CS4784: Human-Computer Interaction Capstone – Press releases from project teams

Press release #10: PhotoClouds at Relay for Life; ICAT Day Approaches

May 7, 2015May 7, 2015 Kurt Luther Leave a comment

Blacksburg, VA., Apr 30, 2015 PhotoClouds went live last Friday for Relay for Life! “Relay For Life” is a 24hour event where communities gather and honor cancer survivors, lost loved ones, and “fight” back against the disease. Users were essentially given the link and/or QR code and had to figure out how to use the applications. Next, they evaluated the application through a survey.

Results from evaluations composed of positive feedback. Users generally desired to use PhotoClouds in the future. Some of the conclusions were expected, such as preferred platforms (application vs browser) and website aesthetics. “Verbally, the people that I had asked to test the applications mentioned that they wish it was an mobile app versus using it from a browser,” said Romico. A conclusion that was not expected were the comments about using the QR code to share. Matt commented, “We made the assumption that people would realize they could also copy and paste the album’s URL to let others see it.” However, these are they types of conclusions that prove to be beneficial! They identify key issues that develops may not notice right away.

The next big event is the ICAT Day on Monday, May 4th. Here, Tyler, Matt, Romico and their peers will showcase their semester long projects at the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT). This week, team Cumulonimbus prepared a practice presentation in front of their peers and Dr. Luther. Helpful comments include adding the evaluation process and showcasing a user profile. In addition, Dr. Luther suggested, “Be able to answer ‘What makes this different than everything else out there?’”

Most of the spotlight in these next few days will be towards preparing for the ICAT Day. However, the project deliverable deadline is May 8th. Once ICAT Day passes, team Cumulonimbus will focus on finetuning PhotoClouds based on the evaluations and peer suggestions. User profiles will be reexamined as well as the sharing functionality.

Team Cumulonimbus is a team of three senior level computer science students at Virginia Tech: Matthew Bock, Romico Macatula, and Tyler Haines. All three of them have extensive skill sets in computer science after their years of study. With several semesters of experience in the field of humancomputer interaction at their disposal, the team is dedicated to creating the best experience possible for their users through rigorous testing and design iteration. Any questions or comments, contact Romico Macatula at rmac817@vt.edu.

Press release #10: AddHawk Team Conducts Evaluations and Prepares for ICAT Day

May 7, 2015May 7, 2015 Kurt Luther Leave a comment

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 17, 2015 – AddHawk is a group of Computer Science students taking their Human-Computer Interaction capstone project to a massive scale. They begun working on an application called PixelPusher, a massive crowdsourced display in Lane Stadium, using all the attendees mobile device screens as pixels.

Updates on PixelPusher:

These past two weeks the AddHawk team finalized development of the PixelPusher application, fixing any flaws and imperfections that were encountered. With PixelPusher fully operational, the team was able to conduct a user evaluation to test various aspects of the system, such as general usability, synchronization between connected devices, efficiency of communication between the server and client-side devices, and so on. The team will use the data and metrics gathered from the evaluation to further improve upon the current application.

“Evaluations are very helpful since they point out aspects of your technology that you would otherwise be completely blind to. When you’re developing something, it’s easy to become unaware of the things that may not be intuitive for other people since only a select few people have seen the application up until the evaluation,” explained PixelPusher developer Connor Hoene.

The AddHawk team also practiced their rhetorical skills by giving a couple of mock presentations in order to prepare for Institute for Creative Arts and Technology (ICAT) Day, which is coming up next week on Monday, May 5th. The developers are scheduled to showcase their final design in the “Social Computing Meets Creative Computing” time slot at the event.

A Look Into the Future:

The future is looking quite bright for the AddHawk team. Even though PixelPusher is a finalized, fully-functional system at this time, there is still much more to be done in terms of development and implementation of the product. After presenting PixelPusher at ICAT Day this upcoming Monday, the developers will continue to improve upon features of the application over this summer and into the next semester. One of the most important aspects of this improvement is scaling up testing to include more users in various locations, since PixelPusher is aimed to eventually be used in Lane Stadium. The team has also been in contact with their sponsor, Dr. Ben Knapp, who is greatly facilitating the growth of PixelPusher. Dr. Knapp, like the AddHawk development team, has a great vision for PixelPusher and has been a valuable asset throughout the entire process.

Mission Statement:

PixelPusher will allow football fans in Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech to display individual pixels on their phones which are part of a larger image. In this way PixelPusher acts as a crowd-sourced collaboration application that will bring together football fans everywhere. PixelPusher also aims to break the current world record of 400 connected devices. The application will be developed with the idea of simplicity and efficiency at heart, providing a lightweight, seamless user interface to football fans at Virginia Tech.

“AddHawk is an up and coming software development initiative aimed at revolutionizing how a single member of a crowd can have a huge impact on an event. ”

For more information or questions please contact: cmw2379@vt.edu

Press release #10: War of Ages

May 7, 2015May 7, 2015 Kurt Luther Leave a comment

Blacksburg, VA; May 1, 2015 –

This is the week you have been waiting for. On Monday, May 4th, War of Ages will be revealed to the public. After months of work our development team has finally finished the first version of the game and is ready to show it off. Players can play as their favorite race, either the barbarians, renegades, or reptiles, each with their own unique play style.

Due to time constraints with programming and balancing, we had to reduce the number of playable units at launch. There are four units that all classes can use, the runner, the attacker, the mine placer, and the mine diffuser. Along with these units each race gets 2 units that only they can use. The reptiles have access to a rock mortar that can take out units and mines from across the map, along with a devastating earthquake unit that takes out everything in its surroundings. The barbarians control the battlefield with ice powers that can stop units in their tracks. Their ice mortar can stop a units movement from across the battlefield, while the freeze unit can prevent all nearby units from moving the next turn. Finally the renegades get their own deadly mortar that is hard to escape, and an armored unit that can survive one strike from anything.

This release also gives us a chance to check the balance between the units and the races. We have spent a majority of our time on this project making sure everyone is on a level playing field, but it is easy to miss something. Once everyone starts playing we will get thousands of hours of test data we can analyze to figure out how to make the game as balanced as possible.

Although the game is being revealed there is still a lot of work to be done on it. We have a lot of great ideas for units we want to put into the game. We were very disappointed that we couldn’t put all of our ideas into the first release, but we’ll make sure they get implemented in the future. We also want to make this game playable from two devices. This is the biggest problem with the game right now, and we hope to fix it soon.

Until then enjoy going head to head against your friends in War of Ages.

For more information, contact Joe Wileman @ wjoe113@vt.edu

Press release #10: J5 Releases Evaluation Report

May 7, 2015May 7, 2015 Kurt Luther Leave a comment

Blacksburg, Va., April 17, 2015 – After evaluating their application, J5 has released a report to the public on their findings!

Team member Daniel Rusz said “We conducted an evaluation of our App and received very helpful results on the usability of our application from the users who tested our application”.

J5 selected six participants that were interested in the Gaming Social Network and had them run through various tasks to see which features were good and where they could improve. In their report, they include several examples of important fixes to the prototype that their users wanted to see before the application launched.

Team member Lucas Eckert said “We had to evaluate the matchmaking aspect of our application and we learned about some key features we should implement”.

J5 ran simulations of two new users adding each other on the Gaming Social Network and then selected a game to play together with the evaluation participants. They found that the volunteers generally enjoyed the fact that they could play with other local gamers that they had not had a chance to meet in person.

With the prototype tested by the public, J5 will edit their application to meet the expectations of their users before they give a presentation on Monday, May 5th at the Moss Arts Center.

J5 – “Let’s Play Together” Contact person: Lucas Eckert

Press release #10: Pass It On! Gets Great Feedback at VTURCS, Looking to the Future

May 7, 2015May 7, 2015 Kurt Luther Leave a comment

Blacksburg, VA, May 1st, 2015: In the past weeks the team at Pass It On! Inc have been working constantly to improve the site. The site now has basic functionality for almost all features and is also fully mobile accessible! The team as always is looking for feedback on the site, so feel free to report any feedback at: http://goo.gl/forms/5vqxOhLQEs

This week the team presented Pass It On! at the Virginia Tech Undergraduate Research in Computer Science (VTURCS) Spring Research Symposium. Feedback was wonderful and the team had a great time at the event. At the end of the event the team placed exceptionally well during the results taking home:
●      2nd Place for the Marston Award
●      2nd Place for the People’s Choice Award
●      3rd Place for the Capstone Award
Huge thanks to everyone who came out to support them!

“VTURCS was a great event and was a good chance to explain Pass It On! to people who likely weren’t familiar with the project! I think that the feedback we got was overwhelmingly great which really shows how committed we’ve been to this project” said Matthew Chittum, a frontend developer for Pass It On!.

“Our project was so different from everyone else at VTURCS I was worried how well we would be received. I was both confused and excited when I heard our names called not once, or even twice but three times. It is an amazing feeling to know that our hard work was appreciated and recognized” from Minahm Kim, developer for Pass It On! Reported.

“It was neat to go out to VTURCS and see all of the other projects and our peer’s work from this semester. I was really proud of our team and the work that we have done this semester!” Joshua White

Currently the team is finishing up the evaluation for Pass It On! and are considering their future options. The team plans to consider developing Pass It On! through the summer to work with their sponsor Dr. Horning to perform a more thorough evaluation with his Graduate students and to possibly try to do a regional test on Virginia Tech’s campus! Be on the look out for future news from Pass It On!

Press release #10: Civil War driving tour app reaching completion

May 7, 2015May 7, 2015 Kurt Luther Leave a comment

BLACKSBURG, Va., May 1, 2015 – This week was a monumental week for the team Kool Katz, consisting of the three developers, Laura Avakian, Seth Cannon, and Ryan Kiel. Kool Katz completed a lot of development of the Civil War Driving Tour app, did a practice presentation, and executed their refined evaluation plan.

Last week, the app was coming along with its individual features, but the features were not nearly as developed nor were they all working together.

This week, the team not only brought the features to being nearly completed, but integrated them so that they all work together. The data entry, which is vital and central to the app, was completed this week. As for the features, the display of the sites and the site information parts of the app are also nearing completion — there are minor changes to be made. Along with that, major progress was made on the visitor comments feature. Now, the user is able to leave comments about the sites, allowing them to talk about the weather, road conditions, fun facts about the sites, etc.

The team was lucky enough to be able to do a practice presentation in their capstone class. In doing so, they were able to introduce the app, the ideas behind the app, the client, and demo the app to the class. The demo was particularly important and essential to the team, as they were able to obtain valuable advice from their classmates.

One student commented that explaining the features beforehand was not necessary. Another said that showing the backend technology, Parse, and how it works is also not necessary and takes away from time that could be used to demonstrate the app itself.

Additionally, the team refined their evaluation plan to make it more explicit and thus easier to measure the success or lack thereof of the app and its associated user experience. The team went ahead and interviewed a few of the potential users who were interviewed months earlier for the contextual inquiry (see archives for corresponding press release).

Executing the evaluation plan has been a very important step in assessing progress. For example, Kara Trimpin was able to demo the app itself: “I like being able to go to the map straight from the site description, it just seems naturally intuitive and prevents me from having to do redundant navigation,” Kara noted.

Next week, the team, with feedback from both their classmates, professor, and evaluation plan interviewees, will be able to make the appropriate changes needed for the app’s completion. There are a few other less complicated features that the team will implement; for example, adding MapQuest directions, images for the sites, and sources for the information presented. They will also be meeting with the client once more to discuss if there is anything that must be changed, and to figure out final details. These details include the app’s future plans and ‘handing over’ what has been done so that the future developers can pick up where Kool Katz left off (when the app is expanded). Lastly, the team will give their final presentation, an improved version of the practice presentation and demo conducted this week.

The team is very optimistic about the conclusion of this project, and is looking forward to introducing the finished app to the public. Stay tuned!

Contact Laura Avakian at lavakian@vt.edu for any further inquiries.

Press release #9: Civil War driving tour app high fidelity prototype complete, to be evaluated

April 20, 2015April 20, 2015 Kurt Luther Leave a comment

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 17, 2015 – This week was a successful week for the team Kool Katz, consisting of the three developers, Laura Avakian, Seth Cannon, and Ryan Kiel. Kool Katz continued their development of the Civil War Driving Tour app and finished the high fidelity prototype.

Last week, the app was still more of a skeleton than something usable, and an evaluation plan had been created. The features were starting to take shape, but were not working together.

This week, Laura and Ryan finished up the prototype, which provides the basic functionality: displaying the tour sites, the details about the tour sites, a link to their website, a way to view them on the map, and the user comments page. The features are now not only working but are working together. There is still of course work to be done, but the extent to which the app has been developed is what qualifies this as being high fidelity.

Additionally, the team got in touch with the client, Paul Quigley, by email to touch base about the status of the project. They will be meeting within the next week or two, pending the team and client’s availability.

The team plans to interview the client on what he does and does not like about the app, but will be careful about using that feedback as the client is not the same as a general potential user. The client likely will give feedback from a different perspective, however, which will certainly be helpful.

“Now that we have something working, we can really focus on what the users want. The evaluation plan still needs some work but it will be instrumental in judging our success or lack of,” says Ryan.

Next week, the team, with recent feedback from Professor Luther, will refine the evaluation plan, and then will use it to interview potential users about what they like and do not like about the app itself. The potential users that were interviewed one month earlier for the contextual inquiry will likely be the target interviewees for the prototype. Doing so is a vital step to developing this app while keeping the users in mind as it is easy to.

Contact Laura Avakian at lavakian@vt.edu for any further inquiries.

Press release #9: The PhotoClouds Prototype - A Success!

April 20, 2015April 20, 2015 Kurt Luther Leave a comment

Blacksburg, VA., Apr 17, 2015 – An image that described the theme of the week is of a roller coaster. With so many up’s and down’s and a Friday night deadline, the project’s status wouldn’t remain constant. In the end, however, Cumulonimbus made their application live and received good feedback from their colleagues!

In the beginning of the week, the team’s goal was to move everything to the VT server. “Everything is functional on the local server. We need to set it up on the VT server provided by the Computer Science department. Then, we’ll add features that will only work when running it live,” said Tyler. When they asked Dr. Luther, their advisor, to setup the server, many random small errors prevented success. Monday wasn’t the most exciting day, but Dr. Luther recommended another technology to use called Heroku. Heroku is a different cloud service that comes with Django.

Long story short, hosting via Heroku instead of Virginia Tech proved to be a great recommendation! Setting up on the VT servers continued to cause problems and the team decided to use Heroku instead. It provided a server that was easily configurable. The only downside is that data storage is limited to 5GB from Amazon’s services, compared to the storage that the Virginia Tech server gives allows its users.

For something that hosts media, 5GB of data is slightly concerning. “Our focus for the short-term are photos. Smartphones typically have high-resolution cameras, so they take high-res photos. High-res photos do take up a decent amount of space, but to evaluate the applications, 5GB should be good enough,” said Romico. Video’s are a different story, since they take a considerable amount of space. A solution would be add more storage space, but videos are currently out of the scope right now.

The team asked their peers to check out the application. They were given little instructions; essentially a QR code was given. It was a hit! People generally liked the application. By judging the positive user experience, Cumulonimbus concluded that the application’s UI was simple to understand and navigate through.

With a working prototype, a decent amount of work remains. The website’s information architecture needs more tuning, which includes the organization and navigation of data. For the website’s design, the team is in the process of finding a color scheme, adding icons (based on the low-fidelity prototypes), and additional focus on the main page.

Another focus is to lower the barrier of entry. Currently, the QR code is the best way to navigate to the website. The downside is that a user must have a QR code scanner on their phone. If the user doesn’t have one, he or she must download one from their respective app store. This extra step can be a major obstacle that will make it difficult for users to locate the website.

Cumulonimbus will try to prepare their application for the evaluation phase. The live event that will be used for evaluation is called “Relay For Life”. “Relay For Life” is a 24-hour event where communities gather and honor cancer survivors, lost loved ones, and “fight” back against the disease. Each member knows a couple organizations that will participate and will ask a few of their members to use PhotoClouds.

Team Cumulonimbus is a team of three senior level computer science students at Virginia Tech: Matthew Bock, Romico Macatula, and Tyler Haines. All three of them have extensive skill sets in computer science after their years of study. With several semesters of experience in the field of human-computer interaction at their disposal, the team is dedicated to creating the best experience possible for their users through rigorous testing and design iteration. Any questions or comments, contact Romico Macatula at rmac817@vt.edu.

Press release #9: Pass It On! Inc Has Initial Site Launch; Evaluation Beginning!

April 20, 2015April 20, 2015 Kurt Luther Leave a comment

Blacksburg, VA, April 17, 2015: The team is proud to announce they have a high-fidelity prototype up and running! They have been hard at work for the past week putting it together but it is now running albeit with some bugs. This is to be expected, but regardless the team is happy to be able to show off their vision for the site and are constantly working to make revisions. If you’re interested in viewing the current site go to: http://cs4784.cs.vt.edu/passiton/. Please report any bugs or feedback at the following link: http://goo.gl/forms/BGCJaueqln

“I’m really glad to be able to publicly demo our work so far. Actually having the site running really makes me feel a sense of accomplishment and I’m looking forward to hearing feedback from everyone” said Matthew Chittum.

Currently the team is making constant improvements to the site as quickly as possible in order for users to have the best experience possible. The team wants to improve the site as much as possible before beginning their evaluation next week. The team plans to improve the site based on initial feedback at least through the middle of next week before beginning their evaluation.

The team has plans to begin their evaluation next week to ensure they have time to reach out to as many evaluators as possible. They have plans to work with Dr. Horning, their sponsor, and his graduate students to provide the base evaluation. The team also has plans to recruit local participants using social media and is considering using crowdsourcing also if they cannot recruit enough participants.

The team was able to accomplish many of their goals despite the hard time frame pushed on them. However, these functionalities need to be further polished and developed. This coming week the main focus of the team will be form validation with warning modals, implementation of the review system, implementation of the scheduling system, implementing a search system, as well as the user management system. The system will continue to undergo revisions as we come closer to a final product.

Press release #9: AddHawk Team Completes High-Fidelity Prototype

April 20, 2015April 20, 2015 Kurt Luther Leave a comment

Updates on PixelPusher:

addhawkLogo This past week the AddHawk team completed a high fidelity prototype to use in the upcoming tests and evaluations. The team worked rigorously on both the back and frontends of the systems to finish the prototype available by Friday. The frontend team worked mainly on the aesthetics of the application and focused on making PixelPusher easy to grasp and understand for a first-time user. “We feel that the User Experience is vital to an application of this nature. We decided that spending a lot of time on making the application easy and satisfying to use was of the utmost importance.” explained frontend team member Dillon Gresham. One major feature that the team added was combobox functionality for when a user is selecting his or her seat. These comboboxes are paired with a grid highlighting the user’s specific location in the image.

The backend team also had an extremely busy week constantly tweaking and modifying the server while also setting up the PixelPusher API. The team was able to successfully set up the necessary server functionality and all members of the team could easily access the PixelPusher web page. Both teams worked together throughout the week to properly set up API requests so both the back and front end could communicate. AddHawk member Michael Peter said, “Getting the two ends to communicate was the biggest issue we faced. Once this problem was solved, the rest of the pieces fell into place.”

A Look Into the Future:

The upcoming week has a decent amount in store for the members of the AddHawk team. On Monday the team will complete its first evaluation with a group of users from the HCI Capstone class at Virginia Tech. The users will be given a list of tasks and shown what the application is capable of doing. After completing these tasks, the users will then be asked a series of questions and for any comments or suggestions they may have. While the team has completed the high fidelity prototype development on the application is far from over. The AddHawk members will continue to add features, functionality, and beautification to PixelPusher based on any suggestions received from the evaluations.

Mission Statement:

“AddHawk is an up and coming software development initiative aimed at revolutionizing how a single member of a crowd can have a huge impact on an event.”

For more information or questions please contact: cmw2379@vt.edu