The WiiPaint project website is now up and running :) Please take a look and feel free to email me with any questions or feedback.
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WiiPaint website under construction
The website for WiiPaint: Gesture recognition and interface design in a collaborative artistic application is now up! I’m still filling it in with information so right now the links don’t work and/or are blank, but check back in a week or so and it should be complete! I have to say, I’m quite proud of the design as I am with every website I create. The code and CSS is always cleaner and better in some way. Anyway, enjoy and feel free to send any suggestions!
What’s in the future?
As the semester is drawing to a close and the feedback from the WiiPaint studies is keeping plenty of brain cells fed and happy, I had the chance today to talk with my advisors about the direction this thesis project is going next semester.
The default path was creating WiiPaint 2, which I had been excited about for half this entire time because I thought I could finally create something that would “fix” everything that was off with WiiPaint 1. This research approach would be “evolutionary” in the sense that it is incremental and makes small steps each time to improve something. I feel that this is very one track minded and potentially trapping — there is no guarantee that WiiPaint 2 will be the ultimate project that I am hoping it will be. There is also the danger of striving for perfection, which would have been an issue with my original thesis idea of creating a 3D game — it will not be as good as professionally-made 3D games that already exist. WiiPaint is bound to come up with new issues that I will continue to have to fix in the search for the “perfect” collaborative art program.
Here is a screenshot of using bomomo, which was a huge inspiration to what WiiPaint 2 would look like created by multiple users.
Inspired by a recent trip to the MIT Media Lab to “think outside the box,” the “revolutionary” approach to research would be to complete scrap the idea and come up with something new and different. Confused and torn about starting something new, I looked back to my original thesis vision (independent of WiiPaint) for inspiration.
To explore Wiimote capabilities outside of competitive gaming and to better understand and envision Wiimote capabilities in different applications.
Continuing with WiiPaint would have no doubt explored artistic possibilities using the Wiimotes, but it leaves a lot of other areas to be desired. It has become an issue of whether I want to try to do one thing really well, or try to do many things. You could argue that either path is the “safer” path, but I’m more interested in which one will better match my vision and passion for this thesis project, and that is the latter. Overall I’d feel I can accomplish more by not limiting myself to WiiPaint but expanding into other applications as well.
One idea that came up while brainstorming was the GlovePIE script for Google Earth where Google Earth is controlled by one Wiimote. In conjunction with research done in human-robot interaction where Wiimotes are used for robotic navigation control and robotic posture control, I could create a GlovePIE script that used gestures to control navigation in Google Earth. The current script only supports one Wiimote and basically maps some of the functions onto the buttons, but I want to figure out how to navigate using gestures with two Wii remotes. I’ll start with this idea during Wintersession and see where it goes.
It could mean that WiiPaint 2 is among this new series of applications, but in any case, I really look forward to breaking free of the conception that the Wiimote is a game controller and use it as a tangible user interfaces for many interesting research questions, wherever that may lead this thesis project. To end, here is a sneak peak of the WiiPaint website layout, inspired by Nintendo 
Social media explosion!
As I write this blog post, my hands twitch in frustration with old systems and excitement for some new changes. These last few days I’ve been getting a little more into Twitter, following and reading a lot of posts and making little progress doing everything else I’m supposed to. As my panic level rises in small doses, so does something else in the back of my brain that struggles and cries out for liberation. I’ve read some thoughtful articles ranging from irrational psychology to social technology encouraging face-to-face interaction (Thanks @EvanMPeck) that my brain ruminated on. It felt like the influx of information was demanding that I say something in response that encapsulated my voice and reader relevance at the same time. It has been a while since I’ve written, and reading about the art of one-butt-cheek blogging got me started again.
Social Media Landscape by Fred Cavazza
What is the role of Social Media in my life? How much time should I spend on it? Is it worth that time that I could be spending on something else? It was clear to me that I couldn’t go overboard or else I wouldn’t get anything done, and a balance had to be found between my Twitter community and my projects. At the same time, the internet is ironically one of the few and best ways to find sources of inspiration related to creating technology that encourages face-to-face interaction, my favorite topic to think about these days leading up to graduate school. I was compelled by these questions to write down my thoughts lest they scurry away like field mice.
My attraction to online social anything seems to be rooted in the fundamental human need for social contact and community. This isn’t to say that my real life communities are not satisfying, au contraire, they are the best that I could ask for and are extremely fulfilling and important to me. But there is something irresistible about being part of Twitter that I can’t get enough of. What started out as a handful of personal follows and followers turned into a place where I could network with people with similar interests, and in turn be exposed to equally awesome things. That rarely happens in real life, or maybe I just haven’t found the right place yet. It is like meeting strangers while taking public transportation and striking up friendly and interesting conversation, or asking people in the bookstore for recommendations and talking about your favorite book. Except, for some perverse reason, we are more open to strangers online; we are more likely to have these conversations online even though in real life, these opportunities are everywhere if we look for them. And having my website allows me to show the whole world who I am and what I like to do, so that perhaps by chance, a stranger will stumble upon it, leading to some conversation that will make us both feel intellectually satisfied. The apparent lack of a social barrier online is something that we need to bring to real life so that we can really connect with each other in person.
Perhaps the reason why social sites like Twitter are so successful is that by being ourselves, we know we can reach out to other people “out there in the world” with similar interests, and they will reach back. It gives us a feeling of connectedness, but what does that mean in a society where connections come from iPods, cell phones, and wi-fi? Perhaps online interaction is slowly replacing real life interaction because it is less disappointing, more efficient, and we can reach more people faster. If that is the case, then we need to find ways to bring a part of that back to our interactions with others in real life. I hope to tackle this question in graduate school and through conversations both online and in person. Here’s to discovering and understanding humanity better through social media so that we can use it to make a positive impact on social interaction.