Bachelor of Science in Information and Computer

It's official. I am a graduate from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I'm in the processing of applying for positions in different companies and looking for work whatever they may be. I haven't had much time to update this blog the past 5 months, so I have added some information on my profile here. In short, one of the classes I took this fall was in Data Networks. I learned a lot about web servers, peer to peer networks and internet protocols.

In the meantime I've been developing some applications to keep up my programming skills. One of them is a program that uses the YouTube api to do bulk searches. It was a pet peeve of mine that whenever I look at some music blogs, I would need to individually wade through different songs one by one and have to search for the song on the web. Well, I decided to create a program using YouTube to provide those songs in an one page list. Since YouTube hosts so many videos of songs, it was a good medium for me to take advantage of their api. Here is a distribution of that program.

I'm also looking into creating an app on the Android platform or the iPhone platform. I'll have upcoming blogs to share about this development.

Summer Internship

Through the Youth Summer Program , I was offered employment for an internship at the Department of Health laboratory division as an IT trainee. Worked started on Thursday July 1st.

It's really exciting! I've already been briefed on a host of topics that concern the Department of Health. Moreover, I've learned that there are quite a few things that the computer technology can do to help the government. I'm been given a project to create an application processing requests that would have otherwise been processed through paper channels.

A lot of this project has to do with database management and website development. I'm certainly going to have to refresh my knowledge of SQL. It's been a year since I last worked on creating a database. It looks like this summer is going to be a busy time for me.

Summer updates

Now that I'm done with the spring semester at Manoa, I'm taking a Calculus class and working on side projects. I've been steadily reading up on objective-c and iPhone development. The hardest part about that is creating something cool and neat. So far I've made a couple of apps that do very generic functions and it's very slow going. I'm trying to find my own creative ideas and implementing them through the iPhone device.

On another note, I'm continuing to better my rhetoric and so I've decided to do more writing. I found a site called mylot.com. It's really interesting and has a community of writers that do a lot of sharing. A interesting incentive that they use to set them apart from other forums is their monetary rewards. Although it's not much, mylot.com counts participation and contributions to the site and rewards users for sharing their writings.

So I am also adding this blog to the myLot User Profile.

Flash Video Interface: Analysis of the features

Flash video players are a big part of the web environment, and even with the coming upgrades from html5, most websites still rely on the Flash interface to stream video content to users. I thought it was interesting on an aesthetic and design level. So I decided to focus my attention on researching several Flash video players and examining the interfaces for each player. This was an ICS 419 design project. What's surprising is the complete lack of literature and studies for interface designs. I found that most sites had instruction guides that showed people how to install and create your Flash video players, but they didn't really talk about the design aspect of the interface. Most of them just used a premade layout from Adobe.

After looking at several interfaces from well known sites and some not so well known ones, I gave my analysis on what I thought. This analysis was based on design principles from Donald A. Normans books about the same topic, Emotional Design and The Design of Everyday Things. Norman gave general ideas about design in general, whereas I applied them to Flash video player interfaces.

Donald A. Norman was at one time the Vice President of Apple Computer's Advanced
Technology Group. His writings taught me a lot about design, but also about the world we live in.

Here is my paper: here

Week 17: Finishing the video

It's coming down to the final week on the Kukui Cup Energy Dorm Competition project. I've worked on the competition design group and the content development group in the past few weeks. As our group has filmed several interviews, we've been thinking about how to put together the video about Solar Energy. This past week we recorded even more material for our narrative in the video. It's getting even more in-depth now.

It wasn't very easy to create the narrative in the video and piecing together what we would say.

The footage we recorded this past week was of ourselves narrating the story about Solar Energy. What was most frustrating was the narration. We had to really think about the transitions that would lead into the interviews. There was a lot of takes in order to get the words correct.

Since we finished filming, it now comes down to editing and making the video good.

Although this past semester has had very little for me to do in terms of coding, I've learned a lot project management and the process of creating content.

Week 16: Slow progress

Our project in content development about solar panels is coming along. We shot footage last week.

This week hasn't been our most productive time. I had some projects coming up for other classes and needed to spend time on those things. What I've done is look at how exactly we would frame our footage in order to create a piece about solar panels. It seems more and more likely that we'll need to create even more footage in order to make a coherent video. We shot A LOT of footage last week by interviewing owners of solar panels and also on campus, but it needs some context to be valuable to us.

I was wrote a short script in order to get an idea of how this video will look. It really doesn't have much on it because we've only thought about the footage so far. The challenge has been in trying to make use of our material. We're not sure yet how to break it up and use the interviews we got.

An idea I had was to use slides or pictures in the video along with narration to explain how solar technology works. We'll use abstract pictures that describe the electrons that are being displaced by solar rays and show the flow of electricity as a result. I find that simple is usually better. This might be worth trying.

Script

We've already agreed that there would be at least two videos. Our second video will probably contain footage on the interviews we had with the Sunetric open house. That interview had even more material and we're just trying to look through all of it.

Week 15: Shooting footage

This week our group has begun shooting footage for our solar energy project. Our content development group is creating videos for the Kukui Cup Dorm Energy Competition. We've interviewed Deans, homeowners and solar companies to find out about photovoltaic solar panels. Over the course of our filming and research we got some really interesting material.

The first interview was with Associate Dean Bill Chismar of the Shidler College of Business. He graciously talked to us and gave us a lot of insight on the PV panels installed on the BusAd building. I also got my first experience with interviewing someone on video. I was kind of nervous, but I found that I just needed to stay focused and maintain my eye contact. You never think about it, but videos require people to act very slow and calm. If you move your hands a lot or move very erratically, it can become distracting. The footage was good and we also got pictures of the panels. The only challenge we had was the rushed schedule. We got a message for an opportunity to talk to the Dean and we had to figure out very quickly whether we could do it. We were grateful for the opportunity and so needed to get things set up ASAP. I thought we did great with the time we available to us.

On our second shooting day, we went to a Sunetric open house at Hawaii Kai. We talked a Suntric representation and the homeowner that was trying to sell a home that had PV panels installed. What's amazing was that she had installed 24 panels on the roof and it was enough to offset all of her eletrical usage. Her electrical bill from HECO was $18 just as a base charge for using the electrical grid. One of the challenges in interviewing at this site was that we didn't know what to expect. We didn't know if the people there were going to agree to being interviewed and we were lucky to get the amount of footage that we did. The homeowner and representative was so forward and willing to talk about the topic of PV panels. Since they were so willing, it was very easy for us to just listen to what they had to say.

Overall, our efforts this week has been in coordinating our shooting project and getting everything ready. The people we interviewed were really giving and willing to share what they know. I learned a lot about photovoltaic panels and the information about using them. A lot of the insights we gained were somethings you couldn't learn from straight research.

For the coming week, we'll work on putting the videos together. From the amount of material we're thinking about making a few videos out of the material. We'll need to write a script with some commentary about what photovoltaic panels are and how it works. This way the audience will know what it is before it suddenly jump to the subjects we go into. I think people watching the interviews are always going to have the question in the back of their minds if we don't address what photovoltaic is.

Week 14: Solar Energy Idea

To educate students in the University of Hawaii about energy conservation we're creating a competition to encourage lower usage of electricity..

Our professor has proposed a idea for the new video we will be working on. It will be about Solar Energy. This new video project will need us to interview people, and gather information to for the video. Unlike our last video, where we just created our rules for energy pong, we thought this video will require outside sources of information. I had some work done this week specifically in research. I learned a lot about relying on outside sources. So far I've sent out two emails out to the Shidler College of Business Building and Saunders Hall and one came back with some information, but it has been hard to try to contact people to respond to your requests.

The basis of this video is about the present infrastructure of Solar Technology in UH today and what Solar Energy is. It occurs to me now that more than ever, we need to emphasize that Hawaii is a great place for solar energy technology. Even if we can't get interviews, I think we could still make great content by showcasing the solar technology used around campus. Dolly Omiya of the Shidler College of Business has graciously provided photos of the solar panels mounted on the Shidler building.
Photos:
here

I think with some great narrating from John Mack like in our Energy Pong video and editing, we can make the pictures work great. Right now all I can do is wait for replies and also look at other sources of information.

The main type of solar technology we we want to talk about is photovoltaic cells. I have a inkling of how it works. But as I began thinking about how to explain these concepts, it made me more worried. Narrating about how this works will not be enough.

So these are all the worries I have about the video project. I am going to work on these this week.

Solar Energy Video Research

Week 13: Reshoots and a new Video.

To educate students in the University of Hawaii about energy conservation we're creating a competition to encourage lower usage of electricity..

As we are creating content for the competition, this milestone reflects how far we've come. This week our content development group did a re-shoot for our Energy Pong video after getting critique from our first draft.

This was our first attempt.


We quickly scheduled another filming day with volunteers. It was actually smoother than our previous shoot. This time we had some experience and knew what we needed to film. I was there just like last time doing the little things. I reminded the guys about lighting, made suggestions for how to show the scenario and also to use old footage rather than shoot again due to time constraints. I really wanted to keep some of the old footage from the first video because some of it was just classic. It couldn't be better.

The challenge this week was in critiquing ourselves. We had to reorganize the video and take the suggestions from our professor and making the changes. We had a discussion where we had to decided whether to re-shoot the entire video or to add more footage. This was a major decision, and helped me understand what it's like a in a project like this.

We decided to re-shoot the video and add some old footage that was good. We also wanted to add some footage of girls participating in the video. This was a challenge as well. It was really hard to find girls that were excited about video making.

This is the newest version we shot and uploaded.


Overall, I think I got some great experience from working as a team.

Week 12: Video shooting is a lot of fun!

To educate students in the University of Hawaii about energy conservation we're creating a competition to encourage lower usage of electricity..

Thanks to the efforts of my teammates, we gathered a few friends to shoot as extras in our Energy Pong information video. We did it over the weekend. As part of the Kukui Cup Energy Dorm Competition, we are creating content that will help students during the competition and maybe teach them a little something which they can remember for a long while. The purpose of Energy Pong is to teach and reinforce facts and practices that we have introduced to the students about energy literacy.

The shoot itself was our main labor this week. We discussed over the details of the preparations. Equipment was borrowed from the UH CIS department and from Scott Wong one of the team members. And with the suggestions from Professor Johnson concerning copyright laws, we also printed out release forms to the actors in the video in order to keep everything legit. I myself am in the video and will probably be reminded of this years from now. yeah..

During the shooting of the video, we didn't really follow a regiment. Instead, our team followed the screenplay and focused on creating the scenes we needed. This was our biggest endeavor. It was actually quite an effort. Since most of us were new to this video making, we had to learn right away how to make this video better looking. It was pathetic. Even the lighting was bad until we took a makeshift lamp to improve the lighting. We learned a lot about the things that are necessary to create the scene. Moreover, getting one scene exactly right took us a better part of half an hour. One particular scene required that one of the ping pongs was spinning and then be dug out. Well since we're not exactly a Hollywood studio, someone had to spin it and create the illusion. I mention this because it was our most frustrating task and should be remembered for all time. Let it be known that the students of the content development team were very dedicated to this!

Even with the frustration, we had a lot of fun. It's just funny remembering all the laughs we had. This is probably a good example of the type of team work that helps to organize a group. A rough cut of the video is coming soon..

Meanwhile take a look at our screenplay.

Week 11: Making videos

To educate students in the University of Hawaii about energy conservation we're creating a competition to encourage lower usage of electricity..

For the past two weeks my teammates and I have been working on video production for the Kukui Cup Energy Dorm Competition. Since we decided to work on a video about Energy Pong, a game designed to increase energy literacy and for fun, we needed to focus on the screenplay first. Here. This screenplay has since been refined from the one I drew up from week 9. John Mack has included a lot of details about how exactly the video proceed. Through discussions we agreed upon the time allotments for each segment and what goes into the explanations of Energy Pong.

A lot of what I learned through researching on this is about how to make a better video. Yes, watching videos on youtube is research. Putting a lot of attention on the subtleties in transitions and other techniques used in other videos is important. That makes it more pleasurable and rich to watch. Although I am currently in an software engineering project, I think the attention paid to the quality of this work is just as crucial.

Now that the milestone is coming up sooner than we'd like, shooting the video needs to be our main priority. As we polish the screenplay further, I think we'll definitely have to plan out the shoot and add that into our documentation as well. With the milestone coming up, we can't wait any longer. That is one of the challenges we face as a team. I don't have that much experience with shooting videos, but I think have good instincts about placing good shots and angles to produce good videos. We just need to give this some more thought.

Week 9: Content Development

To educate students in the University of Hawaii about energy conservation we're creating a competition to encourage lower usage of electricity..

In our project milestone last week in ICS 414, we finished up and packaged our deliverables to show what we had accomplished. We were also split into different groups to work toward new things. I am currently in the content development group. We create videos or any type of content that will inform the students of the Kukui Cup Dorm Room Competition how to play, activities, and possibly information on energy literacy.

This week we decided on starting on the idea of making a video for the game Energy Pong. Jack Mack my teammate had come up with this idea which is a more acceptable version of Beer Pong. Energy Pong Wiki I have created the wiki for the video. It's not much now, but I have laid out the specifics of the video we want to make.

As we started on content development, I had to think about what exactly we would need. Professor Johnson provided some good wikis for us that gave us an idea of what a screenplay was and how the video process looks like. I followed that process. I hadn't thought about before but video making and screenplay writing does require a linear process. I wrote up the screenplay and had to learn how to detail segment by segment on what the person sees. I described each segment and what it is about.

On my research with videos I came across an original video about Beer Pong. It was interesting and gave me some ideas for the requirements. I don't know why it didn't occur to us, but we do need an extra cup for rinsing the ping pong ball when it falls to the ground! Gross.. For those who don't know what Beer Pong is, google it. The rinse cup idea is very logical and of course makes sense now that we know it.

I think I'll need to learn a lot more about video making. I don't have that much experience with it. So I'll research into that next.

Week 8: Our deliverable product is here.

To educate students in the University of Hawaii about energy conservation we're creating a competition to encourage lower usage of electricity..

As our design group continues to create mockups, we're also refining the ones we created to fit one look. Our second milestone is approaching as well, so we're making changes in order to create a packaged product that can show what we have done these past 8 weeks. Although all our timeline mockups may not be done we have made three distinct timeline mockups to show how the Kukui cup dorm energy competition will proceed.

During our discussion about uniformity, we discovered that there was a login in the mockups for 9/6/10. It was an error we didn't discover until now. Since the competition shouldn't ideally start until 10/4/10, we plan to make changes to that and other things to work toward the "one look."
Things I've changed in order to do that include:

• changing the url ihe mockup to match the navigation
• updating details to the 10/4/10 mockups that I had previously made for 10/11/10

At this point, the project has grown and it's quite impossible to upload every picture for our mockups, or even my own. Take a look at them in our project site.

This link will show you how our milestone process has been.

http://code.google.com/p/uh-dorm-energy-competition/wiki/mockupMilestone2

This link is for my own wiki page for my part in the design process. I am responsible for the energy data that a user sees in the dorm energy site. Since our material in the milestone2 wiki is quite a lot, I transfered all my information into another page to explain my progress there. I also left a link in the milestone2 wiki explaining that.

http://code.google.com/p/uh-dorm-energy-competition/wiki/DataPresentation

Week 7: Mockup complexity

To educate students in the University of Hawaii about energy conservation we're creating a competition to encourage lower usage of electricity..

Making mockups getting more and more complicated. As our group continues to map out the design of the Kukui cup competition site, I'm creating more and more mockups to kind of string together a story of how this site will work. My part in this is the energy data page. The technical stuff is really what's taking up so much time. I'm creating mockups to show exactly how the selections and also how clicking on an image will enlarge it. That's why Balsamiq the mockup software tool is really becoming a bothersome program. It's not good for large projects. If there's any way to manage all these mockups that would be great, but there isn't.

On the other hand, I finished creating a third timeline for the competition. This set of mockups is what the site will look like at October 11, 2010. Since this is the second week into the competition there's a lot more data and also more functionality I can show off. That's why there is so much trouble in managing the mockups. I'm having trouble updating the mockups everytime I get a new idea.

Right now, our group has created yet another set of mockups for this particular time. It might be necessary to create all the mockups and wrapup this part of our project. Milestone 2 is fast approaching it's end. It's something to discuss with the mates.

As always, I added images of the mockups into our wiki pages on the project site. This too is becoming a large collection of material. It'll be necessary to start partitioning off our mockups just to keep things. The wiki itself is quite large.

That will be my goal for this week along with the ongoing process of making mockups. I'm going to start organizing the mockups so that we know who's mockup are who's. The number of mockup pages are growing very fast.

http://code.google.com/p/uh-dorm-energy-competition/wiki/mockupMilestone2?ts=1267510898&updated=mockupMilestone2#energy_data_10-11-10

Week 6: Competition layout

To educate students in the University of Hawaii about energy conservation we're creating a competition to encourage lower usage of electricity..

After starting on a new approach to creating content for our Kukui Cup Energy Dorm Competition, the members and I started making a second set of mockups for the second date in the timeline October 4th, 2010. That is the planned first day of the competition. Basically we create the pages and content that will be on the site in a mockup form. At this point we try to add as much content as makes sense.

My responsibility was for the energy data content on the site. In the previous week we had worked on the site on the day of September 9th 2010. Once I got some comments, I make some improvements for that. After that, I started on the energy data for October 4th.

I decided focus on a new approach to what the user would see. Most users who visit this page would probably want information to help them win the competition. I made some indications of their progress. I gave them knowledge of when they had their highs and lows of energy consumptioon and also if they had reduced their consumption. However, that is what I plan to show. Given that October 4th is the first day, the mockup isn't that great in showing reduction and more information.

I also made a different way of accessing the granular data for the charts. Charts are secondary at this point. I decided to focus less on the charts and more on data that the user might want to know instead. Basically I created a sort of directory selection for the user to choose. All the subselections for a particular week is hidden until the user clicks on the triangle button to traverse the directory. The dropdown boxes are then revealed after you click on the triangle. When you choose a hour or day option, you submit once again. At this point I think it seems kind of complex and may hinder usage. But it seemed like a good idea because it saved space.
Most of what I've done is toward creating all the possible views of this selection system. You can look at a detailed explanation at the project site. here

Week 5: Timeline

To educate students in the University of Hawaii about energy conservation we're creating a competition to encourage lower usage of electricity..

After our 1st milestone we were directed to begin setting a timeline mockup of the Kukui Cup dorm energy competition. Basically this week, we set out to make mockups of a specific time during the competition. In order to fully understand what we needed, we began mapping out these details for the competition site.

We are focusing on the week before the competition begins. The UH dorm energy issues site will contain material already before a competition starts. That is where we want to begin.

For my part I made mockups for one section of the site, energy data. This is a page that shows raw or contextualized data to a user. I plan on making several ways to display this data of energy consumption in order. What I've made so far is a chart for different time intervals and also a real time text display for 10 sec updates.

Our project milestone description:

http://code.google.com/p/uh-dorm-energy-competition/wiki/mockupMilestone2?ts=1266310825&updated=mockupMilestone2#energy_data

I have to admit that the selections aren't the best right now. I plan to add more functionality to the options. The hous selection is allowed to only choose a hour in the current day. And it's not quite clear for that either. I definitely need to make some changes to make the options more intuitive and explanatory.

In terms of the data I also want to look into other ways to show the user what the values mean and what it represents.

For this week we'll improve upon the mockups and then work on the mockups during the competition phase.

Week 4: Our first MileStone

The Kukui Cup Competition development is underway in its fourth week. To educate students in the University of Hawaii about energy conservation we're creating a competition to encourage lower usage of electricity..

This past week our group really came together and talked over what we wanted to accomplish. In the end we actually got something done. Our meeting on friday was really productive. So it started on tuesday when we presented our findings and then set out to work on our own set of tasks. I ended up making mockups to show how users could look at a chart to determine their energy usage over an interval of time and also through monetary costs. I spent much of the time before friday on the mockups and thinking about how to display rankings.
During the meeting on friday we talked over what to do next. Professor Johnson had suggested previously on an email that we show what we had and start to focus on getting together a final product. So that's what we did. It turned out to be the most productive we've been in this entire project! We discussed the fundamental requirements this energy issues website and what was really important. We managed to get it down to four main pages, the home page, contacts page, resources page, and the Kukui Cup Competition page.
Once we got that down we started plotting out what was needed on those pages. Basically we did a lot of planning for what was needed. Over the weekend we set out to creature the pages and content. These are the mockups and graphics that I made.

These three mockups demonstrate different time intervals that a user can sample to show energy consumption. Also notice the cost of electricity on the top right corner of the chart.




This is the content I made specifically for our home page. It is a ranking diagram for students in the two dorms Mokihana and Lokelani. Each floor is competing to win their own type of prize concurrently with the dorm competition.

Although these meters aren't probably going to be used, I'd like to show how we're trying to display data in different ways for the students.

I really liked this pie chart because of it's simplicity. It can show users how they are progressing compared to the previous weeks in a quick intuitive way.


This last mockup is the competition page I presented to my group in our meeting today. It contains data for large intervals and also real time data that covers usage within 10-20 seconds. Some parts of this will be in the final product.

I think the meetings are essential to our progress in this project. We need to talk more about what needs to be done and generate new ideas in order to continue to improve upon this project.

Dorm Energy Competition Design: week 3

For this project a set of well defined goals we do not have. It's been difficult trying to come up with ideas to work toward and I think that's one of our groups main challenges. Yet we've been able to come up with enough ideas to work toward and achieve a certain amount of progress. For instance I had an idea on thursday to use the data generated by WattDepot our software tool that outputs energy usage to provide more information to the users.
So that's what I did. I made mockups of how graphs would be represented depending on the length of time. So if you wanted to look at a week long graph of KW/HR then it will also calculate the total KW/HR used and then convert it to dollars. Hawaii is the state with the highest price of energy in the United States. If students are to become energy literate, learning about our high prices would be a good incentive to begin. Another thing I did with this was in listing the possible ways to show the KiloWatt Hour. If we can make more tangible relations to other values with the KiloWatt Hour, maybe students will get a better grasp of what it is. So I got ideas to convert the data to carbon output in tons, or the fuel used.
I've also started to work on making a ranking system for display purposes. I'm not exactly sure how to work it out yet. The important thing is to figure out a way to display the energy consumption per floor for the dorms and also show rankings for the floors for Kukui Nuts. This goes back to scoring and I think it's worth further investigating into.
A topic that Professor Johnson proposed was of a permanent site to host all energy matters for the dorms or campus. It would either have a link that to the Kukui competition or inactive part of the site that would take over during the competition schedule and then fall back afterwards. I thought it was a good idea so my teammate Anthony and I drew up a quick mockup to see what it would look like. It gave us a some thought into how to properly introduce our project. Because on the mockup, there is a reference to a video which gives our mission statement. It might be cool to just make a small clip to frame our objectives.
So I think there's a lot more to be done. I could work on the ranking display, creative more displays for the values, or explore more ideas on this permanent site. My primary focus is on the data.

These are the mockups I updated. They are labelled charts.

http://code.google.com/p/uh-dorm-energy-competition/source/browse/#svn/mockups/TeamGreenSmart

This is for the permanent page.

http://code.google.com/p/uh-dorm-energy-competition/source/browse/#svn/mockups/freshmanDormEnergyIssue

Week 2 Kukui cup design

In the 2nd week of the design process I've looked at more dorm room competition sites to get acquainted with the common things. This Kukui cup is a competition that tries to educate users about energy conservation. This week in our meetings, we have nailed down some fundamental ideas for what the competition is about. We've discussed prizes, scoring system and cohesion within the dorms. All our discussions have led to small changes in our wiki pages in the project site. http://code.google.com/p/uh-dorm-energy-competition/w/list

Prizes are an issues because of funding and being able to still maintain excitement for the competition. Right now we're not sure what the prizes will be, but it seems we do need to give out individual small ones and also a reward for the winning dorm and floors. I just wonder whether giving too many rewards will dilute the enthusiasm for this competition and keep students from thinking about the main competitive spirit for the rivaling dorms.

Scoring is based on energy consumption, reduction and something we call kukui nut points. The KN points are something that can contribute to energy literacy by rewarding individuals who participate beyond just using electricity. They are doing things that can teach them what energy conservation is about.

Lastly cohesion is an issue because we realized that the chosen dorm called Frear Hall may not be a good candidate for the competition due to the demographics and setting. It seems Fear Hall is more of a conservative dorm that doesn't interact as much as the other towers in the UH Manoa campus. This is very important because participation depends on enthusiasm for this competition and to get students interested in energy conservation early.

I'm planning to look over more competition this week and work on the goals our group has set for this week. I'd also like to mention that I've been granted a license for using a mockup tool called Balsamiq. The staff at Balsamiq has been generous enough to give me a free license in order to work on this project. You can take a look at their site here. I'm still playing with the program, but I've created a page to show as an example.


Overall, I'm still struggling to think up ideas. I'm not sure what I can contribute to the design yet in a significant way.

Kukui Cup Competition

I'm in a new class ICS414 and a new project. If you think dorm rooms are tough as it is, wait till the students compete for bragging rights and a reward.

The Kukui Cup is a dorm room competition that pits different dorms against each other by recording their electrical usage. My groups role in this project is to design the competition and it's rules, the web applications and how information that will be displayed.

My initial thoughts about this are that the site has to have both an utility feel and a colorful scheme. Since this is a competition I think it's appropriate to make the site colorful. It's because I'm interested in the aesthetics of the site. So I took a lot at some of the other dorm energy competitions from other universities. Here is a look at the MIT layout of information from their competition. MIT In brief, it appears to be lacking in content. For example, it has charts for different dorms, yet it does not offer information with granularity in a small scale. My professor has suggested it for our project and it is very important in my opinion as well. Students need to connect their actions with the meter system. Being able to see your own usage data will really encourage participation. Each student can see what electrical appliances can do and it can even fun to play around them to see sucks the most electricity.

I have done research into the look of these "utility sites" by tallying up the colors of sites. I studied sites like the HECO site and Hawaiian Telcom. It seems blue is a really popular color, and the look somewhat better than the dorm room competition sites. I also looked at these pages specifically to get an understanding of how sites should look. I have some ideas for this design project.

There also needs to be planning of the design. A good hierarchy is also important, which is why a "web" diagram should be created to clearly show how the all the pages relates back to the home page. I've installed Balsamiq a software tool that allows anyone to creative mockups of sites or any Graphic User Interface by just plugging in objects the user wants to have in their project. It works pretty much like powerpoint, where you create text boxes and insert images, and dragging them around to suite your tastes.

This is where I'm at right now. Expect updates on our group work soon.
Here is the link to the project site.
http://code.google.com/p/uh-dorm-energy-competition/