Waiting room app. How to get started?

Question

Created Sep ’15

Replies 5

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The haunted house I work for has asked me to create an app for the queue at the entrance. People go through the attraction in groups of 4-6 people. Normally, they would update the current group they are on a white board at the pavilion where people wait. Since the wait times are usually up to 2 hours, they would like an app so people could walk to main street and say, get dinner or go to the bar while they wait, and see what the current group is so they know when to come back.

I think it should be pretty simple. A control app on an iPad that is held by the staff member in charge, and then the phone apps for the customers. I was thinking a client-server type app, with only the group number displayed on the screen, nice and simple. The only problem is, I don't know how to get started in doing this. It should work so that, when the next group gets called in, the staff member could type in the current group number on the iPad, and the customers phones would update with that change. Anyone have any advice or tutorials to get started? I would like to make this as simple as possible.

Thanks in advance!

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Answer 1

Jens OP

Sep ’15

Wouldn't the simplest solution to this problem be:

1. Give each group a number (corresponding to their place in the queue) in some physical paper format.

2. Display the current state of the queue (the numbers) on the webpage of the haunted house (sort of like a virtual queue, freeing them from having to embody the queue themselves).

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Answer 2

prodigysoftware OP

Sep ’15

Thank you for the suggestion. The groups are assgined a number when they buy their tickets at the gate. Since the house wants an app to bring the queue to the guest's fingertips so they dont have to load the website every time. You gave me an idea. What I will do is create a simple app to load a webpage in the webkit framework and then have it auto-refresh every 2 minutes or so, as that is the freuqnecy the groups are usually called. And then the iPad could simply update the webpage.

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Answer 3

Jens OP

Sep ’15

Why not just use some javascript to update the status of the queue live on the webpage?

No need for them to actively refresh the page.

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Answer 4

prodigysoftware OP

Sep ’15

How would I implement that into the customer and staff apps? I am not good at javascript nor am i familiar with it.

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Answer 5

Jens OP

Sep ’15

This is getting terribly off topic now. but: To have some information updated in real time like that on a webpage is really very basic web developer stuff, as is knowing javascript. Writing, distributing and getting your guests to use a (crossplatform I guess) app without problems would require a lot more work than that.

I guess an app might be necessary if the customers are supposed to get a notification for example. But then you have to think about what happens when that notification fails for some reason etc.

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