Week 10 August 18-25
Omg, its my last week of research. Mainly focusing on analysing data from our user studies. Paul Gross wrote an excel application to analyze our logs from the user studies. The results should tell us which code reuse interface was the most successful in terms of amount of time users spent on each task, the amount of correctness of each task, as well as, the number of tasks completed overall. We are also going through the user task videos and noting down what user strategies were. This is a very tedious process where we rewatch the session videos and find the most relevent quotes that users say. I created a google document such that we can keep track of which individual said what for which task and what code reuse interface. We probably will not finish data analysis until after my return to Seattle.
So said that it everything is wrapping up. Farewell, St. Louis.... I'll miss you.
Week 9 August 11-17
This week I went to the science center with Kyle Harms, another Ph.d student in the Looking Glass project. I helped him with his project of self generating tutorials. We had a good turn out of participants although the results were not what we had hoped for.
Starting to outline my Final Paper for the DREU. This week is pretty slow so far, as I begin wrapping up my summer here in St. Louis.
Week 8 August 4 - 10
Finished the direction for the new Finding Code tool we will be testing next week at the science center. Had only three user studies this week. We are hoping to get more study participants soon since school will beginning in the next two weeks and students are starting to return from vacation.
FUn Stuff, etc...
Both my roommates have left me for the summer. Very sad to see them go. Best roommates ever. Began packing this week, because our lease is ending and I will be moving into Professor Kelleher's house for about two weeks of the remainder of my research.Week 7 July 29-August 3
Finished the Character Part Chooser Dialog Box and was able to merge it with Paul's code. I also am creating directions for the new Finding Code tool that we are going to be testing at the science center in two week. We are developing a bottom to top strategy to give to a non programmer in hopes it will enable them to find code efficiently and correctly. The bottom to top strategy entitle users to find a particular line of code which may or may not be the exact beginning or end of the action that a user may want. From there, the user may need to zoom out of the code or zoom in to find the action statement or block of code that is the action they want. We are also considering designing a top to bottom strategy to incorporate into the finding tool. I also continued fliering for participants for our study.
Week 6 July 22- 28
This week has been mainly focusing on finishing the Character Part Chooser Dialog Box. I've got this piece of software working for the most part and Paul is merging it in to the rest of the project. Then we started brainstorming a new design for the Hybrid Finder tools. There were many affordance and downsides to each of the designs we came up with. User testing have been pretty slow. We only had two studies this week. We originally scheduled three but the last user got into a car accident of some sort.
FUn Stuff, etc...
Watch "Dinner for Schmucks". Was a great way to spend my Thursday night. Completely recommend this movie. Made we look at mice in a totally different way.Week 5 - July 15-21
This week I spent a good chunk of time gathering more participants for our user study. Recently we have not had much luck, so I had to go around the whole campus, with my roommate Jordana, posting fliers on most of the bike racks. Later we were told that we could do that, and were only allowed to post on bulletin boards. Luckily, we got a few users out of those that we are still waiting for responses from. For my coding part of the Code Reuse, I've continue to make progress, with lots of help from my mentor, Paul Gross and Dennis Cosgrove, on the Character Part Chooser Dialog Box. This dialog box should allows users to visually choose character parts that they would like to apply a particular action to. The debugger in Eclipse has been a great source of help with understanding more of the code.
Week 4 - July 8-14
This week I've mainly split my time at work between user studies and coding the Character Part Dialog Box. User studies have gone pretty smoothly. I have become very confident with leading a user through a study and being able to reply to their questions. Though we were expecting more users then we have been getting currently.
Week 3 - July 1-7
Finally sitting in on studies with Paul. Learning to lead user studies. Its actually a lot harder than I imagine. You really need good communication skills.
The project that Paul had assigned me is not going as smoothly as I had imagined. The Looking Glass code is like a jungle. Taking me a long time to debug and figure out how things work. I imagine that it may take a while for me to complete this project. Its still lots of fun though, but tedious.
I've also been reviewing and learning new lots Java stuff. I realized that undergrad really doesn't teach you a lot of the things you need to know when working on a real project. Most of your learning comes from work. Guess you never stop learning even when you are out of school.
FUn Stuff, etc...
4th of July my roommate Jordana went to North Carolina for a family reunion, leaving me and our other roommate Kendall with the apartment all to ourselves. On Independence Day, I was invited to spend the day with Kendall's family and friends. We ended up going to a Jewish Community Center, which was amazing, and went swimming at the outdoors pool. The center was amazing. It had everything you could imagine from jacuzzi's to raqcuet ball courts.Later that night, we watched "There Will Be Blood". Such amazing acting in this movie. I feel really bad for all the character. Greed really does ruin lives.
Week 2 - June 24-30
Started and finally finished my IRB certification. I need this such that I will be able to conduct Looking Glass studies with people. It took about two days to complete, and I learned a lot about past inhuman and unjust studies that were committed back in the day.
Other things that preoccupied me this week, was learning to conduct user studies. Paul, the Ph.D student I am working with, will be leaving us soon, to prepare for the birth of his first baby. He will be needing me to help with the studies when he is not available. I've also helped Paul rework some more of the User Study tutorials.
Paul also assigned me a small project. I will be working towards building a graphical representation of code reassignment. So whenever a user extracts code from someone else's program, they will use that code and apply it to some object or part of an object in their own animation. I will be building the visual interface for that. Right now the interface is all dialog.
FUn Stuff, etc...
First time making clam chowder from scratch with my roommate Jordana and her boyfriend Brandon. It was a lot easier than I imagined. We didn't have flour on hand, so the chowder was a bit watery, but it was still delicious.Week 1 - June 17-23
I'm working with Ph.D student Paul Gross on the Code Reuse section of Looking Glass. Paul started me off by having me work on adding a new icon to the Hybrid Finder IDE. With help from several people in the lab, I was able to add a magnifying glass icon to a statement in the Right Now Pane when it was not visible in the Code Pane.
The next task at hand, was preparing the tutorials for study session we will be having. I worked on editing some of the online tutorials, specifically proofing some of the written directions and creating video tutorials. I was introduced to some new programs such as Snagit, VirtualDub.
After video taping the study sessions, Paul had me queue all the videos for the last few weeks with a open source software called HandBreak. This will make the videos into better quality for review.
FUn Stuff, etc...
I was lucky to find an apartment a 10 minute walk from Washington University and right next to the Loop, which is one of the very festive parts of the area. Also, both of my roommates Jordana and Kendall are working under Dr. Kelleher, as well. Both of my roommates are familiar with St. Louis, so have been a great help of showing me around and making me feel comfortable.The first day I arrived here, I made a delicious Thai dinner at Kendall's mother's house. There was also a CSE department picnic, where we had a huge BBQ and played volleyball. After the picnic, Professor Kelleher treated her REU group to Toy Story 3 in 3D. The movie was amazing and I'm debating whether or not to watch it again. The following Saturday, I went shopping for some summer clothes with Jordana and her fiance Brandon. I was so excited when I heard that the mall had an Anthropology. Later that night we went to cheer on Kendall's all girl football team, The St. Louis Slam. They won 16 to 14. This was the first time I watched a girls football team.
As for now, I'm adjusting to the heat and humidity. I don't think it is ever this humid in Seattle. But I'm very happy to get all the sun after spending most of the year under overcast weather.