The parks PDA: a handheld device for theme park guests in squeak

The Parks PDA is a lightweight, handheld device for theme park guests that functions as a combination guidebook, map, and digital camera. Together with a small team of artists and designers, we created a prototype Parks PDA and content for a three hour guest experience, including a camera interface, a hyper-linked guide book, three games, an animal spotters guide, a cross-referenced map, animated movies with lip-synched sound, a ride reservation system, and more. Over 800 visitors to Disney's Animal Kingdom™ theme park tested the Parks PDA over a two week period.Developing the software for this test posed a number of challenges. The processor and memory of the target device were slow, the screen was small, and we had only three months of development time.We attacked these problems using Squeak, a highly-portable, open source Smalltalk implementation. We ported Squeak to the target device and used it to provide nearly bit-identical behavior across four different platforms. This supported a cross-platform development style that streamlined the production of both software and content. We created a tiny user interface and application framework for pen-based devices and implemented a simple card-stack media editor and player using it. We isolated and addressed several challenging performance issues.The project was completed on time and guest response was favorable. Looking back, we can identify seven aspects of Squeak that contributed to the success of the project. In fact, we feel that Squeak was the ideal tool for this job.