Our final video can be found here: http://youtu.be/xnb6tI_ggXw
Author Archives: cchardin
RRCP April 18
This week we made great progress on finalizing our study design. Soheyla consulted with a research design expert and was able to get good feedback on how we should set up the study. Caroline consulted with a color theory expert and got many resources to help us pick out our test colors. She also tested the emotive more and thinks it won’t fit the scope of this project. Olivia continued work on preparing the rooms in Sketchup.
Problems encountered included realizing we needed to switch technologies from the cave to the Discovery system in order to get the requisite number of people, and needing to use 3DS Max for proper color saturation display.
The project is on schedule, but have to adjust our schedule up in order to leverage the people at the fashion show.
This next week we will finish the room modeling, finalize the study design details, and hopefully test the system on ourselves.
- One piece of media related to your work (image, video, audio, etc)
- What each individual in the group worked on over the last week
- A description of the accomplishments made
- A description of the problems encountered
- An analysis whether or not the project is still on schedule
- Plans for the upcoming week
RRCP April 11
Accomplishments:
As a group in this week we really started getting into our project.
– We tested the Emotive system and software- so much fun- We also started to become more familiar with the software by reading the software instruction
– We tried to finalize the number of rooms and make color decision
– Furniture or none? We’ll test both on ourselves first. We’re leaning towards neutral furniture such as in a cruise ship cabin.
– Furniture will color same as wall
– We’ll design 4 rooms off of a central room and allow the participant to walk between the rooms at will. We’ll measure how much time they spend in each room.
– white, red, blue, green will be the colors we’ll test. We discussed trying yellow to cover the primary colors, but decided it was too unusual a room color given the saturation we wish to test.
– Using sketch-up, we made our sample room.
– We made an appointment with a research method professor for the next week in order to get help for drafting the right survey questions, and reached out to the emeritus professor of the class “Color Theory: Environmental Context”
– We came up with some idea to solidify interactive activity of the subject while in the environment
– Tell participants task at hand in advance
– “Which hotel room would you most enjoy having for your vacation?”
– Integrate controller training in lobby
– Participant will verbally say their preference – numbered
– And will offer an adjective for their favorite room
– we will use standard prompt if indecisive
– finally, we’ll compare the results vs. a survey we give to people on paper showing color pictures of the room
We hope we will find out Does being in the immersive environment change people’s preferences for room color?
Next Week’s Plans:
– Testing the Emotive system – what does it add to our study? How would we make it work with test subjects?
– Complete Draft of experiment design
– Complete Draft survey question
– Working on the interactive activity of the subject while in the environment
Note: post written by Soheila Mohamadi
RRCP
April 4th
Get emotive software installed and do a test run
Complete IRB Training
Lit review – what work has been done?
Install Sketchup and do a tutorial
April 11
Take Python training
Choose Google warehouse rooms to start from
Draft study design and questions
Draft IRBb
April 18
Test emotive + cave setup
Finish training on necessary skills
April 25
Finalize study design and questions
Finalize dates and times
Begin recruiting
May 2
Run tests
May 9
Iterate on test design if necessary
Begin writing report
May 16
Final polishing and submission
Contingency plan:
We’ve started with a fairly small core project design, leaving room to grow as time allows. If we experience problems, we’re actively logging possible avenues for assistance, including forums, DoIT technical training, and so on.
Rapid room color prototyping
Project description: by using the cave to rapidly prototype colors and patterns in rooms, we can more easily measure the effects on people’s moods with the assistance of the Emotive and questionnaires.
Group Skills:
SOHEYLA: I am familiar with some computer modelling software and colour theory.
Caroline: I have experience in computer programming
Olivia: I have Design skills
Examples of room colors
Group To do:
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Ultimate Presence
Of all the technologies Sterling mentions in the article, I think GPS is the most influential now and will be the most influential going forward, as it allows a close tethering between virtual, augmented and reality.
The way the article ended merged the sense of wonder these technologies bring, with a dramatic reminder that these technologies could be used in ways we might not like.
The article mentions that it would be wonderful if computers could help us understand things like non-uniform fields – at DoIT Academic Technology Media Learning Lab has created such a thing – a particle golf game which helps students learn about thermodynamic states.
As for the separation of presence and immersion, I agree that it’s important to distinguish between the technical specifications with how humans actually perceive it – since, as the article mentions, there is many opportunities to take advantage of sensory metamers to improve the experience of virtual reality with the same computational power.
The accuracy of presence in non-real environment might not be good, but if we can’t tell, do we care?
I was curious about the nature of the debate regarding defining these terms before this article appeared, and if this 2003 article resolved it. In 1992 he wrote An experimental exploration of presence, followed by more than a 40 articles with about presence or immersion in their titles before he wrote ‘A note on presence technology’ – and while I can’t find citation numbers for that article, he has almost 12,00 citations in his career so I think it’s safe to say he was a well-regarded expert on Virtual Reality. I wasn’t otherwise able to answer my questions within the scope of this assignment. Mel Slater has written a blog about Presence at http://presence-thoughts.blogspot.com/ so he has clearly remained interested in the topic.
Inception
For this assignment, I watched the movie Inception (which had been discussed in class but I had never seen). You can read about the movie at ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception or at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/?ref_=nv_sr_1 where you’ll also find trailers.
This movie places a bank heist inside a philosophy question: What is reality and what are dreams? Other movies, such as the matrix, have also explored this realm, (though rarely in such an eerie and unsettling way) as well as books such as Tad Williams City of Golden Shadows. The closer we get to convincing virtual reality, the deeper we go into that uncanny valley, and the more we get nervous about if we’ll be able to tell the difference, and even if we do, if we’ll care.
Sadly, for people who have Derealization disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derealization , they take these fictions to be their reality: that reality is a fiction.