ThinksApps Project

Development of three educational software applications, using the newest Windows technologies to improve their interface accordingly the educational process involved.

The apps

Fractions and percentage

The first application is actually the fusion of two types of application that commonly appears separated: for learning fractions and percentage calculations. There is no reason to maintain percentage and fraction activities in separate applications, so we intend show to students relations between expressions like 150% and 3/2 and 1+1/2 concurrently in a single study session. Beyond the numbers, visual aids are elements of a direct manipulation interface.

Periodic Table

There are dozens of periodic tables in the market, and all of them fight with a crucial problem: how to enable access to all that information without a labyrinth of menus and sub menus and how to highlight relations between them. Here are some preliminary studies:



In the figure above, we see the relation between two properties - electronegativity and atomic numbers - displayed simultaneously, by clicking two radio buttons.



And now we see electronegativity behavior in a single family. Users can highlight any family by clicking their names (1A in this example), and then choose electronegativity by clicking the respective radio button.

Sudoku

Analysing the usage of Sudoku game version in the market is clearly possible to observe problems about usability of the software application. Therefore, the usability of KSudoku can be improved with some studies about the software application. For example: When the user wants to populate some square of Sudoku with a given symbol (number or letter), he have to move an unnecessarily big distance between given symbol and the square with the cursor point of mouse. The figure below demonstrates it.



One possible solution to address this problem is to enable for user, using just one click of mouse, select the square desired and after that choose one symbol using mouse wheel. The figure below demonstrates it.



Another improvement which can be made on sudoku is about the educational benefits of this game. It is possible to elaborate a study which can evaluate the sudoku potential on specific areas of scholar curriculum, for example geometry (polyomino and mathematical floor plans). It is also possible to evaluate what advantages for one teach is worthy about the possibility of to include a tutorial or hint system which demonstrates the relationship between these areas (geometry) and the puzzle solving process.