Interactive table for DECO 7350
For the full documentation of the project process (for the assessment due on 30 October), please refer to the wiki for this repository available here:
https://github.com/deco3500/Local_News/wiki/1.1-Wiki-Home
This is a link to our build:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B2SHj-wTq9DRYWNSdnFzU1hiSVU?usp=sharing
It contains:
play.exe play_Data UnityBuild
play.exe and play_Data are the compiled build.
UnityBuild can be loaded into Unity to see the uncompiled build.
WARNING: These require an internet connection to function and the only current way to quit play.exe is to terminate the application with a keyboard command like alt+f4. Also to get multitouch to work you must be running it on a device with multitouch capabilities.
Trevor Hunter 33052669 Jonathan Hodge 43169128 Shiva Balachandran 44088516 Awais Hameed Khan 44233156
“Local Knowledge” an interactive table that allows you to search and share with your friends news from a journalistic perspective and that of the local person. Like a coffee book this concept can help you explore places of interest or be more specific in your search for travel details.
The role of the journalist is to communicate information to an audience that they can expect from the society and what the society can expect from them. (Kovach & Rosensteil, 2007) Journalist are put in a powerful position of responsibility where they deliver messages to the less powerful. Journalism however tends to present stories based on pitting sides of good and evil or an avenue of presenting sales pitches. Without the ability of self-governing and the ability to discern what is real builds sensationalism.
Sensationalism in news journalism has been a major topic in recent times and how this type of reporting can create hysteria and disharmony amongst people. (Elliott, 2015) presents a perfect example in recent times of how American journalism’s coverage of the outbreak of Ebola virus in Dallas did this. The printed news typically focused on a few victims and graphic pictorials illustrating the worst infected victims in West Africa.
“The lack of identification of those ill, the lack of geographical or resource content, and the dimly lit images served up the subjects created as mere metaphors for the horror of the disease.” (Elliot, 2015)
The sensationalism of the news stories had many questions about why the government wasn’t opening up stores of vaccine to prevent the threat of the Ebola strain and what was going to be done. These sensational and incomplete stories built hysteria that left many people asking questions.
This story highlights how news can take one story such as “a single infected American” and make it headline news but fail to mention the worldwide lack of vaccine and not see it as important.
During this period there were over 25 million tweets containing the word Ebola. Mowafa Househ (2015) survey concludes that the combination of the mainstream media and social media communicated a more relevant and real coverage of the situation.
The Local Knowledge table brings people together to discuss and share news, thoughts, feelings and opinions about the stories they are reading. These people could be sitting in a group, drinking coffee and discussing news feeds or they could be reading and sharing thoughts with someone across the world.
By searching on the globe of the entry screen a user is able to pinpoint a place of interest to find news from that specific region or city. Headlines and pictures present on one side of the table to show the mainstream media’s version of the news. When the chosen topic is dragged to the centre of the table all twitter feeds, relating to that news article, appear in the other half of the table so the users can get two perspectives of the news story. Comparing the mainstream news with those the increasing importance of the social media he user is able to make an informed judgement of the situation.
Research, in the past five years, has shown how social media has had a major impact on how people are getting news their news and how they act on this news.
The table presents to the audience two perspectives of the news for them to make governance over. News coverage tends to present major situations in a negative manner and often blown out of proportions while people undertaking actions seems to appear prominently on twitter (Olteanu, Castillo, Diakopoulos, & Aberer, 2015).
With the development of the web, we saw the base for semantic search engines and sharing of resources but as the twenty first century has progressed linked data is being used in ways that were never ever imagined – “across social media enterprises, media corporations and advertising” (Dowd, 2016). The complexities of modern journalism is heightened by the mode in which news is presented – smartphones, streaming media or unmanned aerial vehicles.
The use of touch screen technology has been used in news presentation to show sport and weather news with presenters showing tactical moves or weather movement. The innovative journalists and media producers now need to have practical knowledge of realising software to enable the true potential of the news – having a working understanding of the software to create interactive touch screens and 3D technologies.
Interactive tables are used in the classroom allowing students to move objects around the table to assist in their learning and in shopping centres to show information.
A similar table is the Mtouch produced by Merel technology. This is touted as an affordable multi touch web table. It has all the features of being able to share parts of the table and pass articles, web pages and digital books between people. However, to look at the news and twitter feeds it would mean opening two browsers and searching on each.
[Mtouch by Merel technologies] (https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/25/mtouch-an-affordable-multi-touch-web-table/)
![Mtouch table] (http://www.tabletpcreview.com/assets/6411.jpg)
When the table is not officially being used to undertake a specific search the home screen (of the globe) will be shown, slowly spinning. Like an arcade game it will provide the people using the table a constant source of interest. As it moves through various countries pictures and headlines pop up almost willing the people at the table to explore one of the areas they may never have thought of previously. They can press on the area and zoom into the earth to see more of the sight where the news comes from. The table could be a very interesting way for children to explore - the world, countries, news ideas.
Table based interaction technologies have been very popular in technological innovations. This includes everything from the drift table (Gaver et al., 2004), which was designed as a coffee table which has a display window showing an aerial view of images. These images can be navigated through by placement of objects on it’s surface, whose weight distribution acts as an input for movement.
The modular Wacom Cintiq displays (Wacom, 2016) – has quintessentially replaced the modern drafts table for visual designers, architects and artists by both pen and touch display inputs. Similarly, Microsoft’s Surface project at AT&T allows for creation of physical interaction inputs on an interactive table top using artifacts, such as mobile phones, to share features, and control (Gohring, 2008).
Individual user recognition by systems have also evolved over time. Traditional pen and touch inputs are now being coupled with novel user identification metrics, such as shoe recognition (Richter, Holz, & Baudisch, 2012) and fingerprint identification used by Apple mobile devices. In projects such as Globemasters, the use of legacy technologies such as the age old tracking ball, originally used for cursor navigation on-screen, tinkering with scale and coupling visual projections (Harper, Brand, & Nelson, n.d.) have also lead to novel takes on the table top interface.
Users have become more comfortable with flat surface, touch-based interactions with growing popularity of smart phones and tablets. This has led to significant technological progression in terms of collaborative controls, allowing for multi-touch interactions to control interactive tabletops; making interactions more and more social.
Studies show that both direct-manipulation and physical input controllers (e.g. pens, joysticks) when used together on interactive tabletops give users a richer tactile experience (Fiebrink, Morris, & Morris, 2009) and assignment of specific areas of control and rotation can allow for greater participation of users (Caballero, Wen, Prieto, & Dillenbourg, 2014).
In general, table based interactions create very interesting social interactions and dynamics amongst users, and unlike other technologies have been rather successful in adoption by general users. There is significant room for further integrating this technology into daily lives of users.
At the initial phase, all team members will contribute to all aspects of the project. While these are the primary roles all members will experience and undertake responsibility in all the different components of the project.
| Person | Role | Expertise |
|---|---|---|
| Jonathan Hodge | Back end team leader | Currently undertaking a bachelor of IT |
| Shiva Balachandran | User experience / Front End UI | Project management, research, web design and graphic design, ideations |
| Awais Hameed Khan | User interface / Design | Bachelor in Business Administration. Marketing background |
| Trevor Hunter | Project manager / Designer / User experience | Professional Primary and Secondary Teacher, Experience as a professional sports coach, organizing and managing teams, public speaking. Document writing. |
As a team, we commit to:
- Use our best endeavors and effort at all times.
- Dedicate necessary time and effort as is required.
- Contribute to the project equally.
- Attend weekly meeting on time.
Decisions will be made collaboratively. Our weekly meeting will be prioritized for major decision making and changing.
- Decisions about the project will be made by consensus across the whole team (consensus means everyone agreeing to all parts of the decision).
- We will work towards consensus by working through pros and cons for each decision to be made and making an assessment of what is best for the project.
- Where we cannot achieve consensus, decisions will be put to a vote and if there is an even split then the person in charge of that key component will have the deciding vote.
- Once a decision has been made in accordance with these processes, all team members agree to accept, support and commit to that decision fully.
Our main method of communication within our team will be face-to-face meeting weekly.
- A private group community has been set-up on Slack for general communication when off campus
- Any issues that need to be dealt with quickly will be communicated either face to face or by Slack.
- A shared Google Drive folder has been set-up to work collaboratively on documents.
- Any back up communication will be via Facebook messenger.
- If all fails we have SMS and phone calls.
We will:
- Meet as a complete team every week during the workshop session [Wednesday 4pm – 6pm] and group workshop [Thursday, 12pm onwards]. Absenteeism subject only to illness or other unavoidable personal commitments.
- Ensure that attendance at these meetings takes priority over other commitments.
- Not be late for meetings unless unavoidable.
- Ensure that we prepare appropriately for each meeting.
- Ensure that we properly participate in all meetings.
- Schedule additional meetings if needed.
- We will allocate work by discussion out from weekly meeting.
- When allocating work we will clearly define:
..1. Who is expected to complete the work. ..2. When the work is to be completed by. ..3. The deliverable(s) and work standard that we expect to be delivered
To ensure that we work effectively as a team we:
- Will always support each other.
- Not limit our efforts to our specified roles but will help each other as much as we possibly can.
- Ask groupmates for help when we come across any difficulties.
- Advise the team if we are not able to meet any deadlines as soon and as early as possible.
- Openly share any resources that we find and ideas that we have.
- Be respectful of each other.
- Provide and receive feedback as constructive feedback.
- Try coming out with replaceable ideas or suggestions before we object other’s ideas.
If there are any disputes within the team relating to teamwork, we will:
- Admit that conflict is present and it needs to be resolved, by approaching the team members involved we will understand the problem from all perspectives.
- Reach for an agreement after understanding the problem as a team and move on if conflict is solved.
- If problem is still present, we will inform tutors and seek advice.
If a team member is not completing work allocated to them or their work is not being completed within the defined timeframe or to the agreed standard, we will use the following process:
- In the first instance, contact the team member to ask for an explanation as to why work has not been completed within the timeframe and ask when the work can be completed. Where work has not been completed to the agreed standard the team will identify how the work needs to be improved.
- A new timeframe for completion of the work will be agreed.
- If work is not completed by the extended timeframe, the team member will be contacted again seeking an explanation. If work has not been completed to the agreed standard, the issues with the work will be outlined.
- If possible, the team member will be given 24 hours to complete the work. If not possible, the work will be re-allocated to other team members for completion.
- If a team member does not complete work within the second timeframe or does not respond to any of these communications or where this process is being followed for the second or subsequent time, the team member will be contacted with a warning that if the team member does not respond within 24 hours, the issue will be referred to course staff.
- If there is no response within this 24 hour period, an email will be send to course staff to advise them of the problem and seeking assistance and requesting a grade adjustment or similar intervention. A copy of this email will be sent to all team members.
The development phases of the project and its deliverables are broken down as below:
![Development Process] (http://eastsvolleyball.club/image_host/process.png)
![Deliverable Phases] (http://eastsvolleyball.club/image_host/table1.png)
Access workshop and hardware - an interactive screen.
Programs:
..*Unity ..*JavaScript ..*PHP ..*React
Access to news API’s and Twitter tags / google API
Pictorial resources – front end
#collaboration #social networks #tangible computing #CSCW #awareness #journalistic values #citizen journalism
Caballero, D., Wen, Y., Prieto, L. P., & Dillenbourg, P. (2014). Single locus of control in a tangible paper-based tabletop application: an exploratory study. In Proceedings of the Ninth ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (pp. 351–356). ACM. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2669545
Elliott, D. (2015). Journalism Ethics. In H. ten Have (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics (pp. 1–8). Springer International Publishing. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_259-1
Fiebrink, R., Morris, D., & Morris, M. R. (2009). Dynamic mapping of physical controls for tabletop groupware. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 471–480). ACM. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1518778
Gaver, W. W., Bowers, J., Boucher, A., Gellerson, H., Pennington, S., Schmidt, A., … Walker, B. (2004). The Drift Table: Designing for Ludic Engagement. In CHI ’04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 885–900). New York, NY, USA: ACM. http://doi.org/10.1145/985921.985947
Gohring, E. M. and N. (2008, April 2). Microsoft coffee-table PCs “surface” at AT&T stores. Retrieved September 4, 2016, from http://www.computerworld.com/article/2536331/computer-hardware/microsoft-coffee-table-pcs--surface--at-at-t-stores.html
Harper, D., Brand, M., & Nelson, T. (n.d.). Globemasters. Retrieved September 4, 2016, from https://vimeo.com/23983508
Kovack,B. & Rosenstiel,T. (2007) The Elements of journalism. Retrieved September 4, 2016, from http://www.academia.edu/5629536/
Richter, S., Holz, C., & Baudisch, P. (2012). Bootstrapper: Recognizing Tabletop Users by Their Shoes. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1249–1252). New York, NY, USA: ACM. http://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208577
Olteanu, A., Castillo, C., Diakopoulos, N., & Aberer, K. (2015). Comparing events coverage in online news and social media: The case of climate change. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2015 (pp. 288–297). Retrieved from http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/download/10583/10512/
Wacom. (2016). Cintiq 27QHD touch | Wacom. Retrieved September 4, 2016, from http://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays/cintiq-27-qhd-touch
Unity Build Folder - Contains last Built Unity Prototype for Windows machines ServerSide Folder - Contains everything needed for grabbing social media data and perhaps storing it