Margarita Miranda

Final Project - Presentation

2009-12-12T23:51:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

We met earlier today (8am eeeek) to work on our presentation and look over the Powerpoint to make sure everything was on point. We also did some last minute touches on what we each worked on -

Colette fixed the Google Sketchup mockup more and added some animation to our Powerpoint
Maia worked more on the glove and Bluetooth
I helped Maia research more about the Bluetooth and also rewired the turn signals so that they would be more reliable

Overall, the presentation was a success! Each group did a great job, but it was scary for us because we were last. However, we started off with our video, which was a real crowd pleaser. We got some great questions, a lot of them which we were expecting, like other safety features like sensing an open car door or worries about not being able to feel the vibrations if on a rocky road.

Anyways, we did great!! And we are finally done with the project. We all celebrated by going to the CS Holiday party!!

Final Project - Website

2009-12-10T18:45:00.001-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

I've started making the website for our project. It's a work in progress but my goal is to be done with it before our presentation so that we can present it! I'm not quite sure what information is required to be on it yet though. So, the requirements may not be added until Orit posts the Milestone description. Anyways, here's the like to the site - http://cs.wellesley.edu/~mmiranda/iBike

Final Project - Working...

2009-12-10T18:41:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Today Colette and I went into the lab and worked more on Google Sketchup and making the turn signals more reliable. We made covers for them with the 3d printer, but it turns out that when we left them overnight, the machine ran out of material so it didn't finish. We went to talk to Robbie Berg, then he referred us to John Rose. Unfortunately he wasn't available when we stopped by his office. It doesn't seem like we'll have the covers...

Our group also met tonight in the weight room (Colette had to work there). We went over our powerpoint presentation and split up what we were going to talk about. Our game plan is to meet tomorrow and be focused to present!

Final Project - Google Sketchup

2009-12-09T18:39:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Colette has been working on Google Sketchup to make a 3d model of what our ideal bike would look like! It's a very cool program. I wish I could embed the file into blogspot?!?!

Final Project - Research

2009-12-08T14:35:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Right now we're in class and while Maia and Colette are working on the gloves, I'm doing research on connecting the iPhone to the Lilypad Arduino. I found a really cool site where these two guys used the iPhone to control a remote control car and the way they communicated with one another was with the Lilypad Arduino and bluetooth! Here's the link - http://hacknmod.com/hack/diyiphone-controlled-rc-car/

Final Project - Another Video

2009-12-07T22:29:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

I finally finished editing the tutorial video. Here it is!

Final Project - Videos

2009-12-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Today I edited our footage together from our filming. It was a little more complicated than I thought because the clips wouldn't download onto my computer because they were in mts format. So, I got iSkysoft which converted the files for me! It was free and very easy to use - www.iskysoft.com

After converting everything, I used iMovie to edit things together. I made a logo/front page ad for us in Fireworks to make our video have a sleek presentation. I then combined important clips and added transitions.I made two videos - one for our story/use case and another for a tutorial on how to use our system. The fun part was the soundtrack! Both songs are from the band Phoenix.

Heres the story video:

I'm still editing the tutorial video and will post it later today!!

Final Project - Filming II

2009-12-05T16:00:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

This morning we all met to finish off filming for our video. We all met at the science center and filmed the "indoor" clips. Also, we decided to separate the use case and tutorial parts. So, Maia was the actor in the tutorial video. I'm going to try and edit these tonight so we can have it done!

Final Project - Filming I

2009-12-04T15:56:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

After class we did some filming for our video. We had to do it before the sun went down AND we checked the weather forecast - rain all weekend! So, Colette and I used a video camera Maia got from Olin, and she filmed me riding the bike around campus. I must say, I'm a little rusty on my biking skills....

Final Project - Bluetooth for the Arduino

2009-12-03T15:48:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

After doing some research I found the blog of Leah Buechley and found that there is a way to use bluetooth for the LilyPad Arduino. These are the things that I bought on Sparkfun - http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=582 and http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8430

I had to do express delivery ($10 more eeeeek) so that we could get in time to add to the glove. This will really enhance the functionality of our glove and unite our system more.

LilyPad+Bookbag

2009-12-03T11:43:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

This is a fun video I found online that involves a LilyPad and bag patch. It shows just how versatile the LilyPad is!!

http://www.channels.com/episodes/show/3197625/CRAFT-Video-LilyPad-Arduino-Bike-Patch

Final Project - GPS/Bluetooth

2009-12-03T11:38:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Here are some great links I found that have GPS and Bluetooth!

TinyGPS is a library that provides Arduino users with position, date, time, etc. : http://arduiniana.org/libraries/TinyGPS/

LilyPad+ Bluetooth shows ways to extend the LilyPad with a Bluetooth module and a data logging module. Make clothes that communicate with your laptop, mobile phone, and PDA. http://thehighlowtech.com/LilyPad/extend.html

Final Project - Feedback in class 2.0

2009-12-03T11:30:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

We presented our prototype in class and we got a lot of positive feedback and some constructive criticism.

First, we got a lot of questions about calibration and what happens if the user misses a turn. Our solution is a button on the glove for the user to indicate whether or not missing the turn was intentional or not. Also, there is an LED light on the glove that indicates green, yellow, red. Green is for if you are going in the right direction and no turns soon, yellow is for is there is a turn within 1/8th of a mile, and red is for if you missed a turn. Helen mentioned that maybe yellow and green are too similar of colors for the user to notice the color change. While others in the class felt that the color scheme was very intuitive, especially since it is the same as the stop sign lights for driving.

Orit seemed pleased with our progress and would like to see us work more on the connection between all the systems. Separately they seem to work, however we have yet to implement a way for example for the glove and phone to work as feeding information back and forth. A solution would be bluetooth, so we are currently researching ways to do that.

3D Printer!

2009-12-01T15:42:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Tonight our group met with Alex and we used SolidWorks to make a model of turn signal covers for our iBike. We used clear material so that the LEDs would shine through. We're leaving them in the printer overnight because it takes a long time to print. We'll see how it turns out!!!

Final Project - Photos!

2009-12-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Front Turn Signal: This is a view of the turn signals from the front. The right turn signal is lit up indicating that someone is pushing the button.

We were able to use supplies from the Engineering lab and I built the turn signals just with 4 LED lights per turn signal, a 220 ohm resistor, and AA batteries. The wires for the positive end are all connecting in a circle between the LED lights and the wires for the negative end are what is connected to the tweezers on the handle bars. We decided to make the "touch sensor" tweezers in the middle of the handle bars, instead of the handle bars them selves, because we wanted to make sure that the user would be intentionally squeezing. Colette came up with the arts and craft look of them....then, ta da! our homemade turn signals.

Glove (Back): This shows the glove on the top of the hand. The micro controller (the larger circle/lilypad arduino) and tri color LED (smaller circle on the top) are sewn on and there is conductive thread connecting different parts, as seen in the stitches.

Glove (Front): This shows the palm of the glove that will be grasping the handlebars. The vibrator is sewn onto the bottom of the middle finger. This position was chosen after testing out different locations for the sensor, focusing on finding a place where the user would feel the sensor, but it would not be intrusive or uncomfortable.

iPhone Application: This shows the mockup of the application being used on a iPhone. The mockup is accessible by a website that I made quickly (cs.wellesley.edu/mmiranda/iBike/a.html) and interactive because the buttons were linked to other screens of the mockup. This simulates a real iPhone application.

iPhone Interface: This poster shows the mock ups of the different interfaces the user would interact with on the iPhone. This is what we presented in class. The mockup of the iPhone interface was created by Colette using a program called Balsamiq. This is the final product and output of the program.

Guest Speaker - Jamie Zigelbaum

2009-11-25T15:44:00.000-08:00

We had another guest speaker in class today. He Jamie talked a lot about his work at the MIT Media lab. Here's his website and his past projects: http://zig.media.mit.edu/!

Something really exciting was Gestural Interaction. Since pixels are cheap and computers are fast, Jamie believes that its time to move past the mouse! He even argues what we think is intuitive, like using a mouse with a computer, isn't actually intuitive at all. And that there is a difference between intuitive and easy to learn. The new gestural interface, g-speak, can create digital environments that are nearly seamless with architectural space.Another cool project is Slurp. It turns abstract information and files into something tangible. Taking the form of an eyedropper, Slurp extracts and injects pointers to digital objects. It explores the use of physical metaphor, feedback, and affordances in tangible interface design when working with abstract digital media types. http://zig.media.mit.edu/Work/Slurp Jamie also gave feedback about our iBike project. He really likes the idea of the vibrations and how that warrants the reflex of squeezing which causes the turn signals to turn on.

Guest Speaker - Marcello Coelho

2009-11-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

Today we had a guest speaker in class today, Marcello Coelho, from the MIT Media lab. He should us some great projects he and others are working on in the lab.

One of his projects is Shutters: A Soft Kinetic Membrane for Environmental Control and Communication. Basically, the shutters swing back and forth according to light and air and preference of the person who owns the room. http://web.media.mit.edu/~marcelo/shutters/index.html

Another really cool project dealt with materials for clothing that moves with a life of its own. The material made dresses that the "models" wore and it would move in different ways. http://ambient.media.mit.edu/transitive/

Marcello also gave feedback on our project. He commented on the gloves, saying that maybe people would throw them away. He also said that it might be worth considering getting rid of the vibrations on the gloves for navigation and instead making the vibrations come from the iPhone app itself. That way users can keep it in their pocket and perhaps feel that vibration better.

Reflections on Visions of Invisible Computing

2009-11-22T21:10:00.000-08:00

This week we read two articles - Ubiquitous Computing: The Computer for the 21st Century by Mark Weiser and Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits, and Atoms by Hiroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer.

Weiser’s paper describes a world where computers are everywhere. He describes computers three ways: tabs, pads, and boards. Tabs are tiny and the size of thumbnails, while pads are the size of a piece of paper, and boards the size of a large whiteboard. These computers respond to gestural interaction, and even know our preferences. He envisions hundreds of these "computers" in our cars, offices, and houses. They will aid us in performing specific tasks and have knowledge about our daily routine.

Ishii and Ullmer's paper descries ubiquitous computing in a slightly different way. They focus less on the ever presence of computers, but instead computerizing objects we already (join bits and atoms). Tangible User Interfaces are the key to making computing ubiquitous. They show how projects at the MIT Media lab, such as the metaDESK, the transBOARD, and the ambientROOM, are great examples.

For the iBike, our TUI is in a sense ubiquitous because we are ultimately enhancing the bike. With the vibrations and reflex of squeezing, the gesture is intuitive. Also, we are embracing the objects that a biker today would have with them already and making them better - like the gloves, iPhone, etc. Our vision of ubiquitous computing is very much in line with Ishii and Ullmer's view.

Final Project - Shopping Lists!

2009-11-17T20:57:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Today we made a final list of all the things we need and Orit ordered them online. Pretty exciting.

Final Project - Language/iPhone App

2009-11-11T20:44:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Our interface language can be seen in the following charts: (the first is before presenting to the class, the second has our modifications)Here is also a sketch of what we want the iPhone app interface to look like:

Final Project - Changes/Updates

2009-11-11T20:29:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

So, after presenting our idea to the class, they gave us some very helpful criticism. More specifically here are some comments -

the dashboard may affect speed of bike
maybe too many sensors
not collaborative enough
consider combining exercise aspects
what is the point of knowing the temperature?

So, keeping our classmmates' responses in mind, we made some modifications. They are described below:

Our new version has significant changes based on feedback from the class and the conversations we've had with our user group.

We got rid of the dashboard for several reasons. Members of our class were concerned that it would negatively impact the experience of biking and be distracting. Our users were concerned that it would be stolen. We eliminated the air pollution, temperature, and wind displays, deciding that they were more appropriate to be seen ahead of time with an iPhone app (when the user has their full attention), than real time on a dashboard. We moved the road slickness output to the back of the handlebars, so that the users could test the slickness at their discretion.

We added a heart‐rate display. It would be sensed through the user’s helmet, and communicate with the iPhone over Bluetooth. We felt that this was the one output that was appropriate to display realtime.

In addition, we modified the vibration output so that it would be in biking gloves rather than the handlebars. This change was made after our users said that they usually wore gloves to bikw in Boston and they were worried that they would not feel the vibrations through the gloves.

Final project - Description

2009-11-09T20:22:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Narrative Description-
Our computationally aided bicycle system is intended for people who use a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation. These people usually live in urban environments, but the design of our system is not restricted to use in cities.

There are two main overarching use cases we are designing for our system. The discrepancy between them can be roughly described as the difference between when the user knows where he is going and when he does not. We will refer to the first case as “commuting”, and to the second case as “navigation”.

Commuting -
The commuting case refers to the user bicycling to work, school, or another regular destination. Because of the frequency and timing of their ride, our system will be able to infer their standard route as well. Using this inferred route, the bicycle system can check the route ahead for traffic, and alert the user if there is too much traffic or construction ahead. Since the user knows the route, the system will not provide navigational assistance.

Aside from traffic, there are several other helpful interactions within the commuting scenario. One is a tangible display indicating the slickness of the road. Road slickness is a hard to predict factor dependent on oil leaks, road surface, time since last rain, and other factors. Because it is composed of so many factors, it can be highly‐variable from block to block. It’s also potentially very dangerous for bicyclists, who depend on the friction between their tires and the road to turn and stop. Our system will have a sensor on the tire that sends the slickness up to the system dashboard. There, a transducive display will map the slickness to a panel that will have a range of textures, from sandpaper to smooth. When the slickness changes dramatically, the panel will light up, indicating that the user should feel it at the next stoplight. After the user touches it, the light will turn off.

The bicycle system will also have sensors for wind, temperature, and air quality to show to the user on the system dashboard. These factors may affect the cyclist’s route or decisions. For example, if the air quality is too low, the cyclist may decide to put on a mask, take an alternate route, or hope on a bus instead.

Navigation-
In order to indicate that they would like navigational assistance, the user clips their iPhone into a holder of the bicycle system dashboard. We expect that the user will need navigational assistance for getting to places they have never been to before and for getting home after they have gotten lost. The navigation system will vibrate the handle on the side of the bike where an upcoming turn is. It is hard to ignore vibrating handlebars, so we hope that this will alert the user successfully. We think that the tangible nature of the vibration will keep from distracting the user too though. We plan on doing a lot of testing to calibrate the vibration frequency in order to strike a balance between being intrusive and beingindistinguishable from normal road bumps. In addition to the vibration, there will be a row of lights on each side of the dashboard. The lights will light up in succession as the user approaches the turn. This will be useful if there are multiple roads the user could turn on in that direction, since the lights provide finer‐tuned control.

Turn Signals-
The last system, which is useful for both use cases, is turn signals on the bike. Our system has turn signals on both the front and the back of the back, so that oncoming cars can tell if a cyclist is planning on turning as well. The turn signals are activated by squeezing the handlebars on the appropriate side. We think that this will be a very natural interaction, especially in combination with the navigation system. The system will buzz to indicate a left turn, the user will squeeze, almost as if in response to the vibration, to activate a turn signal on the left side, and then the user will turn left.

Final Project - Meeting

2009-11-07T20:04:00.000-08:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Our group met and we came up with a name, the iBike! We also decided to make a mock up of our bike system. Here are some photos:

This is the dashboard that will contain our widgets. There are 4 total - wind speed, road slickness, temperature, and air pollution. The circles on the border represent lights that will represent left/rigth turns and approximate distances.
These are the turn signal lights and a representation of the sensor we want on the wheel to detect road slickness.

Final Project - Proposal

2009-10-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Problem: With the advent of ubiquitous location-based services on mobile devices like iPhones, the Android G1, and the Palm Pre, people have become reliant on the ability to receive directions and other location information from anywhere. In most situations, being able to pull out an electronic map is a tremendously useful resource, but when biking, this resource becomes dangerous. Having observed the unsafe practice of biking while looking at directions on a mobile device, a service people seem reluctant to do without, our team has decided to tackle the problem of making directions available to bicycle riders in a safe manner. Furthermore, it is often difficult to stop biking while in busy urban traffic, so one of our design requirements is to make the information available without causing the user to stop riding.

Users: Our intended user group is people who live in nearby urban areas (Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, etc.) and who use bicycles as their primary mode of transportation (non-leisurely bikers). Because these users rely on their bicycles to get to important appointments, social get-togethers, and meetings, as well as more regular destinations like grocery stores and their place of work, they need a navigation system that is reliable, safe, and can provide directions to a variety of destinations. A diverse set of circumstances has caused bicycling to be a more popular activity than ever. Bicycling is less expensive than driving, more eco-friendly, provides numerous health benefits, and is seen as a trendy thing to do. Our users are mostly young professionals who are comfortable using technology to augment their experiences, and like being seen as first adopters in their peer groups. Since many college students own iPhones and they are notorious for being avid bike users, we will be sure to keep such variables as price and theft-resistance in mind for them while designing our system.

Proposed Solution: We have decided to leverage the existing GPS capabilities of the iPhone and build a navigation system that combines an iPhone app with external transducers. The iPhone is the most popular smart phone, so we’re comfortable choosing it as our base platform. Also, since many of our user groups own iPhones already, not building a separate GPS system will reduce both the monetary cost and the need to carry more electronic gadgets. We hope to embed output devices on the handlebars; likely both a tangible mechanism that vibrates and some sort of optical signal like a light or other easily visible display. As far as inputs are concerned, we aim to have both a passive input device (like location from the iPhone’s GPS, or a sensor that measures an ambient environmental variable) and an active input that the user can deliberately activate by, say, placing their hands in a certain place on the handlebars. Some of the inputs we are considering integrating into our system include current weather and traffic conditions, air pollution, road construction, and user heart rate.

More specifically, we plan to use the accelerometer in the iPhone to sense the vibrations of the bike, so if the surface the user is biking on is particularly rough, the intensity of the vibrations will increase to ensure the user will feel it. The phone will be placed in a container on the handlebars of the bike so it is facing the cyclist in an upright position. This ensures the accelerometer will sense the vertical movement of the bike under consistent conditions, and also lets us program the phone assuming it is in this orientation. We also plan to position LEDs on the handlebars of the bike to have a visual output. These will function like turn signals on cars; the lights on the left or right handlebar will turn on depending on which direction the bicycle rider is turning. This will also make the bike safer because other vehicles will know when it is turning.

Related Work: There has not been much related work in this area, despite a clear need evidenced by the recent 50,000 person petition for Google to include directions for bicyclists in their popular maps application. The two closest alternatives don’t solve our safety risk of keeping users from being distracted by a dynamic screen display. One product is a GPS unit mountable on a motorcycle that has several features that make it appropriate for use in uncovered areas. The weather-resistance of the motorcycle GPS is an attractive feature, but the $800 price tag makes it unattainable for most, and attractive for thieves. It is also not available for bicyclists. The other work we found is an injection-molded mount so that people can attach their iPhones to their handlebars. While this solution is less risky than users pulling their phones out of their pockets, we still believe that is in an inherently unsafe activity.

Samsung has come out with a new phone which uses haptic technology to give the user feedback about who is calling them. Phone owners can set custom vibrations, similar to custom ringtones, to serve as a form of identification when someone is calling them. Our system uses a similar technique to set the intensity of the vibrations of the handle bars. However, our system is more intuitive in that our vibration intensity is directly proportional to the roughness of the ride, so it changes depending on an environment variable. Conversely, a phone vibrator ID is unique to an individual, but set by the phone owner.

The book, "Human Haptic Perception: Basics and Applications" by Martin Grünwald, discusses the interplay between mechanical variables arising from the environment and the perceiver. This interplay is bidirectional, as the environment's reactions may have an effect on actions by the perceiver and vice versa. This is something we will be aware of when designing our system in even more detail, not only in regards to haptic perception, but with all the senses. We want to make sure our feedback to the user is in the right format so they respond in all of the ways we anticipated.

Final Project Phase I

2009-10-19T10:30:00.001-07:00

Group: Margarita, Colette, Maia

Our group met a couple days ago and we came up with some great ideas for TUIs that we can further elaborate on -

Rock climbing path finder

Existing toy with sensors
Key, phone, etc. reminder programmed on iPhone
Gym machine sensor for personalized data
Navigational tool for bicyclists programmed on the iPhone and sensors on handle bars

Microsoft surface application

Motion sensor on platform that is used with Google Street View

It's a great start! We're leaning towards the TUIs that involve the iPhone since we would have a bigger user pool and as a bonus we can learn how to program apps on the iPhone as well.

Reactable!

2009-10-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

Created By: Sergi Jorda, Marcos Alonso, Gunter Geiger, and Martin Kaltenbrunner

The Reactable is an electronic musical instrument designed so users can create and perform music. Someone presented it in class today and I thought it was really cool! The controls for this TUI are blocks and other small objects that glow and light up on the surface. It provides a great combination of visual and audio feedback. Very collaborative, intuitive, and fun for all ages!

Reality-Based Interaction: A Framework for the Doll Head

2009-10-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

Based on Reality-Based Interaction: A Framework for Post-WIMP Interfaces by Robert Jacob, Audrey Girouard, Leanne Hirshfield, Michael Horn, Orit Shaer, Erin Solovey, and Jamie Zigelbaum

The Frameworks article analyzes TUIs by trade offs of the following: expressive power, efficiency, versatility, ergonomics, accessibility, and practicality. They focus on the following real world themes aka RBI (reality based interface) themes -

Naïve Physics: people have common sense knowledge about the physical world.
Body Awareness & Skills: people have an awareness of their own physical bodies and possess skills for controlling and coordinating their bodies.
Environment Awareness & Skills: people have a sense of their surroundings and possess skills for negotiating, manipulating, and navigating within their environment.
Social Awareness & Skills: people are generally aware of others in their environment and have skills for interacting with them.

Using this, we can look at how the Doll Head TUI would be analyzed. The Doll Head TUI takes into account, most prominently, environment awareness. With such an awareness, the user must have an understanding of the props in front of him/her. Every movement has an effect. For example, the shifting the doll head in any way directly changes the position and rotation of the brain that is displayed on the computer screen.

An awareness that this TUI definitely lacks is social awareness. This is because, while the user can show others the computer screen, that user is the one manipulating the data. This TUI is not very collaborative. In fact, it would be very difficult for multiple people to be controlling different props.

With that said, a great trade off for this TUI is practicality. This TUI was made for pre-surgical planning and I think it does a great job in making 2D data 3D. If a neurosurgeon had the time to learn about the Doll Head and developed the habit of using it, then I think there could only be a positive effect on surgical outcomes.

Fishkin on the Doll Head

2009-10-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

Based on A Taxonomy for Analysis of Tangible Interfaces by Kenneth Fishkin

Fishkin's article suggests a way to analyze TUIs by metaphor and embodiment. Early I wrote about the props-based interface for neurosurgical visualization aka the doll head. I will show how Fishkin would analyze the doll head.

Based on Fishkin's article, the doll head would be classified as a distant embodiment. This means that the output is "over there." For the doll head, the output is on a computer screen. The user has to look at the screen to observe the results of using the props and moving them around.

As far as metaphor classification, the doll head is very iconic. The correspondence between real life and the TUI is one-to-one. The doll head represents the human head (although it is not to scale), the cutting plane prop looks like a blade, and the trajectory selection prop looks like a scalpel.

Cell Tango (Global Collaborative Visual Mapping Archive)

2009-09-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

Exhibit by: George Legrady

The project, Cell Tango, uses information sent by cellphone and sends it as input via email into an archive of photographic images. They are then displayed in different ways. The key part of each photo is the text tags that are provided by the person who sent in the photo. Then, the software enables those photos to interact with Flickr, a photo storage website. When photo contributors send images and text, the Flickr database finds their own photos and attaches found photos to your image. Criteria for such an attachment are - time, location, text tags, etc. The images projected during the exhibit are constantly changing as more and more people send in photos.

This project allows us to see the different ways people think and describe the things they see and take photos of. This is also a unique view of how technology can be used to perform social experiments. As Legrady was speaking to our class, he explained that he is very much interested in syntactic and linguistic processes that are part of technologically generated information. He builds upon each of his previous projects. Pockets Full of Memories was a project he did in 2001. It archived objects that people scanned into a scanning box. There were a wide array of objects/body parts such as phones, keys, toys, clothes, currency, heads, hands, and feet. This project, like Cell Tango, helps analyze the way people think and the choices they make.

A criticism I have of Cell Tango is that, while the software and algorithms behind the exhibit seemed complex and interesting, the actual display was not as exciting. It focused too much on tags and words, that the photos did not seem to pop that much. He did show us parts of Pockets Full of Memories and I loved the display of the photos of scanned objects. It was more about the photos and the way they were organized, than the words (which for Cell Tango would sometimes show up "img 2132").

The Props-Based Interface for Neurosurgical Visualization

2009-09-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

Article By: Ken Hinckley, Randy Pausch, J. Hunter Downs, Dennis Profﬁtt, and Neal F. Kassell

This tangible user interface is for pre-surgical planning. They chose a props-based interface for several reasons:

1. to achieve a high degree of usability by employing human motor, position/movement, and touch senses to its advantage

2. hand-relative-to-hand manipulation of physical objects allows users to focus attention on tasks without distraction from interfacing technology

3. computer based surgical planning allows the ability to quantify and visualize 3D information available from medical imaging studies (eg MRI)

The typical users for this are neurosurgeons and perhaps students. Here is a breakdown of all the components of this interface -

The head prop is a small doll's head that serves as the absolute rotation controller. When you rotate the head, a model of the patient's brain rotates correspondingly on the computer screen. Since it is a doll's head, the movement is not to scale: one millimeter of real world motion is equal to several millimeters of virtual motion.

The cutting plane prop is us

ed in unison with the head prop to specify position and orientation of an arbitrary slice. It is used to provide a cross section view of the volumetric head data.

The trajectory selection prop allows the user to specify 3D vectors and points. When used with the head prop, it can specify the position and orientation of a cylindrical virtual probe relative to the brain model. The user can al

so use this prop with the cutting plane prop to select points on the interior by bisecting the volume and then selecting the point.

The last "prop" is a touchscreen computer. It is used for 2D tasks like panning, zooming, image contrast, brightness, etc.

There are many pros to having this tangible user interface available for neurosurgeons or simply just students. As far as pre-surgical planning, this would provide a better view of the brain for the surgeon. For students, this would be an excellent learning tool.