One class I’m taking this term is in UX Research method and practice. Some useful resources from class and for the next phase of my work on the VT — writing requirements.
Jacob Nielson, Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html
What (Definition of Usability)
Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The [...]
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~changmin/virtualtribunal.htm
This Fall, I joined a project at Berkeley called the Virtual Tribunal. The Virtual Tribunal is envisioned as an interactive online multimedia repository for the documents of war crimes tribunals from Nuremberg to the present. In addition to the documents of the court, the Virtual Tribunal will include documents related to the associated wars and [...]
Our final project for our Tangible User Interface course (Fall 08) is a musical gear toy. Each gear is mapped to the sound of an instrument playing a bit of music. You can listen to this music by spinning a gear. If you connect multiple gears and spin them together, the sounds from all of [...]
Recently, I’ve been researching theremins for a backup-singing-friend who wants to include this instrument in her schtick. The theremin is the sound of spooky. It’s the instrument of the “woo wooooo wooo” noise in old-time horror movies. In the fall, I made a theremin using an Arduino board, a couple of photoresistors, and a piezo [...]
Greener Gadgets Conference, is “a chance for gadget geeks and electronic companies alike to think about the role of gadgets in our lives and how we can engage in more sustainable solutions for the future. Topics of discussion ranged from personal responsibility for energy consumption to how companies can track their carbon footprint to the [...]
Free, open source visual recognition system created and made available by reactable. We used this with our final TUI project, attaching the identification markers to the bottom of gears. Set on a clear table surface, these markers were recognized by a camera from below. The markers worked quite well and were very popular among classmates’ [...]
We used Max MSP, visual programming, to code the music-control parts of our TUI class project. It was great, easy to learn the basics, and capable of doing much more, I’m sure, with a little more knowledge/experience.
These are a few resources that were helpful in making our code from Processing, Arduino, and Max to work [...]
The assignment for this lab was to create something that crawls. I sewed a servo motor to a fruit container and am controlling the motor with a potentiometer. The result is an object that moves in a rather comical way with it’s awkward inching along and servo sounds.
Details/Observations:
Components:
arduino
servo motor
potentiometer
produce basket
wire
usb cable
computer
/*
* Servo with Potentiometer control
* [...]
For Lab this week, our assignment is to make a system that includes motion — ie. that makes use of the dc motor in our lab kit. My system has three motors, each tripped by a different photocell sensor. You trip the first sensor with your hand, causing the square paddle to rotate. [...]
http://www.replate.org/
From replate.org:
v. (re-plate): to place unwanted leftovers, typically in a doggie bag, on top of the nearest trash can so they don’t go to waste
This phenomenon is not uncommon in California (and perhaps, in other places where leftovers will not spoil in the outdoors and/or there are enough people looking for food in the trash [...]