Day 32 – Secondary Research Review

Had a catch-up session with Mannu. Put down most of my research on paper and like I had expected, it became clearer. Found a lot of good resources today as well. He showed me a very good blog of Keyur Sorathia, IIT-Guwahati’s Head of Interaction Design.

Pink Floyd binge started with Breathe. Took me back to my elective and Musique concrète. It also made me get to know more about Richard Wright, who I had missed before probably because of Gilmour. The timeline of Pink Floyd and the fact that they were from London made me wonder if they had ever run into The Beatles, and found out that they had. Its been a long time since I have played any of their material. I also got to know about Acousmatic Music and a blurry understanding of how it is different from Musique concrète. The history and story of Musique concrète is told better in this soundmattersblog post.

Watched Ilayaraja Sir’s explanation of Symphonies with Idhayam Pogudhey which introduced me to Franz Schubert’s work on which the arrangement was based. Of course, I didn’t stop at it. Watched Poove Sempoove‘s beautiful live version and errors and restarting the performance, trademark Raja, by Yesudas Sir. What magic!!! And then came SPB Sir, Yesudas Sir and Raja Sir on the same stage for Kaatukuyile. Goosebumps!

Found Will Schoeder through this Rick and Morty video. Watched this WatchMojo video called ‘Top 10 Psychological Thrillers‘ and found some good movies. Also found ‘Goodnight Mommy‘ and ‘La Pianiste‘. Then came ”Metallica Through the Never‘.

Found Digital Trends and Quartz.

Came across the Nintendo Virtual Boy, its story and an opinion. Haven’t read these completely.

I was checking out Lisn, the app that Arumani had spoken about.

Had forgotten about Niantic Labs, the one that made Pokémon GO.

Went back to this haptic.al article from my earlier readings.

Have tos –

Found cbinsights. Have to see if I can get something from it.

Have to share Arumani this article on collaboration and how Google thought about it.

Have to share this one about Board Games with the Game Designers.

Have to read this article about an app that teaches children empathy.

7 Tools to Helps Designers Get More Done

The Jony Ive Computer Apple Didn’t Include In Its Monograph

Experience The Trippy Life Of An Ancient Redwood

Have to watch Elements: An Animated Film of Improbable Gallery Installations Composed of Two Billion Shifting Spheres by Maxim Zhestkov ; C4DDDD

Webvj.mattatz

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OneTab: 81 Tabs in the PC & 19 in the Imac

Day 31

Most of the day went in trying to work on slides for the work I have done so far.

I went for a walk (Really looking forward to the walk immersion exercise next week) and found an Oculus Rift and Touch game arena at Soul Space Arena. Played a game called Robo Recall.It was expensive (INR100 for 15 minutes), but I finally got a first-hand feel of the entire rig. The focus seemed to be a bit of a problem. The graphics were not as good as I expected, but the system running it was pretty normal in configuration. The learning curve with the controller was not as steep as I had expected, but I was only using the primary buttons. It would be interesting to try it out more, but not at that price.

I have to get my ass back to work. Research seems good, but it will not be solid without putting it down on paper / a slide.

Have to make my submission for ux-india by tonight, but I do not think that is possible with the things lined up. I had registered yesterday and they had called asking me to make my submission by tonight.

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Found some clearly documented resources about Spatial Audio, by Google. There was also a page on Using Spatial Audio in VR. Went back to reading about HRTF. Found an (old) article on Wired about Spatial Sound coming to Google Cardboard.

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OneTab: 72 Tabs

Day 30

ONAM!!

Watched a few videos.

‘The search for the Sadhya’ was futile. Watched a few videos.

This was an interesting interpretation of war with the game theory. I should make the game designers in my life see this.

Slightly over the top. Reminded me of our jury presentations when the audio would play and we wouldn’t know what to do till it stops.

This was very, very interesting. All the points were well, on point.

This one by Ferriss made me think of what I am going through right now. And my project, of course.

Reminded me of the days when I was into this. Mental note to get back to this. I will be with the way things are shaping out. 🙂

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Other than this, got my Sim card upgraded to 4G.

Have to finish the slides to show by tonight.

Left today’s Everyday at home.

Day 29

Guide confirmed.

Day 28

Salary Day!

Fairly good day. Lot s of learning.

Started off the day with a lot of articles from Medium –

1. Our redesign of Medium’s Claps…and why they may not have chosen to do it this way

2. Choose the right VR gear for you
3. Why sleeper hits are waking up the film industry
4. The Creativity of Cameras – have to share this with Sai
5. 7 habits you need to adopt if you want to write more
6. How to create a morning routine that will make you thrive

Found http://750words.com/ along the way. Got the printer set up for my system and printed out a lot of research papers and journals. Got the timeline printed as well. ^_^

Got a whole load of stationery (whiteboard, post-its (not yellow :D) and highlighters. This couldn’t have been a better day.

Back to the Pomodoro, but it wasn’t quite successful because I was actually off the system for a while.

Called Jignesh to no reply. Called Natallia. She said we could speak after 8:30 PM.

Read and watched a lot of things related to AI.

Saw the Sirinlabs phone.

Mannu showed me Horizons on the Daydream headset.

Spent a lot of time with the Daydream headset and controller. Found a cool, addictive game called “(fill this blank tomorrow)”. It was a fighter game and crazy. Very immersive experiences. Had a bout of VR sickness after.

Watched a lot of videos:

1. Sherlock – How creative transitions improve storytelling
2. Composition in Storytelling by Channel Criswell [Primal and Artifical Control]
3. 10 Skills that are hard to learn, but will pay off forever
4. TED – Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality | Anil Seth
5. TED – The incredible inventions of intuitive AI | Maurice Conti
   1. Dreamcatcher
   2. Google Deepdream
   3. AI’s growth
      1. 1952 – Tic Tac Toe
      2. 1997 – Deep Blue vs Kasparov
      3. 2011 – Watson played Jeopardy
      4. 2016 – AlphaGo

Things to see:

1. Microsoft’s Hololens Controller
2. Linux Phone
3. Privacy in a Virtual World

OneTab – 49 Tabs

 

Day 27

Arshed had shared a tech trends study for 2017 by Frog Design.

I was going through AI in recent times and found “Daddy’s Car“, a song written by an AI at Sony, and “Sunspring“, a short film with the screenplay written by an AI.

Mannu, Atul and I sat and discussed yesterday’s sketching session.

Found Clay Bavor, head of VR and AR at Google.

Spent a lot of time on CNET and read articles about Google launching ARCore, ARkit apps and what to expect and what not to from them, comparing iPhone 8 and Note 8 and everything out about Google Pixel 2.

Got my joining letter from Samsung.

Day 26

Started with trends again.

A Gartner article on Immersive Technologies gave a five step process to implement immersive technology:

1. Plan
2. Identify
3. Design
4. Scale
5. Analyze

A prnewswire report called ” Global Virtual Reality Ecosystem Markets and Trends 2017 – Immersive Technologies Creating New Opportunities Across Vertical Industries” was available. The actual report is expensive, but the description gives an idea.

Found Trends and Applications of Serious Gaming and Social Media when searching for social trends.

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Wanted to see if Spatial sound could also be applied to AR and MR. And turns out it can, and it will increase the level of immersion. This thenextweb article explains how ‘Spatial Sound will be a Critical component of Mixed Reality‘. It starts with explaining what spatial sound is and goes on to how it can be used in MR and also lists down key benefits of using spatial sound in MR according to Dave Black, Co-Founder of 3D audio firm Mixed Immersion. All this with examples. This could be THE article like how Recode’s article was for Dorian.

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Found another resource for news on AR and MR, namely Next Reality.

Rohan suggested starting with BCG and Deloitte’s work for Social Trends.

Came to know of dji drones.

Might be having a brainstorming/sketching session with Atul and Mannu‘s project.

Found some resources on Atul’s website.

Got to reading some pending articles in the Guardian about No Man’s Sky’s latest update Atlas Rises, Atari’s accusation of Kit Kat’s Breakout Ad and the Google Search Result game of Breakout if we search for Atari Breakout and go to images. Learning Morality through Gaming was interesting, something that had been on my mind for a while.

Got the attendance issues almost sorted.

Music

Found a seemingly good lesson for chords on Zebrakeys.

Found fingering charts for Major, Natural Minor and Dorian Minor scales. Also got a list of 50 Jazz Standards that are standard. 😛

OneTab: 38 Tabs

Day 24

Got the refined timeline.

It seems doable, with room for iteration. But something that I am thinking of now is to start prototyping parallelly with the ideation/conception.

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Took most of my day

Found a very interesting article in this area in the Guardian that manages to put a perspective to this line of thought. Also found a certain Dr.Paul Cairns, a senior lecturer in Human Computer Interaction at York University who is currently studying immersion.

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Went through Maya‘s blog. Interesting content. Forgot to send him the Hellblade Dev Diaries, but Arumani had, thankfully.

Came in late because of last night’s rain shenanigans.

Back to the Pomodoro. Not missing the physical one as much as I thought I would. Hoping to get some good rest and work done over the weekend.

There was a small issue with the SwipeIn time not showing. It is sorted now.

Installed a mind-mapping app on my phone for easier upload in the blog. Started putting pen to paper and getting a little clearer.

Some notes from today:

1. Spatial sound in virtual environments
2. How do people feel immersed in cartoons even though it is in 2D? Is it the power of the story?
   1. 2D seems to have higher immersion than low-quality 3D because of the high levels of expectation from 3D from the consumers’ trained eyes (thanks to today’s 3D advancements and criticism openness).
3. Playing games that we played when we were kids gets us the (almost) same level of immersion. This includes low-quality 3D, say Quake II in my case. Is it only nostalgia at play or something else?

Found compute.info, a site that seems to be better organized to search for useful data. Reminds me of my text analytics days at LV.

Have to resume using the ACM Digital Library, for at least a paper a day.

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(Contextually) New term: Content provider

Example: Uber

In use: “Content provider integration required.”

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To check:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/14/no-mans-sky-atlas-rises-update-game

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/18/kitkat-nestle-atari-breakout-advert-copyright

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/13/learning-morality-through-gaming

OneTab EOD: 23 Tabs

Day 23

Had a catching up with Mannu. Made a basic 4-month project plan. It has to be refined. Feeling a little pumped after the discussion. Have to keep everything away for a while and go back to the work mode that I was in. Have to get the whiteboards out. Might go to the room. It is silent and has room to walk around. He took me back to IDEO’s design kit and the Sprint (Design Sprint Methods, Playbook for startups and designers). Something new was Luma’s design methods (Luma HCD-guide).

My agenda now is to compile and pen down my interpretations of all that I have read so far in my Secondary research. It is always the same thing: I have to put it down on paper and post-its to get that rush.

The place seems a little cramped and the leg is irritating because I am not able to sit still for more than 15-20 minutes.

I should ideally get my problem areas and tentative briefs by Monday EOD. I should also try to stay away from the areas I have in mind right now (in the picture) because they are concepts which I should be arriving at after all my research (Rings a bell?).

Really looking forward to the long weekend to get some work done and get some well-needed rest. I am getting tired out in office because of all the walking.

Got the foot dressed in the medical center at office. Got a good look at it for the first time. It is healing. Have to visit the place again tomorrow for another dressing.

Did not watch too many videos today. Was looking at methods more.

Vijay anna had sent BookChor, a second-hand book buying app. Have to check it out.

Have to get housing sorted fast. And get a bed. That seems to be the root of all these problems.

OneTab EOD: 10 Tabs

Day 22

Started off the day with clearing the Imac. Got some links out of it that I hadn’t noticed before.

Then came Dinotopia, James Gurney and Dan Gurney. Really tempted to start with React Native with the Udemy course.

Looked at the 360 cameras in the industry and coming out in the near future. On the way, stumbled upon Google Jump for VR filmmaking. This is the rig.

Then, there is Nokia’s OZO Reality. Expensive, but looks like it will be worth it.

With all this happening, can Facebook be far behind in the 360 camera market?

Found John Brownlee. His writing is on interesting areas. Have to read more of his articles.

Rohan was telling me about the two-factor theory of emotions at lunch with the example of the Whatsapp forward messages.

Tizen seems to be an organization and Samsung seems to be contributing a lot to it. I am yet to see the relation between the OS and the organization.

Watched another video about David Fincher’s attention to detail.

Watched this TEDx talk about good posture called “Why sitting down destroys you“.

Working on the schedule.

TO CHECK:

1. Got to check Callaghan Innovation and what they do.
2. The Power of Design Thinking.
3. Art is a Problem by Guernica.
4. Odd Exercises in a 15 minute routine. Seemed interesting.
5. The Criterion Collection.
6. 10 of the Best Political Comedy Movies of all time.
7. John Locke’s theory of Representative Realism. I think this would lead to an interesting take on immersion. I have to look into the Tabula Rasa as well.
8. Google’s VR Blog.