#bct2016

Trickster: The Poster

This is the project poster for Root Directory. It’s intentionally sparse on some of the details, since the project is so deeply-rooted in linear story that revealing too much would dull the actual exhibit. The entire poster is in-character, and I tried to make it make sense as an explanation of the meta-purpose of the project itself, while still making it meaningful within the project’s universe context as well.

This project was by far and by all mean’s one of my favourites throughout the  year to complete it took a lot of time and research to pull off. I'm very pleased with how it turned out in the end although I do wish that I had time to complete finish off the aesthetics of the helmet as they are slightly lacking, but as far as functionality goes its amazing and I couldn't be happier.

This project took a lot of time and research into servos and their functionality, and spent a good part of my time working out the range of motion that the servos were capable of moving to and also servo positioning and staging. After exploring the ins and out’s of servos and learning from other 2nd and 3rd years about there full capabilities, I became very confident in my ability to pull off this project.

At first I started off with researching different examples of how servos are used and some common applications or mini projects that they could be used for. I then spent a few days writing and testing my code. At this point I had only included one servo to work with my code and tested it very thoroughly for any problems or faults. So far I only had one servo opening and closing with two buttons attached and felt that it wasn't much of a project at this point so I decided to go bigger and add another two servos, but only one button to toggle it, this required more code and research to go into the project. And as the same process as before, I heavily tested the code to work out as much of the kinks and other problems until I was happy that I could simulate the outcome consistently.

At this stage of my project I had three servos with most of the code finish and as the same feeling from before passed again, I felt that it still wasn't much so I thought about adding LED’s for more effect. I had decided to program the LED’s to turn off at certain points during the servos cycles.

At this point I spent a lot of time trying to fit these electronics, and having some eyes and a lever 3d printed out for my iron man helmet. I feel that I had the most fun trying to make it all fit and work together, as It required a lot of outside the box thinking and problem solving. This I feel had really paid off as it worked really well but also if need be I could add or change this code at a later stage to better suit the needs for any future helmet project’s.

What it does.......

In the end of have set this helmet to perform 2 functions altogether for the front face panel to open and close, having the LED eyes light up when the helmet closes. And for the Rear panel of the helmet to open and close using the servos in the ears to do so. Unfortunately the rear panel wont feature on the helmet for now as it was damaged during transport and couldn't be fitted on in the state it was in.

Overall I very pleased with this project and all the learning that was undertaken to get this project this far. I feel that this has been my most ambitious project to date and it gives me such a feeling of joy to see it working after weeks of hard work.

Trickster: Root Directory - The Exhibit

This is the final exhibit layout for Root Directory. You’ll note that it looks rather bland, and that’s intentional.

You see, I chose to strike a balance between the original “used-industry” look and a more realistic “nuclear power plant control room” look, since the original plan to age everything on the table by about a thousand years became a little tough to do under these circumstances. Though you can’t really tell from the photos, everything is set up to look like it was used as a workstation, hastily abandoned when the facility closed its doors for good, and then left to sit for a thousand years in the very climate-controlled environment that a semi-autonomous medical facility would have. It’s not as aged and old as I would’ve liked it to look, but it still fits the bill enough to suspend some disbelief. The labels on all the items were printed using an old embossing label maker instead of a digital one, so as to give off that “factory machine” feel, and the specific mouse and keyboard were chosen to emulate control panel setups in power plants and elsewhere, which often use trackball mice and very basic keyboards. Finally, the labels themselves give a little incidental backstory of their own, from the licensed ID of the workstation (QGBO03), to the company that built the workstation (Lancaster Solutions, a fictional company), to the facility that the workstation is currently in (AGRI’s Oregon Facility). Through this, I tried to give out little tidbits of info as discreetly and realistically as I could, rather than the more blatant alternative of just writing a “these are the facts” exposition page.

The software side of the exhibit was tedious and boring to set up, but thanks to Unity, most of the hard work was modular enough that the code only had to be written once, and could then be copied into every other place that could possibly need it. This saved me weeks of work, but because of the design of the whole exhibit, I still had a bunch of work to do.

The plan for the exhibit has always been, as per the roadmap, an overarching linear story made of several shorter stories put together. As I progressed though, I began to realize that the universe is more coherent and easier to follow if I focus more on a single character’s story and the events around her. Eventually, this meant that all the different short stories evolved into “pages” in the same book about the main character: Lauren Goddard. Each step on the roadmap became either another thought from Lauren, or an ulterior event related to what Lauren said previously. This way, I could build one really fleshed out story, rather than a dozen half-baked ones.

But then a new problem came up. While designing the layout of each page, I realized that there was no way to fit the stories I had already written onto a single page, and there was no real way I could make a scrolling page with the time I had left at that point. This, coupled with the fact that most of the stories didn’t really fit the storyline anymore, meant that I had only one real option: re-write all the stories from scratch, shorter and better. After that, the roadmap changed a bit as well, and ended up looking like this:

This is my poster displayed next to my project, hopefully everything works while being marked but I have my doubts since AR can be really unreliable.

I just wanted to go over some of the marker design decisions just as part of my last few steps.

The reason why I’ve used terrain background pictures is because they’re the most recognizable on a smaller surface and it’s suppose to symbolism the ‘real world’ as oppose to the virtual one. The zig-zags also help but also give it a wacky design that I was trying to use as the ‘virtual world’ part of the design.

I have been working on making a gif animation for the introduction on the website. I drew a series of illustrations for a stop motion animation on paper first - this is a mock up 

Conceptual Statement

CubAR is a project which numbers with objects to help with early childhood education. The idea is to give the user the feeling of playing with blocks while also teaching them the very basics of small numbers, which then also teaches them to add small numbers in a fun and interactive way. I have worked individually to try and create an application for mobile devices but the road has been extremely bumpy for me and I fear that I haven't created a working game as such, instead most of this project is still speculative but I do have something to show.

My workplace uses programs to assist the tutors to teach their students, but I’ve noticed that the interactivity is very limited due to the old software on the computers. So I want to bring some interesting new technology that gets the younger students to use blocks and feel for the numbers that appear on the screen as they use real world objects. I feel that young students should interact with the real world as well as the digital world to truly understand and expose themselves to technology.

Throughout the semester my idea has changed quite a bit and in the end I don’t have the finished outcome I wanted but it has been an incredible learning experience. I used Unity for the first time to build the application, luckily I do have some experience with other programs such as Unreal Engine to understand Unity pretty quickly. Augmented Reality is not easy to work with especially if you have never used it before which is really risky. My process has been experimental over the semester and it took weeks to even get the AR to actually work.

Initially my idea was to use very tiny blocks which were not much bigger than the blocks used for Place Value in Education today however it was impossible to get Vuforia to recognise anything that small. So I had to scale everything up which made a lot of complications, bigger cubes meant less space for blocks in the camera view.

When building the application on the mobile device I used my phone to test out the markers and one thing I didn’t realise was how uncomfortable I was using my phone for the exhibition so I used a Samsung Galaxy tablet instead which also had a stand so people don’t have to hold the device in their hand which promoted the interactivity of the project. My phone seemed to work better with the AR so I’m not sure about the tablet, probably because the tablet is quite old and it’s camera isn’t as good quality as my phone.

Augmented Reality can be very unreliable and I can’t stress how scared I am that the AR might not work in the space I’ve chosen for the exhibition, lighting seemed to be the most important thing and I didn’t find that out for weeks. The reflection on the paper seemed to be the problem as the ink was slightly reflective if a light source was directly on it so using natural light that isn’t direct sunlight will be best.

The critique session a few weeks ago really helped with my view on my project, seeing what everyone thought about my project initially and then expanding on what they expected to see. This made it all the more frustrating I couldn’t meet my goal of having the blocks connect to each other.

Next time I want to have talked to more people during/after these sessions to get their help and learn more about their skills that could help me. This was very important because I was working individually.

Contextual Statement

As a tutor who works with years one up to eleven, I have experience education for over a year now and I’ve worked with a lot of five and six year olds and a lot of them don’t know how to use simple math with small numbers, even below ten. CubAR uses the virtual world as an extension to the physical world where children can play with blocks of different sizes and not only learn about numbers, but get a feel for them.

Augmented Reality (AR) is the core of this project. By using AR and the existing use of building blocks, we can properly unify the concept of adding numbers while also understanding shape, size, space, depth, width and height and developing hand-eye coordination (“Play idea: Blocks” 2015). This project will also help children experience using mobile devices which seems to be needed in the modern day and it will be worthwhile to expose young children to this kind of technology to prepare them and make it easier for them to use it as part of their everyday lives.

We are gradually entering an age where technology is being used to augment the real world to help with our educational needs. An example of this happening is in Japan with a game called ParaParaParadise, “a game popular in Japan that uses hand and eye sensors, are just on the horizon for education.” (Borja, 2006, p 1). By using technology we can use our basic human functions such as hand-eye coordination to help with our mental learning. When learning, the best way to learn is to do things yourself rather than listening to someone talk about it, that is why we learn the most when teaching others or actually doing things in the real world.

An existing project, Elements4D, uses AR to help with learning the periodic table and reactions of some elements put together. This project initial function was to be able to use the same principles as Elements4D but with Place Value numbers. Existing projects were the first thing I looked for because I needed to know what were possible with AR and what current educational applications were out there that had the same scope as my project.

The main interactive process that is prominent in the scope of the project is trial and error. For all the users the application will require trial and error to learn about the basic numbers and it’s a great way to learn according to Moran (2005). I want users to be able to feel like they have to get it right and it doesn’t matter too much if they fail the first time. This way it will also help them to learn those combinations of numbers because they have learnt it through failing the first time.

By using puzzle elements it can increase the amount of time spent using the application which will tie into the learning because it will increase the attention span of the younger children when using the application.

References

Moran, S. (2005) To really learn, fail — then fail again! Retrieved October 30, 2016, from https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/really-learn-fail-%E2%80%94-then-fail-again

Boot, W.R., Kramer, A.F., Simons, D.J., Fabiani, M., and Gratton, G. (2008) The effects of videogame playing on attention, memory, and executive control. Actapsychologica, 129(3), 387-98.

Carr, A. (2013, July 24). Daqri's 4D Cubes Use Augmented Reality To Teach Kids The Periodic Table Of Elements. Retrieved August 03, 2016, from https://www.fastcompany.com/3014771/tech-forecast/daqris-4d-cubes-use-augmented-reality-to-teach-kids-the-periodic-table-of-elem

Blocks - Ministry of Education. (n.d.). Retrieved September 5, 2016, from http://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Early-Childhood/Play-ideas/Blocks.pdf