The visual portion of my thesis will be an application that allows the user to build a web page with a simple design with voice commands on their mobile devices. The targeted platform for now will be the Android platform. However the option of using phonegap is also on the table. A desktop version would be nice to have but will require additional research into Google’s Web Speech API http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html. So with that in mind I will be focusing on developing for an android device to keep the scope of this project manageable.
How does this relate to complexity of web design? This is my way of proving that the first steps of using something new must start out simple. If trying to achieve a more rich and vibrant design then it can rather frustrating for the user because of the necessary steps needed to accomplish that design.
The targeted audience will be male and female who are in their twenties to mid-forties. Their knowledge of web design is basic but they would like to learn more or at least have something that is easy to use so that they can build a simple web page fast. They would have some experience working with smartphones and/or microphones.
Using voice commands to build a web page is rather new. There are already programs out there but one must know the code language syntax to build those pages which pretty much leaves the rest of the interested viewers out of the mix because they do not know that syntax of the code language.
By building this application it will allow people who are interested in creating web pages slowly learn the lingo as the application takes care of the code language behind the scene based on specific keywords that the user says to the application.
As the voice command web page builder application evolves then so does it’s abilities to handle more complex web designs and commands. Just like CSS (and other technologies) it started out with limited abilities and gained additional abilities over time; CSS used to just be able to affect the background color, font color, type of font used and a few other properties. It did not have the ability to position elements on a web page until CSS 2.1; websites relied on heavy images, image maps and tables to get a certain look until CSS could provide more capabilities.
The goal of this visual component is to prove that with the beginnings of web technology, such as voice controlled web page building, that the design must be kept simple to allow for easier adaptation of the technology. As the technology grows then so does the vibrancy of the design because of the added features to the application.