CMSC 434            Homework #3 Part B - 6% of Course Grade            Spring 2003


Due April 2nd, 2003 at class time.
Note: I suggest starting and completing it before the break, or by Monday March 31st at the latest...

Aw, come on, just 5 more minutes....
Just about everybody can probably tell you some details of their ideal alarm clock. Local lecturer Charles Lin even created a web page to describe his (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~clin/Links/Alarm.html).

In this homework, you will create an alarm clock using Visual Basic. You need to decide how you would like it to appear (digital? analog?) and exactly what features it should have as well as how to access these features. We've looked at Visual Basic a little already, but typing "visual basic tutorial" into your search engine of choice will provide you with many options!

The following is an example from The Design of Everyday Things in which someone intentionally created a confusing interface for an alarm clock / cd player / tv / radio / etc...

Notice how you can't tell which is the time and which is the radio station.


Minimum requirements for this homework:
  • display current time and date and day of week
  • be able to set the alarm time by time and day of week
  • have at least two alarms that can be set
  • have it work so that if I set the alarm and leave the program running the alarm will "go off".
        - The alarm going off should play a WAV file. I have included a small WAV file in the ZIP file listed below. This should be submitted in the directory you zip together and submit and should be the default WAV that is played when the alarm goes off.
        - I would also like you to add the ability for the user to select a different WAV file. However, do not include any other WAV files in your submission - we'll have several WAV files on our testing machine.
  • a text file in which you discuss how you gathered information about the tasks for which this might be used as well as the options that users want to see

    A short code example is posted here for a simple Visual Basic application that displays the current time and also plays and stops playing a WAV file. Feel free to use any part of this code example in your project.

    We are focusing on the interface, so don't worry about making all of the features actually work, but rather focus on creating the interface. For example, if I want a snooze alarm that can be set to go off again in either 1, 5 or 10 minutes I will need to design the interface to allow the user to set it (dial? buttons? pull-down menu?) but I don't need to actually have it so that when they alarm goes off and the user clicks on the snooze button, that the alarm actually goes off again in the correct number of minutes. There will be points assigned to the level of detail in implementing the program, but the vast majority of points are attached to issues such as layout, task-centered and user-centered design, positive transfer and affordance, etc.

    You will need to submit this via e-mail. Send your submission as a zipped file containing all of the files for your project. We will extract these to a directory, open your Visual Basic project file and compile and run it. I suggest that you test things out by sending the zipped file to yourself, extracting it in a WAM lab and trying it out from scratch just like we will.

    The e-mail address to which you should send this project is eg434003@wam.umd.edu. Along with the zipped file attachment, the body of the mail message needs to have your name and your student ID number so that we easily know who you are. Of course, your code should be commented, and your name will appear there as well.

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