Server issues

This week the team and I needed to make sure that the server was up and running before the exhibition. Sigurd and Thomas had already made the sever work for their prototypes but it was important that it worked for all of our team members. However, as we tried to send the colour values over the server it became apparent that something was wrong and it just refused to cooperate with us. After several hours of trying to make it work we simply had to give up since other tasks were more pressing

Later this week while Tuva was trying to make it work it suddenly just did. What was initially wrong and how we fixed it some a bit of a mystery but thankfully we managed to make it work.

I also learned this week that Sigurd's prototype is broken, so for the exhibition we will only have 3 functioning prototypes. This shouldn't be a problem but it would have been ideally if everyones prototype could be displayed on the exhibition.

Website

This week I became mostly finished with the websites design, the only thing that remains is writing the content which I find to be the boring part of building a website. However, I must say I became very pleased with the header image I created for the website. I was inspired by the sketching tools for arduino and created it to look like a breadboard etc.

In the end, I though this project was fun and I learned a lot about the theme and creating prototypes using Arduino.

Gesture Based Research

For the gestures that I want to use in my robotic hand, first I need to make sure that none of them offend people. Therefore, to quickly gather some data I asked several people around the target market base of 18 -30 years old what gestures offended them, and in what context. Many of these gestures were deemed offensive but required more of the human body than just one hand like my robot. With a lack of body and other hand, many of these gestures are impossible or if attempted don’t look the same and aren’t offensive. For those gestures that can be done only two were an issue, with flipping the bird and using two fingers to represent ‘up yours’ were deemed offensive by some, however the context was when the gesture was directed at them by others, especially those they don’t know or when in an argument this gesture would insult them if done with intent. After asking whether these gestures done by a disembodied robotic arm would be as offensive, most participants responded with no, rather it would be humorous or novel to see, not offensive. There was nobody in my research group who would want a robot to not do these basic gestures due to a caused offense in this group.

Use of Research

Overall this showed me that it would be okay to use seemingly offensive gestures for my robot as they don’t come from a harmful place and is rather a novel method of interaction and shouldn’t offend anyone in the user group. The only potential issue is with second-hand viewers like children, however the nature of the concept doesn’t mix well with kids as the moving parts and many wires make the product fragile and susceptible to being broken, therefore in my project these gestures will be used to convey aggressive intent by the robot.

Update to Research

It is now week 13 and Lorna has just notified me that using the middle finger emoji in my branding of ‘hand signs’ for my portfolio could be unsuitable as school kids are attending the online exhibition. While the kids themselves might revel in the included ‘vulgar’ gestures, their parents would less than enthused. Rather than risk the concern, these gestures will be censored and not used in the robot, and more simple emoji notices will be used in the design (from middle finger to thumbs down on the site) in order to reduce the risk of possible offense to parents or guardians of the attending kids.

At the end of last week, I mentioned some issues I had with my prototype. Sadly, both the accelerometer and bend sensor are broken, rendering my prototype unusable. I have spent a lot of time on this subject this semester, but most of the time has been spent trying to solve technical issues, which in the end have stolen countless hours from building a prototype that we can use to gather data from. Given that I've dedicated most of my time to PhysComp, I don't really have any more time to spend to rebuild my prototype if I ever wish to finish my master thesis. It's a sad way to end the semester by having your prototype break down. Luckily I have a couple of pictures, a short video and my test results to show for. The test results are in the end why we made the prototype in the first place.

Tuesday

After Tuesday's stand-up, our team met to discuss how we should work on the team reflection. We ended up with a divide and conquer method, splitting the parts amongst ourselves. Some of us started to write a draft on the team reflection the very same day before we iterated on the text later during the week. Then we proceeded to check if our combined code base worked after everyone had updated their code. This didn't turn out as we expected, we found some new issues that hadn't been there before that didn't allow us to receive data from each other anymore. Moreover, the overall experience and functionality were rather janky and unreliable, as it jumped back and forth between the different states, seemingly at will. Thomas, Tuva and I spent many hours that day trying to figure out what the issue was but were unable to fix the issue. The reason for these issues in the first place is probably a lack of communication and planning out the system ahead of time, which likely would not have been an issue if the semester ran as normal where we could meet up and discuss things in-person. We did discuss a plan B in case we did not get it up and running again, as Thomas and I have our previous combined codebase, where sending and receiving worked on both ends and Tuva and Marie have their individual working code. However, if possible we would like to present one working codebase and functional prototype. For the rest of the week, given that Thomas and I had previously spent the most time on the combined codebase, Tuva volunteered to spend some time fixing the issue, as Thomas and I were falling a bit behind on the thesis.

Portfolio

I did spend some time finishing up my portfolio this week. I've been pushing ahead a bit to finish it ahead of time as I need to spend as much time as possible in the coming weeks on my thesis. Most of what I did on my portfolio for this week was to write down more content and make sure the website was fully responsive and accessible. Working on the portfolio took significantly longer than I expected it to, and it all feels a bit repetitive given that we are re-writing the very same things we have already written about here in the journals, the proposal and in the prototype delivery previously. Also, building the site took more time than expected as I'm not used to working without a framework. I could really see the differences in all the heavy lifting a framework does for you and the time you save as a result of this, but then again, the content is what took the most amount of time.