Author: aucadmin

Grant Baxter, University of Otago Part of CW12

This presentation will focus on how design ideation, visualisation, prototyping, and production tools and techniques can be used to produce better iOS applications. Description below:

With the growing adoption and importance of iPhones and iPads, multiple opportunities exist for these devices to enhance people’s experiences in New Zealand’s national parks. While there are a reasonable number of existing applications that could be considered useful to national park visitors, many are poorly conceived or executed and many fail to take advantage of modern iOS device capabilities.

This presentation will describe a series of studies that applied various ideation, prototyping, and production techniques to create a wide range of outcomes. These outcomes included a large number of iPhone application concepts, rapid prototypes, semi-developed iPhone applications, and fully functional iOS applications. All of these outputs were informed by wide ranging IDEO ideation, design, and production techniques, including: Activity analysis, Character Profiles, Extreme User Interviews, Fly on the wall, Paper Prototyping, Quick and Dirty prototyping, Scenarios, Try it yourself, and multiple site visits.

The presentation will then describe the development of four applications, and will go on to give a live demonstration of the applications. The four applications are:
(1)NZ Birds – an advanced prototype application with a corresponding web application visualisation tool
and (3) Arthur’s Pass Which Activity and Bird Identifier Game – two iPad applications used in Arthur’s Pass National Park over the 2011/2012 holiday period
(4) The Denniston application – an application co-designed with the Department of Conservation and available for download from the iTunes application store.

The presentation will end with a discussion of the co-design process used to develop the Denniston application with/for the Department of Conservation and how this process can result in better designed iOS applications.

Judit Klein, Auckland University of Technology Part of CW12

In an age defined by mobility of people and knowledge, mobile technologies offer us new ways of interacting with each other and with content to enable more collaborative and dynamic ways of learning. To be peripatetic is to learn across contexts, a notion originating from Aristotelian philosophy which can be reframed to describe how mobile technologies have bought about a new way of thinking about education.

Many institutions around have embraced the use of iPads as the ‘magical’ tool that will reinvent education. There is of course criticism and scepticism around whether the iPad is just another tool that is forced upon teachers as just another way to do the same thing that will soon become obsolete.

This presentation looked at going beyond the simple ‘logistical’ value of the iPad. Apple Distinguished Educator Dr. William Rankin identified the three key affordances of the iPhone are that it brings together rich media, connectivity and access to the internet, all in a mobile platform.

There are some apps that begin to tap into the intersection of these affordances but current applications of the iPad in tertiary education are only just scratching the surface. Informed by iOS development (creating apps for iPhone and iPad), see the behind the glass screen to the underutilised features of the underlying platform and the implications of a programmed pedagogy. The talk is aimed at both staff and students to explore ways to harness the new ways of working with emerging technologies and practices.

Desmond Koh, Queensland University of Technology Part of CW12

This presentation discusses the developmental journey of, and reflects on the experiences gained from, the design and development of “The Secret SLQ” app developed for The State Library of Queensland (http://secret.slq.qld.gov.au).
The Secret SLQ app is an interactive scavenger hunt that incorporates camera (Quick Respond (QR) & Augmented Reality (AR)) and sound technology (AVFoundation) to arouse school-aged students between 8 -12 years to explore the library. The app is designed in collaboration with the digital agency Reading Room (www.readingroom.com.au).
This presentation will teach you how to use and integrate some key features in this app into you own apps. In particular we will cover.

• How to integrate Quick Respond (QR) codes into our app that allow users to scan QR codes to answer questions.

• How to add Augmented Reality (AR) to augment images over to AR codes.

• The usage of Apple AVFoundation to detect sound level changes and some simple image processing, such as screen capturing and image manipulation.

• Finally the presentation will reflect on which iOS features worked well for the project, what challenges we had to work around to overcome during the development process and some useful tips and advise.

The presentation is particularly useful and beneficial for teachers, librarians and developers, as it could be used for university building and tours.

 

Richard Deveraux, Charles Darwin University Part of CW12

The presentation will look at some of the perceived barriers/limitations with developing for the web and will provide possible alternatives that can ease the transition from traditional native development. Some topics that would be covered include:

• the barriers/limitations for web programming (straight from the spider’s mouth)
• workflows for making cross platform websites / web applications using responsive design
• developing a game with HTML5 and JavaScript

The last topic will look at my major third year project, which was a HTML5 Game (called The Little Worlds Project). This would include a live demo where the audience use BYO mobile devices to view/participate in the demo. QR codes will be provided for quick linking.

Dylan Turney, Auckland University of Technology Part of CW12

Creative Coding (or Sometimes It’s Alright to Write Rubbish Code) looks at the role of coding within in the emerging field of experiential advertising and interactive installations, using examples from projects I have been involved in (including work for international tech start-up company Makelight Limited).

Topics:

• Why a high-tech approach is needed to engage the public
• The relationship between creative and commercial coding and how the two are often intertwined within a project
• The importance of code quality and scalability for one-off installations and large commercial creative products
• The challenges of a 24-hour work cycle (New Zealand/London) and tight deadlines
• The art of quick code iteration for prototyping

Sebastian Beswick, University of Tasmania Part of CW12

I’m currently studying for a Bachelor of Computing with Honours at Utas, and as a keen amateur musician, I have a special interest in Computer Sound – after all, most modern music relies heavily on computer generated synthesised sounds.

Now, Wouldn’t it be cool if you could sit down in front of a computer and, after showing it what you liked, have it intelligently generate you unique works of art, (in this case synthesised sounds), based on your own personal aesthetic preferences?

My honours project Gene-synth leverages the incredible power of modern evolutionary computing and artificial intelligence techniques to deliver a solution that would allow all composers – regardless of their level of technical ability – to create beautiful original sounds. Gene-Synth works by automatically learning and modelling the musician’s sound preferences, and using Darwinian techniques (such as survival of the fittest) to breed generations of high-quality sounds for immediate use in their production.

Kerry Wilkinson, University of Adelaide Part of CW12

Our presentation will describe the development and evaluation of an iPad application as an e-learning tool for training winemaking and wine marketing students in the technical evaluation of wine. We will demonstrate features of the App designed specifically to facilitate student learning. For example, the objective assessment of wine colour using slide-bars; a glossary of wine aroma and flavour descriptors; and the ability to compare tasting notes over time (i.e. as both wine and students evolve).

The potential for the App to be used both in and out of the classroom will be discussed, in particular, the use of the App to engage shy and quiet students during class discussions about wine.

The presentation will cover digital media (i.e. mobile applications) as a tool with which to improve student learning.

Richard Stals, Edith Cowan University Part of CW12

In a recent project, I developed a series of prototype 3D Serious Games using the Unity3D game engine.

One of the prototypes sparked a great deal of interest from both academics as well as students and has been further developed into a pre-release version of the game.
The game/simulation is a real-world disaster scenario that is designed to train Paramedic students in Mass Casualty Incident Triage.

Initially it was developed as a SCORM compliant module that can be loaded into the school’s Learning Management System like Moodle or Blackboard. In order to explore the utility of the game further, I have developed a version for the iPad.

In this session you will learn how you can begin your creative journey into 3D serious games using a combination of free and low cost tools and resources.

Richard Stals, Edith Cowan University Part of CW12

How can we leverage the devices that staff and students are bringing onto campus, their own iPod, iPhones, iPads? How can we enable anytime, anywhere access to learning content, information and expertise? What applications do we need to develop to allow our community to take control of their own learning journey with us?

This presentation will explore the open-source framework, ‘Kurogo’ – a Mobile Middleware for developing content-rich mobile websites and iOS and Android apps. The core of Kurogo is a lightweight PHP framework that aggregates and organizes raw, decentralized data sources from your enterprise systems and delivers them through a mobile web experience and native companion applications.

We will explore how to get the framework up and running and connect some of the more common University data sources. We will briefly look at the iOS application project in Xcode as a first step in releasing your own University iPhone app.
I will also introduce you to the newest Kurogo module, which I have developed, that connects to your Learning Management System (we will be using Blackboard).

Thomas Verbeek, University of Otago Part of CW12

“The Octagon” is both an exhibit and an experiment in cooperation and user interface design. Eight computers provide eight ‘artists’ with a view into a shared virtual room. In the center of the room is a platform on which sculpture may be built. Each participant can add to the sculpture using a very intuitive interface. It ‘feels’ as though you just draw what you want and it appears in 3D. Most users need no instruction. Each user’s 2D view is inherently ambiguous, yet artists do not seem to ask how their 2D gestures are translated. They discover the rules by experimentation and usually don’t even realize that there are rules.

The Octagon can be presented in various forms. The simplest is to set up eight computers in a ring so they surround a real space. But it is possible to put the computers anywhere. Activity can be shared across the room or across the world.
The application was developed in Graphics Research Group at the University of Otago in New Zealand. It was featured in the “Emerging Technologies” exhibition at SIGGRAPH ASIA 2011 Hong Kong.