Quick Updates | Prototype Planning

Time is of the essence right now... Lately a lot has been happening as Melissa, Karen, and I have been branching out with independent tasks with the hopes of amalgamating everything into a functional prototype at the end of this week!

I've been learning Flash in a hurry, Melissa has been doing fundamental UX/IxD work planning the user interface, while Karen has been learning the coding with the PC Kinect. Recently we decided to scale back the initial design vision, this was a result of various factors such as: using Xbox360 Kinect for gaming, checking out a Kinect kiosk prototype at a local company (unnamed due to confidentiality), re-assessing the needs at the CDR, and of course keeping our deadline in mind. If we can make something basic, that can give a user information related to the systems, then we can always add to it later but for now the task is to build a basic prototype with energy savings and consumption data. The lights at the CDR are already on sensors and when evaluating areas for innovation that fell low on the list due to the fact the existing system work well, it senses motion and turns on the lights, there's little need to add manual overrides for that in our interface. Integrated manual controls for the electrochromic window tint would be nice but will most-likely be pushed back into a later version of the prototype.

Image below shows system information data that Melissa collected, the data communicated was referenced from photographs we took of the existing CDR energy systems (click to enlarge)

Below is a Cmap image that Melissa put together using IHMC CmapTools, it illustrates some of the information we are sorting through between the solar and wind systems. (click to enlarge)

Building the Cmap image helped us compare the information from the different systems to establish what pieces are valuable to the user and what can be left backstage. Some information became more apparent through this exercise, and it also shows the late removal of the light and temperature controls. The focus shifted towards information access and away from system controls, in any case we are saving the work off to the side for future reference.

The next blog post will cover some technical issues that I have experienced with the Xbox360 Kinect in my apartment, in the meantime it's back to work for me as I've got plenty of work to do on our prototype!