Emilia Ruzicka

02/11/2020: Initial Meeting

Purpose: To discern what kind of data science project would be useful for me to complete to support the class both now and in the future.

Outcome: The current project will be twofold. The primary objective is to make the cumulative wiki more accessible. The secondary objective is to act as a design consultant for current students as they complete their projects.

Notes: A few ideas for projects were floated concerning making tools for current and future studernts to use in order to make the data preparation process easier for them so they could get to making VR technilogy more quickly; however, after discussing my technical skills, we decided that projects focused on communication and design of VR innovations would better suit me. Since the goal of the class is to make a "toolkit for scientists", enhancing the accessiblility and continuity of the wiki will greatly advance the class' purpose. Furthermore, by helping students integrate design principles into their technologies, those tools will hopefully be more intuitive for others to use.

We set a weekly meeting time of Wednesdays at 2:40pm and decided that any changes to that schedule could be communicated via Google Calendar, email, and/or Slack. All communications with students and other TAs will also be primarily conducted through Slack unless otherwise necessary. At the weekly meetings, I will update David on the work I've done for the week and also record important notes and events here.

Next: For the next week, I will be familiarizing myself with the wiki, the knowledge stored there, and how that information is structured. I will come to the meeting with some ideas for where I think the wiki could be improved and, time permitting, have a general plan for the semester.

02/20/2020: Weekly Meeting

Purpose: To update David on my investigation of the wiki and discuss how to proceed with the project.

Outcome: Here are updates by section:

Overall Notes on the wiki: if there is a very technical distinction that must be made, just integrate it into the wiki instead of making a separate vocabulary document.

Section 1 Notes: Make the labels more specific instead of combining resources.

Sections 2-6 Notes: The main tools are Unity, Unreal, OpenSpace, Paraview, and Slicer. Instead of retroactively cleaning up these pages, make a flexible template for students to use in the future to format their additions to the wiki.

Section 7 Notes: Larger chunks are preferable, but let's think about a template for the future.

Notes: Work on investigating the wiki this week was somewhat stunted by mandatory CS TA training that must be completed by tonight at midnight. The diversity and inclusion training was an unforseen circumstance, but is necessary to the success of the project.

Overall Notes on the wiki: I really like the setup in general! I wonder if for each of the eight sections, we could have a section vocabulary or section background page that defines some key terms and makes distinctions between items that may not seem obvious to a layperson, such as the difference between VR and AR, GPU and CPU, etc.

Section 1 Notes: For 1.3: What is VR for? the section is very disjoint. When you click on 1.3, it gives you a list of where VR is used and when you click on them there are articles and links to follow. Some of those correspond to subsections (1.3.1, etc.), but those subsections lead to different pages. Can we consolidate this?

Sections 2-6 Notes: All of this information is awesome, but each of the subsections within these larger topics takes a different form. Can we work to standardize these? This would allow users to learn how/where to look for certain information about each subsection, making the site more accessible.

Section 7 Notes: Can we split this large section into subsections? It's basically done within the page, but it would be easier for users if they could see the available datatypes on the home page.

Section 8 Notes: For VR@Brown, I'd love to remake those pie charts so that they aren't blurry. I also noticed there is a section for 2018 reserch. Is there information missing for 2019?

Notes on consulting: I can hold open hours, but would it be helpful for me to do workshops/presentations on design and accessibility principals?

Next: Work on the wiki improvements in "outcome" section. Also, introduce myself via Slack and see what kinds of workshops students might be interested in attending.

02/26/2020: Weekly Meeting

Purpose: To update David on my investigation of the wiki and discuss how to proceed with the project.

Outcome: Proceed with suggestions to the templates that already exist on the website for software, but don't spend any time worrying about the hardware components.

Don't split Section 7, as it's a work in progress. Consider taking it off the main page and adding a short summary at the top to explain the nature of the page.

Edit content directly where vocabulary/labels for pages are unclear.

Update the url for Samsung hardware.

Notes: I put a note in the Slack earlier today about workshops/one-on-one hours. Will keep you updated as that progresses.

For Sections 2-6, here are some template components:

Software: description, metrics, hello world (or equivalent) tutorial, recommended systems, installation instructions, summary, other notes/issues/etc.

Hardware: description, software requirements, price, where to obtain, issues, other notes/issues/etc.

For Section 7, we could split it into the predefined sections, but there are 14 of them. Are there other practical distinctions to make?

Next: Work on the edits in the "outcome" section above. Also work towards learning some Paraview if possible.

03/11/2020: Weekly Meeting

Purpose: To update David on my edits of the wiki and discuss how to proceed with the project.

Outcome:

Notes:

Next: