Reflections
I think that it might be interesting to put here some reflections that we each had on the project and what we think of it now that it is completed. It has been about three months since we intially began and had out first meeting with Roger Mayer. Since then the project has gone through a lot of changes...even between the revised project description and what the finished product is. I think it is really interesting to look at how our ideas have changed and what brought us to this point. Intially we were just focused on writting these applets for Rogers class, I do not think we had a clear idea of what the project would be like. We put up a webpage with a outline of what our software would be like, pretty sure that we liked the design, but we had to see how it would work with other people. From the begining I think we have had a pretty solid webpage, and the basic outline of our project has not really changed, because that part was well thought out. It has been the actual presentation of the material that has changed over time.
Tuedsday May 5, 1998
Today we had demo day, which was kind of like a 7th grade science fair, going around and checking out each others projects. We have gotten some good suggestions to make as we begin to wrap up this project. The project is due Monday morning, so we are going to be finishing up everything this week. We have to fix the text and make sure that it is clear, spell checked and correct. Also right now the applets only work in IE4.0 on a pc, we would like them all to work in netscape on a pc. We feel that although it would be nice if they could work on a mac, it is most important that they are at least available on one type of machine. Their are some other little things that we have to clean up in the page, like the instructions on how to use the applets. For the most part everything seems to be almost finished, it will just be making everything as perfect as possible over the next week.
Friday May 1, 1998
Unfortunately, we did not recieve responses from the VA10 class...We will use the feedback from the 92 students that were able to come to our user-testing, though, and hopefully this will be enough.
Thursday April 30, 1998
We were able to schedule user testing in the PC lab from 2:30-4pm today, and although it was such short notice, we did get come valuable input from several of our fellow 92'ers. This was also one of the first times we were able to see what the page and the applets looked like on the cluster computers, because so far we have been writing and coding exclusively in the Sun lab. Everything was MUCH BIGGER, and this is something that will definitely be changed. There were also many good suggestions that we are going to discuss and decide on in the next few days.
Monday April 27, 1998
During this week we plan to have user testing done. We have handed out a questionare to the VA10 class in the hopes that they will have completed it by Friday. Hopefully by them looking at the page we can get some good feedback on how they feel about the whole project. It is most important that they take a good look at the page because this project was created for a class like theirs. We also want to do user testing on the 92 class because they will have a different view of the project. Having taken 92 they will be able to give us more of a overall feedback on what the finished product is like- how the user interface works, do they think that it is conceptually easy to move through the web page, does the page look appealing- would you be willing to read the text. Once we get the feedback then we want to work with the page and perfect what we have...
Tuesday April 21, 1998
This week we are trying to put all the finishing touches on the page before we do the user testing. We are not quite as far along as we had hoped, but are still are far enough ahead so that we will have time for user testing. We plan to start user testing next Monday and we want a basically finished product by that point so that we can get some good user feed back. We need to integrate the applets into the page. A big decision this week will be how they are put into the page, whether we will have them pop-up when the user gets to the page or whether they will be intergrated into the page. Roger read the text and seems to be pretty enthusiastic about what we have decided to include. He has given some suggestions and we are going to work with them and also clean up the text so that it is in a more formal format.
Tuesday April 14, 1998
We presented our project to the class last Thursday and it seems to have been pretty well received. We have most of the text up in a preliminary format. Now we just need Roger Mayer to look at it so that we can see how he feels about it. Since we have made such a large change in the focus of the page since the beginning, it is important to see how Roger feels about things. Especially since the focus is now on electronic color rather then pigment, it will be important to know if Roger thinks that this will work with his class and whether he likes what we are discussing in the page. We are planning to have most of our project done by Thursday, but I think that there are to many little things to get done so that we can be complete by that point. The text still has to be looked at by Roger, which has been able to happen because he has been away. As soon as he is able to look at the text we hope to get a more finalized version so that we can do user testing. When the page is in a pretty complete format we would like to start user testing, hopefully this will be within the next week or so.
Tuesday April 7, 1998
Roger was unable to attend todays meeting so we met in smaller groups to discuss the different tasks for this week. We will be presenting our project to the class on Thursday so we need to have as complete a project as possible by then. We are exploring all of the text over the next two days. A lot needs to be looked into- now that we have decided that we are focusing on computer color a lot of research needs to be done. Now our page is really going to make the user aware of what electronic color is and exactly what rgb is. I feel that now that our outline has been clearly defined we will actually really be enhancing the users knowledge with something new and exciting. Most people really do not know what rgb is and this page would explain that -> as well as the different things that you can do with it. Now a variety of mixing will be available so the user needs to understand why all of this mixing is being made possible. Right now we plan to have most of the text up, and a almost working color chooser, and a new and improved version of Goethe with the new color mixing available done by Thursday.
Monday April 6, 1998
Goal of the week - have almost everything done by thursday to show the class for the begining of testing. We should have almost all the text up by Wednesday. Right now a simple outline of the text is up on the page - it will be full text hopefully in the next two days. Also we would like to do a little bit more research by thursday so that we can be absolutely positive with what we are trying to explain. Goethes triangle will go under complete changing and redesigning this week. We will add the option of additive, subtractive or averaging mixing to it. As well the way it appears in the applet will be slightly different. Albers is already on the page - all it needs is a help box. The help box though is something that all of the applets need and it will describe how to each applet.
We would also like to have a small survey/quiz
on the web. This would be something that the tester could take after
using the page. There are a couple ideas on how we could test this
page. The ideas of this page are very abstract and difficult to test
because one can never be right with color theory. We were thinking
that a small quiz on some of the ideas of color spaces and what
electronic color is would be something we could give a quiz on to see
if people were actually willing to do the reading. We were hoping to
give this quiz to our 92 class because most of them have never taken
color theory before, and they would be a appropriate group to test.
With Roger Mayers current VA10 class we are hoping to set up a time
when they could meet us in a lab and test out the webpage with us
right in front of them. That way they could hopefully give us some
direct feedback. This might also be a possiblity with testing within
our 92 class. On monday we went to his class
to tell them about our project and ask if any of the students in the
class would be willing to look at our project page. We really want
feed back from the students taking the course now-since they have just
used the program that he teaches the class with. This way we can
hopefully get some ideas from them on things that they have not liked
with the program used now. And also suggestions and thoughts on new
things that we could create that would improve the understanding of
color theory. The students seemed pretty willing to check out our
site -and we are going to send them email and hopefully they will
respond with a plethora of ideas.
A important decision was made-that is that our project is really only
being designed for the novice user and someone that will only use it
once. We decided this because of the style in which Professor Mayer
will be using the program. He plans for the student to go and use it
once while they are discussing color theory. This is important to
take into our design because we are concerned at how to make sure the
user reads the information and doesn't just play with the applets.
Because this program is being designed for the one time user we
decided to hide the links to the applets-making sure you go to the
reading before you get to the applet. This way -hopefully the user
will do some of the reading. Also we toyed with the idea of having
the applets say things like "no, no, no-read the description
first"-but I think we are a bit concerned that could offend the user.
Also audio could be used for that. We are still unsure about the
saving issue. It would be really nice if each student could save the
picture they made and have there be a online museum-but the saving
might be a bit to difficult to implement. We are going to save that
task till the end and see if we have time. We are meeting again this
sunday as a group to work more on design. Right now we are working in
two groups: Ming and Jerry on the color chooser, and Jessica and Emily
on Goethes Triangle and Albers. We are hoping to have something
almost working by the end of next week so that we can get feed back
and figure out where to go. This monday we are going to Professor
Mayers class to ask his students to check out our website. We are
going to put a online survey so that we can get there feedback. We
are hoping that they will check the site often and tell us how this
compares to what is happening in class now and where they think it
could go. I feel like we have made a lot of progress this week and
that the project seems to be coming together
We also discussed the nature of the applets themselves,
realizing the need to have the students invest both time and thought
into the exercises. We fear that the ease of creating the color
mixtures will trivialize the issue that is so prominent with real
paint. (When students do the Goethe's Triangle exercise in paint, the
time and energy spent on each triangle created forces comprehension of
the theories at work, albeit tediously. We want to find a way to make
it easier to create the triangles and still force them to understand
why colors are mixing the way they do.)
Before our next meeeting on Sunday, the 29th,
we have agreed to each learn more about the capabilities of AWT so
that we may actually start the preliminary design of our applets. We
are also hoping to synthesize and finalize our ideas for the look and
feel of our accompanying web pages.
Sunday April 5, 1998
Today was our goal
for having a nearly complete project - we want to start testing this
week. But this past week has been such a break through in different
color spaces, and color theory ideas that we have not been able to get
as much concrete work done on the page as we would have liked. On
tuesday we brought Roger Mayer into the sunlab to show him the
webpage. He was completly mesmerized by the whole page. Goethes
triangle could not be more perfect - it seems that everything is way
beyond his expectations. I think Roger really did not understand what
is available now in computers. The fact that it is possible to do a
lot more then when bucolic one and two were made. On wednesday we met
with Anne and she began to explain additive and subtractive color to
us. It opened a whole new world interms of ideas for Goethes
triangle. Now we have decided that our Goethes triangle will have the
option of choosing what type of mixing you would like to do. This
also lead us to the fact that we needed to go more in depth in
describing computer color. A complete rethinking of the page needed
to happen. On thursday we met with Anne again to discuss more about
color mixing and color spaces. We have now settled on the HSL color
space. It has been really difficult to actually decide which space
would work best for what we are trying to get across. A lot of the
color spaces are very limiting in what they have to offer and others
are very decieving in trying to explain colors. A color space that we
decided we would definately not use is the generic computer color
cube. Also from this meeting we came to understanding that we did not
want to try to stimulate RBY using the RGB constraints of light. The
conclusion we came to from thursdays meeting is that CMY(Cyan,
Magenta, and Yellow) are practically the same as RBY and that RGB
mixes to get CMY. So inorder to get the largest range of colors we
should use RGB mixing.
Sunday March 29, 1998
Our group ended our
wonderful break by having our first meeting back on Sunday evening.
We have decided as a whole that our page needs to have a main idea and
that is not quite there yet. Hopefully from our meetings planned for
the next week we will be able to come to some type of conclusion. Our
goal for the week is to have almost a complete project by next
Sunday's meeting. This week we are meeting with Anne Spalter who will
hopefully help us with some of the major color issues that we have
been having. As well we hope to come to a decisive point with Roger
Mayer on what the exact point of the page is. We have invited Roger
to meet us in the sunlab for Tuesday's meeting so that he can see the
webpage. We have not gotten it to work on his computer and would like
him to see exactly what it looks like. Eventually our page will work
on all browsers.
Friday March 19, 1998
Over break we plan to take some resting
time and to think about the page. I would like to do research and
begin to understand color theory more. I think that at this point we
have been a bit scattered in what our exact thoughts are of the page.
We really have dove deep into the page and done a lot but it has
mostly been ideas from discussions with Roger Mayer. The four of us
have been so excited by just the simple color theory ideas that we
have seen that all we have wanted to do is work with them, We have not
had the chance though to look deeper into a more complete
understanding of this subject. I plan to get a more sound
understanding of Albers and Goethes and would like to look into color
spaces. Hopefully we can put a more cohesive bond to the page rather
then the slightly scattered ideas that exist now. I think that the
page looks really fabulous at the moment - but a random stranger
looking at the page would not understand why it was created and what
they would be learning from it.
Tuesday March 16, 1998
This week Roger was
not able to attend our meeting. It would have been helpful to have
met with Roger this week because we really now have our project fully
outlined. We had our storyboard today and showed the class exactly
what our whole page looks like to our class. This is almost exactly
like what we plan for our final page to look like. We have taken a
lot of time right now - carefully deciding on the layout of the page
and it was interesting to hear peoples comments on what they thought
of the flow of the page. From the discussion with the class they
thought that there was a little to much going back and forth so we
plan to change it so that the page is one continual line. So rather
then go to Albers explanation - go to plate1 and then go back to the
explanation of plate one - which will then lead you to plate two - you
can go directly from plate 1 to plate 2. Also we have promised the
class that we will meet with Anne Spalter to discuss the problems that
we are encountering and see if she can be any help.
Tuesday March 10, 1998
This weeks meeting
was really fabulous. We had a lot of fun with Professor Mayer -we
upgraded his Netscape so that he could view our project on the web.
This meeting was nice because we finally had something to show him.
In previous meetings we have just discussed our plans or drawn
pictures to discuss things. But todays meeting we actually showed him
the web page and what we planned for the layout for the whole project.
We tried to show him the sample applet that we have made for the color
chooser-but it would not work on his web browser. This is going to be
one of our largest problems -making sure that we can get the applets
to work on all platforms. I think he was pretty impressed to see
something-and could finally begin to grasp how we were putting
together his ideas into a program.
Tuesday March 3, 1998
Our fourth meeting
with Professor Mayer went well. There was not as much to discuss as
in the past meeting because we are in this intermediary stage where we
are designing but there is not much to see. We have decided that we
are going to have two color chosers-Popes color tree and a rgb slider.
The user can choose between the two. Not much was discussed during
the meeting but afterwards we begin to think more about the layout of
the page. We are unsure on whether we want the color chooser to
pop-up when the user first reads about it and then to stay up during
the whole session or for each applet to contain the color choser.
Tuesday February 24, 1998
Our
third meeting with Professor Mayer was as productive as any we've had
to date. We now have much firmer guidelines for the creation of our
color palette - this being in the form of Pope's color "tree". It was
confirmed that the original color tree we had planned on digitally
recreating was visually defined and extremely difficult to reproduce
on the computer at all, nonetheless in one semester. Pope's tree
offered a more geometric and mathematically defined shape, lending
itself to the calculating computer environment. Although this is
promising, we still need to get in touch with an Java AWT expert to
determine exactly what can be accomplished.
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