Move/Rest is an app developed for people to gather information about the city around them, and their movements within it. It was built using the MIT App Inventor, as a way to experiment with that platform’s interface and features.

Move/Rest app sketch & layout

First, a user opens the app and sees two options: Move or Rest. The Move option gathers information about an individual trip taken within the city, and the Rest option gathers information about a particular static place.

If the user clicks on Move, they are taken to a screen with a simple Play / Stop button. This button will record the length of the trip they took. After the trip is over, the user is directed to a series of questions about the trip (What mode of transport did they take? Was is crowded? Was it for work or for leisure? Did they enjoy the trip?)

If the user clicks on Rest, they are taken to a screen with 3 more options: record ambient sound, take a photograph, or add comments. These three things compose an image of the place in which the user is standing in that moment.

After completing each section, the app sends the recorded data to a Fusion Table database (which is accessible through a Google account) and can then be downloaded and analyzed in the usual way (by mapping coordinates, charted, or graphed).

While the underlying coding language is essentially the same, the MIT App Inventor coding interface is quite different from the average IDE, in that it is meant to be much more user friendly. Instead of writing lines of code, the developer connects preset ‘blocks’ of code together like puzzle pieces. This way, the logical procedure is easier to understand.

The app has particular use for any future MaCT seminar that plans on developing projects in cities with scarce data, such as Shanghai.

Move/Rest is a project of IAAC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, developed at MaCT (Master in City & Technology), 2017-18 by:
Students: Alba Alsina Maqueda, Irene Rodríguez Vara, Ivan Himanen
Faculty: Andre Resende