26 Aug 2009 WED - Ambient Sound fine-tuning

Today myself and Dara checked the ambient sounds on Museum Building and Campus with a fine-comb. We changed a few of the sounds and their position, loudness and range. We also changed all the names of the clickable sounds to their final versions. Killian incorporated our changes into a final prototype, which was posted online:
https://www.cs.tcd.ie/~walshk8/cube/main3/index.html

We are still conducting user testing as we review minor details, but the prototype is fully working and now has to be incorporated into the overall interface of the final project.

Marcos.

24 Aug 2009 MON - Reports and testing

Today we handed in our individual reports about the Final Project. This kept us busy for most of the weekend and today. Killian posted the latest prototype over the weekend which includes the transition movie between the campus and the building interfaces and the clickable dot in the campus that activates it. 

We have been testing the interface among colleagues and friends and most people seem to be spending between 5 and 10 minute browsing the soundscapes in both the campus and the building interfaces. Based on some of our observations, we are doing a few changes.

We still need to adjust the ambient sounds on both interfaces, changing their loudness and filling in the blank spaces where nothing plays at all. Once we have that done we will maek a list of things that we want to observe while people are using the interface and we will test it again on people that don't know about the Museum Building.

Marcos

20 Aug THU - Proto 5

Killian posted the latest version of our protoype:


https://www.cs.tcd.ie/~walshk8/cube/Proto5/index.html

19 Aug 2009 WED - Meetings

Today we had Build Team and Team Leader meetings. The deadline for interface submission was extended to Friday, the 21st of August. We had an internal meeting to check on workload to ensure we have interface done by deadline. There are a few elements of the Flash interface that need to be tweaked: image pop up, slideshow, clickable dot fading (for images) and fine tuning sounds on Campus interface. Killian is working on them. Dara edited the transition movieclip and managed to knock down size of images to the bare minimum. At the moment the movieclip is about 2.5 Mb in size. He posted it online so we can test the download speed across different internet bandwidths. Marcos edited the research page text and blurb for brochures. Bin Bin edited extra recordings he did to fill in gaps of both interfaces.

We have been testing early protoypes among friends and colleagues and observing how they use it. Initial reactions are good and generally people are spending a few minutes exploring the Museum Building interface's soundscape. We still need to add movie transition, research page and link both campus and building interfaces to have a fully working prototype, which should be done by Friday.

Marcos.

18 Aug 2009 TUE - Academic Journal and Content Editing

Today we found out our submission for the Parson Journal of Information Mapping was accepted. We have till September, the 11th to send the article. Killian showed us a prototype of the clickable dots (containing either sound or images) where their opacity increases as the mouse approaches them. This is a similar idea to our previous idea of "shining a torch" onto the area surrounding the mouse, but is more discrete and coherent with our minimal approach to the interface. We all like it. Killian and Marcos plotted the campus ambient sounds onto interface(circles above represent sound areas - not part of final interface), Dara edited final sounds and worked on transition movie clip between campus and building and Bin Bin edited remaining images of light trails and textures.

Marcos.

14 Aug 2009 FRI - Sound Prototype

Today Killian showed us a preliminary version of the Flash sound interface and the image popup. We tested them on an external Internet link (Binbin's O2 dongle) and it uploaded quickly. We now have to plot the sounds and images in their exact location for both the Campus and the Museum Building and check how they work together as we progress. The fact that they are pulled in dynamically via XML files will help us in the process.

Marcos.

13 Aug 2009 THU - Content Editing

Today we plotted content on both the building and campus interfaces. Marcos and Binbin went back to the campus to record a few more sounds while Dara edited the existing ones. Killian is working on the Flash prototype. We decided to use jpeg images and create the round border by using a mask directly into Flash, which will make the final files considerably smaller. The png files with transparent background we created as tests were 3 times bigger and there wasn't any significant difference between them.

Tomorrow we will finish editing the sounds and the images and proceed to build our first version of the final prototype. We have all the graphical elements and the content we need, which hopefully will make the task easier.

Marcos.

12 Aug 2009 WED - Update Meeting

Today we had an update meeting to check on our progress and organise the workload. We reviewed the interface and decided on a few minor changes to ensure that we keep in line with our emotional/explorational/minimalistic approach and that it does not veer back towards the informational. At the moment Dara is working on 3D Max editing the circulation trails, Binbin is editing the XML files, Killian is prototyping different parts of the Flash interface and Marcos is editing the photos in png format for the final interface.

Marcos.

9 Aug 2009 SUN - Academic Paper

Today I wrote an abstract for an academic paper submission to the Parsons Journal for Information Mapping (PJIM) as suggested by Nicky. This will be good to ensure that the final interface is consistent with our aims and objectives. I'll work on the article during the next few weeks. Final submission date is September, the 11th.

Marcos

Fridays meeting with Nicky.

Friday we had a meeting with Nicky via the magic of shouting at the microphone on Binbins laptop . I kind of like these sessions now where we all crowd around the magic box and take turns pouring our nerdy souls out. He said we were on the right track and we said thank you.

Dara

File folders and fun

Today myself and Binbin worked on the soundmap for the site by editing the audio putting it in folders and then assigning the sounds to places on the map and then creating the xml files with the locations of the file in the folder structure. Killian continued marching on with the 10100100 1 1001 wizardry and is proving himself to be the Gandalf of code.

Dara

PRO TO TYPE GO

Proto Type Go
Today Killian finished our first prototype .
It had some looping audio and a basic interface.
It loaded super quick from the server.
Good times.
Still working away on the mp3 not looping issue.
Emailed some lads from the MSc MMT course.
We have a Skype meeting with Nicky on Friday and a TL meeting tomorrow.
Did some more work on a paper design document and also worked on some basic icons for the hole site which Dee finished off.

Dara

Skype meeting with Marcos

Just brought up the following points:

Reminder to do the following:
-solve the mp3 looping issue
-try the torch light idea
-do we really need the flow and wavelength and people buttons? (probably not)
-figure out a way of making the museum building layer more obvious from the campus layer

Dara

Thursday meeting

On Thursday we had a meeting where we agreed on a number of matters. The first was the new interface: we decided that we liked it and that we would go with it for the moment.
Then we decided that we would try and create a prototype interface by Monday based on the new interface. We decided that we would have two light trail pictures and four sounds and would try to take a minimal version of the final interface to the completion stage. This is a good way of trying to debug any major problems that might raise their head at the end and might require changes in the design document.
We also decided that we would go about setting up a folder structure and start putting content into it based on the location and media type.

Dara