Software components supporting the implementation of multimedia applications for Android

Abstract

The performance of smartphones increases with each generation. Because of this, editing multimedia content directly on smartphone devices gets more and more relevant. The design principles of desktop and mobile applications differ in many cases because smartphones have a smaller screen and use touch-gestures for input instead of using mouse and keyboard. But, for example, mobile video editing applications on smartphones often rely on the same metaphors and design decisions of their desktop counterparts. Within this thesis new user interaction and user interface designs were identified and described using qualitative methods from the research field of user-centered-design. Then a software library called MicroDO was implemented, which supports the implementation of the identified user interactions and user interface designs on the Android operating system. To evaluate the implementation, experienced Android developers were asked to implement small tasks using the MicroDO software library and describe any issues they found within the software library. In addition, semi-structured interviews were held with the developers after they finished implementing the tasks. The feedback of the developers and the analysis of the semi-structured interviews showed, that the MicroDO software library is a flexible and modular software library that can support the implementation of innovative multimedia applications on Android.