Questions to Ponder

Garrett Reuscher and Andre Wiggins

University of Advancing Technology, garreusc@uat.edu, andwiggi@uat.edu
Abstract Questions to Ponder is an application for the
curious mind. Inspired by the popular Philosoraptor
meme, QTP is an application that provokes the users
thoughts by asking confusing, often paradoxical
questions. The user can swipe through question after
question in the application itself, or quickly view a daily
question using a widget on their home screen.
Index Terms perplexing, philosoraptor, questions

FEATURE LIST

Multiple perplexing questions

Different question featured daily

Home widget for daily question

Colorful backgrounds

Lighthearted sounds and animations

Store favorite questions

AGILE METHODOLOGY

This project will be using the SCRUM

methodology, which is a popular form of Agile project
management utilized in game development. The tasks for
each milestone are assigned to an individual, to be
completed over a timeframe known as a sprint. The length
of the sprints for this project will be two weeks. At the end
of each sprint, each member on the team does a stand up,
which is a short report of what they have completed, what
they will complete next, and any problems they have
encountered. The standup is also a time to reassign tasks and
address concerns if necessary. A build of the project will be
done before each stand up.

APIS
Questions to Ponder is an application for the
curious mind. Inspired by the popular Philosoraptor meme,
QTP is an application that provokes the users thoughts by
asking confusing, often paradoxical questions. The user can
swipe through question after question in the application
itself which requires the use of basic text objects and the
API for the touch screen.
The app will store all of its questions on the device
itself to allow offline viewing and increased access times (at
the cost of device memory). This seems like a good decision
since text strings do not take up very much memory,
although this can be stored online if the app size gets too
large. Since the ultimate goal of the device is to store
thousands of questions, I would like to utilize a SQLite
database API to ensure that queries remain fairly quick. In
addition, the user will be able to designate questions that
they like, so a list of favorited questions will also be stored
in this database.
Another key feature of the application is the
generation of a daily question based on the current date. I
will be writing a custom Java class to handle the processing
of a date string into one of the entries in the database. The
app will also feature a widget that will display the daily
question. This functionality will be achieved using the API
for widgets.

September 20, 2015

Tempe, AZ 85283
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MILESTONES

PROGRESS

Milestone 1:

Pre-Milestones (Week 1 Week 4):

Application stores multiple questions on disk. User

can swipe between questions within the application.
Milestone 2:
Background color changes with each swipe, text
color adjusts accordingly. A question of the day is picked
based on the systems date.

Created Proposal Document (Week 3, 1 hour)

Created Storyboard (Week 3, 2 hours)

Researched required services and APIs (Week 4, 1

hour)

Added API section to Proposal Document (Week 4,

1 hour)

Milestone 3:
The daily question can be displayed on a widget on
the users home screen. Give question swipes simple
animations and sounds.

Milestone 1 (Week 5 Week 7):

Created Sequence Diagram (Week 5, 2 hours)

Created Use Case Diagram (Week 5, 2 hours)

Created Agile Methodology section in Proposal

Document (Week 6, 1 hour)

Created Progress section in Proposal Document

(Week 6, 1 hour)

Display notifications for new daily questions. Give

user basic notification settings. Bug fixes.

Completed asynchronous work involving database

content providers (Week 6, 3 hours)

Backlog:

Store questions in a database instead of on the

users device. Add question tags to allow user to view
similar questions in succession.

Created basic application that calls a function when

the user swipes right or left (Week 7, 1 hour)

Used example code from Asynchronous

assignments to set up a background SQLite
database for application (Week 7, 3 hours)

Milestone 4:
Populate application with as many questions as
possible. Allow user to access favorite questions by storing
them on disk
Milestone 5:

Milestone 2 (Week 7 Week 9):

Began work on the question of the day

functionality, researched using the system time and
calling a function at a certain time daily (Week 8, 2
hours)

Swapped backend storage to saved preferences

since all that is needed is a key-value pair (Week 9,
1 hour)

Researched different storage methods for user

favorites (Week 9, 1 hour)

Background color and text color of application is

changed when the user swipes (Week 9, 2 hours)

Milestone 3 (Week 9 Week 11):

September 20, 2015

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Began research into using sounds within an app

(Week 10, 1 hour)

Began research into creating widgets (Week 10, 2

hours)

Introduced Andre to project code and structure

(Garrett, Week 11, 1 hour)

Readjusted milestones to new scope (Garrett, Week

11, 1 hour)
Tempe, AZ 85283

Learned project and code structure (Andre, Week

11, 1 hour)

Milestone 4 (Week 11 Week 13):

Add search functionality (Garrett, Week 13, 2

hours)

Backlog:

Migrated project to GitHub (Garrett, Week 12, <1

hour)

Finished adding sounds (Garrett, Week 12, 1 hour)

Reviewed asych code for Preferences (Garrett,

Week 12, 1 hour)

Researched adding notifications for daily question

(Andre, Week 12, 1 hour)

No progress yet
AUTHOR INFORMATION

Garrett Reuscher, Student, Game Programming &

Advancing Computer Science, University of Advancing
Technology
Andre Wiggins, Student, Game Programming, University
of Advancing Technology

Milestone 5 (Week 13 Week 15):

Added widget that displays daily question (Andre,

Week 13, 5 hours)

Revised color code to make application more

readable (Garrett, Week 13, <1 hour)

Added philosoraptor picture to application to make

UI less bland (Garrett, Week 13, 1 hour)

Added a tag system so that questions can be

filtered by tags (Garrett, Week 13, 3 hours)
SEQUENCE DIAGRAM

September 20, 2015

Tempe, AZ 85283
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USE CASE DIAGRAM

September 20, 2015

Tempe, AZ 85283
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September 20, 2015

Tempe, AZ 85283
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