Category Archives: Spring 2015

Week 14: Working Session!

Well, this is it … our last class before we wrap up with the final Team Synthesis next week. It is hard to believe, but here we are. Today will be unlike any other day we’ve spent together. I will be giving the class to you — we will still be in the room together for most of it, but I want you to take the time to hang out, talk, laugh, and work in your teams on a couple of things. First and foremost, I want you to make progress on your paper prototypes. I am really excited to see how you have decided to design at least two of the interactions we brainstormed last week and I am very interested to see if you took advantage of the tools we looked at.

The second thing I want you to work on is your Final Synthesis. This one is different than the first two in that I want you to work together to draw our three themes together. You can do that in any creative way you see fit, but you must connect the dots from across the entire semester and use the lenses of Community, Identity, and Design to bring your synthesis to life. I am giving you one last reading this week and I do think you’ll enjoy it … please integrate it into your Final Synthesis. I expect you to share your app prototype, discuss the disruptive potential of the iPad, and describe how our themes and our semester long conversations about disruption impacted your final design statement. Most importantly I want your teams to bring forward a bold statement about how your collective minds may or may not have been expanded by our little grand experiment this semester.

Again, if you have readings or things for the rest of the class to do to prepare, please post them by 5 PM on Tuesday. As some inspiration, here is a Final Synthesis from ghosts of Disruptive Technology Past …

Out of Class

Ken's Weekly iPad Reflection, Week 12

Recently, inspired by Jay, I’ve been looking into sending MIDI between different apps on the iPad. One promising way is using Inter-app Audio, which was introduced in iOS 7. A lot of apps support it, including GarageBand and Tabletop.

There’s also an app called MidiBridge that lets you route MIDI to and from apps that support it. This might be more promising because it seems like more apps can use it. If I were to write an app that supported MIDI thought I’d probably look to support Inter-app Audio too since MidiBridge costs $8.99 so that’d be a barrier for people.

 

Week 13: Time to Decide on Design

This week I want to give you ample time to complete your research and start actually prototyping a couple key interactions within your proposed app. We will start with you sharing the results of last week’s Team Post assignment. Let’s discuss what you have learned so far from your research and what has been effective.

Start with a peek at something I’ve been working on.

Brainstorming

We need to start with learning how to appropriately brainstorm … let’s do something together to illustrate how to best construct opportunities to arrive at ideas together.

Now it is your turn, I want you to brainstorm a set of scenarios or case studies that you can use as the basis to develop set of prototype interactions within your app. Work together to imagine:

  • A set of scenarios (3-5) where your app would be the tool people would use to solve their problem
  • How the app would be used in those scenarios by creating a work flow, a diagram, a process map, or other visual ways of articulating how the app addresses your audiences’ challenges
  • Create a set of opportunity areas to focus on within the scenarios — the team should construct a series of “How Might We …” statements to address the challenges illustrated in the frameworks from the previous step
    Spend time brainstorming each opportunity area …
  • Decide if your app truly does overcome the problems that people are trying to solve with your app
  • Choose at least two scenarios to prototype

Begin to Design your Interactions

Paper prototyping is a great way to do this … let’s explore some options. Here is a fantastic PDF template of the iPad you are designing for available for free to print (I even printed some for you). Here is an app that automates your paper prototypes — and it works perfectly with the template I just linked to.

Out of Class

  • Watch the Paper Prototyping course on Lynda.com.
  • Come to class next week with your interactions ready to paper prototype … it is a good idea to play with some of the tools we looked at.
  • Bring your iPad paper templates to class with some ideas sketched out.
  • Start working on your final synthesis — due in two weeks!
  • Remember you can now start doing your class evaluation.

Weekly iPad Reflection – Chris Stratis

Here’s where the iPad and I have ended up:

The iPad has become necessary to my workflow. Its portability and functionality allow it to be the Swiss Army knife of productivity. It’s a browser, text editor, presentation maker, audio and video playback device, camera, microphone, and communicator.

Problems:

Although I have few apps installed on the iPad, it has become sluggish and unresponsive when I have one chrome tab open for the purposes of writing these blog posts. I will type on the keyboard; the keys don’t change color, to indicate that they have been touched, until a second later. It’s made typing blog posts more than annoying, but all other text input has been less frequently sluggish– I can manage with few instances, but nothing as laden with issues as using the blog and the iPad.

I actively dislike not being able to download files and look for them in a specific location on the device, with a file browser– as easily as you can with an android device. I needed to download a pdf from Google drive and upload it to a web application, and I couldn’t. I was only permitted to  upload photos, so I took a screenshot and uploaded that. I was left feeling less than satisfied.

Regarding operations on large bodies of text: I find it difficult to move the cursor to the correct location in the text. Text selection also becomes an issue. When copying text from Gmail to Evernote, it is difficult to avoid pasting unwanted content, like the gmail layout and the column of emails/folders. I accidentally destroyed a huge assignment by attempting to paste a large selection of an email into the Evernote. The pasted selection sat directly over the typed text; it took me hours to try and salvage what was no longer visible.

Aside from web content / text operations that don’t play well with the iPad, all other issues are too infrequent and minute to be worth mentioning here.

Swiss Army Knife:

Specific tasks that I use my iPad for include: reading and writing emails, reading plays, writing papers, writing blog posts, conducting research, filming rehearsals, taking rehearsal notes, taking rehearsal photos, editing documents, designing presentations, timing rehearsals to activities, waking up (using the alarm), playing music, playing music remotely with Spotify, controlling midi capable devices (this is possible and is on my list of things to do as soon as I can find the time), communicating with my organization using slack, sharing files, managing and auditing communications over slack, using social media applications, viewing light plots and other mechanical drawings, the list goes on…

 

Right Shark's CritQue

Design a mobile app that supports peer critiquing using gamification elements.

No change
Our approach to our design challenge is constantly evolving while the challenge remains the same.

After discussion with students some of their concerns were:
1: How to stop possible plagiarism?
2: What are the specific perks of being a Master in a category?
3: They felt feedback on prose is done better in person.

 

We sent out surveys and conducted group interviews with the population we are looking to connect with.
Stats from survey coming soon…

Weekly iPad Reflection – Katherine

This week I discovered new ways to use the iPad to improve my productivity. Last Thursday, I helped set up and assist with SBU-TV’s Film festival as an intern. Part of my duties that night involved checking people in with their names and ID numbers. In order to speed up the process, I used my iPad to set up a spreadsheet using Google Sheets while another intern used a laptop to open up the same Google spreadsheet. I was able to have people sign in with their name and ID number and type it themselves using the iPad which made the process a lot faster. It was convenient to have both a laptop and an iPad and be able to have people sign in on both.

Google Drive and Docs have been a lifesaver this semester when I’m not able to physically meet up with the other interns or group members in person. Being able to work in Google Docs and have each group member highlight their text with a chosen color has greatly helped to organize notes and blog post ideas all in one place. Before the iPad, I rarely made use of Google Drive and had never used Google Docs/hangouts/sheets/slides in such a productive and fast manner.

iPad – Shady – Week 12

In the theme of design, this week I had to be a companion at the hospital.  While I was there, I saw nurses scooting around computers on wheels.  The entire setup must cost thousands; big frames, bumpers, wiring, batteries, monitor cradle, etc.  The nurse goes from room to room asking patients a series of questions before surgery, and she clicks the appropriate boxes.

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Being in the field of IT, this interests me, and now, having been exposed to an iPad, I couldn’t help but thinking, how much easier would it be for this nurse to carry an iPad mini on her pocket.  The same software could be setup as an iOS app.  A fraction of the cost, and a simpler tool to carry.

 

 

The iPad as a Global Broadcasting Tool

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One of the main ways my use of the iPad has evolved thanks to CDT 450 is that my mind is beginning to develop a deeper understanding of the iPad as a MOBILE GLOBAL BROADCASTING TOOL, and the implications for education in general. I can read, take notes, sketch, record video, audio, research, etc. I’ve been doing that for years – But now I’m thinking more about how the iPad can help me to communicate and share my creations, ideas, and discoveries with a global audience – especially when I create something compelling enough to grab and maintain people’s attention.

For me some of my most productive learning comes through interacting with other students and experts. I know that my understanding is increased when I am required to create something related to course material and present it, or creatively share it online. As I mentioned above, I’m learning new ways to do this throughout my learning experience, from collaborating online, to presenting to a group.

Weekly iPad Reflection Chris W

After almost a full semester of occupying the iPad, I don’t know how I am going to live without this thing.  All my assignments and a majority of my internet browsing are done using the iPad.

Stony brook University uses a website called Blackboard to distribute assignments, post grades and weekly reminders, and have the students interact with one another. I navigate blackboard exclusively form my iPad. The layout is nicer. The design is nicer. Everything is nicer on the app end of Blackboard.

Screen Shot 2015-04-21 at 1.08.15 PM
Screen Shot 2015-04-21 at 1.11.48 PM

Web version of Blackboard

imageApp version of Blackboard

The main difference between the two is the active panel the app version has. It is easy to navigate the different tabs as well as see exactly where you are.