BirdsEyePM

Upon opening the application, the user is shown four icons in the Main view/Watch mode. These include upload/download, settings and Editor-mode. For education use, we recommend an opening splash screen for the application and app instructions such as a user instructional overlay, a demonstration video or access directly to a user manual via the application. The ‘Settings’ icon allows you to save your design to a configured server. 

The ‘Edit’ mode enables the user to create a Bird's Eye View of a site plan. The interface shows a series of icons on the left-hand side that include: vehicles, roads, buildings and an icon to return to the Main view/Watch mode.

The ‘Vehicles’ icon includes a forklift, truck, digger, plane, cab and bus (these are known as assets). Once these icons have been pressed the vehicle will appear in the main window. We would like to see the background in a lighter colour than grey as this makes the lines difficult to see. The Asset can be selected to add attributes such as a name, start/end time and more.

The ‘Road’ icon allows the user to add a series of roads to the site plan. We particularly like the auto path icon where a road can be laid in succession to create a continuous path, however, we did find this very difficult to master.

The ‘Building’ icon includes several different styles of buildings that can be added to the site plan. Once these icons have been pressed the building will appear in the main window.

Once an asset has been added such as a vehicle, building or road they can be edited using the icons at the bottom of the screen. These include move, rotation, link, delete, save and more. We found these icons intuitive and relatively easy to use, however, we found ourselves wanted to click and drag the assets rather than click to place or rotate. 

Returning to the ‘Watch’ mode is a valuable experience. Here you can see the model in 3D and the real-time movement of vehicles if the asset information has been assigned. We did find this view difficult to navigate at times. A ‘reset’ button would help where the drawing is reset into a Plan View for the user to manipulate once again.

‘BirdsEyePM’ is an interesting application that offers some educational value. We certainly could see this being used in a subject such as Design and engineering, Geography and Information Technology. However, the user interface has been designed for industry and the developers would need to simplify the interface and controls to make it suitable for a younger audience. We would suggest an opening splash screen, a link to instructions, a demo, text to support the icons/controls, further assets so the application could be used in subjects such as Geography and the option to share via applications such as Dropbox and Google drive.

You can download BirdsEyePM on your iOS devices from the Apple App Store.