All the interactions are scheduled into the step-through and the various connections are illustrated by the flowchart, the description under here has just the function of overview.
THE MAIN MENU INTERFACE
When you start Snowball the first screen that appear is the title. On the upper side is displayed the user nickname. On the lower side the bar shows on the left the word ON/OFF so clicking with Softbutton-left you can work online or offline. If you click on menu, you get to the main menu where you can set your snowball attack, your profile and modify the contact list, maybe blocking the user which sent that ugly image yesterday. Navigating into the menu is very simple: moving with the arrows make the selection rectangle switch over the icons, if you press Fire or Softbutton-right (originally we planned to put scalable vector icons, put that has not been possible due to programming limitations).
THE FIGHT INTERFACE
The fight interface appears if you wait for a short time on the title. It disappears and you can see only the snow falling down (like a sort of screen-saver). When a snowball attack arrives, it is shown on the foreground on the center of the screen, in the meanwhile the corner where it ought be put will highlight. You can communicate with up to 4 users contemporaneously (think that is an application made for buchi di tempo), so in every corner you put a different snowball attack (they will be filled in clockwise order starting from the top-left one). These stay in their places until you or the respective antagonist disconnect.
ACCEPTING SNOWBALL AND SNOWBALL ATTACKS
Accepting a snowball from an user, means that you will select it, drag it into the provided corner and then press select again. Doing this you will accept the incoming communications from that user. The snowball attack is shifted into the centre of the corner (or sector, as you prefer to call it) and shown under the user’s nickname. If new snowballs arrive from that user they will be displayed in the centre of the screen and the sector of the sender will be highlighted. Selecting, dragging into the corner and reselecting it will make accept the snowball, which will take place with small size on the corner closest to the centre. New accepted snowballs are put on top, so the older will be shifted down in column.
SENDING A SNOWBALL
Sending a snowball is a very easy operation. Just select the user you want to reply to by moving the joystick to its corner and press select or fire: you will access to the archive, where you can choose from all the multimedia resources stored into your mobile phone, just select the one you prefer and press select. After a short time your snowball will be sent. There’s an option in the archive to send text message: just select the bottom-right icon (the one with the piece of paper and the TXT writing on it).
STEP-THROUGH
Microsoft Power Point PPT file, 3854 Kilobytes (click on the image to download the Step-through)
FLOWCHART
Adobe PDF file, 1005 Kilobytes (click on the image to download the flowchart)