Tim - Self Reflection

At the start of my Self Reflection I want to mention that I joined the team late in week 3. I want to thank the team that they took me and helped me get up to speed fast.

Week 1: Introduction to Socio-Cognitive Engineering

In this week I learned about the project by going through the lectures slides, the papers and discovered the Brightspace page.

The lecture started with an introduction to the course with an introduction to the team and an explanation on how the course was set up. After that Human Centered Design was explained together with the standards. Than, the ReJam and PAL project were presented. The ReJam project was a project for people with Dementia in Pieter van Foorest where music was used to stimulate group activities. 

The Lab Session slides together with the XWiki learned me what I should think about for the Quick Start menu and which Robots are available. 

Week 2: Dementia, Memory and Music as an Intervention

From the lecture slides I learned that age is an important factor for changes in cognitive abilities. Also, your lifestyle can have a huge effect. This can be explained by the term 'cognitive reserve'. This essentially means that with good life choices (much exercise for mind and body, healthy food etc.), the brain is more resistant to illness. When a person does get ill, for example with dementia, music can help with regulating mood and emotions.

The second lecture talks about the Socio-Cognitive Engineering Method. The inclusive design also gets explained by what it should address. After that, the stakeholder gets explained which can be direct but also indirect. Lastly, scenarios were discussed. Why they are important and how they should be constructed.  

Week 3: PAL

This week I joined the team and they brought me up to speed. I was introduced to the subject and how it would improve lives of people with dementia. 

Week 4: First Presentation

What did I do?: Gave feedback on presentation. 

What did I learn?: How to give good feedback and good present what we found and designed. Also learned a lot from other presentations which I think was very interesting. Also learned a lot from the feedback.

How did I do?: I think I did good with giving feedback, but could have helped with designing the slides. 

Week 5: Design Specifications

Week 6: Implementation and Initial Testings

Week 7: Evaluation

Week 8: Final Presentation

At the start of this week, on Monday, we had our final presentation. We worked on the slides and discussed what was important to include and also what could be left out. A test-presentation in our own group was done to make sure everything we told was clear. 

In our presentation we first had a quick recap of our problem scenario, than an explanation of our design and theories to support it. After that, I showed a video of our experiment and presented our evaluation and results. We received feedback on our statistical analysis and choice of questionnaire. 

Week 9: The Finishing Touch

This week was the deadline for our XWiki on Tuesday. Of course, most work was done, but we went through everything and improved parts that were unclear. Finally, we handed in the XWiki and the project came to an end. I want to thank my team for all the hard work and I am very happy with the final result! Also, I want to thank Mark and the whole Socio-Engineering team for teaching us this course.