Executive Summary
The following is a proposal for our Software Product Engineering project, undergone by Josh Hamwee, Andrei Bogdan, Finn Wilkinson, Sharlene D'Silva and Kshitij Upmanyu. Grade Achieved - 68% (2:1)
Client
The client in which we are working with is the European Microbeam Analysis Society, EMAS. Our primary source of contact is with Mike Matthews, the chairman and creator of the EMAS Periodic Table. EMAS is a non-profit organisation run for and by scientists working in the related field. Founded in 1989 with its primary purposes being Education, Communication and Innovation
Application Domain
The application domain of the product in which we are going to develop is that of the EMAS group. This comes under that of Earth Sciences and Chemistry.
The Problem
Currently the EMAS group is using A3 sized periodic tables, and large data books to look up the necessary data. This is a laborious task especially when each individual element can have different Absorption Values dependant on which machine is being used, and which crystals are used within this machine.
The second problem is that of converting units between different machines. There are two large manufacturers of Electron Microscopes, Jeol and Cameca. Both of these companies use different units when processing the data. This can make it confusing when analysing the data, and even harder when having to compare the data between the machines.
Our Vision / Solution
What we have envisioned for this product is an Android App which would solve the majority of the current issues that the EMAS group are facing. The main focus of the application would be to make data more accessible to the user. So how would this application work?
Our current idea is that converting the periodic table that EMAS are currently using onto your phone/tablet. This periodic table would be interactive, so if an element was clicked on, further information would be delivered to the user. This information would be more detailed than that of the original periodic table are the screen would provide much more space, including a scrolling aspect to present more data to the user.
One of the problems that we believe is necessary to fix is that of the issue with that of the units. We are going to try and eliminate this problem by creating a toggle on the detailed information page for the element, which will switch between the two necessary units.
We believe that accessing data quickly is a very important feature for any application, so to implement this into our solution we will create a search bar that will be able to look up elements by both their name and sybmol.