Contact Info

Email: ankita_sharma1@brown.edu

Skills & Interests

• Have taken CS32/CS33

• Experience with downloading and installing software on linux/windows

• Experience with software testing, evaluation, and documentation

• Have dabbled with ARKit

• Interested in the real life uses of VR and its role in making certain experiences more accessible

Activity Log

• 1/26, 12 - 2 PM: attended Google Tech Talk on WebAR/Three.ar.js + chatted with Marley afterwards

• 1/27,  9-10 AM: set up  HTC Vive (virtual reality headset) for Hack@Brown

• 1/27, 12 PM - 7 PM: helped people play with the HTC Vive during Hack@Brown - I helped lead this activity with the Hack@Brown hardware team

• 1/27, 7-8 PM: played with tilt brush on HTC Vive

• 1/28, 10-10:30 AM: created journal

• 1/29, 6-7 PM: read about how Lighthouse Tracking Technology works (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• 1/29, 7-9 PM: read about some thought provoking applications of VR (1, 2, 3)

• 1/31, 12-1 PM: attended minVR meeting

• 1/31, 9-10 PM: added to Resources page (workshops, communities)

• 1/31, 10-12 PM: cloned baby scene graph library and minVR repositories and browsed through source code 

• 2/1, 11-12 PM: read about Unity, tried installing the software but since it required more space than I had available, the installation was unsuccessful, contributed to document on Unity

• 2/4, 7-9 PM: read about how augmented reality technology will be used in journalism (1, 2, 3, 4)

• 2/4, 8-10 PM: added more to Unity document and updated resources on site

• 2/7, 12-1 PM:  learned about OpenGL

• 2/8, 7-10 AM: Read about Google WebVR, tried out tutorial, struggled with uploading my own images/videos

  • Helpful resources (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) --> planning to create a tutorial since I don't think the documentation was that great, left out a lot of important details for someone who would be new to web development

  • https://github.com/ankitasharma1/webvr/blob/master/index.html

  • Would like to come up with specific instructions on how to generate videos and images to display using Google's webvr API and troubleshooting strategies for error messages like this:

• 2/8, 8-9 AM: Updated journal with findings from Google WebVR

• 2/11, 9-11 PM: Worked on journal

• Progress Report

  • Course Deliverable: Gather data to understand where to improve in terms of getting people interested and excited about VR and an assessment of  currently available VR software in terms of how to use/develop/understand. 

  • Activities: Attended multiple workshops over the past week, set up the HTC vive for Hack@Brown and was able to observe the experiences of first time users, updated and added pages for workshops and communities under resources, added to/put findings on Unity on the webpage, understood data gathered from Visual Computing talk - their findings suggested that using VR was more intuitive for robot grasping teleoperation than desktop, played around with Google WebVR

  • Relationship of Activity to Deliverable: Would be interesting to collect metrics on the attendees of the YURT lunch sessions, would like to put together a workshop on WebVr and to collect metrics on attendees -- several of the activities I have done would be interesting to extend to a larger audience to determine its usability and perhaps beginner friendliness (i.e. setting up HTC vive, playing a game, etc.). 

  • Total Hours: 31

  • My deliverable will go under 'Findings' in the Manuscript. Hoping to generate a list of metrics that we'd like to gather, come up with an initial survey, different strategies to gather data in an unbiased manner, and to understand who would comprise our representative targeted audience

    • • 2/15 - Come up with a list of metrics, speak with Eric Rosen and David Whitney on how they decided on their metrics for their individual studies - 3 hours <added under Findings>

      • 2/22 - Outline the kind of audience we would like to gather data from, start putting together details for a potential workshop/logistics, think about how we would like to represent the data we gather, start speaking to people in class on potential available tutorials that students have generated, begin advertising workshop? - 3 hours

        • • Blender, A-Frame (Brett)

          • Google WebVR - (Ruiqi)

          • Look through journals of other students

          • Perhaps think about holding a VR screening

      • 2/27 - Put together resources for workshop, decide layout of workshop, perhaps combination of tutorials that students have generated for various VR software for the workshop and have each student fill out a survey on their experience after the workshop - 3 hours

      • 3/1 - Compile gathered data in a meaningful format - 3 hours

      • 3/6 - Analyze data and make conclusions based on user feedback - 3 hours

• 2/12, 1-2 PM: Attended talk on Visual Computing

• 2/14, 12-1 PM: Attended minVR meeting

• 2/14, 5:30 - 7:30 PM: Worked with Linda on coming up with a comprehensive list of metrics and spoke with David Whitney on the user study he conducted

• 2/18, 4-8 PM: Tried doing a dual boot on my Windows machine since Tom had mentioned that installing minVR is easier on Linux and installing on a VM would not be ideal

• 2/20, 10-1 PM: Tried following the installation steps for minVR on Windows, installed Visual Studio and cmake but still running into issues, will speak with Tom tomorrow -- need help configuring some environmental variables and building the demo

• 2/20, 6-8 PM: Updated Findings with workshop logistics and TODO's, narrowed down the activities we had in mind to target a 2 hour workshop

• 2/25, 5-7 PM: Met with Linda to discuss how to split up tasks, re-evaluated timeline and TODO list

• 2/25, 9 PM - 1 AM:  Starting accomplishing tasks -- looking at NASA TLX + SUS for hardware evaluation, created volunteer onboarding doc + signup sheet, confirmation email for attendees, created event description to put on facebook, reached out to Mosaic (meeting with them tomorrow) to discuss logistics/potential collaboration, put together a shared google drive folder with Linda to reorganize all of our actionable items

• 2/26, 5 - 9 PM: Met with Jonathon from Mosaic, discussed more logistics/reserved rooms with Linda, did a dry run of our VR "hardware" activity with Zach

• 2/28, 12 - 1: 30 PM: Attended minVR meeting

• 3/2, 8 - 11 PM : Emails/finalizing logistics, spread out the word for getting volunteers

• 3/4, 10 - 1 PM: Met with Linda do go over day-of logistics

• 3/5, 8 - 8:30 AM: Today@Brown submission for workshop

• 3/5, 5 - 6 PM: Updated 'Findings' and started drafting progress report

• 3/6, 8 - 9 AM: Finalized updated progress report

• Progress Report

  • Deliverable: (1) Conduct a user study to assess currently available VR software and hardware in terms how they are used,developed, and understood. (2) Document findings from user study (3) Formulate conclusions on currently available VR software and hardware based on findings from user study

  • Location in Manuscript/Wiki: Linda and I have put everything under Findings. We have documented our work flow very well on that page and have also created a google drive folder with all of our surveys, logistics for the user study, activity documentation for both participants and volunteers. This folder is linked to under Findings. Everything in this folder will be useful for the Manuscript, but for organizational purposes we felt it was easier to put things in a folder.

  • Activity: 

    • Create a section in the manuscript for our work 

    • Scheduling times to meet with Linda to work on the planning and execution of the user study (D 1)

    • Brainstorming different metrics and speaking with David Whitney about his user study (D 1, 2, 3)

      • David recently conducted a user study for his research. It was helpful to understand how he recruited participants, formulated his questions, and designed his study

    • The drafting of the 'User Study Details' document which can be found under 'Findings' (D 1, 2)

    • Working with Mosaic on a collaboration for the user study (D 1)

    • Finalizing activities in the User Study Details document (D 1, 2)

    • Booking rooms for all 6 activities (D 1)

    • Deciding on a date and time for the workshop (D 1)

    • Creating a Facebook event description/cover image and reaching out to Today@Brown for advertising purposes (D 1)

    • Documenting all 6 activities for both participants and volunteers (D 1, 3)

      • This documentation has been linked to in the in-class google sheet of experimental data

    • Creating a volunteer sign up form, job description for each activity, and outlining our expectations for volunteers (D 1)

      • Sent to our class and Mosaic

    • Draft a confirmation email for participants that will be sent once we have all 30 participants signed up (D 1)

    • Working with Professor Tellex and meeting with David Whitney to borrow their HTC Vive for the user study (we want to have 2 for the user study) (D 1)

    • Creating a survey with the data we wanted to collect for each activity for both the participant and the volunteer/observer (D 1, 2, 3)

      • We need to make sure we ask the right questions in order to visualize and analyze our data well

    • Working with Media Services to help with the logistics of the event - obtaining spare Macs, iPhones, etc.   (D 1)

    • Testing out/doing each activity (D 1, 2)

      • Met with Zach to learn how to set up and document "how to use the HTC Vive"

      • Tried out the NY Times VR App

      • Did tutorial on A-Frame and Unity

    • Created a schedule for participants and instructions for them to fill out each survey (D 1)

    • Created a 'cheat sheet' for volunteers that can serve to help them during the workshop (D 1)

      • Responsible for documenting the Hardware and Media Lab Experiment activities

    • Met with Linda several times to hash out logistics! (D 1, 2, 3)

      • We revised all of our surveys, made sure all permissions for surveys for both participants and observers was correct, and started to brainstorm how we would like our data that we find to be represented -- some initial brainstorming has been done under 'Findings' under 'Data Representation'

    • <The Google Drive folder linked to above also includes a record of what we have been working on over the past few weeks>

    • // Unrelated to the Deliverable // - I have been attending the weekly minVR meetings and am working with Martin to document the on boarding/installation process on Windows machines, I have also attended a few VR talks over the past weeks (whichever were brought up on Slack or email)

  • Relationship of Each Activity to Deliverable:

    • All of the activities listed above serve as an effort to make our user study run smoothly and successfully. We are really excited to share the data we obtain with the class and in the paper! In conclusion, these activities mostly align with Deliverable 1 which will consequently help with both Deliverable 2 and 3.

  • (total) 72 hours

< Activities explicitly and clearly related to deliverables-5,  Deliverables described and attributed in wiki (items in in-class google sheet are also in the wiki- 4, total time is appropriate - 5>

• 3/7, 9 -10 AM: Exchanged emails with RIVR lady, asked to have workshop but on their list of events to sent out to the community

• 3/7, 12 - 1 PM: Met with David Whitney regarding setting up the HTC Vive

• 3/7, 5- 6 PM: Various logistical things, ordering food for the event, sending out confirmation emails, following up with Mosaic on the Facebook event

• 3/8, 12 - 1 PM: Met with media services to obtain Google Cardboards, laptops, headphones, and iPhones

• 3/11, 8 - 10 PM: Met with Linda on workshop logistics, getting ready for meeting with our volunteers, more outreach/"cold" emailing

• 3/12, 8 - 9 AM: Going over my specific activities, checking all links, making media lab experiment a little bit shorter

• 3/12 6 - 6:30 PM: meeting with our volunteers!

• 3/12 9 -9:30 PM: dry run of media lab experiment, navigating through NY Times VR app

• 3/14 3 - 4 PM: HTC Vive logistics, planning with Josh and Zach

• Official Plan

• 3/15 - Conduct User Study from 5 - 7 PM

• 3/20 - 3/22 - 4/3 Work on assembling data from User Study, speak with RIVR folks on our findings and possibility of making this our event a community event

• 4/5- 4/10 - Share data with class and formulate written conclusions to be added to the paper, add data to webpage

• 4/12 - Start planning another iteration of our workshop targeting a different audience or with different material

• 4/17 - Work with rest of class on new material they would like to gather data for

• 4/19 - 4/24 - Finalize logistics for event

• 4/26 - Conduct second iteration of the User Study

• Reading Period - Synthesize data from second user study, share with class, and add to paper!

• 3/15 - 11:40 AM - 12:30 PM - Obtained headphones for VR User Study from Media Services

• 3/15 - 4 - 8 PM - Workshop (preparation + cleaning up)

• 3/17 - 11 - 11:30 AM - Confirming time to meet with Siu-Li from RIVR

• 3/23 - 12 - 1 PM - Meeting with Siu-Li and Linda

• 4/1 - 7 - 1 AM - Consolidating data from VR User Study, updating site (findings under manuscript), keeping correspondence via email with Siu-Li

• 4/2 - 9:30 - 11 AM - Finished consolidating data from Activities 1 - 6 with Linda and updating site

• 4/2 - 10:00 - 12 AM - Installing Unity, had to clear a lot of memory to make space for it, figuring out how to correctly sync my computer with Google Drive also took a bit of time

• 4/8 - 7:30 - 9:30 PM - Worked with Linda on visualization of what we've done to present to class on Thursday (4/12) + some more correspondence with Siu-Li

• 4/19 - 8 - 10:30 AM - Completing the Vuforia and A-Frame tutorials

• 4/22 - 5:30 - 8 PM - Worked with Linda on presentation/ Medium article - dividing tasks

• 4/23 - 7 PM - 1 AM - Working on medium article and gathering results

• 4/25 - 6 PM - 1 AM - Medium article

• 4/26 - 1 PM - 5:00 PM - Medium article

• 4/27 - 6:00 - 12 AM - Medium article/publishing article

• 4/30 - 7 PM - 1 AM - Putting together presentation

• 5/2 - 12 PM - 1 PM - attended last minVR meeting </3

• 5/5 - 12 PM - 5 PM - updated Findings

• 5/12 - 10 - 3 PM - meeting with Siu-Li/poster mockup/update manuscript