Journal

Week One
I have spent this week getting settled into life here in Minnesota and life in the vitual reality lab here at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus. Once I finally made it here, I settled into a nice neighborhood in St. Paul and began to learn my way around the campus. The main area where I will be working this summer is in the Vitual Reality Lab in the Walter Library. The lab here consists of a very large screen (which takes up an entire wall of the room), a virtual reality headset, and an entire ceiling of infrared LED lights which can track a persons position in the lab.

The screen here is actually run by three computers which work together to present on large image on the screen. This image can also be viewed in 3D when special lenses are worn. The tracking system on the ceiling can also be used while wearing a hat with the appropriate censors on top. Using the hat and glasses together, one can walk around and view the screen in a full 3D environment.

I began my work this week learning the basics of OpenGL, which is used to create the graphics for the virtual reality and the big screen. This week I was able to learn how to draw 3D objects, add movement to objects, and add lighting effects to make the objects appear fully 3D. OpenGL is used with C++, which I also had to familiarize myself with this past week.

I also began talking about possible projects with my mentor, Victoria Interrante. We are still trying to decided what project I will be working on. For now, I will continue improving my OpenGL skills, because I will certainly need them for the coming weeks!


Week Two
I have developed an idea of the research project I want to work on, and have been developing an exact model for the program I want to build and a plan for implementation. The hardest part of this process is to develop the idea in a way which is interesting, unique, and asks intriguing questions. I have tried to look for papers with similar ideas, but I am having a little bit a trouble here as well. Vicky has given me a few papers to read about large displays, and the interface concerns involved. These are defiantly pointing in the right direction, but a little more research will be needed before I can entirely flesh out this idea.

After two weeks here, I'm getting more acquainted with the city of Minneapolis and the University Campus.


Week Three
This week has been full of research, and the beginnings of the realization of my project! I have now found I way to articulate my research goals clearly, and know exactly what I want to achieve with my research. Through some careful research, I examined the needs of a user examining UML/Architecture diagrams, and developed an interaction model which I hope will facilitate learning and promote a better knowledge base for a user of this system.

I have begun to generate the data I will need for my program, namely a set of UML/Architecture diagrams. I have chosen to start with a simple "example system" for the proof of concept. The first example is a class diagrams for an online toy store. The application will be built using these diagrams initially, but the ideal use would be for diagrams so complex that they create the need for this application.

Since the goal of this research is not to develop a complex system, I will seek some existing, well-formed diagrams which can then be used in my program. These types of diagrams would make up the ideal use. If evaluations are done for this program, diagrams like this would be necessary in order to see any kind of pronounced benefit from using the large display and interaction used in this program.


Week Four
This week, I began generating and searching for some more interesting diagrams for my program to work with. It's very important to have quality diagrams which can be used in the program. If the diagrams have flaws which are distracting to the user, our evaluations will be hurt.

We have two good diagrams at this point. One is a very the simple diagram, intended to be used to explain the system to a user. The other diagram is considerably more complex, giving the user a much more interesting experience. These diagrams have been evaluated and put into a format which will be usable by the system.

Also, we began making the display do more than just show the diagram. The program has been growing steadily. It is now able to switch diagrams based on the user's position. This is the first step towards the "blending diagrams" but we are not there yet. The major task this week has been to test out the spacing of the diagram changes, and create spaces large enough to walk through before the diagrams change. Our next step will be to make a smooth or animated blend to make the diagram changes more fluid.


Week Five
The program is really starting to take shape. This week, I learned all about alpha shading in OpenGL. Using this technique, we worked with the diagrams to make a fast and smooth blend as the user crosses from one boundary into the next. This proved to be a little bit tricky, since we needed to keep track of the boundary being left and the boundary being entered along with several other state attributes in order to make the blend work. There was a bit a frustration and more than a little debugging to get this working, but in the end we accomplished a smooth blend between diagrams.

By the end of this week, I was already playing around with the interface, and making corrections to improve it. Now it is time to begin thinking about how we will carry out evaluations.


Week Six
We spent this week refining the user interface for the program and thinking about how to run evaluations on the program. We ended up adding a few controls to the interface for use in evaluations. The controls include turning off diagram blending, and changing the diagrams shown. These controls will give us a way to show the participant different views of the program, and better determine the usefulness of the various features of the program during evaluation.

We also spent time optimizing the blend and further refining the distance between blends. Because of the speed of the blend, tweaking the distance between blends was important. This helped correct the display if the user walked very fast through the boundaries.

The last thing to accomplish this week was to prepare some instructions for participants and questions for them to answer to help our evaluations of the program. This has been one of the harder tasks I had to complete. I had to be sure to ask the right questions in a way that was easily accessible to participants. If the data we gather is not helpful, our evaluations will reflect that. That is why a well thought out evaluation process is key to finishing up of this project.


Week Seven
This week was one of the busiest yet. During this week, we needed to carry out all of the user evaluations, finish up analysis of the UML Window, and wrap-up the project for the summer. It has been a hectic week trying to get everything done before it's time to go home.

The user evaluations went well, but it was definately an experience. Being the first time I had to run the UML Window with actual users on the other side, it was a bit nerve-racking. I have put a lot of work into it, and I wanted the user evaluations to not only be positive but also helpful to my analysis. I am depending on these evaluations to aid my analysis for my final report so I needed them to go well. Overall, completing the evaluations wents smoothly and began preparing to head home.

There wasn't a whole lot of wrap-up that needed to be done in the VR Lab, but it was extremely hard to say good bye to my lab mates who became my buddies over this summer. We had a lot of fun and did a lot of work together, so I hope they visit me in California!