CTD

The challenges of user testing made "easy"

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 17:17:43 +0000

The challenges of user testing made "easy" Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/08/2022 - 11:17

The appeal of Dashboard-Zero is its simplicity.

User-testing is employed across almost every industry, most often with surveys given to users after they experience a product. However, memory is fallible–feedback captured in the moment, as users experience a product, yields much more reliable information. But how can you do that without creating a distraction?

Elsy Meis, who graduated with a BS in Creative Technology and Design this spring, proposes an approach in a paper she will present later this month at the Human Computer Interaction International Conference, held online June 26—July 1. Titled “HCI Strategies for Informing the Design of a Teacher Dashboard: How Might Real-Time Situational Data Determine the Potential for Technological Support in the Classroom?,” she discusses user testing of a teacher dashboard developed by a CU ��«��Ƶ team from the Institute of Cognitive Sciences.

Teacher dashboards provide teachers with information about real-time student learning. In this case, the system gauges student learning by using natural language processing to monitor conversations among small groups of students working on specific problems. Based on the content of the conversations, the system provides the teacher with a real-time assessment of student learning group by group.

However, given the existing stresses of the classroom environment, the user experience for such technology must be finely tuned for teachers to adopt it. In her paper, Meis critiques the current retrospective user-survey approach to testing, pointing out the weakness of relying on memory. Instead, she proposes an approach to gathering data during the lesson that involves a single red button on an iPad:

“When they press the button, they are answering yes to the question: ‘Are you feeling overwhelmed?’” says Meis. “The testing sessions are recorded from multiple angles, so have all the context and it’s not hard to figure out why they were feeling stressed.”

“Until now, the research group has interviewed teachers after their class ended to determine how they felt at different points during the class, or they would interview teachers based on hypothetical situations. Using this approach, we get more information without having to ask them,” says Meis.

The HCI International selection committee for late-breaking work clearly agreed, admitting her paper to the conference. “The paper deals with a very specific application of this idea,” says Meis, “but the hope is that it is seen as applying to a wide range of user-testing scenarios.”

This research was supported by the NSF National AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming (iSAT) (DRL 2019805).

Publication

Elsy Meis, Samuel Pugh, Rachel Dickler, Mike Tissenbaum and Leanne Hirshfield, 2022, “HCI Strategies for Informing the Design of a Teacher Dashboard: How Might Real-Time Situational Data Determine the Potential for Technological Support in the Classroom?” In Proceedings of the 2022 HCI International, pdf. (Virtual—June 26-July 1, 2022).

In a paper she will present later this month at the Human Computer Interaction International Conference, recent CTD graduate Elsy Meis proposes Dashboard Zero, an "easy-button" approach to user testing that is both simple and immediate.

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Spring 2021 ATLAS Student Awards

Anonymous — Tue, 04 May 2021 19:29:06 +0000

Spring 2021 ATLAS Student Awards Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/04/2021 - 13:29

Graduating in May 2021 with degrees in Creative Technology and Design, the graduate and undergraduate students listed below are recognized for exceptional accomplishments, having demonstrated initiative in their academic and extracurricular activities, completing outstanding research or creative projects, or contributing significantly to the ATLAS community.

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Spring 2021 Capstone Projects

Anonymous — Mon, 03 May 2021 22:40:00 +0000

Spring 2021 Capstone Projects Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/03/2021 - 16:40

CTD Capstone (previously TAM Capstone) is a rigorous, two-semester course sequence required for all Creative Technology & Design majors. Normally taken during the senior year, it involves the completion of a culminating project that goes through multiple rounds of faculty review and iteration. This small collection of project presentations gives a sense of the kind of work students complete in the CTD program.

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Shapeshifting: The varied applications for bioplastics

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 22:32:28 +0000

Shapeshifting: The varied applications for bioplastics Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/26/2020 - 16:32

In the accompanying video, Fiona Bell shares a class research project that explores bioplastics, including making bioplastic that changes color in ultraviolet light, concocting edible bioplastic packaging for ramen that has flavor impregnated and a variety of decorative applications. Conducted in the Living Matter Lab, directed by Mirela Alistar, Bell's work provides a refreshing exploration of sustainable alternatives to traditional plastics that are choking ecosystems around the planet, while illustrating the diverse interdisciplinary fields students are able to explore in the ATLAS Creative Technology and Design professional master's program.

In recognition of both her bioplastic research and academic achievements, Bell recently won two CU ��«��Ƶ awards totaling $5,000:

[video:https://player.vimeo.com/video/388648147]

In this short video, Fiona Bell, ATLAS CTD student and member of the Living Matter Lab, shares a class project she completed for Design Foundations where she made a variety of bioplastics for a range of different applications.

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ATLAS grad student Ted Thayer helps NIMB.LY team to New Venture Challenge win

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 12:46:26 +0000

ATLAS grad student Ted Thayer helps NIMB.LY team to New Venture Challenge win Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/03/2019 - 06:46

Ted Thayer, Creative Technologies and Design master's student, and two team members won fourth place and $7,500 at the New Venture Challenge (NVC) championships on April 3 for their startup, Nimb.ly, beating nearly 120 other teams that initially participated in the annual competition. Overall Nimb.ly, a revolutionary software platform that helps catering companies keep their events efficiently staffed, won $11,000 in funding, initially bringing home NVC's IT Track $3,500 first-place prize after the team pitched their business idea to a panel of judges and more than 100 people in attendance.

Six CU ��«��Ƶ startup teams advance to the New Venture Challenge 11 Championships on April 3

Software company Nimb.ly alleviates staffing problem for caterers, wins first place in New Venture Challenge 11 IT Track Finals competition

Ted Thayer, Creative Technologies and Design master's student in the creative industries track, was one of three students on the IT Track winning team for the New Venture Challenge Championships, taking home a $7,500 prize for their startup, Nimb.ly, a revolutionary software platform that helps catering companies keep their events efficiently staffed.

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"Hot Swap" wins top spot in alt.ctrl.GDC

Anonymous — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 00:28:21 +0000

"Hot Swap" wins top spot in alt.ctrl.GDC Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/29/2019 - 18:28

At the Independent Games Festival in San Francisco, March 18–22, ATLAS graduate students Peter Gyory (left) and Clement Zheng were awarded the coveted alt.ctrl.GDC award for their game, Hot Swap. Reporting from the alt.ctrl.GDC showcase, Makezine's Donald Bell recorded this interview with Zheng and Gyory while covering this fun, offshoot of the Game Developers Conference, the world's largest annual gathering of professional game developers. Their award came with a $3,000 prize.

Clement Zheng (right) and Peter Gyory celebrate at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco after winning the Independent Game Festival's alt.ctrl.GDC award, which came with a $3,000 payout.

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Wearable technology brings high-tech to mushroom hunting

Anonymous — Wed, 09 May 2018 21:24:51 +0000

Wearable technology brings high-tech to mushroom hunting Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/09/2018 - 15:24

Assistant Professor Laura Devendorf and Jen Liu, ATLAS doctoral student, co-authored a new study that brings wearable technology to one of humanity's oldest pursuits.

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Danny Rankin: Hacker, Farmer, Technologist, Designer

Anonymous — Mon, 01 May 2017 18:00:00 +0000

Danny Rankin: Hacker, Farmer, Technologist, Designer Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/01/2017 - 12:00

Danny Rankin is a farmer, designer, artist, instructor, musician, hacker, coder, craftsman, husband, veteran and visionary. And this spring, he adds Master of Science in Technology, Media and Society from CU ��«��Ƶ’s ATLAS Institute to his credentials.

“He doesn’t fit any single box,” says Ruscha Cohen, co-director of the institute’s graduate program. “Everyone in ATLAS knows and respects Danny. He embodies so much of who we are as an interdisciplinary institute.”

And Rankin will be extending his ATLAS stay, teaching several classes in the fall as an adjunct instructor, as well as continuing to mentor students in the institute’s Blow Things Up Lab.

He’s just not ready to leave, he says.

“BTU is made up of people who don’t like to fit into one box,” he says. “They are self-motivated people who like to make things all the time; and I, too, put myself in that category.”

For Rankin, “that category” means building things with electronics. Experimental things. Useful things. And sometimes, weird things.

Rankin invented a mobile chicken house that follows grazing cow herds. Chickens subsequently peck at the manure, reducing fly larvae and improving soil fertilization. He tried it out on his farm east of ��«��Ƶ, and it worked well until it was destroyed in a windstorm. But he’s not deterred.

“The farm has become a laboratory for me,” he says. “You can mess with stuff at the BTU Lab, but you can’t find out if it really works until it gets rained on and stepped on by animals.”

His most recent project is a room-sized, working model of the Internet that transmits ping pong balls around the BTU Lab, sorting them by color. “It’s hard for people to conceptualize how the Internet works, so I built something they can see at work.” He also relished the design challenge of mechanically sorting the balls by color and sending them to the right destination.

The Road to BTU

Rankin first became involved with the BTU laboratory as an undergraduate student. But he almost followed a different path.

Skilled in both piano and bass, he planned to major in music as an undergraduate. When he auditioned for CU ��«��Ƶ’s College of Music, a professor advised him to continue playing music, but to choose a different major.

He’s grateful for that advice. It’s how he found his way to ATLAS.

“I immediately fell in love with hacking and building circuits and doing weird projects with electronics,” he said. “The BTU lab has been my home ever since.”

In the BTU lab, Rankin was encouraged to pursue his personal interests, and he explored his passions. A farmer himself, he wanted to help farmers and ranchers gain control over how they used agricultural technology, without having to worry about being sued by Intellectual Property owners for modifying the technology.

As an undergraduate, he developed agricultural sensors that detect soil temperature and moisture, giving farmers real-time data about their land. His work is rooted in an Open Source Hardware methodology, where documentation on how his devices are created, fabricated and programmed are publicly available. Anyone can use or modify the hardware as they wish.

“Having a space where you work on your own interests rather than a class project was fundamental,” he says. “I would have never pictured myself doing this kind of research, but the ATLAS community made it happen.”

Rankin’s technology reduces labor costs for farmers, he says. Instead of needing to drive from field to field or hiring extra farm hands to assess the condition of crops, his sensors provide continuous feedback, he said. By providing farmers with such tools, they will be better able to manage their land and the commodities they’re producing.

“For me, sustainable agriculture is not only environmentally sustainable, but also human sustainable,” Rankin says.

In the future he hopes to work in creative fabrication design.

“I want to custom build for anyone who has weird ideas that they want to turn into reality,” he says. “I really just like hands-on work. That makes me super happy.”

“He doesn’t fit any single box. Everyone in ATLAS knows and respects Danny. He embodies so much of who we are as an interdisciplinary institute.”

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Creative++ attracts participants with non-tech backgrounds

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 18:00:00 +0000

Creative++ attracts participants with non-tech backgrounds Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/07/2017 - 11:00

On a recent weekend, 32 students and community members joined for the first Creative++ jam, where participants formed teams and collaborated to design and build creative technology projects. Some were artists and musicians. Others were computer scientists. Some of the participants had no programming experience.

But they all had one thing in common: a desire to express themselves with new technologies.

“Creative++ brought together people of different cultures, backgrounds, disciplines and ages to build creative technology projects,” said Monica Bolles, a master’s student in the Creative Technologies and Design track. Bolles organized the event with ATLAS doctoral student, Annie Kelly.

The event was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (CNS-1562030), which funded Assistant Professor Ben Shapiro and his students to research new creative pathways into computer science. Shapiro, whose tenure home is Computer Science, leads ATLAS’s Laboratory for Playful Computation. The event was run in collaboration with the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, which provided the space and staff support.

Creative++ attracted majors from ethnic studies to mechanical engineers and students from CU ��«��Ƶ, Colorado School of Mines, CU Denver and a local high school. It was a diverse group culturally, and almost 45 percent were female. Ages ranged from high school students to a woman in her 70s.

“One of the main goals of the event was to empower women to get creative with technology and programming,” Kelly said.

BlockyTalky
The event’s only constraint was to build projects with BlockyTalky, an educational toolkit created by the Laboratory for Playful Computation. BlockyTalky teaches modern computer programming and networking by inspiring users to build creative and meaningful projects. It also allows users to rapidly prototype new interactive devices through connection of a wide variety of sensors and a drag-and-drop browser-based programming interface. It easily interoperates with a wide variety of other technologies.

It’s designed to be easy for beginners to use, and powerful enough to be expanded for those experienced with developing creative technology projects.

“Though most of our past work with BlockyTalky has been with middle school students, we are now exploring BlockyTalky as not just a tool for children, but also as a toolkit that can empower adults to invent their own creative interfaces,” said Kelly, who has been the lead developer for BlockyTalky since 2015.

In less than 12 hours, participants developed roughly a dozen projects. They included a game that resembled a pyramid with a voice offering clues, such as to touch the pyramid with a wet hand or shine a light on it to move to the next level. In another project, the closer the player moved toward a plate of cookies, the closer a shark projected on the ceiling would move toward the player, while theme music from the movie “Jaws” would get louder. Another project involved using sign language to control a synthesizer.

“What’s nice about BlockyTalky is you can build new ways of interfacing with things very quickly,” Bolles said. “It’s an easy way to try out different ideas in one learning curve.

“Everybody had a really a great time. They all learned a lot. They worked together. Everyone had a role.”

No longer just for kids, the Laboratory for Playful Computation's BlockyTalky toolkit empowers adults to invent their own creative interfaces.

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