On Monday, June 19, I helped teach paper circuits to SOIC campers from 9:00 a.m. to 12 p.m. I had a blast! My campers were really artistic – they created glowing images that ranged from a one-eyed alien to a bald eagle! After lunch, I created a second prototype of my 3-D glasses in Tinkercad. This time, I included holes in the sides of the glasses where the Lilypad could rest. I also started creating my personal website through Wix. Anne and I read through the peer reviews of our papers and made appropriate changes before resubmitting our paper to Github for a second peer review.
On Tuesday, June 20, I peer reviewed another group’s paper and submitted my feedback. I worked on my Wix website and filled in the Experience and Skills section. At 1:00 p.m., Anne and I met with Ben to catch up from last week. We showed Ben our prototypes, and he encouraged us to continue improving our designs. We also shared our impressions of the workshop videos and laid out a plan for this week, which includes grouping our evaluations of the workshops into themes and iterative prototyping. I spent the rest of the workday filling out the Reviewer Response Table and working on a new model of the glasses in Tinkercad.
On Wednesday, June 21, I continued working on my website. I struggled with finding an appropriate color theme. I also spent a large chunk of time drafting the abstract and outlining the findings and discussion of our paper. The Networking workshop at 2:30 p.m. was extremely insightful. We learned about the importance of creating an online presence and communicating one’s work to others.
On Thursday, June 22, we met with Katie at 9:00 a.m. to get suggestions on our paper and to pitch a stackable container for the Lilypad Arduino that can connect to hard surfaces. We discussed magnetic clasps, wire, and copper tapes as means of connecting, or stacking, the individual components together. I then spent a couple of hours downstairs in the laboratory to laser-cut my second prototype for a Lilypad container that will be attached to a pair of glasses. While I was downstairs, I helped several high school students laser cut name tags. Anne and I met with Ben at 1:00 p.m. to identify themes that emerged from the participatory design workshops. Afterwards, I continued prototyping. In my GRE class, we covered Reading Comprehension and read through several passages together for practice.
On Friday, June 23, I trudged through the pouring rain to arrive at work early to laser cut a cardboard holder for the light sensor. At 9:00 a.m., we met with Ben in the large conference room to briefly discuss our prototyping and ShareLaTeX document. Ben suggested that we create different geometric shapes for the stackable prototypes to test which work best for the configurations of the Lilypad and sensors. At 10:00 a.m., our weekly Prohealth meeting commenced. The theme of the presentation was animal GIFs, and I chose a hedgehog unraveling at the smell of cheese. Anne and I presented on our work from this past week, including our prototypes and our workshop analysis session. At 11:00 a.m., we took a mid-summer assessment to provide our feedback on our experiences within the REU program thus far. At 1:30 p.m., the Prohealth students convened again for teatime. We discussed how people are grouped into social classes, and we demonstrated this phenomenon by working with Lego kits. My group’s kit contained a manual with step-by-step instructions on how to construct the Lego scene. Furthermore, we were provided with all of the necessary pieces, so we naturally finished constructing the kit before the other groups. As a reward, we were given a
“recommendation letter” from Dr. Siek. At 2:45, a group of Prohealth students toured the Cyberinfrastructure Building and saw the supercomputers!
The main challenge that I faced this week was figuring out a way to connect the Lilypad and sensors to harder materials in an easy, modular way. I settled on using a stackable design in which each component will be magnetically connected. I have put in an order for the magnets, and they should arrive by Monday. As I move forward with this design, I will have to decide how the components will be oriented vertically. Which sensors will be placed at the top of the stackable design? Can certain components, such as LEDs, extend horizontally?
First iteration of prototype:
According to our timeline, our work is on track. We have begun analyzing the participatory design workshops and are on our second iteration of the example objects.
Below is a link to my personal website:
https://minamjn.wixsite.com/minaraya
Below is a link to our Reviewer Response Table for Week 5:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-KletLinktUu24wQks1WEyve4dA_6o8iiKk2HRf81-k/edit?usp=sharing
We are trying to publish our paper at CHI or UbiComp:
UBICOMP: http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2017/
Food of the Week: Citrus crusted fish from the IMU
