GR6 - User Testing
Design
Implementation
Our implementation uses the Facebook Connect API in order to sign into the website. We decided to use this instead of having the user create a new username and password, seeing as it would be more efficient and easy for the user. We used Facebook Connect to obtain the user's profile picture, name and educational history. In fact, the application only lets users post reviews and ratings about their own college, so we used the educational history in order to access the names of the schools they have attended.
We also used Google Maps API v3 for the PhotoMap tab. This new version of the API did not allow integration with the Fancybox framework that we were using for overlays. As a result, we changed our design so that the images would be displayed directly in the info window that pops open when a user clicks on a pin. In addition, due to the limited documentation and examples with the new API, we were unable to get the info window to resize when the user clicks on the link to see the photos. As a result, the info window is automatically as big as the photo carousel.
For the persistence layer, we used Ruby on Rails, which unfortunately we were unable to integrate with the frontend.