Month: April 2015

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

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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!

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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!

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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

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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:

addhawkLogoThis 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:

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 #9: War of Ages

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Blacksburg, VA; April 17, 2015 –

Big things are happening in War of Ages this week. First of all, out mid-level prototype is complete and ready to be tested. We will be sharing the prototype with anyone who is willing to play to get as much feedback as possible. Once we finish testing we can solidify our balancing plans and ensure every game will be fair and fun. We have decided to run our prototypes with limited numbers of units in order to pinpoint balancing problems. With fewer units in play, there are fewer variables to cause problems.

Our prototype isn’t the only big news from our team this week. Progress on the game has been swift this week. In the last week the team has made the complete game board, with random mountains and lakes scattered throughout, making each game a unique experience. With the map generation, we have also developed the visuals for the grass, water and mountains. The mountains even utilize the 3D and pop out of the map. Once the map was complete we were able to implement unit movement too. When the user clicks on a unit, it becomes selected and highlights the spaces around it that it can move to. This movement range takes into account the terrain, and other units. In order to move you have to click a space next to the selected unit and it will move there and change the highlighted spaces where it can move(since it has one less move this turn and is in a different spot). According to programmer AJ Fritsch “The game has been coming together faster than we thought. It looks like it will be a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to release it”.

Next on the agenda is to implement turns so that units can only move on their turn, and their movement range will reset after each turn. With the implementation of turns we can then add in the mana crystals to restrict the number/type of units spawned each turn. After all of this the last step to finishing the game is to add in the mines and the bases. These features should complete the game, leaving the only programming left to be menus.

With this exciting news, you should be expecting to be able to join the battle within the next couple of weeks.

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

Press release #9: J5 Releases Prototype to the Public

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Blacksburg, Va., April 17, 2015 – J5 has completed and released a high fidelity prototype of the Gaming Social Network for others to test and evaluate!

J5’s Gaming Social Network application prototype will allow users to have a hands-on experience and get to test out some of the main features of the app.

Team member Daniel Rusz said “We wanted the prototype to give us insight on what features were easy to use and what we needed to refine. This way we don’t have to make major back end changes when creating the final product”.

J5 plans to use this prototype to get feedback from a select group of testers that will run through the application and complete set tasks. The feedback they receive will help the team know how well their features work in practice and the final product can be modified to better meet their goals.

Team member Iyaz Shaikh said “We are simulating the social interactions users will have right now, but after listening to our testers responses and perfect our front end design before continuing”.

The final stages of development left for J5 is to add in their application’s networking capabilities. Although users can only interact with sample friends in this prototype, the final product will allow users to communicate with one another to establish the social network. The final product will be presented in front of an audience on May 4th at the Moss Arts Center!

J5 – “Let’s Play Together” Contact person: Lucas Eckert <lucase93@vt.edu>

Press release #8: AddHawk Creates an Evaluation Plan and Prepares for Testing

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BLACKSBURG, Va., March 20, 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:
addhawkLogoThis week the AddHawk team began the development of the Android and web platforms of PixelPusher. These two platforms are the team’s first steps toward a high-fidelity prototype, which should be finalized within the next week. To give the high-fidelity prototypes the functionality that they require, an API was developed to allow for communication of data between the server and the client-facing applications. The aesthetics of the prototype are of great importance as well, so the team also spent time designing a batch of icons for the front-end of the application on both platforms.

In addition to focusing on more front-end facing features of the high-fidelity prototype, the team debugged and worked out kinks that were causing issues on the server side of the system. At this point the system is able to serve requests at blazing fast speeds, which imbues the hearts of the AddHawks with optimism and joy.

“We’re super excited about how fast the requests are able to be processed on the backend of our system! The Phalcon PHP Framework is light as a feather and we’ve been seeing speeds that are up to seven times faster than a Ruby On Rails based API. We hope that since it’s this fast at the moment that it will scale well when we begin moving on to evaluation of the system with real people,” said PixelPusher developer Christopher Wood excitedly.

A Look Into the Future:
In the upcoming weeks the team will finish production of the high-fidelity prototype for both the web and mobile platforms. This finalization of the prototype involves connection of the front and back ends of the PixelPusher system in order to be able to present relevant tasks and functionality that the system should be able to accomplish.

Once the prototype is ready, the team will move on to begin evaluation of the system. This evaluation will test users on various metrics that the team considers valuable for the continuation and improvement of the system as a whole. Testing will initially be performed by the PixelPusher developers themselves with a small sample size of around four people. From there on, the team will move on to testing first-time and returning users with increased sample sizes.

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 #8: War of Ages

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Blacksburg, VA; April 10, 2015 – Shapes are forming in War of Ages, as we start developing the units and their podiums. Each unit will have a symbol mounted on a podium. The larger and more elaborate podiums signify higher units. After we have a podium for each unit tier, we plan to start drawing the unit symbols. We decided to go with podiums because they look impressive the more elaborate they get, and that gives each unit more character.

warofagesApr10

(Figure 1: Tier 1 unit podium under development)

Since last week, we decided to completely scrap the 2D board for our original idea of a 3D board. This will allow us to add more dynamic animations to each cube if we have time. The podiums will also appear as 3D objects on a 3D board, rather than top view 2D objects on a 2D board. Our next step with our board is to load the unit podium prototypes and start adding movements.

Our final focus is on our mid-level prototype. Vasily has been developing the prototype for the past few weeks, and he is almost able to implement units and turns. Once our prototype is available to play, we will open it up to the class and friends for another session of feedback. We decided to make a mid-level prototype in order to get it out quicker to our audience before the final launch.

Our main goal in the next week is to finish the board and units in order to start programing the units on the board. Once we finish the units, we will start working on the crystals and making it turn-based. We look forward to the coming weeks and presenting our game to our patient audience.

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

Press release #8: Cumulonimbus Combines Back­-End and Front-­End, Creates Eval Plan

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Blacksburg, VA., Apr 10, 2015 ­- Team Cumulonimbus had the opportunity to visit the Moss Arts Center. The focus of the week is to combine Django and Bootstrap, to get one talking to the other. Finally, they ended the week creating an evaluation plan.

So far, each part has been working by itself. One of us would continue on the front­end while the back­end would be worked on by another one of us. This was mainly due to the learning process ­ both frameworks are new to the team. At the beginning of the week, Tyler mentioned, “We need to have front end and back end talking by the end of the week.” To stay on pace to the schedule, this needed to be done. Cumulonimbus accomplished this goal by Wednesday afternoon.

Although the integration was a great milestone for the team, it’s imperative that they use the momentum instead of letting it die out. Now, the next steps are more concrete. Each part still requires a decent amount of work. The UI currently involves a functional navigation bar. The graphics, which include the icons and color scheme will be provided by Matt’s sister, a graphic designer. The back­-end may require the most work out of the two, since Django is the more unfamiliar framework. The team members are really just figuring the basics at this point. For example, Tyler said, “We’ll need a way to host static files on a separate server. The mode I use to run Django is very simplified. Once I turn on the full service, we’ll need to host these files separately.”

In addition, Cumulonimbus prepared an evaluation plan this week. This is to prepare for the upcoming evaluation for the high fidelity prototype, known as the common prototype. Since they don’t have a client, it’s up to them to figure out a way to evaluate it. Right now, the idea is to test the application during Relay for Life. “Relay is scheduled after our high fidelity prototypes are due, conveniently, and we could recruit our friends to take pictures throughout the event,” says Matt. A couple specifications that Cumulonimbus will look out for will be barrier of entry, ease of use, and any bugs found.

It’s the perfect environment to test the application. With the evaluation plan set, Cumulonimbus will work on completing that high fidelity prototype.

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 #8: J5 Creates Evaluation Plan

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Blacksburg, Va., April 10, 2015 – J5 has written up an evaluation plan for the Gaming Social Network as well as continuing their design of their final prototype.

J5 wrote their evaluation plan this week in preparation of prototype testing. They are asking volunteers to run through a series of tasks and provide feedback and constructive criticism.

Team member Daniel Rusz said “Our evaluation plan is done and we are looking forward to meeting with volunteers to test our prototype”.

Additionally, J5 have been continuing work on the User Interface for their prototype and have made significant progress in that regard. Specifically, the profile and matchmaking screens are done.

Team member Parham Ghazanfari said “We met up to discuss how to go about doing the user interface. From our design patterns, we created the core screens that will enable the user to seamlessly and easily view friend and profile data”.

This coming week, the J5 team will be hard at work finishing a functional high-fidelity prototype so that the public can see what it will eventually look like and maybe even get to try it out!

J5 – “Let’s Play Together” Contact person: Lucas Eckert <lucase93@vt.edu>