Chantel Bergamin Lab 8

Week 13

chantelbergamin — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 07:07:01 +0000

This week we completed the final presentation of our Augmented Campus Lab, titled the “little library.” Following is a reflection on this group design project, with an analysis of its strengths and weaknesses, as well as thoughts on its further development.

The overall process of our group encompassed a number of stages. Theses included research, idea generation, concept development and interface visualisation. Moving through these stages as a group was both beneficial and complicating at times.

One of the main strengths of working as a team is that you are able to share and build on each other’s ideas. This provides the ability to produce concepts that are much more refined. When working as a group we often generated ideas individually and then came together to combine our ideas and thoughts. I feel that this aspect of group work was beneficial as we developed and refined our augmented library concept.

Another aspect of group work is that people will have different strengths, weaknesses and characters. Depending on your group this can be an advantage or disadvantage. Overall our group was well rounded and able to co-operate together, hence allowing the project to run smoothly.

The division of tasks was important to the experience of this group work project. As a group we would sit together and work out what needed to be completed and then designate everyone with a specific role. Planning ahead in this way was vital to ensure we remained on task, and that everybody in the group was participating.

By dividing up tasks in this way there was often a problem with consistency, particularly with the production of visualisations. Therefore, in the weeks before our interim and final presentations, someone was given the task of synthesising. This ensured the presentations had a consistent aesthetic across all of their components.

One of the main weaknesses of this group work project was our ability to meet up outside of class time. Some weeks we felt we needed extra time together as a group, however it was often difficult to find an appropriate time, as we all had different schedules and commitments outside of university.

Working as a team, it was important that major decisions were made and agreed on by the group as a whole. This was particularly important when deciding on a concept, and visualising the interface of our application. However, sometimes this process was complicated by the absence of group members.

Following are a few thoughts on the further development of our augmented library concept. Firstly, the visualisation of information within the application we created could be developed and made more aesthetically interesting in the future. However, this would have to be completed in a way that doesn’t complicate the ability of users to easily obtain information from the application. In our final presentation we focused on the social media aspect of our augmented library concept, as we felt it was of greater importance than the other elements of the application that we proposed. The other two aspects of our application, being way finding and environment are something that could be developed further in the future.

I have learnt a number of important things from completing this project. Working as a part of a team has helped me to broaden my design experience and ways of thinking. It has also highlighted the need for good organisational and time management skills. Overall the experience of this group design project was an enjoyable one, with the strengths of our group dynamics strongly outweighing its weaknesses.

Week 12

chantelbergamin — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:32:00 +0000

This was the final week to work on our project before our presentation. It was now time to pull together all of the elements of our concept.

During our tutorial this week we sat down as a group and went over exactly what would be on each page of the interface. We wanted to make decisions as a team to ensure we all agreed on them. This had been hard in to achieve in the previous few weeks due to different group members being missing.

As a group we worked out what needed to be completed and divided up the workload. The main roles of our group were as follows; Martha was to create the initial wireframes, Lara would develop these further and Dylan would make all of the final refinements, as well as working out how a demonstration of the app could be filmed. Tiia focused on creating a pdf for the presentation and I concentrated on putting together a pdf of our process work.

The development of the app moved from rough sketches, to wireframes, to the final Photoshop documents. Images of some of these stages can be seen below.

Images of the refined wireframes.

Images of the final Photoshop documents.

The general breakdown of the final app interface.

During this week my main aim was to document the development of our augmented library concept, which came to be titled the “little library”. In order to create the process work pdf I looked back over the weeks at our team’s experience of producing and developing our concept.

Week 11

chantelbergamin — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 07:00:29 +0000

This week’s lecture presented by Stephan Hajkowicz was about our future world, in relation to trends, risks and scenario’s. During the lecture we were told about a trends database that he was involved in creating with CSIRO staff. This highlighted the importance associated with looking to and designing for the future. This idea of “looking at future tendencies… (to ensure) you are prepared for the future,” is also acknowledged by Munnecke (2005, para. 1). Similarly, this idea is critical to the augmented library concept we have produced in our lab. We must ensure our designs look beyond the present and aim to accommodate the needs of people in the future.

One of the five megatrends identified by CSIRO was that of the iWorld. This is based on the idea of digital and natural convergence. In particular one thing they have been exploring is where smart phones are heading in the future. Similarly we have been investigating the possible uses and applications of such technologies in our Augmented Campus Lab.

During class our group showed each other sketches and examples of possibilities for visualising information in our app. At this point some of our ideas for visualisations although quite interesting aesthetically, looked a little too complicated for users to easily obtain information from. We were reminded in our tutorial not to become merely focused on creating unique info graphics. The whole point of our concept was about adding a social aspect to the library and revitalising it as a living network, hence it was important this was at the forefront of our design.

We divided up the visualisations and aimed to each come up with ideas for one section of the app. The section I was designated to work on was based on visualising information in relation to a specific resource. This would be what is displayed once the user has selected a resource and would like to view details about it, such as ratings, borrows and comments.

We decided to meet up on Monday before our next class to share our ideas. Below are some wireframes I came up with to show a possible way the information about a resource could be visualised. Below I have designed the app to have various pages each displaying a different aspect of the resource (information, ratings, borrows and comments). An alternative to this would be displaying all of the information on a single page to give a more succinct overview.

Wireframes

To gain inspiration and inform the ideas I produced for information visualisation I continued to research existing examples of them. Upon viewing different info graphics they immediately left an impression of what aspect of the app they could possibly be used for. For example, the graphing styles used in images 1 and 2 could potentially be used to represent information in the “explore by course” section of our app. This is based on how they allow the different segments of a whole to be visualised.

Image 1 (The Design Inspiration, 2010)

Image 2 (Digital Podge, 2009)

The following week is our last chance to develop our concept before our presentation. In the time we have left our group must start agreeing on elements of the app interface to ensure we have time to develop our visualisations to their final form.

References:

Digital Podge, 2009, Measurable Fun, Digital Podge, viewed 23 October 2010,

Munnecke, M. 2005, Workshop: The Future of Printing, Ma3x, viewed 23 October 2010,

The Design Inspiration, 2010, Stunning Infographics and Design Visualisation, Noupe, viewed 23 October 2010,

Week 10

chantelbergamin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:59:37 +0000

This week’s lecture focused on permaculture, which is the goal to create a permanent culture. In order for this to occur we need to be stewards of our resources. In the lecture, the wasting of nutrients was highlighted. This emphasised one of society’s problems, being that there isn’t enough cycling and reusing of nutrient rich wastes occurring. This idea of the cycling of resources is important. It can also be applied to our augmented library group work assessment. Essentially what our augmented library concept is doing is reusing resources in the library. In this case these resources take the form of peoples thoughts and opinions about books in the library, which are highly valuable to other students. Instead of allowing these to go to waste, they are cycled back to students for future reference.

During the lecture it was also mentioned that permaculture involves utilising lots of little solutions and taking small steps. Similarly this will also be the case with our augmented library concept. Adding a social aspect to the library isn’t something that will occur instantly, it must be gradually built up over time.

Interestingly, in the past it has been acknowledged that upon completing our course many of us will not enter the field of design as a profession, but will instead integrate their design skills into other fields of work. Permaculture is an example of this, since it is about designing human society so that it can continue forever.

During our tutorial this week our group mainly concentrated on designing the interface of our app. In particular we aimed to focus on the visualisation of information. During our lesson our group went for a trip to the library and flicked through the images in the book Data Flow (Klanten, 2008) in order to inspire ourselves and gain some ideas of the different ways information can be visualised. Below are some interesting examples of visualisation from the book.

Images from Data Flow (Klanten, 2008).

For the following week we each aimed to look further into information visualisation and how it could be applied to the information we wanted to communicate about resources in the library. I looked at various sources of people talking about and showing examples of this. Tapia (2008, para. 2) recognises the hype surrounding information visualisation. The beauty of infographics or data visualisation is in its ability to simplify complex information (Leannec, 2010). Following are some examples of information visualisation I found online, which I felt were interesting.

Below are a series of maps by Stefanie Posavec, which beautifully “capture regularities and patterns within a literary space” (Krakowski, 2008, para. 3).

Below is an interactive visualisation of the wealth and health of nations (Gapminder World, 2008). Through the use of an infographic viewers are easily able to see patterns within the data.

After looking at various examples of information visualisation such as these I began to think about how elements of them could be applied to the app we were creating. Below are some of my rough sketches that I planned to show and explain to my group the following week. One aspect that I had in mind when creating these visualisations was how to encompass the aesthetic of a library into the imagery. This is evident in the idea of utilising books and stamps in some of my sketches.

Images of my sketches.

Next week in class we will be sharing our ideas such as these, so that together we can decide which techniques will be the most appropriate and effective at displaying information about the library and its resources.

References:

Gapminder World, 2008, Wealth and Health of Nations, Gapminder World, viewed 13 October 2010,

Klanten, R. 2008, Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design, Gestalten, Berlin.

Krakowski, J 2008, Stefanie Posavec – “On the Map”, Notcot, viewed 13 October 2010,

Leannec, P. 2010, Infographics and communication – data visualization in the information age, Text 100, viewed 13 October 2010,

Tapia, H. 2008, Visualising Information, viewed 13 October 2010,

Week 9

chantelbergamin — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:16:02 +0000

During our tutorial this week we received some additional feedback about our interim presentation on the augmented library concept we produced. Other than looking at the design of the interface itself there were some other important aspects to consider:

It was felt that we had to narrow down the focus of our concept. Initially our project focused on three aspects. Although the aspects of wayfinding and environment will still be present, we decided to focus mostly on adding a social aspect to the library through our app.
We also have to work on making it evocative.
A further thing to consider is that people will need some form of encouragement to use the app initially, something that makes it fun to use first. Discussing this amongst our group we felt this could be as simple as setting up a points system for users of the app.
The app must be simple, yet enable users to dig to the next level.
Additionally, we must find a way to make it feel personal as though the users own it, not the library.
The issue of regulating comments must also be addressed, however it may be assumed that if the comments produced aren’t anonymous they will self-regulate. The ability to simply report inappropriate comments would also ensure this doesn’t become a problem.

Interestingly, during a web design class I attended this week we looked at user testing, which I felt was relevant to the design of our augmented library app. During this class we looked at a number of resources based on user testing, as well as being introduced to a number of people and their thoughts on aspects of user testing. These people included Don Norman, Jacob Neilson and Steve Krug. Norman (2010, Design-Driven Innovation section, para. 1) highlighted the importance of human-centered design theory. When designing our own app its essential that this is taken into account. Neilson (2010, Articles section) focuses on research into tracking user’s eye movements in response to webpages, in order to create the greatest usability possible. Hence, it’s critical we understand the importance of elements such as placement and hierarchy. This will ensure users can easily and intuitively navigate through our app. Krug (2010, This Months Tip section) accentuates the significance of making people interact with what you are making to ensure it functions correctly. Thus, showing people possible designs of our app and seeing how they interact with them is vital.

In the next few weeks we will produce the interface of our app. During this process it is essential that we always take the users of the design into account, as well as ensuring we test the design on other people to overcome any issues of usability.

References:

Krug, S. 2010, Advanced Common Sense, viewed 6 October 2010,

Neilson, J. 2010, Jacob Neilson’sWebsite, useit.com, viewed 6 October 2010,

Norman, D. 2010, Don Norman’s jnd website, Jnd, viewed 6 October 2010,

Week 8

chantelbergamin — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:25:27 +0000

Considering our concept was based within an iPhone application, during our time off I began to explore what constitutes a successful app and how this can be achieved. In particular I watched a lecture on YouTube called “How to build an iPhone application that doesn’t suck” (Marmon, 2009). This provided a good overview of constraints when designing, what is required and how these can be accomplished. Following is an overview of aspects I felt were interesting or important, and should be taken into account when we begin designing our own.

1). Decide what to build

A lot of people start of with the solution, but you shouldn’t do this.
You should consider the following.
- Why are you building it?
- What is it solving?
- Who is it for?
Focus on your USER + PROBLEM.

2). Visit the app store

Users will have a limited patience for your app.
It needs to be similar to what they’ve already used.
Helps decide what people are doing or expect from an app.

3). Explore possible solutions

Constraints:
- Small screen
- Less precise touch input
- Typing is more difficult
- Short bursts of usage
Less precise input. Buttons need to be about 44px to hit it with the finger on the phone.
Used for less than 5minutes at a time. Thus you don’t want a long process.
Needs to be minimal. This should be based on the user and what they need.

4). Sketch

Get other people to leverage, which is best.
They can either be friends or more specifically people from the user group.
Quality through quantity.

5). Fail early to succeed sooner

Paper prototyping.
It costs more to make changes at later stages in the process.
Interactions:
- How to ensure the user does these.
- Shake, turn device
- To interact does the user require prompts or is it based on discovery.

6). Fire up omnigraffle

Once laid out changes may need to be made. For example there might not be room for a button.
Colour issues can be resolved.
Paper prototyping should be black and white. This ensures it will work for those who are colour blind.
Be pixel perfect.

7). Do it all again

Sometimes you have to back track.

8). Okay you can finally code

9). Beta test your app

Your friends can help test the app. Even if they’re not in the user group you can get valuable information from them.
Mechanical Turk – pay small amounts of money to get people to perform a task for you.
Test before you submit.

Other than examining how the interface of an iPhone functions, in the coming weeks I will also need to begin researching further into information visualisation and info graphics. This is important to the design of the interface, and will form a main component of our final presentation.

References:

Marmon, S. 2009, How to Build an iPhone App that Doesn’t Suck, Youtube, viewed 29 September 2010,

Week 7

chantelbergamin — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 09:21:54 +0000

During class this week we presented our interim concept for our augmented library. The feedback we received after our presentation assisted in giving us direction, highlighting aspects of the design that we will need to concentrate on developing.

Our feedback was as follows. First of all, as the concept takes the form of an iPhone app the design of the interface itself will require much experimentation and testing. We must find a way to be able to simply and effectively integrate the three capabilities of our concept into a single app. Creating something that’s intuitive and transitions seamlessly between these capabilities is essential. Also, along with the social aspect of this project comes the requirement to develop some kind of filtering system. This is particularly important in the case of the ability to make and access comments about resources. In the coming weeks we will be investigating how these requirements can be achieved.

Week 6

chantelbergamin — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:50:01 +0000

The interim presentation for our groups augmented library concept is now due in a week. As a group we have a large workload to complete to ensure our presentation is of the best standard possible.

During our tutorial, as our group discussed our augmented library concept we began talking about library books in the past and how they were stamped with a due date when borrowed. This also allowed those looking at the book to see how many times it was borrowed, adding a social aspect to the library. When mentioned, this suddenly took me back to the lecture this week on traces, highlighting an interesting link between the lecture and group work assessment. This lecture on traces involved looking at the city as a canvas based on what was left behind from interactions of society with it. We acknowledged that since the borrowing of books became electronic this social aspect has been removed. As a part of our augmented experience of the library we aim to revitalise this, allowing students to see the number of times a book has been borrowed as in the past, but with a modern twist. This social aspect will also be extended, allowing students to make comments about and give ratings to resources in the library.

We summarised our design concept by making visual representations of our ideas in the form of maps and graphs. These can be seen below in images 1, 2, 3 and 4. The use of information visualisation, such as in these images help to draw out connections; clearly and succinctly depicting how different elements interact together. It even has the ability to open your eyes and answer “questions you didn’t know you had” (Dawson 2008, para. 7). Information visualisation will also be important in the development of the interface of our augmented library concept. It is essential that users are able to quickly and easily navigate through information about the libraries resources and instantly see what value other students have placed on it. I believe that user testing will play an important role here in order to create an intuitive interface. The requirement of user testing in interface design is seen as being important by many sources such as UserNomics (2008, para. 3), due to its ability to anticipate what will and won’t work.

Pdf of images 1-4

With the interim deadline looming our main aims for the next week are to summarise our concept, flesh it out with the appropriate technology, as well as produce a concept of how our idea could look and function.

References:

Dawson, R. 2008, Now a major trend: Information visualization for everyone, Movable Type Publishing Platform, viewed August 2010,

UserNomics, 2008, User interface design, UerNomics, viewed September 2010,

Week 5

chantelbergamin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:43:37 +0000

During this week we began to delve deeper into the ideas we began to brainstorm as a group in the previous week. To do so we began to explore what data is in the campus, how it could be useful to students, and how to effectively communicate this information to them.

To help inform this idea we each decided to go home and create our own personas. The personas we created as a team are featured below. We aimed to test our design concepts against these to determine whether they would benefit different students and identify possible problems.

Persona 1

Persona 2Persona 3

We also observed people in the library to provide data about student activity in the library, as well as creating a photo journal. Such observation based research helped to see how the library is used currently, hence informing how it could possibly be used in the future. Images from these can be seen below.

I also explored possible augmented reality devices for the essay due in week 6, which included handheld displays, head mounted displays and spatial displays (Pilgrim 2010, AR Applications section, para. 2). Such information could also be applied to the group work assessment as we tossed up between the pros and cons of each form of device for our augmented library. I also collected specific information related to what technologies could possibly be implemented into our group work concept of the augmented library. Possible ways of tracking activity in the library include the use of pressure and motion sensors, as well as tracking log-ins on computers and tracking student cards.

Below is an overview of the group work project at this point in time.

Summary:

The Augmented Library
- Making the library more engaging and its resources more accessible is essential to improving the library.
- The whole point of university is to enhance your learning, so the process should be as simple and appealing as possible.
- This involves making it easier to locate books, enhancing resources for research and providing access to suitable study locations.

Way finding
- We need to research the potential of RFID to locate books.
- What if a book is being used? Could possibly guide you to where it is or indicate that it’s in use.

Social media
Students can search for books based on:
- The subject they are researching for. Information on each subjects suggested texts has been added to the system.
- The course you are doing. Students will have access to information on what books have been borrowed most by people completing the same course as them.

The system suggests books based on:
- Same topic
- Same Author

Information provided to help guide students in their research:
- How many times its been borrowed
- Ratings given to the book
- Comments made about the book
- These could also help library staff when selecting new books for the library.
- If you would rather scan the shelves to find a book you can. An alternative way to search if that’s what you would rather. The shelves are layered with general labels when viewed through the device. Also you could view information such as which have been borrowed most etc.

Environment
- Internal and external.
- You can choose a room based on your needs and availabilities at the time.
- Could be tracked by pressure sensors on seats at a study table, whether a computer is logged in to etc.

The next stage of the project is to continue refining our concept and the technologies involved, as well as beginning to create visualisations of how it would look and function.

References:

Pilgrim, G. 2009, Augmented Reality, Buzzle, viewed August 2010,

Week 4

chantelbergamin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:05:55 +0000

The week 4 lecture was presented by Vicki Karaminas. It was about fashion modernity and the city – the places and spaces of consumption. The content of this lecture didn’t correlate to what we were examining in our Augmented Campus Lab.

As a part of our tutorial this week we looked at past examples of works that were related to our own project. These were helpful to ground myself in the project, and see ways in which technology could be applied to solve problems.

Also, during our tutorial we continued to focus on the concept of relaxing. However, as we attempted to extrapolate on this our group became stuck. Our efforts to come up with a solution surrounding the idea of relaxing continued to lead us to the problem that students needed to be able to find a place to relax that suited their needs at the time. However, we found it difficult to advance from this point.

Somehow whilst we were looking at the notion of relaxing the lack of resources for research (whilst not related to relaxing) occasionally popped up. In particular, the lack of computers in the labs was mentioned. Upon looking at this idea of improving students’ resources for research, we came to focus on the library and how hard it is to find books. We then began to examine studying as a motivation, as we felt it had more potential for improvement. The whole point of university is to enhance your learning, and currently we all see problems in our own experience of this. Hence improving the ability for students to study, particularly in relation to their use of the library seemed quite appropriate. We felt that making the library more engaging and its resources more accessible were key to improving this.

Some ideas we came up with included using RFID tags in books to assist in locating them. We also felt that it would be helpful if students had access to information about the books that other students or tutors in their course have borrowed, to help them more efficiently extend their knowledge. Providing suggestions, such as a book on the same topic or by the same author would also assist with this. Relating the library to other forms of research also helped us pick up on problems. Our group felt that the web is so much more efficient with searches based on keywords than the library’s catalogue. Hence the library requires a better database with additional key words. These were the main findings we came up with in class.

We now need to develop this concept of creating an augmented library to the next stage. To achieve this our group decided we should begin researching specific augmented reality technologies and see how they could be applied.