Ricardo Vogel

Project Journal

Week 1

In week 1, I attended the lecture and the lab. In the lab, we brainstormed ideas for our robot. We decided to use the Miro, the animal-like robot. We divided our tasks for week 1. I created the beginnings of the PACT analysis, which Rohan continued with. I made the personas, which currently do not have the use case scenario yet, as the conceptual design of the robot is not yet at a stage where this may be useful. I have left the problem scenario for next week, to discuss it with the rest of the group. 

As I have three group project courses this quarter, it is important that I schedule my time in well. I'm using a to do list application and time tracker to make sure I stay on top of things. Presumably we all have busy schedules, so we should also aim to divide tasks well, and spend our time together well. 

Week 2

This weeks lecture may not have been the most relevant to our project, but I did find it very inspiring. Especially the part about "snoezelen" may be interesting for our project, as I feel like animals are perfect for that. My task this week was to finish the personas and use case scenarios. I have done this, and I've also added an activity coordinator persona, as they are also direct users of the system. Through creating these personas we have learned that the system should be low effort for the activity coordinator, so that they can focus on others too, while still allowing for a lot of customization. The coordinator knows the needs of the resident more than the system could. On Wednesday we also worked with the Miro. This was difficult at first, since we didn't have accounts and the free trial took long to confirm, but we ended up being able to execute code on Miro, and we were able to play around with the block system. 

Week 3

This week I worked on the design patterns. First, I made the team design patterns during the lab, and presented them there as well. I made some minor alterations, but overall it is still the same. I also made three interaction design patterns: guiding the human, guiding a human back on a wrong turn, and getting attention. I tried to make the design patterns as general as possible, while still making them applicable for our project. I think the team design patterns really helped visualizing the interaction, and helped us figure out when the human was in charge and when the robot was in charge. The interaction design patterns were a nice way of designing our interaction. The fact that they had to be generalizable helped strip away potential tunnel vision, we weren't just focusing on what our robot dog should do, we were thinking about ways a human can be guided by a robot in general. We also made some nice process with the Miro robot, and the team is setting up the MDK next week.

Week 4

This week I worked on specifying the functions along with Tim, and I wrote a bit about the human factors > design patterns. We also worked on on the robot on Wednesday, and recorded some videos. Using the controller for the robot proved more difficult than expected, so we will try this more next week. The lecture on evaluation was very interesting to me. Some of the concepts I already knew, but we went deeper into it now. I was not super involved with creating the evaluation plans this week, but I would like to do more of that in the coming weeks. 

Week 5

This week, I have filled in the HREC Risk Assessment and Mitigation Plan. This ended up not being necessary for the course, but it was still nice to learn about the process of filling in the form. We also got the Miro's remote control functionalities to work, which means we should almost be good to go for the test! We want to do a pilot test first this week, followed by the real evaluation later this week or next week.

Week 6

Sadly, I tested positive for covid this week. Luckily I was able to work on the report beforehand, but I was not able to work on the robot, or continue working on the report. At the time of writing (Tuesday in week 7) I am feeling better, so I will be able to work on the report. Sadly, I have not fully recovered, so I am not able to go to the user test tomorrow.

Week 7

The user test took place on Wednesday, but sadly I couldn't be there. I was able to help with the analysis and conclusions. We also made our presentation for next week, and we did some minor things here and there.

Week 8

The final week! I was one of the people giving the presentation for our group on Tuesday, so we spent time making the slides and preparing for it. After the presentation, we polished up the XWiki, adding some things that were still incomplete and rewriting pages. This also continued a bit in week 9. In the end, I've really enjoyed this course. The socio-cognitive engineering method allowed us to design and evaluate with intent and with scientific foundation.