collab studio: community wireless

Final project requirements

Presentation Requirements for Dec. 9:
Remember, you'll be presenting on site so you won't have a projector for PowerPoint. Practice presenting without one, and make handouts to summarize or explain complex ideas.
1) Summarize the reasons and the thinking behind the project:
1a) What is this project?
1b) What makes it appropriate to the Parsons/New School campus and community and/or to this location?
1c) How will it change the way we relate to each other or exchange information at this site, or on campus more generally?

2) How does it work?
2a) An overview of the technologies you are using and how they work together. (You can walk through your system diagram if you'd like, but you need to make it clear to a non-technical person.)
2b) What equipment do users bring to it? (Laptops? WLAN cards?)
2c) What knowledge must users have? (Do they need to know how to use a Wi-Fi network?)
2d) What equipment and systems must the school provide to implement it?

3) Live demonstration
3a) Demonstrate the initial or default state of your project: what it looks and feels like before anyone interacts with it.
3b) Demonstrate how one or more people interact with it, and what happens when they do. (If possible, you should demonstrate the actual process by which your project will accept and react to user data--e.g. logon information from the 10th floor access point, HTTP requests to your web pages, activity of users with RFID badges, etc.)
3c) If it's necessary to get your idea across, demonstrate the full/busy state of your project: what it will look and feel like when many people are interacting with it.
3d) If you have designed a means of promoting or explaining your project to the community, such as paper handouts, be sure to show these and explain how they will be used.

Documentation Requirements (Ideally you should post this to the website on Dec. 9, but you have to have it to me by Dec. 16.):
1) Text project description, two or three paragraphs. (You can adapt this from parts one and two of your Dec. 9 presentation.)
2) Complete hardware and software requirements list and diagram.
3) System administration requirements: What would a sysadmin need to do to keep the project running? How often would they need to do it? Is a human editor or reviewer needed to keep an eye on what users add to or do with the system?
4) Website or QuickTime movie showing your project's display or user interface in its full/busy state.
5) On site photographs or composite images showing what your project looks like on site.

11/25 (week 13) agenda

Technical issues Q&A, with breakout sessions on:
- Using live data from the 10th floor access point
- PHP and database issues
- RFID

technical questions-PIC

Need assistance in setting up RFID environment, also need help in scripting for RFID. >_<

11/18 (week 12) assignment

Due online before 11/25:

What technical challenges are you encountering as you implement your project?

- Post your technical questions to the weblog as early this week as you can, and I'll work on gathering resources and contacts to help you answer (or work around) them.

- If necessary, revise your network diagrams and hardware/software requirements to reflect what you are currently building. (The revised diagrams will be due in class.)

- Post the current description of your project and one screenshot from it to the class web space.

11/18 (week 12) agenda

- Schedule and due dates for the final weeks of class

- Presentation and response: project prototypes

Community interactive wall

Dynamo is "a public multi-user interactive that supports the cooperative sharing and exchange of a wide range of media."

11/11 (week 11) assignment

Present in groups November 18:

Create initial prototypes of the user interface (front-end) of your projects. Presenting on site will be optional--please let me know at the beginning of class if you'd like to do that.

In your initial prototype, you should:
- Create a look and feel and functionality that combines the most successful features of the design alternatives you tested last week.
- Present all the screen views and behaviors necessary to demonstrate one user's complete experience of your project, from his or her first encounter with the project, through the point where he or she finishes interacting with it or leaves the site.

Please note: If there are members of your team who have not done a lot of talking in our past two weeks' meetings, please have them present the demos this time. (Part of your final grade will be based on presentation, so it's important that everyone have a chance to get up and talk.)

Each group will also respond to one of the other demos: The Palfinder group will respond to the Footprints demo, the Footprints group will respond to PIC, and PIC will respond to Palfinder.

11/11 (week 11) agenda

Announcements: Possible speaker Friday, December 5.

Demo: 10th floor access point
- Logging into the access point
- Viewing current status information
- Parsing access logs

Following the demo, I will be meeting with groups at 3:45, 4:30 and 5:15 to get updates on your prototyping progress.

11/4 (week 10) assignment

Present in groups November 11:

Create 2 or 3 design alternatives for some part of your project--key screens, animations, or another aspect of the interface. Design alternatives can be
- Different look-and-feel approaches (visual or sonic!)
- Different feature sets, or different presentations of the same features
- Simple vs. complex designs
- Other aspects you want feedback about

Test your designs with users and report the results either here on the weblog or in an e-mail to me. Your report should include:
- A link to to designs you tested
- What you were trying to find out from users
- What you asked them
- How they responded to each design.

Here are some questions you might ask your users (these are only suggestions!):
- Imagine you are at (project location) and this project is there. Would you notice it?
- Where on the screen do you look first?
- What information here is most important to you?
- (passive use) What do you think this display means? Why do you think it's here?
- (active use) What would you do/click on next?

WiFi Toolkit from Eyebeam

Eyebeam engineer-in-residence Julian Bleeker has created some interesting new software tools that will make it easier for artists and designers to create social computing projects with WiFi. Check it out!