Update - Craig Hood

Right then, time i actually updated on the blog. so since the first presentations i have been working on the interface design for our installation and it is coming along nicely. i have done a fair bit since we started but not updated on here so i will try to catch up with this post and be more regular for the next 2 weeks. The first thing i had to contend with was the number of screens/patchers that needed to be created and making sure they all opened and closed at the correct points. After working out roughly how many scenes our installation needed i set out putting it together. It was a bit difficult to get a feel for the installation we are creating at first because i had no images/audio in the early stages. By using comment boxes i was able to keep track of which screen was for which part of the 'game'. My main aim at the early stage was to get the many windows opening and closing when required so using the comment boxes helped me to keep track of where i was at. Now we have some of the images loaded in i am finding it easier to put the rest together as it is taking shape.
The first scene in our installation is the news story which has a number of images changing over the news room image as the story is being told, it then goes straight into the doctors office where the user can choose to learn about each charm or go straight to the waiting room to play the quiz section. All of this part is completed from the interface side of things with the timings of the changing pictures and end of the news story to be finalised when the audio etc. is complete.
The next section, 'learning about the charms', posed some problems but not too difficult. There are all of the 5 charms to learn about in this section and the opening/closing of these windows needed to be programmed. I have created the interface throughout the project so that there are not too many windows open at the same time, so only the needed ones at any point are the only ones open. This sometimes made the project 'jitter' a bit so needed solving with some simple delays, so that there wasn't to many of these open/closes happening at exactly the same time. I came across the 'jitteryness' by selecting to change screens fairly quickly, which is when it started to play up, this could deffinately happen at the museum with users selecting things quickly so i tried solving this problem just in case this does happen. It works fine now, (even should be kid proof from their quick fingers) and seems to run smoothly on my maschine, needs testing on the mac mini though!!
All the quiz section is working fine with the interfacing, i have progammed it so that after 5 questions are answered correctly the final completed screen is shown with a code to collect a prize from the main desk. The user can select a patient from the waiting room where he/she needs to try and cure them with the correct charm, the patients can be slected in any order and the correct answers are still counted up, which when it reaches 5 completes the quiz. The user can also go back to the learning page and other pages with the count for the quiz staying at the same point.
With all of the screens working fine the next tasks that i have to complete are as follows:

• Add the final images when completed
• Add all of the audio when completed and get the triggering of these right, checking for bugs etc by testing it and testing it. things like selecting options on the screen need to be checked if done too fast as this could mess up the triggering but could happen with those pesky kids using the installation like a kid does. so need to look into that.
• once pictures of the patients and waiting room are complete, i need to make sure that when one patient is cured that their picture is removed from the waiting room, also disabling the u-buttons for that patient.
• Need to do something with the page containing information about Clarke so that it is a bit more engaging than just a few pictures and writing. allowing the user to scroll through the pictures of Clarke by dragging their finger on the touch screen would be nice.
• need to sort out the 'fullscreen' on all windows so that when they open the menu/title bars are not present.

Other than these few changes the interface is pretty much up and running smoothly and it shouldn't be too difficult to add the finishing touches once the audio and images are finalised.