#ctec708-2

[qzkevin]

Prepare for the presentation

Today we have finish our final set up before the presentation. Compare to last year and year before, we are more relax at this semester. I think what make the difference is we finally have a good time plan and team role. Unlike my pervious projects, this is the first time I only work with one people in group. It is hard to judge more or less people in group is good or not, but work with Tim really make our work easy. I have work with Tim since the first year, so we know each’s weakness and good. As the result, we can split the project to two and have free to pick one that we like to do.

What we done today is place the poster and fix up some problems. It is quite horrify that I see the cable drop from the wall(was glued by tape before), fortunately we fix that. Last week we were more focus on finish the documentation and poster design, it is good but also means we need finish the button part today. 80% of the button part is finish at last week, all we have to do is just extend the cable little bit so it can place around the table.

(Yes the coke bottle caps is our buttons.)

At this stage, we have done everything we could do. I do send our doc and poster to Sangeeta for getting feedback, but, you know... She doesn't give any reply. Whatever, I am more worried about the presentation, Tim is confidence with the project but I am not. I am always the one that have no confidence with the project result, it happen every years so I should be fine. 

[qzkevin]

week13 studio poster

For explain how is our project works, I made two poster this week. To be honestly, I think most people would understand how to interact our project when they see some buttons, so the poster is more focus on explain the detail about GPGP. In our videos, it shows clearly about how the ocean moves and the GPGP kill animals. The weakness part is we don’t have sound and text in the project. The reason is we don’t want sound as it does not working well in the open studio/showcase (too noise around). The text will be in our poster.

I have take some keyword from our project and make them looks like a maze shape. All I want is this could interested more people stop and look our project. I also steal some idea from national geography for design the out layout which someone believe it looks nice. The information paragraphs will be in the next poster so this one can have more free space.

This is the second page which I believe it had all the information we want show. First, our name, project name and the sub title for telling how to interact our project. Second, two short paragraphs explain what is GPGP and our project. At this point, thanks Tim for helping me finish the writing stuff. Below it is the description for each buttons, we don’t want our audience just random buttons because they don’t know what is that means. We also have a extra blog nearby to talk about the micro plastic problem. It is a part of the GPGP but the fact is people more care about this because they eat fish more than swim in the pacific Ocean.

Tomorrow I will meet Tim to finish the last set up of buttons and prepare for the final presentation.  It is quite pressure but I think we did our best. Hope everyone get a good result, good luck.

[qzkevin]

week13- studio update

Well, it is the week 13 again, deadline is coming.

We had a test about our prototype last week which is useful to judge what is the main problem we need solve. The main problem we need to solve is the buttons. The fabric is fine, but we will change a better one for enhance the user experience. 

First, about the buttons.

Tim has been to the store around city for finding suitable size buttons that can place on our cylinder table. The sad thing is we can’t place those big buttons to a curve surface, and those smaller buttons are just too small. And the good thing  is we still remember the experience from the "DOOM" project. We decide to find some coke bottle caps and fix them on those smaller buttons. The finish buttons will be fixed around the table with some tape and hot glue.

Second, the fabric.

To be honestly, we don’t have much thing could talk about the fabric. We know the old one is shitty and looks bad. The only change we did is just bring a new fabric and test with the projection. Tim has find two fabric which one is more plastic feel and one is soft and light. We decide to use the soft one as it is work better for projection mapping. The new fabric has been cut to a circle shape, we haven’t fixed it on the project structure yet but will do that later in this week.

There will be a presentation at next week, so I am work on finish the a4 one page document and our poster. We plan to finish our physical set up in Thursday or Friday, maybe the weekend as well. Anyway, I have done one poster already and there should have 1 or 2 more for the final. The summary doc also finish but we haven’t ask Sangeeta to check, wonder she can show up today.

[qzkevin]

Prototyping test video 2.

Tumblr is so bad that you can’t upload two video in one post.

Thanks Rachael again.

[qzkevin]

Prototype testing video 1.

Thanks Rachael for help,

[qzkevin]

Studio- Early research data

For our studio paper, we have two different data collecting process, the first one is using the google form and online research to find how many people don’t the GPGP. We also asking their feedback about our project idea to make sure we are working in the right direction. Here is the screen shot from the google form survey we did.

[qzkevin]

“We didn’t study harm”

“We didn’t study harm,” he says. “We showed there are microplastics in human stool. Up to now, people believed it, but now we know it. That’s important.”

-Richard Thompson, a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth in the U.K.

Back to the start of the semester, we were stuck on decide the project idea and be pain for that. In the rest time, I saw a article that explain how GPGP(Great Pacific Garbage Patch) harm to our life. I don’t feel that surprised as I already know this story like 3 years ago, but Tim is not. He told me that he never hear that news before, even his family and friends. It is quite unbelievable, so I go ask some people and lecture in studio about do they ever know this thing, and all the result I get is No.

It is interesting that everyone understand how important about protect environment in New Zealand but not much people know this problem that happen in Pacific Ocean. At this stage, I talk with Tim that could we make a project that introduce this issue to more people? At least let some of them know this would affect our life and future.

Tim agree with my idea and then we talk with Sangeeta, it is first time that Sangeeta strongly agree with our project idea. She told us that she believe this would be the most valuable project we will have before we graduate. We start do some research and prepare for our prototype making. With more and deeper research, I realize this problem may be more serious that I thought. 

Most research article I found all talk about a fact that there are some microplastic find in human poop. They all comes from the fish we eat in daily, which is a loop that human throw rubbish into the sea, fish eat those plastic and finally we eat those fish and those plastic back to harm our health.

We want to build a project that has a education value as our idea is let more people know there is a problem happen around us. I plan to use my projector to create a projection mapping project that allow people to have some simple interact action. And for get feedback data I will make a google form to see how many audience that don’t know this problem and after have interact with our project, what do they feel about their understand on this serious problem.

[qzkevin]

Studio blog - build prototype

It is been a long time that I am not blog my studio project and I know it is bad. I was too focus on solve my elective paper but now it is nearly finish. Compare to last two years, I feel more pressure and busy, we have to do our portfolio, finish studio project and plan for next year... Oh god...

Back to the topic, I have chat with Tim at week 7 about speed up our project process, so what I did in this week is I get the wood we need and finish the laser cutting. During this process, I have made a mistake about cut length, so those two pieces are not able to insert together, fortunately I can fix that just need do a re-cut.

As you can see, now there is the frame of a half sphere project. Once we finish use some paper( or other thing) to make the out cover, we will put some curtain on it so we can do project mapping.

Thanks to Sangeeta save our project. We was stuck on to find out a stand for place our projector which might cost 50$+ on PB tech. The idea she give and save us is:

“Just put that cylinder on any table, that is your stand.”

Yeah that is how we solve the problem, funny and work. I am glad that we finally make Sangeeta love our project idea once before I graduate. Every year we can hear Sangeeta complain about our project idea that make no sense and strange, but not this time. She called this is a big improve for both of us and we should keep doing like this.

Now the plan is Tim will work on the video editing and get the curtain and hard paper we need. I will help him to finish set up the projector and start document our process and work with the portfolio thing. Once both of my two elective paper finish, I will have more blog to post about the way we walk about this project.