Shane’s Week 9 Summaries
Alice
Alice is learning system built to allow people without backgrounds in programming to create 3D content. The system has been specifically designed this way and is very different from more robust and industry standard systems. The system utilizes function overloading to allow users as much or as little control as they desire. The system was tested with users considered to be novices and the actual testing was done in pairs. The researchers observed the pair trying to use the system and took notes on the user’s experiences only intervening when the stability of the system might be compromised. This is a tried and true method of user testing and allowed the researchers to tweak the system for their intended audience. They researchers also found word choice to be an important factor in the users ability to use the system. Mathematic concepts like the Cartesian coordinate(XYZ) were replaced with simple directions left/right, up/down, and forward/backwards. These coordinates are relative to the object itself. Often times the words engineers use to describe things have other connotations in common English like for example rate means the amount at which a particular quantity changes to technical people, while the average person associates the word with interest/tax rate. A solution to this is to choose a word which means roughly the same but has a more basic meaning, like for instance “rate” becomes “speed”.
Dart
Dart is the Designer Augmented Reality toolkit. It is a system intended to be used very technical and novices to build AR content. The design is based on the common Marcomedia director software. Even for developers generating AR content is a not trivial task requiring expertise in 3D modeling, geometry, design, and low level sensor control further compounded the relatively crude nature of AR software and hardware. It takes a good amount to time to just get the basic system model working given it’s many parts. Dart is mainly focused at prototyping applications rather then building whole large systems from scratch. Non technical personal usually prototype AR applications by using other forms of media(particularly videos) to convey the intended experiences rather than trying to develop any AR content. Dart is designed to take advantage of the principles of earlier programs to allow new users to quickly pick up the system. Dart builds content by letting the user add “actors” to any scene and then provide a series of triggers to control the behavior of any of the actors. The goal of Dart is not produce a system that supports every AR interaction technology instead focusing things providing a small set of behaviors into larger more complicated systems.
EverQuest
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