Design and development of an app for statistical data analysis learning

As statistics grows in importance in our society due to the need to analyze the increasing amounts of data available, it is necessary to reinforce the role of statistics in education. However, the non-existence of free open-source statistical tools designed specifically for educational purposes make the task more difficult. Concern about this fact led to this project. An app designed for statistical data analysis learning has been developed from scratch, and fully programmed using R. Diverse studies and profound research have been carried on to design the application, named StatClip. Different aspects have been taken into account, following a logical sequential structure for implementing the application: review of similar existing programs, characterization of target users, definition of user needs and translation into program characteristics. The result is a fully functional program with several important and useful functionalities implemented. More importantly, though, the whole architecture and structure of the software has been designed to make it easier to continue developing and adding functionalities to StatClip. An emotional design study (more specifically, a study following the kansei engineering model) has been as well performed, to take into consideration sensations and feelings that StatClip’s user interface conveys on users. The results led to rethink some features of the program’s user interface (UI), although in general the initial UI’s design was found adequate and correct. A lot of working effort in this project has been devoted to program code for the application. As a result, the app’s skeleton and structure, as well as many important functionalities, are already programmed. From now on, StatClip can continue growing and expanding, with the addition of new functionality, so that it becomes a complete and useful statistical educational tool