In this week's class, we had an exercise to practice how to conduct an observation using different methods or sources while we were staying at home. During the exercise, I didn't know that we were told to do an observation on the train. However, at first, I just wrote down whatever that came to my mind; I picked a random observation to observe people walking by the house. Then later, I realized I did it wrong, and which it didn't make sense to me cause during this time, there were fewer people on the street. I missed out on the keyword to do an observation on the "train" after I read other students' work. I quickly changed mine.

I later read some of the other classmates' observation results. Everyone had come up with somewhat different contents, insights, methods of approaching the observation; it was good to read and to learn from them. After reading/picking methods from a google docs Lorna shared with us, I picked two methods to use in my individual project. Those are using the phone as their probe to record video/take pictures to record time and the date and their daily habits; Online/phone interview to ask them some questions before and after they participate with the exercises/tasks using the probes. These are what I can think of right now, and it's not fixed methods and might be changed later. At this stage, it's still vague to me of how I am going to contact user testing. I will also ask my team members or other classmates to see how they are planning to do.

After writing the proposal, my biggest concern was how am I going to find target users since ours are elementary students. I have no access to this user group. Can we use adult instead? But the experience, reaction, excitement, understanding, and knowledge are all different. The experiment and testing would not be as accurate if it were testing it from the actual elementary students.

Breaking down a project

The second in-class exercise we did on Tuesday was trying to breakdown the whole project into small sections. It was beneficial before we could clearly see what we need to do from step by step. It not only provides an overview (location, people, and time) of the project but also let us give more thoughts in each section and how we would want to plan for the future works. On the other hand, our team is still working as two instead of four members. We only have two people working on this mapping, which others were still not active and absent most of the time.

The second map, I haven't completed since it hasn't fully figured it out all the modules or components that I would need for my prototype. The function section I felt I need to think through more about it before the answer to the questions. This is something that I want to do during the break.

Work is done for this week

The key achievement this week was that we turned in our team and individual proposal report. We also shared in the class on what we had done since last week, and what we were planning to do during the break. For the workshop section, I attended the first part of the section and went back to organize our team report.

This week I didn't do more new research, but I did a bit finding on YouTube to see more methods of how others did on making smoke. I also looked at the website to find out what parts/sensors I would need in my project. I also ordered wooden craft sticks that I planned to use to build the house or room.

In our team-based report, I am getting tired of waiting and keeping reminding people of the work that they were assigned to do. The whole experience was bad and unpleasant. It becomes annoying that people are absent from the team. I was a force to do last-minute work, which I don't like. Moreover, I was not satisfied with our team report because our members did not care to look over it to make the paper more consistent. I don't know maybe I am glad that we would do individual work project rather than a team project because I can't imagine how that would be like. It's hard to put more team effort when some of them don't even bother to ride on the same bus.

What's next/During the break

• Some rough of sketching of the house/room that I am going to build
• Need to figure out what sensors I would need? If I would need to buy more parts-battery, wires, and motors.
• I already borrow some tools from my friends, and I would need to find out what other tools I might use.
• Refresh my memories on Arduino
• Have some fun, relax, and read some books