CS257 Software Design
Wednesday, 26 October 2022

+ Thinking about your data & features
- Animals
    Who's the user?
        * 10-year-old who's into animals
        - evolutionary biologist    
        - parent looking for pets
        - college students
        - middle school students trying to find a
            topic for their report
- 10 minutes:
    - What features would the user want?

- Your feature ideas
    - (??) pictures (eye-catching)
    - (!!) search feature: text input, ("bear" --> list of
        bear types that you can click on, thumbnails)
    - some way to search by ecosystem (savannah, taiga, rainforest...)
    - (!!) some way to search by map
    - glossary (alphabetical list of stuff)
    - mobile-friendly, especially tablets
    - (I don't know the UI yet) table linking predators to prey
    - pronunciation of the name, scientific name
    - animal sounds
    - table/something linking similar species
        click click click to EXPLORE the space of species
    - picture recognition
    - monetization (merch!)
    - quiz, games, achievements, etc.
    - search by attributes
    - user profile; save favorite animals, cultivate a
        giant squid as a pet...

+ IMPORTANT OBSERVATION
- You don't actually know what your target audience wants
    so you should ask them
- They kinda don't know either

+ Next
- Get your vision of your web app ready
- Learn how to render a web page using HTML/CSS
- Design an API that provides service to your web application
       Implement that with Flask
- Design a database to serve the API
        Implement that like we did for Olympics data
- Put it all together


+ The word "interface"
Your definitions
    - the window that you use to get data
    - the design -- multiple ways to get there
        e.g. you can search these things, but there
        might be multiple ...
    - a mediator for retrieval or interaction
    - an abstract interaction with the system
        e.g. code for accessing data without caring about the underlying
            details
Two categories
- User interface
    - the widgets, layout, appearance, "affordances", etc.
        that enable a person to interact with the
        software, its data, and its features

- Software interface
    - "functional interface" -- the mechanism by which one
        of the code invokes a function elsewhere in the code

            def print_author(author):
                ''' Prints the author's name and dates to standard
                    output '''

    - "network interface" / usually involves a "protocol"
        client software wants to request a service from server software

        what language does the client use to articulate the request?
        what language does the server use to respond?
            "protocol"

        HTTP provides a protocol, and an API publishes an
        interface that uses HTTP as the request/response language

            GET /actor?name=adams HTTP/1.1

etc.

+ Architecture
- Shaun, me, and our colleagues' code
- "Design patterns"
- Question: interface
-