Introduction
This week we had our halves presentation on Monday to showcase our work in front of the faculty and peers at ETC. Our client, Lou Karas, was also in the audience to support us. We then collected feedback and planned what needs to be done before our next playtest. For the rest of the week, we made progress on further developing and fabricating the activities.
Halves Presentation
Our halves presentation took place on Monday morning in the ETC building. The presentation was an opportunity to show the progress we made so far. We explained why we chose to design these activities this way and how the kids reacted to them during playtests. We also answered some questions that were raised during ¼ walkarounds and stated our plans for the future.
(Slides and more details about the presentation were featured in the blog for Week 6)
The feedback that we received was generally positive. Our client was in the audience to support us. Faculty mostly think that we are going in the right direction. Some faculty expressed that they really liked that we chose light color mixing instead of pigment color mixing as our direction. Some faculty were very intrigued by how kids made their own story when playing with the shadow puppets. One helpful question that was asked during the presentation was from Dave Culyba: is the team going to playtest the documentation, and how is the team going to do it? When we were preparing the presentation, documentation was a part of the project that was still far away, and we were a little surprised by the question. However, it pointed out something very important — if the documentation is about how the design works and how the teachers can replicate, then it’s necessary that we give our draft to teachers to read first and see if it’s clear for them. The team plans to work with graduate students, Lisa Mcgee and Kathryn Nelson, once we have a draft of the documentation.
Logistics
The team went over the bill of materials for developing and fabricating the hardware together. It includes the equipment list for shadow puppet activity and the shopping list for each individual activity. We submitted the bill of materials and have already received some of the parts that we ordered.
Tech update
LED strip
To make the LED strip more engaging and more themed is always a part of our plan. This week Wizard has successfully connected sound to the LED strip. Each color of light is now assigned a musical note, and white light designates a silent space. During the ending light show, the player can hear the music that is coded in with light. The team had a lot of fun with it playtesting internally.
Make a rainbow
Caitlyn has been working on the software for the “make a rainbow” activities. It is a work-in-progress. Once it’s finished, the players will have the opportunity to interact with colors other than primary and secondary colors.
Fabrication
Bob is working on a layout for laser cutting a piece of wood for the interface for the hardware version of the sliding mixer activity. Bob and Max have also been discussing some different wood materials for the prototypes and will hopefully have some of them to start fabrication in a couple of weeks.
We have also been testing diffuse plastics for certain activities.
Looking into after Spring break
- We will have a playtest with Assembly on Mar 17th. We plan on bringing all of the prototypes with us.
- We will continue the fabrication process.
- We will test and craft different types of shadow puppets.