This thesis entitled “ANDROID BASED OFFLINE TRAVEL APP” has been submitted by Nusrat Jahan to the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Daffodil International University, and has been accepted as satisfactory for the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of M.Sc. I hereby declare that this thesis was done by me under the supervision of Dr. First of all, I express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to Almighty Allah for His divine blessings through which I have been able to successfully complete this dissertation.
The Context
Bangla is the mother tongue of Bangladesh and people who come from the rest of the world have their own mother tongue. In this research, a voice simulator is planned to integrate so that travelers can easily communicate with local people. It is also planned to design an offline integrated map through which travelers can easily access their itinerary with specific route along with the other facilities when they have no internet on their mobile device.
Goal of the Thesis
The app will show and navigate the traveler to their destination with an interactive offline map. This voice communicator will help users make their journey more convenient and easier. The app will archive all the travel details, which will help the user get an automatic suggestion through AI integration.
Structure of the Thesis
In that case, a voice communication facility can be used as a language translator in the app. The "System Development Plan & Analysis" chapter discusses the design of the application and how all components of the travel application are implemented. The chapter “Conclusion and Future Scope” presents the summary of the work plan completed to fulfill this dissertation.
Research
Inspiration to design a new Android App for travelers (Especially for Dhaka
Challenges in Mobile Application Development
Interview
Interview Results
When asked which features were most important for a travel app, the majority emphasized reliability, ease of use, minimal storage requirements, customization options and a responsive map. Travel route from one place to another is also a practical feature that the interviewer felt could further improve the travel app. The offline feature can be used without having to pay data charges, which can be very expensive and can be unreliable due to network issues.
Benchmarking
It should be able to show nearby places of interest and the user's location. The offline feature of my app will be very useful for the users as per the interview as there are no other offline travel apps available for Dhaka city. The interviewer thought that this would enable better communication between foreigners and locals, who do not know each other's language.
Some travel apps made specifically for the city of Dhaka have been tested to find out what features they offer to users and what their limitations are. It contains a list of places of interest indicating their location, some pictures of the attractions, a general description of the place, the location on the map and the duration to get there. Just have the names of the places of interest and their visiting times and any required fees.
Points of interest are listed with pictures of location, address and description of the attractions.
Requirements Specification
A visual map should be available in the app that helps users find tourist attractions with minimal effort. A travel planner based on points of interest can help users find the attractive place in the minimum available time. A voice translator can help users communicate in a foreign country, which will help the trip to be easier and more comfortable.
The traveler will be able to ask for help from the locals through the app's translation feature. All the information of the point of interest will be retrieved from the data stored in the device. The map and POI location markers will also be retrieved from the stored data in the device.
The user will be presented with a form where they can select and enter their travel location, time and date choices and create plans. The trip planning service will also be able to suggest recommended tour plans based on their interests and POI popularity. According to the objective of this study, the application should have a user-friendly interface and the structure of the application should be such that it can be easily customized.
Technologies that are already present must be integrated with the application for full functionality.
Agile Development Method
If there is a small system to be developed, it is easy to manage the software development without using any particular framework. But as a system grows, it requires a more disciplined development methodology so that it can be managed more efficiently. The most widely recognized SDLC improvement models are cascade, iterative, meandering, and smooth models (Istqbexamcertification.com, 2017).
Previously, most enterprise application development groups used common practices for creating desktop applications. These days, a large number of them do not work with mobile application development due to the variety of devices available, advancements in mobile networks, changing customer requirements, and many different components (Appknox, 2014). Sometimes the client may request changes which are influenced by the rapidly changing requirements of the business sector.
In the event that testing is performed all the time, unlike improvement, it guarantees the execution at a similar minute, preventing any problems during the release of the application. The specialized and practical scene is progressing significantly, which affects the general business estimate of the mobile applications. To speed up business, agile development provides a lightweight structure to help deliver faster releases, organizing key highlights.
One of the biggest problems that appear at the expense of agile development is the absence of quality testing, especially regarding safety and security.
Process of Development
- User Centered Design Process (UCD)
- UX Planning for UCD
- Specifying Context of Use
- Specifying Product Requirement
Shaping the app's interaction based on the user's taste is the driving force behind this planning. In this app, interviews and discussions were conducted with the end users to know more about their requirements, which helped us in defining and planning the UX design along with the app's interaction. The findings from the field research helped define the potential features required by end users.
Online magazines, books, websites and mobile applications are the secondary sources available in the app markets and form the basis of this research. The data collected from the end users is used to specify the user requirements as well as the problems that users face while using other similar apps. According to the users' opinions and the results of research on other similar online apps, they came up with a resolution and plan to develop the proposed Travel app.
Development Plan
It is not downloadable from the store, but accessible with the URL in the mobile browser. Native app: it is produced using the local instruments and dialects given by the stage dealer. The local app is downloadable from the stage merchant store and persists on this stage as it were.
The decision to develop a native application was based on many factors such as o The availability of mobile phones in Dhaka. The data layer which mainly consists of the database and file server next to the mapping service of Google maps.
System Design & Implementation Plan
- User Interface
- Location and Maps
- Tour Plan Recommendation
- Analysis components of the system
- Obtaining user input
- Communication between components
- Displaying recommendation results
- Translation
This post presents basic data for the application to the Android framework, the data that the framework needs before it executes the application's code. The controller is the segment of the app that responds to outside activities: a tap on the screen, a press of a button, and so on. The map of the application is retrieved using the google map API, which will be implemented on the Android platform.
The map can show almost all the cities in the world, as google map shows the map of the whole world. In addition, the suggested POI visit spans are tailored depending on the traveler's intrigue dimensions, i.e., the longest visit duration for POIs that are fascinating to the vacationer. Create the traveler's visit history by linking visits to points of interest (obtained from Step 1) of the same traveler.
Calculate the popularity of the point of interest and preferences of the travelers according to the findings of Step 2 (traveler visit history). Furthermore, suggested POI visit lengths are adjusted depending on the plot dimensions of the vacationer, that is, a more extended visit term for POIs that are fascinating to the visitor. The posterior tour recommendation algorithm is based on a modified version of the ant colony optimization algorithm” (Dorigo, Birattari, and Stutzle, 2006).
Modifications to the ant colony optimization algorithm include the following: (i) “the utility of each POI is based on a combined score of POI popularity and tourist interest. Only publicly available data are used for information in the following recommendations”; and (ii) “the cost of. The app's translation feature will help users communicate with local people.
Critical Review
This paper shows how the proposed application could achieve the required objectives. The application is developed using Android SDK and java, which enables the user to help locate their point of interest in offline mode. The SUS forms also helped to find out the average SUS score of the application, which is 70.
This score shows that the app is just above the industry average and that improvements can be made to improve this score. The proposed Travel mobile application will help travelers discover the various attractions in Dhaka city such as restaurants, hotels, parks, historical places, etc. The voice translator in the app will make it easier for foreigners to communicate with locals.
Future Recommendations
Methods of data collection in qualitative research: interviews and focus groups. [online] www.nature.com. Available at:http://sdsudspace.calstate.edu/bitstream/handle Sindavala%20Karnam_K.pdf?seq uence=1 [Accessed 4 Sep Available at: https://techcrunch.com breaking-google-announces-android- and -open-handset-alliance/ [Accessed 25 Oct
