Final Project...

So these are my final screens for the project. I added color because in black and white this interface is much harder to explain and the elements are impossible to identify. This application is a VST plugin that could be used within programs like Cubase or Nuendo or as a standalone instrument. So above is the default screen when the program opens. The front panel is where you access everything on the interface. The window with the wave form provides feedback to the user about how their adjustments of each knob on the envelope controls effects the way the sample is played back. The arrow button in the top left toggles between full view, where all the devices are viewable and default view. By clicking the effects tab you go to this screen. The effects rack would sort of "slide" down.

Each effect has an on and off switch that activates or deactivates the effect. Also when the user is working on any particular device their will be a sort of glow around it so the user knows which device they are working on. Pressing the keyboard button on the front panel brings the user to the next screen.

The keys on the keyboard function like buttons. Their real purspose is to give feedback when a user is using a remote midi controler. Clicking on the pattern sequencer tab opens the pattern sequencer. This screen assumes the keyboard is not open.

So this part may be a little confusing if you don't know how a pattern sequencer works. The rows on the grid (on the blue part of the screen) correspond to the notes on the keyboard.C C# D D# etc. The columns on the grid represent a step in the sequence. You set how many steps in the little box that says "Steps"Above the grid (still on the blue screen) are grey square with orange outlines.There are 8 of them because the steps box is set to 8. Right now it only goes to 16 but 32 would be preferable. As the user moves the number of steps up or down the boxes will either appear or disappear. The grey boxes on the grid indicate which notes will play on a given step. So on the first step an F major chord will play (F A C). Below the grid (still on the blue screen) are grey columns within the columns. These control the volume of the notes on a step. The user just clicks on them and can adjust the volume. There is also an octave select which sets what octave you are placing the notes in. Bank and Pattern select button allow you to set up to 32 patterns. There is a tempo set which determines the speed of the pattern and a resolution set which determines the type of notes that will be played.

Back to the front panel: Clicking the info button displays info about all of the devices.

Clicking on the Click here for parameters button opens a new window that gives and explaination about all of the knobs for a givin device.

This is the bulk of what I was going to present. Below are show screens for the file menu as well as a menu to set the audio routing for the device.

Technology helping disabled youth find their voice

According to Janice Light, a professor of communication sciences and disorders at Penn State, more than 2 million Americans are unable to use speech to communicate. Obviously a significant portion of these Americans are children. New laptops that combine features from childrens toys as well as new technologies are helping children learn to communcate and learn at an accelerated rate. This seems to be a realm where Human Computer Interaction techniques can really pay off. Though these new technologies are making strides, some feel that they have not yet reached their potential due to the fact that it is adults who are creating them.
Proffesor Light explains:
"The design of many of these systems is really based on how adults think, and the machines are complicated and children take years learning how to use them. As a result, the children miss several years of a crucial learning period and fall further behind normal children. Due to their impoverished learning environment, they're really locked in, in a way." A key factor Light acknowledges in designing for special needs children is fun. Light notes, "The kids talk about that as they build their inventions. They say things like 'it has to have smile power', they like a lot of bright colors, and want to laugh, and make burping sounds." Isn't that really what we all want? The goal is to take a child's experiences and represent it interactively through digital photos of the child, the family, or storybook cartoons. Much like the way we design website for adults, the aim is to have technologies that we can set in front of the children and they can immediate understand how to use it. Imagine that.

Study: Most Websites failing the disabled.

According to a recent study, most of the leading websites around the world are failing to provide the most basic accessibility standards for people with disabilities. This is of particular interest to me because while I was pursue my undergrad in psychology I had an emphasis on disability studies and really came to realize how little attention is paid to making anything accessible.

According to the study ninety seven percent of websites did not provide even minimum levels of accessibility. Alex Metcalfe, head of client services at Nomensa said, "This is a global failure and we are very disappointed with the results." The study focus on websites in five key sectors - travel, retail, banking, government and media. Obviously these are pretty much the most significant uses for the internet.

The British Prime Minster's sites alongside the Spanish government site and the German Chancellor's site were the only three to conform to the most basic standards. So what are these minimum standards? In order to reach the minimum standards - tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - websites needed to provide adequate text descriptions for graphical content so that visually impaired people could 'read' pictures. 93% of the websites failed to meet those guidelines.
A further 73% failed to make the grade because of their reliance on JavaScript for some of the website's functionality. JavaScript does not work with some screen readers used by those with impaired vision.
Experts in the website accesibility say that sharing websites that are good examples can go a long way in encouraging others to do the same.

The World Health Organisation estimates that there are around 600 million disabled people worldwide, which represents about 10% of the world's population. Of these, around 80% are believed to live in developing countries.

In the spirit of sharing here is a website for a great artist who happens to be blind, Raul Midon.
http://raulmidon.com/index2.php

A 'Creepy' Robot and the Uncanny Valley...

According to an article I recently read, researchers in Japan have created a"Child-Robot with Biomimetic Body," or CB2. The robot -- which weights 73 pounds and stands 4 feet tall -- has 56 actuators that control its motion and 197 sensors that simulate touch. CB2 is designed to assist in child development studies."
The point of the robot is to mimic a real child between the age of 1 and 3 years old. It's able to crawl, change facial expressions, and make sounds using an artificial vocal chord. Based off the article it seems that this robot can be quite useful.
"In some cases they are programmed to undertake some action, while researchers study the reactions of real children watching; in others, the robot may be put in some situation, and the real children are asked what they think the robot should do."
Success aside, there is another issue related to the story. A lot of the people who have witnessed the CB2, adults included, have said that it is extremely 'creepy.' This can be attribute to what is apparently called the "uncanny valley."
"What this robot represents, and why a lot of people get creeped out by it, is the uncanny valley, which is a term we use to describe robots or other animatronic devices that look really realistic but are off just a little bit." Apparently the robot is a long way of from robots in the movies, such AI. The problem that I see here is that if children are creeped out by it, how can it be used to accurate gather data that can categorized as normal. Clearly this would effect the way the child interacts with the robot.

Vocal User Interfaces.

I recently read an article that discuss the use of a vocal user interface. Instantly I couldn't help thinking of the terrible voice to type applications that came out years ago. It seems like voice recognition just sort of faded into oblivion. Well, at least on personal computers. Anyways, the article was mainly about interaction issues for vocal user interfaces.
These are some of the necessary functions highlighted in the article:

A vocal user interface should be able to:
capture speech as text.
maintain a list of VoiceListeners by adding new ones and removing old ones.
Be able to notify VoiceListeners fo a Voice Event directed at the VUI
Support being told to focus on speech capture by any one of the VoiceListeners.

A Voice Listener should be able to:
hear a Voice Event
Act accordingly to a Voice event

A Voice Event should:
Encapsulate voice speech
Identify the source

Voice technology seems that it would be quite beneficial in web applications, the problem is in a case where the VoiceListener mishandles the VoiceEvent. This could potentially be disastrous. Hopefully though, they continue to move forward and improve the technology so this is not a concern

Are we growing or is technology shrinking...

It's impossible not to notice that everything around us is getting smaller... our phones, our cameras, our computers and if your on top of the newest technologies, your wallet. But where do we draw the line? I just got done reading an article about Sony's new paper thin video screen and I can't help but wonder what the next step will be or if it will even be necessary. I will say up until now I've fully embraced the miniturization of my various devices but at what point will being small hinder the users experience. I can't really see phones getting much smaller. It seems now that the focus in phone designs isn't size related but content/feature related. The iPhone for examle, didn't get smaller. It's just more packed with features than anything we've seen. I'd imagine that this is the approach phone manufactors will take on their new designs. I suppose whether or not the size of a device is appropriate is a case by case issue though. Sometimes I guess I'm just amused the thought that everything we own will someday be bite size.

synthmaker

So this is my new favorite program!! I stumbled across this while searching for some help in designing VST Plug-ins and since then I've been using this to design my school project. Basically, it's an soft-synth development environment, similar to visual basic or flex but completely audio based. It makes designing VST plug-ins MUCH less painful because you don't have to write the code. However, creating complex instruments is still somewhat tricky as you need to know a good bit about signal processing. Below is an example of a basic set up. Because Synthmaker has a highly efficient sound engine, it is able to process one signal at a time which makes for quality audio.

So how does this equate to a vst plugin?? Above is the inner workings and paths of the your plugin. This is like the second level view of the developer mode windows. Below is how all these pieces fit together.

The coolest thing about synthmaker is that you can go even deeper into different components of your plugin, giving you complete control of every aspect of your plugin.

Synthmaker also allows you to write short bits of DSP code to create your own algorithms. Once your finished with all the signal processing etc you can begin to work on the visual aspect of your plugin. SynthMaker has tools that allow you to spruce up your plugin and give it a realistic feel. Here is an exampe of what a final project would look like. You can also see that SynthMaker allows you to turn your project into a fully functional, ready to use VST plugin that can be used with most other audio applications. I highly recommend checking this out if you have any interest in designing your own audio software!

http://www.synthmaker.co.uk/about.html