Multi-Modal Mesh Manipulation (M4)
This project, conducted in collaboration with Adam Faeth under the supervision of Christopher Harding sought to provide users with multiple streams of information to help them understand and interact with geologic 3D models as well as a platform for 3D art. My primary work on this project was in the creation of the 3D user interface to allow individuals to choose tools, change drawing colors, etc. and programming the interactions between the primary application and the sound synthesis module. I also wrote python scripts to ease the model loading process and for auto-generating a mesh from a depth image (one such model is featured in the video below).Demo video of M4 created by Adam Faeth
Wiicussion
I worked with Jeremy Bennett and Adam Faeth on this project for Computational Perception (HCI 575x) at Iowa State University. Wiicussion is an interactive percussion experience that entertains not only those wielding the Wii controllers (Wiimotes), but the audience and casual passerbys as well. It won first place, voted on by a panel of peers, for the 575 class demo competition in spring of 2007 and was presented at the 2009 Emerging Technologies Conference held in Ames, IA.
From the moment Wiicussion starts up, you can begin playing drums using an intuitive downward motion. You simply aim the Wiimote so that it is vertically over one of the six drums and make a downward motion to play the drum. If you want to continuously play a drum for a while and don't want to worry about locking on to it, simply hold down the B button to lock on and play that drum for as long as you'd like. It currently supports two players, each wielding two Wiimotes and an audience as large as your room.
Want a challenge? Then start up a game of Horse. Lay down a beat and your friends must match it and then add on to it. A vertical red bar indicates the timing where you need to match the note. Miss a beat, and you lose a point. If you lose all five points then you're out of the game. The last person left in the game is the winner.
The code was released open source and our class report is available online.
A video of people enjoying Wiicussion at Iowa State's annual VEISHA event
3DJ
3DJ is a project I worked on for my electronic music independent study course (Music 590i) at Iowa State University. It uses the H3D API for haptic (touch) and stereo graphic rendering, Reaktor as the electronic synthesizer, and a Phantom Desktop with ReachIn display as the hardware.
3DJ uses the OpenSoundControl (OSC) to handle the communication between my application running under the H3D engine and Reaktor to create music based on the current scene. It can be thought of like a virtual record player with the haptic device acting as the needle only instead of playing pre-recorded music, based on several parameters of the object.
The goal of this project was to turn 3D graphical objects into real-time music using a haptic pen and an electronic synthesizer. The most important part was properly mapping the object properties to sound properties, more so than the creation of a complicated synthesizer design.
More information on 3DJ is at the project site.
Cross-Cultural iPhone Redesign
In collaboration with Faye Huang and Utkarsh Seth and under the supervision of Sunghyun Kang, I worked to redesign the iPhone (OS 1.6) interface so it would work better for Chinese and Indian consumers without negatively impact American consumers. We had this work accepted at HCI International and the paper can be read on Google Books.CHI Student Design Competition
While I have never participated in a design competition, I have served as a mentor for Iowa State teams in 2008, 2009, and 2010. In 2008, one of the two teams I mentored made it into the competition and they placed in the top four. I repeated this success in 2009 when two of the three teams I mentored made it into the competition and one of them placed third. Unfortunately, despite what I felt was a fairly strong project, the single team I mentored in 2010 failed to make it into the competition in a year where entries more than doubled.Early Presentations
The presentations in this section were all given during my first semester in the HCI program at Iowa State as a student in HCI 521: Cognitive Psychology of HCI.Accessible Technology - A Twenty-Five Minute lecture I gave on accessible technology in mobile devices. It's fairly general as it was for my cognitive psychology of HCI class and was thus geared more toward people who had limited knowledge of the topic (and thus covered a lot more background information). This was the first presentation I had to give in grad school. It was given on 14 September 2006. Wiki entry and slides are located here.
Active Learning - A 15-20 minute lecture I gave about Active Learning and Dyknow Vision. Once again, the content is general and does not go into great levels of detail. This was my second presentation in grad school and overall I think it went much smoother (I changed the style of presentation slightly, which I think helped me deliver a more relaxed presentation). It was given on 26 October 2006. Wiki entry and slides are located here.
Death to the Mouse! - A 15-20 minute lecture I gave about designing interfaces for Tablet/Pen based systems. I also had a nice rant against the mouse in this presentation. I had a lot of fun with this presentation and especially the wiki entry. It was given on 5 December 2006. Wiki entry and slides are located here.