Month: September 2016

Augmented & Virtual Reality

Announcements

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a few minutes to review some of your design notebooks.

Augmented & Virtual Reality

Augmented Reality

What is Augmented Reality?

Reality ———-> AR ———-> Virtual Reality

Triggers

  • Feature Recognition – markers, QR codes, images, colors, etc.
  • Positioning Data – location, orientation
  • What kinds of devices have cameras, GPS & accelerometers?

Augmented Reality & the Web

WC3 Augmented Reality Group

Why use it in Museums?

  • In exhibition space – provide additional levels of interpretation
  • Outside the exhibition space – extend exhibition reach and provide additional levels of interpretation for digital/print exhibit media

Some AR Toolkit Options

Holographic Systems

Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality Filmmaking

Exercise (time permitting)

  • Break up into teams of 3 or 4
  • Head over to the Aurasma website and signup
  • Using Aurasma Studio, create a a new Aura
  • The follow the instructions to create a demo AR app
  • Use photos or images from the Sarnoff Collection to create your demos

Assignment

Natural User Interfaces

  • Read the 2012 NMC Horizon Report pp. 31-35
  • Create a new page in your Design Notebook with the heading “Natural User Interfaces”
  • Take a look at some of the examples of natural user interfaces currently used in museums on pp. 33 & 34 of the Horizon Report and write a paragraph about your favorite example.
  • Can you find any other examples of the “Natural User Interfaces” being used “in the wild”?  Jot down a brief description & a link to what you find in your Design Notebook.

NJSM Archaeology/Ethnography Collections

Submitting Your Work

This week’s homework assignment is due next week before class. When you’ve completed them, post a comment on this page (Augmented Reality), including a link to your Design Notebook.

Internet of Things

Announcements

Open Content Review

APIs

Most web applications are built in a three-tiered architecture:

  • presentation layer ( html, css, javascript, etc )
  • application logic (php, ruby, python, javascript, etc)
  • database (dbms, file, spreadsheet, etc)

APIs are basically three-tiered web applications without the presentation layer. You access the data using a URL over HTTP, like a web page, but all you get back is data.

Why is this important? Because you can create different & separate presentation layers for different devices and situations. It also allows you to mashup data from different sources and wrap it in entirely new interfaces.

example:

Open Applications

Timeline JS3

One of the great things about Timeline.js is that it’s both a content visualization app (application + presentation layer) and a content database (data layer). As such it gives us a complete content management solution that relatively non-technical people can use to update the presentation layer without having to know how to code.

Exercise

  • Break up into teams of 3 or so – one to edit the Google spreadsheet, one to organize the timeline info and find additional content, and one to create the web page
  • Take a look at this History of the New Jersey State Museum one-sheet from the NJSM
  • Go to Timeline JS3 and click on the green “Make a Timeline” button
  • As a team, work through the document and create a timeline of the history of the New Jersey State Museum – include images, videos or maps in your timeline record entries
  • Here’s a Github Gist starter web page if you need it for your Timeline

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a few minutes to catch up on some of your Design Notebooks

Internet of Things

According to Wikipedia:

“The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to uniquely identifiable objects and their virtual representations in an internet-like structure.”

The idea is that objects can be directly connected to the internet, transmitting or receiving data, or be tagged in such a way to have digital representations of the objects be accessible over the internet. And, increasingly, much of that IoT traffic is M2M.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVlT4sX6uVs

History – http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-history

Roadmap – http://robertoigarza.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/rep-six-technologies-with-potential-impacts-on-us-anexothe-internet-of-things-nic-2008.pdf

More info on IoT – http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-resources/

How do we connect everyday objects to the internet?

examples:

The Internet of Things is about sensors, accuators, and networks

The Internet is the global network of networks

examples:

Exercise

  • Divide into groups of 3 or so representing four tracks at IMM (e.g. music, games/programming, video/animation, and physical computing/digital fabrication)
  • Log into the class blog using your team account and create a post for each room in AIMM that’s significant for your IMM track
  • Create a category for your track and assign all your posts to that category
  • Go to http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ and create QR Codes for each of your posts
  • Print, cut out & place QRCodes around the AIMM building at your chosen track locations
  • Fire up your QRCode Reader and take your creation for a test drive
  • How could you tweak it to make it better?

Assignment

Object Interpretation

  • Last week at the NJSM, Beth Cooper told us:

Every object has multiple stories:

1) Who made it

2) Who used it

3) Why is it important

4) How did it get to the museum, etc

Finding the most compelling angle and narrowing down the story is the key

  • Read Imagining the Possibilities
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Interesting Objects”
  • Identify an object or objects in the A Much Moved People, Cultures in Competition, and/or New Jersey’s Original People collections that you find particularly interesting. Identify the object attributes for each object and describe some story concepts you might want to develop

Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR)

  • Read Virtual Reality in the 2016 NMC Horizon Report, pp. 42-43
  • Read Me/We/Here/There: Museums and the Matrix of Place-based Augmented Devices in the 2016 Trendswatch, pp. 23-29
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Augmented & Virtual Reality”
  • From the reading, which examples of Augmented and/or Virtual Reality particularly appealed to you and why?
  • Do some Google searches to find other examples of AR- or VR-enhanced museum exhibits? List them and include a brief description of each

Submitting Your Work

This week’s homework assignment is due next week before class. When you’ve completed them, post the link to your design notebook on canvas & post a comment on this page (Internet of Things), also including the link to your Design Notebook.

Mobile Apps & Location-based services

Announcements

Today’s NJSM Visit

Map to NJSM

  • 8:30 am – meet at AIMM 222
  • 8:30 am to 10:00 am – Mark Thompson teaches first half of class at IMM
  • 10:30 am to 12 pm – Greg presents Archaeology/Ethnography exhibits covering background and more detail. Beth B. talks about designing these exhibits and Beth C. add Educator’s perspective.
  • noon – drive back to TCNJ

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a few minutes to review your Design Notebook entries for this week.

Mobile Apps & Location-based Services

Why mobile first is outdated…

User Context

Which device to design for? Depends on user context; What are they doing? Why are they accessing (or contributing) content? Where are they?

Designing for read-only content on multiple device forms? Consider HTML5/responsive web design.

Designing for data collection? Consider the type of data:

  • Text? Maybe a web form…
  • Photos? Web form or mobile app…
  • Images or QR-codes? Mobile app.
  • RFid or iBeacon? Mobile app.
  • Other sensor data? Mobile app.

Sensors

  • Camera
  • Microphone
  • * Wifi / Bluetooth / Bluetooth LE / RFID
  • GPS (not indoors)
  • Accelerometer
  • Magnetometer
  • Gyroscope

For more info on cell phone sensors and how they work, check out Sensors and Cellphones

Responsive Web Apps

Example Responsive Web Framework

Mobile Apps

Native or Code Generated?

Native Apps

Native apps are typically coded using Java (Android) or Swift/Objective-C (iOS).

  • Pros – better performance, direct access to hardware & sensors
  • Cons – lower-level programming required, (sometimes) more expensive to implement

Code-generated Apps

Code-generated apps are built using standard web technologies like HTML, CSS and Javascript, and then run through a processor application to convert the input files into native code.

  • Pros – easier/faster to build (HTML, Javascript, CSS)
  • Cons – slower performance (extra app layer in there), more limited access to hardware & sensors, UI likely not completely native, maybe confusing for the user
EXAMPLES

Voice & Messaging apps

Especially good for feature phones…

Exercise

  • Close read the Native American History Scavenger Hunt worksheet
  • Try to answer the questions based on what you remember from last week’s visit
  • If you’re unsure about an answer, make a checkmark next to the question (you can revisit that question at the museum later this morning)
  • Based on the content covered by the scavenger hunt, formulate 3 questions to ask the museum staff  about the collections during our visit later this morning

Assignment

Active Participation in Museum Exhibits

Culture Labs

  • Read Culture Labs
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Culture Labs”
  • Write a short paragraph describing the nature of “Discovery” and how it facilitates learning.
  • Write another paragraph comparing David Edwards concept of “Culture Labs” with Jake Barton’s concept of active participation with museum exhibits?

The Internet of Things

  • Read “Networked Objects” in NMC Horizon Report 2016 Museum Edition pp. 46-47
  • Read “When Stuff Talks Back” in TrendsWatch 2013 pp. 24-28
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Internet of Things”
  • Pick one or two examples of IoT being used in the museum setting and write a short descriptive paragraph. How might something similar be applicable in the NJSM setting?
  • Can you find any other examples of IoT in exhibit design?

Submitting Your Work

This week’s homework assignment is due next week before class. When you’ve completed them, post the link to your design notebook on canvas & post a comment on this page (Mobile Apps & Location-based Services), also including the link to your Design Notebook.

Open Content & Big Data

Announcements

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a couple of minutes to review some of your Design Notebooks.

Open Content & Big Data

What is Open Content?

Examples:

Open Content

Open Apps

What’s an API?

What does API stand for?

Examples:

Anatomy of an API

THREE TIERED ARCHITECTURE:

The Data Layer

Collection Database Resources – This is your database of collection records, could be in a database management system like MySQL, or even in flat files like CSV or Excel.

The Application Layer

Application Programming Interface – A middleware application in a server-side language like PHP, Ruby, Python or Server Side Javascript (Node.js) that responds to user requests by querying the database and returning the results of the requested action. There are some decent lightweight frameworks available that simplify creating RESTful APIs.

REST (Representational State Transfer) APIs work like web pages, but for machines. You build URL strings to tell the API which resource you want, and make a single request for that resource.

The Presentation Layer

  • Websites
  • Mobile Apps
  • Kiosks/Installations
  • e-paper labels

Why use APIs?

Mashups!

Creating an API

When designing a RESTful API, use nouns to to identify resources. Limit your base URLS to two; one for collections, and one for specific items within a collection.

Examples: /collections - retrieve a listing of all collections /collections/12345 - retrieve info for a specific collection

You can then nest resources to reflect associations between resources.

Examples: /collections/12345/items - retrieve the collection of all items in a specific container /collections/12345/items/54321 - retrieve a specific item in a specific container

To perform actions, use the following HTTP methods when making your REST requests:

  • GET – return the resource set
  • POST – insert a resource
  • PUT – update a resource
  • DELETE – delete a resource

Pragmatically speaking, you’ll often find POST being used in lieu of PUT and DELETE to edit and delete resources.

*Want to design a RESTful api for your collection data? Check out the Apigee Web API Design book!

What is Big Data?

Examples:

Exercise

Let’s break up into three groups and work together to create three different example APIs for our partners at the NJSM.

  • Review one of the A Much Moved People, Cultures In Competition, and New Jersey’s Original People collection descriptions.
  • Think of various ways you might be able to categorize the items (size, date of origin, location of origin, color, etc).
  • Write out these attributes as a list for each kind of object
  • How might you construct an API that would allow other developers to create a web or mobile interface to search each collection?
  • What if NJSM asked you to create a basic RESTful API to do just that. Write out a URL scheme you might use to enable that kind of an API.

Next Week

Map to NJSM

  • 8:30 am – meet at AIMM 222
  • 8:30 am to 10:00 am – Mark Thompson teaches first half of class at IMM
  • 10:30 am to 12 pm – Greg presents Archaeology/Ethnography exhibits covering background and more detail. Beth B. talks about designing these exhibits and Beth C. add Educator’s perspective.
  • noon – drive back to TCNJ

Assignments

Mobile Apps & Location-based services

  • Read “Mobile Content and Delivery” pp. 16-17 2016 NMC Horizon Report
  • Read “Mobile Apps” in the NMC Horizon Report 2012 Museum Edition, pp. 11-14
  • Read “Location-Based Services” in the NMC Horizon Report 2015 Museum Edition, pp. 40-41
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Mobile & Location-based Services”
  • From the examples listed in the reading, what was your favorite example of a mobile or location-based service? Why?
  • Can you find any other examples exhibits using mobile or location-based services “in the wild” (could be from museums, libraries, or even retail)? Describe them and why they’re appealing.

NJSM Archaeology/Ethnography Collections

  • Review the A Much Moved People, Cultures In Competition, and New Jersey’s Original People collection descriptions.
  • Based upon the “Mobile and Location-based Services” reading above, imaging a mobile or location-based service that could effectively present the one of the collections listed above
  • Write a brief paragraph describing your mobile or location-based service

Submitting Your Work

This week’s homework assignment is due next week before class. When you’ve completed them, post the link to your design notebook on canvas & post a comment on this page (Open Content & Big Data), also including the link to your Design Notebook.

Today’s Visit to the NJSM

Map to NJSM

  • 10:00 am – Drive over to NJSM
  • 10:30 am to 11:00 am – Beth Cooper introduces NJSM covering mission, history, audience and how exhibitions are realized
  • 11:00 am to 12:00 pm – Jim Moss presents collections management basics with possible tour of compact storage
  • 12:00pm – drive back to TCNJ

First Day of Class

Announcements

  • Meeting next week at 10:30am at the New Jersey State Museum
  • Need cell numbers from each of you for travel forms
  • How many of you drive?

Intros

Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves; name, year, what do you hope to get from this course?

What is this class?

Syllabus

Let’s review the syllabus

Next Week

Map to NJSM

  • 8:30 am – meet at AIMM 222
  • 8:30 am to 10:00 am – Mark Thompson teaches 1st part of class in AIMM 222
  • 10:00 am – Drive over to NJSM
  • 10:30 am to 11:00 am – Beth Cooper introduces NJSM covering mission, history, audience and how exhibitions are realized
  • 11:00 am to 12:00 pm – Jim Moss presents collections management basics with possible tour of compact storage
  • 12:00pm – drive back to TCNJ

Assignment

Open Content & Big Data

  • Create a Google Drive presentation and name is “Design Notebook”
  • Read  The “Open” Economy: filling the data pipeline in TreadsWatch 2015 pp. 9-17
  • Read  Data is the New Oil in TreadsWatch 2014 pp. 24-31
  • Read Open Content in the 2012 Horizon Report Museum Edition pp. 23-26
  • Create a slide and name it “Open Content & Big Data”
  • From the museum exhibition examples described in the reading, which ones do you find most interesting? Write a paragraph or two describing the exhibits and why they appeal to you.

NJSM Archaeology & Ethnography Collections

Submitting Your Work

This week’s homework assignment is due next week before class. When you’ve completed it, post a comment on this page (First Day of Class), including a link to your Design Notebook, and submit that link to canvas.