Hey You! Interact with me!!Project Manager: Youssef Elwakil Team Members: Charles Annals, Colby Deed, Thomas Morcom, Joel Shepherd Weekly Update Time: Wed 2-3pm |
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Key Idea: develop an information display that provides convenient (and potentially novel) ways to interact with the display. With a suitable app installed on a person's phone you could, for instance, utilize the Mosquito sounds effect to achieve communication between display and phone. For an example of this sort of use see the Google Tone Chrome extension. For an option that doesn't even need any phone app installed there is, for instance, the option of using OpenPose to recognize in skeletal-form people standing in front on the screen, and from that develop a system of (e.g., arm) movement that allows users to control and interact with the information being displayed on the screen.
Note: an approach centring on OpenPose for this project is similar to the functionality needed in The Movable Discovery Wall project above, and so depending on how the Project Preference voting goes, it could be that these two project end up being merged into one project. |
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Dancing Doppelganger (My Waterloo ... Your Waterloo)Project Manager: Alex Grant Team Members: George Elstop, Brogan Jowers-Wilding, Liam Labuschagne, Ethan O'Sullivan, Kyle Whelan Weekly Update Time: Wed 1-2pm Loaned Equipment: Kinect, Webcam Update: The code developed for this project and an online demo can be accessed through Dancing Doppelganger Github code repository |
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Key Idea: Take the idea of Guitar Hero, with the chords sequence flying towards you that you have to play, with being on the dance floor following the moves in Dance Dance Revolution and you get the core idea to this project. Add to that the fact that the routine you have to follow comes from a recording made by someone previously groovin-on-down on the dance floor, and you get to why this project is called Dancing Doppelganger (My Waterloo ... Your Waterloo)!
For this project I can supply a Kinect device, which can be programmed with Microsoft's .NET framework (C#, C++, etc). I envision its skeleton detection ability the key feature that is exploited: both in a recording mode to set up what the dance moves are (setting the challenge), and to judge how well the person trying to follow the moves is doing (taking on the challenge!) In terms of taking on the challenge, perhaps one way to do this is to have a sequence of key skeletal poses stretching out in front of you in 3D on the display. That way you can see ahead of time what an upcoming moves there are. As one of the key skeletal poses reaches the 'front' of the screen, that's the time for you to be in that position. In terms of making good choices for which skeleton poses to choose for the recording, I would suggest that timing these to the beat of the music (using beat tracking software, for example) would give good results. Useful Links: |
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Pub Quiz Buster!Project Manager: Taran Kern Team Members: Christopher Cason, Siddharth Deshmukh, Braedan Kennett, Jeffrey Luo, Huey Olegario Weekly Update Time: Wed 1-2pm |
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Key Idea: The range and depth of knowledge required to answer Pub Quiz questions is quite staggering. Do you know which Scrabble tiles have individual scores between 2-4? The population of Iceland? Or who wrote the song Nothing Compares 2 U made famous by Sinead O'Coner? I didn't (last night!) ... but I'd like to!! So, what I'm after here in this project is a software environment that helps me prepare for such an eclectic mix of questions.
The key to this project is devising a way to learn that isn't too monotonous or boring. (Solve that one in a general way and you'll have educationalist kissing your feet!). For example knowing the populations of countries from around the world could be done by presenting lists, getting the user to memorize them, and then test them on it. Boring! Instead, how about you present a challenge for a particular continent (say Africa), and then have jigsaw pieces of the various countries that have to be moved into the correct place, and add to that a graphic that show how populous that country is. Variations and extensions abound: you could require the jigsaw to be solved by placing the pieces in order of population, largest to smallest; or the piece plays the national anthem when it is correctly put into place, and some additional facts about the country come up; or the jigsaw piece show the flag of the country within it, but doesn't include the name, and you have to drag-and-drop the name of the country on to it as well. Then with a click of a button, you change some of the parameters you wish to be learning about (continent, area of country not population, etc) and go again. So that sounds like a fun way to revise for Geography questions. Now to figure out some gameification for other categories such as Music, Sport, Art and Literature ...! Useful Links:
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David's Take on Richard's House of GamesProject Manager: Hunter Cavers Team Members: Bedir Asici, Charlotte McLeod, Marshall Patty, Shihao Li, Casper Tyson Weekly Update Time: Wed 1-2pm |
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Key idea: develop a computerized version of Richard's House of Games quiz show, featuring, imporantly, the development of a software environment that assists in the setting of the sorts of questions the quiz show uses.
One way in to the question setting side of this project is to source the questions from Linked Open Data sources such as Wikidata, using Semantic Web technologies such as SPARQL to access and manipulate data/knowledge in a machine-readable way. See Useful Links below. There is also the development of playing a round of the quiz to consider as well. I think it would be fun to recreate the look and feel of the show, which includes the graphics and signature music/audio. As captured by the name of the TV show, Richard Osman is the host of the show. A critical decision to make early on in this project is whether or not the computerized version would retain this, or if the game-play can suffice without. A way that the project can go beyond what gets compiled as a TV episode of the show is that the resources that are drawn upon to produce the questions can be targetting to the age range of the users who are going to compete. For example well known song selections from the 80s if the group playing are of my generation. More recent songs if closer to your age! To assist with the software short-listing songs that are well known, this could be accomplished if the songs being selected were linked to data such as number of record sales, or else chart position. Useful link(s):
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Key idea: Develop a 2D geographical map app (akin to Google Maps or Open Street Map) that displays historical geographical data: the regions and city boundaries an historical view of
We've all become accustomed to how useful web-based mapping systems such as GoogleMaps and Open Street Map (OSM) are terms of looking up information about a place before we go there. And then when we we are in the place itself, these web-based mapping tools can assist again giving us in-context information that helps us relate where we hare to the map. The aim of Ye Olde OSM/Google Maps is to take a bit of a lateral sideside step (or to be more accurate, take a lateral step back in historical time) to view historical geographical information. Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to develop an environment to enhances a history scholar's ability to work with historic data, primarily through the overlaying of historical map and building plans, but also assisting with how place-names and districts have changed over time. If available, this could even be extended to include demongraphic data, sourced for example, from historic cenus data. Some existing activity in this space is detailed in Historical Map Overlays for Google Maps/Earth. A key thing to establish early on in this project is an interesting, publically avaiable set of history data that can be used. You don't have to take on the world: showing how things could work for a selected region of interest (within NZ, or elsewhere, such as the centre of London in the UK) would be more than sufficient. |
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More PintrestingProject Manager: Sulhan Ageel Team Members: Jedd Lupoy, Jascha Penaredondo, Theodoor Siraa, Alexander Stokes, Abdullah Alsaadi Weekly Update Time: Wed 2-3pm |
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Key idea: Develop an on-line environment for developing photo collages/montages following User-centered—rather than driven by commercial-centred—design. In this case my daughter, Natasha!
Notes from discussion with Natasha (aged 15) ... Idea 1: When visiting someone else's board, be able to say you "like it" (in the style of FaceBook) without having to save it to one of your boards. While it is tempting to think Pintrest already can track such a detail internally, by noticing when someone adds a photo to one of their own boards (thereby implicilty liking it), Natasha explained to me that she sometimes just wants to show she likes the photo, but wouldn't be putting a pin in it, as it doesn't fit in with any of her boards. Idea 2: Support the addition of comments. This can be when you are viewing another person's board (like the "likes" idea), but in other places in the interface also. The idea would be for those comments to be associated with that board, but does not proliferate up the chain (i.e., does not transfer to other instances of the same photo others might have on their boards). Idea 3: Support synchronous group chat. You can already add notes at a board-level (can do this on your own board, and on a shared board), but as a form of communication its form is asynchronous, and no alerts get generated to notify others with whom the board is shared with. For More Pintresting, Natasha would like group chat: synchronous/realtime. Text definitely. Even possibly audio. Pintrest does have a "message" feature, where you can message a particular user (which does generate an alert) but this is restricted to either leaving a text or specificying an image that has already been saved as a Pin. For More Pintresting, Natasha would like to be able to message audio as well as text. Also make it easier to send a photo directly that is on your phone (without having to make it a pin). (One could imagine perhaps making use of a private pin-board that get's used as a stepping stone for this as an implementation strategy for this). Alternatively, the image goes directly to the user/friend, however you state whether or not it can then be turned into a pin or not. Currently in Pintrest, if I do want to send a pin to someone, you have to go through my your pinned items. There is a search feature, to filter down the number of images being displayed, however in Natasha's More Pintresting version she would like to browse through her boards, and from within that her sections, to find the relevant pin she wishes to share. Useful links:
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