2011-12-14

Yesterday, I run a set of pilots about monitor angle, how to hold the electronic pencil and the time. I gave them two to three minutes as training session, and then asked them to do the pressure control. I collected 15 groups of the data and some valuable feedback. However, the problem for me is I am not sure what to do with those data. Should I analyse them in details? Or  mainly consider the subjective feeling and feedback? What is more, they think with the larger angle (inclining from horizontal), the task is harder. But for me, I have to decide whether to make it harder or easier.

2011-12-13

In the last few days, I focused on the preparation of presentation in the group meeting. Actually, during the preparation, I concluded some current unsolved problems which has to be checked in the pilot. I found that I also have to do some more researches about whether the kinesthetic processing is under the central executive. Yesterday, I finished the implementation of tone counting task and add a confirm button on the interface.

Today, I'll do the pilot of tablet angle, pen angle and duration.

2011-12-06

Today, I learned some details of java.util.logging, understanding it's main components and basic usages. I also discussed my designing with Ronnie and Natalie to clarify some questions, especially whether my experiments can increase the cognitive load to the expected levels. They gave some suggestions about what data to collect in the pilot study.

I also edited a draft of my presentation next week and refactored the experiment code. I think tomorrow I should finish the draft slide and understand the working principle of "listener".

2011-12-05

Today, I attended the regular Monday group meeting in the morning. I think what Dan talked about in his presentation made me rethink about the validity of my experiments, particularly the difficult levels. In my experiments, the primary task remains on the same level, and the reason is that it may be very hard if I shrink the range further down -- but still needs to be proved. Meanwhile, the secondary task has three levels. In the pilot study, I should focus on analyzing the data and to find evidence that participants indeed feel Level 3 is harder than Level 2.

I also organized the steps of each tasks and wrote a detailed description of my experiments containing screenshots of UI and timeline of the experiment. It is in CVS.

2011-11-30

Today, I finished implementing the first version of my primary and secondary tasks.

There are still some points to modify, especially the logging part. The original way in my program to write to a file has two main disadvantages. Firstly, it is hard to separate different participants' data, which increases difficulties in data analysis. Then, open and close files too many times waste time and decreases the speed.

Another important point to think about is how to give feedback of pen pressure to the participants.