Monday, October 6, 2008

Phiddlers

The Experience Technology module has started at full effect and we're currently in our cells trying to research on ways to make our project a reality. Our idea is based on a memory type of mind game which John in my group has devised. Tim and Eliot have been out getting wood so we can build a box to house the computer in.

The technology we got assigned to us was the Phidget RFID kit. Last Friday we sat down and had a brainstorming session where we basically just tried to come up with a bunch of different ideas. In the brainstorming process some of the ideas were very far out there and some were more "doable" in the sense of time and within the range of our skills. Since none of the members of our group are self-acclaimed "coders" or "technies" I felt that it was important for us to focus on what we actually could accomplish rather than spend time on complex and, in effect, impossible ideas. We have also heard that most groups that struggle at the exhibition are the ones that have took upon them too much. The keyword, it seems, is to keep things simple. At the end of the day we decided to roll with John's mind game idea.

The basic concept is taken from the game Memory and then upgraded with new technology and tweaked to be more fast-paced. We have been very ambitious with our ideas and thoughts on how our space at the exhibition should look like and we have a pretty good idea of how things should work. Tim and Eliot have already begun searching around for the physical resources like wood and Plexiglas that we need for the project. Me and John are looking into the coding part, which will be based on Action Script 3.0. Mathias is our project manager and is also in the exhibition group which will handle the practical issues surrounding the event.

We haven't really run into that many problems yet, besides the fact that we're still sort of new to the whole thing and don't really know exactly what we should be doing all the time.

Since I'm not very "techie" as a person, I decided to challenge myself and try to be a part of the coding process for this very reason. Hopefully I'll be able to contribute with something, but for the moment I'm mostly just looking on, pointing a finger here and there and speaking my mind when I have something to say.

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