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Team:Wellesley HCI/Notebook/KimberlyChang
From 2012.igem.org
Kimberly's Notebook
Contents |
May 29: First day of the summer session!
Orientation. Plan. Fill this in
Jun 6: A day in the wet lab
MIT reflection goes here
Jun 12: A day in the wet lab
BU day!
Jun 13 & 14: Brainstorming!!
Brainstorming reflection goes here
Jun 18: Brainstorming and Finalizing Paper Prototype
Today we finalized our paper prototype. We roughed out the basic interactions with the cubes and the Surface using paper cutout Sifteo “screens” and a “storyboard” using posterboard and Post-it notes. We then gave a brief rundown of the installation to Consuelo. While we were demonstrating the project, Linda came up with a good way to deal with the menu cube, as we had been struggling with a good way to implement a menu while keeping the number of specialized cubes to a minimum. Linda’s suggestion was that we utilize the four different sides of the cubes as menu selectors, and depending on which of the sides another cube was placed next to, the menu selection would change.
Jun 19: Demonstrating Paper Prototype
Wendy and I met with Orit to go over our paper prototype. Before meeting with her, we’d come up with different ideas for the installation to connect more directly with synthetic biology. One of these ideas was to create representations of ice buckets and petri dishes that users would then physically “place” the cubes into to cold shock or incubate the bacteria. We thought about using another Surface and possibly even the Microsoft tablet. However, after talking with Orit, we decided that these additional features might be cumbersome. Orit stressed that we needed to grab the attention of our users in about five seconds, so streamlining the interaction was really key. This meant that we needed to simplify the characteristics we gave our creatures and that we needed to get rid of our menu. We are most likely going to be sticking strictly to color as the trait that we are going to modify in order to simplify the interaction further. We are additionally going to move away from a “cute” aesthetic towards something more mature-looking in order to appeal to the more adult audience at iGEM. We discussed testing the prototype installation at Wellesley and also potentially at the Discovery Museum. For the next stage of the project, we need to think about affordance – basically customizing the cubes to distinguish them – and the aesthetics of the installation. My next task is to work on how the E. coli will look and start creating a short animation of the installation by Friday.
