#10 Live Event

To be honest to myself, I felt that I lost the direction in how I should communicate to my guider. The tutors seemed not able to accept whatever we have done. As if whatever hard work we've been through is not important at all. If the work is not fully, bugless-ly completed, our work is not acceptable, it's a failure.

I tried very hard to manage the team work to get everything done as well as we could. But my team members seemed to be at their lowest productivity mode. Rushing through their Essay, and the past few weeks of sleepless night working on this project and other assignments has affected their brain working speed. We're at our lowest point of productivity. I'm very guilty of not able to give the team a complete interactive product. But with the limited resources and time, I manage to work out a finger gesture controlled ui plus a separate skeleton detection hole-in-the-wall game ui.

Most of the primary functions are working fine. Sound and instruction are included this time. I felt that I have not failed completing the tasks in such project timeline. While we working on furnishing the exterior looks of the vending machine, I'm working on the final testing and interactive setup of the machine. While I am adding in the final set of animation slides into the Processing program, the software crashed at the final 2 hours before the presentation.

My face got pale. All the files couldn't work at all. I restart my computer, reinstall the program, controlling my anxiety, take away those slides and maintain the software capability so that the overall product could still work fine in the presentation. I almost break down, but I know that I need to be professional, and responsible to the team. So finally things work out well again.

I learnt one great lesson from this technical production. I've looked at the new media (Kinect) in an old way. Instead of making the interactivity starting from instruction to game to calculate scores to restart the game, the flash way of thinking Processing and Kinect, I think Processing is used for one single experience that explore interactivity and visual generation of data.

With the cover design of the program it actually signify that the program does more of the data visualizing display and calculation. But because this software has got many libraries that enable Kinect functions and it still stands between the knowledge of Designer and Programmer, so I adopted the technology. 

If I were to explore Kinect the next time, I'll be looking at it from a different point of view. Just like how, one of the assessors today said, it could be a no-brainer game that keeps user interacting with the artifacts, it  doesn't even need to be a complete interactive circle. 

Of course, the requirement of the complete interactive circle comes from the tutors consultation. When the actual capability of media is not well-explored, but we have to meet tutors' expectation of project outcome and there's no enough time and technical skills, students could easily went off track from their project. And it will come to a point when students do not know whether they should listen to their tutors' advice or to remain at their stand so to be responsible to the ability to finish his or her work. 

At this point, I felt that my team work with my classmates, the group members are fine. But I have a broken link of teamwork between the team leader and the module tutor in this particular project instances. 

And because of the frustration of misunderstanding of learning direction and uncertainty of whether I have learnt what I needs to learn, I have another round of bigger emotional break down. As I cannot figure out why if a student has try very hard in working his/her project out, the project outcome still seem unfinished and insignificant to the tutors. Maybe because the focus of this project became aiming to place it in Publika for exhibition, the requirement from the tutors became more than just a learning process. It's also a product building assignment that you need to complete the product. The concern is the project must be completed, no matter you learnt or not. 

Facing my own failure, with things that is unclearly delivered to me, or too much of guessing in what tutors are concern in our group, I have 2 days breakdown after the live event. But after some careful thoughts, I decided to move on and make the final product finishing better so that our team could still show the overall outcome in a complete way.

#9 Total Independant

My group members are still not very active in problem solving. While I am working very hard to figure out the coding of the project, my team members are not actively spot other problems and handle them. I need to literally delicate the job to them one by one. Even the time allocation I set will exceed. Suppose other group could complete a task in a day, our group took 2 days.

The collectively growing pressure to aim at completing the project is getting bigger and bigger.

I finally sort out the ways to integrate graphical UI into Processing. It's a very tough journey to walk. At one point, I have emotional break down at home because I am so worry that after working so hard to develop the ui with the design head, I can't make use the UI at all. I feel so sad. I feel sorry to my members if I help them to sort things out yet at my part of the project I didn't fulfil my part of expectation. It's also very tiring to get deal with so many things at one time. But with no time for emotional, I need to pick myself up wherever I fall. So I press on and aim to put in all the graphical UI into Processing as close as we could, to present the prototype experience.

Today is Beta test.

Our UI is all in the program. But it's demonstrated in 2 parts. The best that I can do, is to customise Kinect's skeleton detection with our GUI. The other part is to get the UI sequence function by coding them line by line. At this stage we have no sound component integrated. But the rough stimulation of the experience is there.

Knowing that we couldn't impress much in the complete usability, we try our best, the research, idea development and behind the scene to the assessors so that we wouldn't be judged just by our finishing. To this point, I'm still very proud with the team. As we know who we are, the personality, the working style, the weaknesses, the struggles and the speed of working could be all vary, but we finally pull through! We've got something to show.

I realised one interesting fact. We can do best at the skills or given talents we have. Sue Min is a very detailed oriented person, has a very strong passion towards architecture. She's been sharing with me many times how much she wanted to study architecture before. With the help of her father, she realised her dream, she helped us build a very solid and easy to assemble and resemble vending machine frame. I had never seen any logistic that could perform so well as she could. She's been telling us that building an actual machine frame is not easy, but I only understand in parts. When her dad fetch the completed machine frame to IIS for us, I am totally amazed.

Evon has very sharp video skills and content research skills. She always help us to record down notes, and take care of all the video filming details, editing till late night also, she's willing to make the best out of our video content.

Mt is quite unwilling to make changes most of the time. But she's critical enough in idea thinking and user flow consideration. Though she's not taking the lead in the design department, but she's critically enhancing and executing the UI design.

To me, personally, I know that I've tried my best to work with the team that I am given, with the various style and preferences we have, we are able to come to the same direction and move together effectively, I personally are impressed by the outcome we can manage to create.

Since it's only about 8 academic weeks time.

I'm very encouraged. Knowing that as I have to dealt with my incomplete project outcome, as a lecturer, it wasn't easy. But I took the responsibility. Trying very best to explain the challenge of our team, I hope that the focus of the critic can also be given upon the direction of the project and the ideation part. This is the first time since the project started, two of the assessors can identify what we've been through. As I didn't got any assurance from the tutor saying that we're moving at the right direction, or we are learning from the mistakes we've made. None of these comments are given from the tutors. Instead, I felt a bit weird that my tutors seems to avoid eye contact with me outside classroom, and our group seems like receiving a different treatment compared to other groups.

I became very sensitive towards what the tutors expression is signifying to us.

But, I still have the motivation to aim to complete the project as much as I could.

#8 Mission Impossible

This is week 13 of TWP timeline.
Just submitted the AIN project. I didn't complete it well. Most of our time has been given to teamwork.
I feel a bit stress and I can sense it among the classmates. There's even one group that has to change the TWP project idea at very late stage, then went through tough group discussions.

With very little sleeps, I am getting weaker. Weaker in my fighting will, weaker in my rationality, weaker in my hope of making the best out of everything.

We were not doing very well in our last week alpha test. But the following Saturday we got out vending machine delivered to IIS. We're so happy! In the clouds of uncertainty, facing questions and commends from the tutors, we are really worry if we can make it. But we press on and find ways to make it work. When the TV and the vending machine frame came in to IIS, we are on fire again. To boost our hope and motivation in making it happen, I told the members, if we got it completed, we do good documentation and send it to competition! I hope that everything that we do are for the better cause. Everyone then became excited again.

We really hope that this week when we meet the tutors, our effort will finally be seen and they will understand that we are doing our best to make our project work. As last week we really had hard time with the tutors. We got comments repetitively about the colour treatment of the ui. And I took some time to convince the design head to improve the design. And we got no machine to show in alpha, only projection on the wall explaining the experience as much as we can. So, with the vending machine frame, TV and further exploration of Kinect and Processing, we hope that we could show more to the tutors so to assure them that our group are ok.

But I got shock in today's discussion in the meeting with tutors.

With our excitement, yet we see worry and slightly angry faces toward us. Strangely not towards other groups. I felt confused. With what I can observe and critically analyse, these are the below scenario:

To get Kinect work well with GUI design we got, I need to understand the authoring software, Processing, and the way Processing algorithm works. So it took me very long time to source for script library and sources to connect the UI design with Processing. While I'm working in IIS before meeting with tutors for discussion, one of the tutor came straight into my station and asked if I found my technical support to get the program work. I believed it came as a concern and care, although it was expressed in slightly demanding way. I got pressured and offended personally. With the addition of really don't want to over promise what I can achieve, I replied that I'm not sure, but I'll try to show the outcome in the scheduled tutorial hour. And I was directed to another tutor for more technical consultation.

In my heart, I think that I want to learn the technology and programming. I want to make it work. It's just that I'm not familiar enough with the programming language style and it's logic structure, so I really hope to explore further to see it work. I guess my way of reply has also in return offended the tutors. I am confused with the positioning I am in. As a colleague and as a student, I have a point of view. And I think that a teacher will sees the heart of the learner and know that teacher and learner can work together and learn to create an outcome. But I do not know why, the tutors seem to be very unhappy.

I kept thinking that if I can get the project done, the unhappy moment will be gone, because tutors' worry will be gone.

#7 Kinect Wonderland

To confess, I used most of my time to do the reading in my Essay Assigment preperation. I also spend time to work on AIN (thankfully Zui gave us one week allowance that saves our life, without that week time, we can't show the project at all). And I spend time with family and friends in this CNY Holiday. 

I only spend 2 days in learning AS3 and Kinect. 

With my working experience and research practise in coding, I can do research faster than my classmates. And make decision faster. I've no Kinect with me throughout CNY break. The first day right after CNY break we need to show our Alpha already (but we just got our equipment collected the week before CNY, how can it be possible? is it human enough?). Anyway, to show that we are responsible to the project requirement, in meeting the basic alpha requirement, we try to get the design finalized, and show some of the exploration of Kinect working with Flash AS3.0. 

Since I don't have Kinect with me at home, all I can do in the CNY is to familiarize the common practise of other users in using Kinect. I learnt that I'll need few third party installer to bridge the hardware - Kinect, to the software - Adobe Flash. I prepared all the files and go into IIS earlier to install the and get Kinect working fine with the computer.

It's not a very smooth process. The college PC given to us has the Kinect driver installed with error. We can't even run the default Kinect application from Microsoft smoothly. With the Jazmi the tutor assistance, we discover that it's not the problem of the Kinect. Other group's PC are working fine. So I know that the software PC needs to be switched or I need to use my personal laptop to do all the testing. I took very long time to familiarize ourselves with the potential problems hardware and hardware could have. 

After I decided to use my laptop, I followed the tutorial online, few of them, and it's still not working smoothly as how the tutorial said. 

Reading through online comments and questions from other people who faced the same problem as mind, I realised the risk of using AS3 is too high. It could lead to a not working final product at the same time wasting too much time to get the basic detection work. So I made a tough decision. Since other Kinect explorer also mentioned Processing as a graphical authoring tools for Kinect, and I have some introduction knowledge towards it, I am willing to give it a try. Picking up C# or other programming language is too difficult for me. Although I really try to understand and consider about it, but I think it's too difficult to relearn a totally new programming language compared to Processing which I still have some knowledge to start with.