Project List

U.S Air Force STEM Registration iPad App

Bringing the index card form submission process into the 21st century

iPad frame for video

Implementation

  • Languages:

    • Objective-C
    • JSON

  • Source Control:

    GIT

About the Project

Traditionally, when prospective recruits visited the Air Force recruiting booth at an event, they would be handed an index card to fill out, which would then be manually entered into a spreadsheet. The goal of this project was to digitize that process.

An additional problem: more often than not, the events had no wifi access.

The Solution

An iPad app was designed to collect the recruits’ information. The basics:

  • Text inputs gathered name, address, email and phone. UIPickers gathered date information.
  • An embedded data table performed a reverse lookup of zip codes to populate city, state, and country information.
  • Single and multiple choice questions with a set of answers were each given their own view.
  • Appropriate validation, inlcuding age validation to confirm the recruit was old enough to apply, was performed for each of the inputs.

The process at the booth was to have a recruit fill out the first half of the form, and then hand the iPad back to the recruiter to ask the applicant a few additional questions and then complete the form process. For that reason, the recruiter was given credentials that needed to be applied half-way through the form process so that the recruit could not finish the form on their own.

Once the form was completed, the review screen would display. If any of the information was incorrect, the applicant and/or the recruiter was given the opportunity to return to that screen and update the erroneous information. For that reason, deep-linking functionality was also programmed into the application.

Because of the wifi limitations at most events, upon form submission the data was written to a text file on the iPad in a comma-delimited format for the recruiter to then save to his computer later and view in Microsoft Excel. Each record was stamped with a timestamp so that the recruiter knew which event the recruit had attended.

When an event was over and the data had been saved, credentials were supplied for the recruiter to clear the iPads of all recruit data.

Summary

The process of turning paper into a tablet application not only created efficiencies within the organization, it also added a bit of a “cool” factor to a target audience that appreciated and was impressed by the presentation.