Week 6 - TouchIt is Reborn

We started off the week with a full day of work on Tuesday. Two of the group members started writing the design document while the remaining four carried out a workshop aimed at identifying tasks carried out on a computer, along with possible ways of solving this on a multi-touch interface. This resulted in some simple sketches and mockups.

On Wednesday we met with a friendly interface design company by the name of inUse. The purpose of the meeting was to put faces to names and to kick off our proposed cooperation in this project. They, along with Touchtech, will help us by answering questions and evaluating solutions we come up with throughout the life of the project. The result of this particular meeting was that we were able to take a step back from our project plan and get some much needed perspective. We realised that we need to be more specific in our development rather than aiming for a "general framework". Among other things we started thinking more about the particular situation the interface will be used in and how multi-touch/multi-user can add to the experience.

Today, Friday, we took a critical look at our plan for the project and revised it. After a long workshop involving copious amounts of post-its on walls, we decided to hone in on developing a multi-user interface for meeting and group-work situations. We feel that we can come up with something that is unique, innovative and that has commercial possibilities.

Week 5

This week things are starting to move forward. We have a room and Touchtech has given us access to a screen so we can check our solutions when we want. We have gathered enough information to start the actual work. A clearer goal has been formed and the work on the design document and the research has begun.

This is the morning report!

Welcome to this weeks morning report.

This week we’ve finished our work with the project plan and sent a copy to Touchtech and our tutor. They both seemed happy with our work so far, except Touchtech that had some comment upon our usage of the word “TouchTech” (note the capital T). But we fixed it and uploaded the new revision asap.

Today we’ve also had some feedback from the library about our research from previous weeks. They had a few hints about where we might find some useful information (e.g. CiteSeer).

We’ve also written an e-mail to InUse but we haven’t got an answer yet. But they’ll hopefully get back to us later this week... Hopefully....

And we’ve finally got access to a private room where we can store equipment, so Touchtech has installed the hardware there so we are ready to go!

BAW!

Planning report

This week has been devoted to the planning report, which is due Friday next week. We feel that we have come pretty far already, and feel confident that we will be ready before Friday.

During the work on the report we have come to better understand what lies ahead - the problem have been broken down into smaller sub-problems, so it is easier to see what needs to be done now.

Erik has produced a very pretty Gantt chart and an accompanying workload distribution spreadsheet, where we now have divided up the work between ourselves in an for the group agreeable way.

A few links

Here are a few resources that might come in handy:

• Informing the Design of Direct-Touch Tabletops
• Gestures, Shapes and Multitouch Interaction
  
• Multi-User Interface and Interactions on Direct-Touch Horizontal Surfaces:
  
• Collaborative Tabletop Research at MERL
  
• Experiences with and Observations of Direct-Touch Tabletops
  

As far as I know you can only reach them from the Nomad network at Chalmers.

First Weekly Report

Tuesday

We started off the project with a meeting between Morten (our tutor), Deniz (one of our TouchTech contacts) and ourselves. The purpose was for everyone to get a feeling for what the project will involve, and to get a short introduction to the multitouch hardware we'll be developing for. 

Friday

During an introductory workshop with TouchTech, three of our six-member group were given more insight into the software architecture that we will be using to develop our interface. 

Sunday

Today we've been working on our project plan, and have also drawn up a group contract for everyone to sign. The purpose and planned execution of the endevour is becoming clearer by the day. 

However, one problem still looms. The official name of the project has yet to be picked, and has been the subject of much debate. Even though it will be tough, we are confident that an agreement can be reached. 

First!