Author: Brie Musser

Progress:

• Finish Paper Macheing the Bloomshroom, Close to done on Mindfulower, and Pollinator.
• Made sure idea for orb works with mocap cameras.
• Got notes!!!!
• Started planning with Brad on when to get into Blackbox.
• 4/12 animations done

Goals:

Brie:

• Plants Done! Or close to done.
• Start on Orb.

Zander:

Riley:

• 4 more animations done

Progress:

• More progress with Paper Macheing the Bloomshroom, Mindfulower, and Pollinator.
• Found people to acquire notes from.
• Got card access to SL1 space and started getting used to SL1 set up so we can run some tests in there when needed (if B2 is busy).
• Performed some usability interviews regarding the sound.

Goals:

Brie:

• More Paper Mache!!! This week the Paper Mache process will be ACTUALLY FINISHED for all plants. And make progress with adding notes and painting.
• Gather the notes from people.
• Plan out the orb.
• Talk to Brad about future black box availability.

Zander:

• Finish user testing with the sounds
• Make progress on the Max patch
• Schedule more days to work in the black box.

Progress:

• BloomShroom first paper mache layer (such a time consuming process)
• Created new sketches for animation concept and landed on a preferred design approach
• Rough designs of the ambience and all interaction sounds
• Named the dandelang
• Construction of the dandelang delayed due to injury

Goals:

Brie:

• Finish paper mache on bloomshroom, mindfulower, and butterfly.

Riley:

• Finish CalcuLily wireframe and assemble with notes/flowers

Zander:

• Start construction on the dandelang
• Conduct user testing for and iterate on the sounds

Progress

• Zander
  • Broke hand
• Riley
  • Created new moodboard for animation
• Brie
  • Paper Mache base of each of the plants, and the pollinator
• All
  • Worked with Brad in Blackbox to design some rough mocap interactions
  • Met with Andy and discussed our vision for the garden from an artistic conceptual standpoint.

Goals

• Group
  • Decide on favorite animation concept
• Zander
  • Finish all interaction sounds
• Riley
  • Create 3 full-fleshed concept sketches for animation
  • Acquire more notes for construction of Calculily
• Brie
  • Finish up sculptures
    • Add notes
    • Paint

To do list:

Brie

• Mindfulower and ShroomBloom will have a more sturdy paper Mache form
• Start making Pollinator
• Start learning to animate in after effects

Riley

• Gather materials for making a more polished Calculilly
• Find a watering can
• Create 1 more realistic plant animation in after effects

Zander

• CAD a sphere that can be taken apart for sun orb
• Come up with name for Cotton Ball plant
• Gather Cotton Ball materials
• Paint small sphere plant

All

• Source notes and solidify subject of each plant
• Paint aesthetic/material tests on all plants

Plant Prototypes:

Sound Prototypes:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1e-KSzzbNxdgSdofZ1D4Rdrlv7xjCmpHV?usp=sharing

User Feedback:

We observed and interviewed some people that interacted with our prototypes. They gave us valuable feedback that will give us direction moving forward with our project.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F7V3EZ0DH5hiGuNml6fD2ck8N0DRJGoYeJO40UvcvSw/edit?usp=sharing

Also here is a link to the media we recorded of the UX test in progress:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-KbZhYAhIIyhy2pKj3UqPrindVs4yC0j?usp=sharing

To do list:

• Make plant prototypes for user testing
• Make animation prototypes user testing
• Identify subject of each plant
• Brainstorm items to represent water, pollination, and sun – Bring items to class to do user testing
• Plan out user testing 1

Schedule:

By tomorrow night, each of us will plan our individual schedules and deadlines for each of these tasks so we make sure to complete them by monday.

Tuesday from 3:30-5:00 we will get together and plan out user testing 1 fully.

Ideate and decide on plant designs:

We also did some other fairly detailed sketches of some of the other designs but these are the plants we liked the best and chose to focus on .

Also workshopped very rough idea of one plant using art tools and this also set the tone for our new color palette and aesthetic vibe going forward.

Finally, we determined the basic visual feedback for each type of interaction that participant may perform in our garden. Our three interactions have been identified as:

• watering
• pollinating
• providing sunlight

Here are some simple animations of the visual feedback using our initial sketches:

Talk to faculty about access to Blackbox Space

• Emailed Stephanie – Still in air about exact details but they are sorting it out and haven’t forgotten about us.

• Talked to Brad about being able to test technically – We have card swipe access to SL1 space which has all the technology we will need but on a smaller scale, and he’s willing to work with us about getting time in blackbox.

Feedback:

We used feedback from Anthony to better develop our theme and decide on a more solid audience. When gaining advice on materials Anthony led us in a direction of using found notes in the creation of our plants to symbolize growth in an educative setting like college. Through this we narrowed our audience to college students who need a break from the stress of struggling to balance all that they are learning and how they are evolving as humans in this mindful garden experience. We started to refine our plant designs and add these elements to them. We also used this guide to brainstorm what specific interactions will be taking place and what our animations within our visuals will look like.

What we learned

This week we learned that we struggle with decision making and going forward need to focus on committing to our ideas and running with them instead of leaving them as an ambiguous blob in the atmosphere.

It also surprised us how different the artistic process is to the engineer/designers process and we are learning how to combine these approaches as we move forward, being careful to have a concrete plan that also enables us creative freedom.

We also learned that its a lot easier for a week to pass us by with little progress than we thought, so we need to get stricter with our personal deadlines and setting aside specific times to work on capstone.

to be updated