This week, I set up the team repository and have begun writing the feedback page. I am currently on schedule, however, I am slightly worried about the implementation of the mobile app since I am not the most familiar with Dart. In order to make up for my unfamiliarity with Flutter, I hope to spend most of my time during spring break experimenting with it and finishing my implementation of the app. My goal for next week is to complete the feedback page and the design report.
Jasmine Yew’s Status Report for Feb. 18
This week, I primarily worked on getting Flutter set up and learning Dart, the programming language required for Flutter, while also working on the design presentation slides. I also worked with my teammates to draw out the diagrams for the hardware components. Sydney and I have also begun thinking about how we will be implementing the back orientation and curvature algorithms.
Currently, the plan is to potentially use pre-existing Arduino Quartenion libraries that work with gyroscopes, accelerometers, and compasses (the sensors we will have in our device). With Quaternion, we can determine sensor orientation and potentially detect back curvature by checking that all sensors are oriented in a straight line. For the back orientation, I am thinking we can use physics to determine sensor positioning and apply this data to see if sensors are located at a consistent distance apart throughout the movement.
I am currently behind schedule for my feedback page on the app because I did not account for the Flutter learning phase when creating the schedule. This should not affect the final date we finish our project because the plan is to finish the app by the time we finish building our devices, and based on the newly updated schedule, there are still several weeks left. By next week, I hope to figure out which specific Arduino libraries we will be using to read the data from our sensors. In addition, I hope to have worked on part of the Feedback page of our app.
The main courses that helped me incorporate design principles into this project were 18-349, 17-214, and 17-781. 18-349 allowed me to help Sydney with the hardware design process, while 17-214 helped me create and refine the object models I drew last week. Using the user design principles I learned from 17-781, I was able to design a user interface that users will hopefully find to be simple to use.
Team Status Report for Feb. 18
This week, we primarily worked on finalizing our designs for the device and software. We also decided to add a new device to our project where users will wear ankle straps with pressure sensors hooked onto them that they place under their foot in the shoe. This new addition allows us to measure the weight the user is carrying such that we can help them better track their progress. Since we will be building and testing an additional device, our schedule has been modified. The main risk for this project is getting our devices to work and being able to correctly determine back positioning. To manage this issue, we did thorough research to ensure the components are compatible. In addition, we have also begun discussing and researching which libraries we will be using to develop our algorithms on back orientation and curvature. Currently, we are looking into Quartenion libraries to get proper positioning values of the sensors.
With our research conducted last week on use case requirements and stakeholders, we were able to apply different engineering principles to design our devices and software. To design the weight detection device and back orientation and curvature device, we had to use hardware design principles where we had to figure out what we wanted our system to do, what we need for it to carry out its function, and how we will connect them together. When it comes to the designing of hardware systems, lots of research was put into gathering necessary components, such as sensors, and ensuring they were compatible with other components. In addition, we incorporated mobile design principles for our frontend design, such as Lund’s Usability Maxims, to ensure we have a simple and well-designed user interface. For the backend of our software, we used object-oriented design principles to understand the components we will need and then define the solution.
Jasmine Yew’s Status Report for Feb. 11
This week, I worked on the wireframes for the app, so we can get a general understanding of what the app would look like and the potential features. In addition, I began working on the domain model and object model for the software. This will help simplify the process of writing the software later on when we begin writing the backend. Overall, my progress seems to be on schedule and by next week, I hope to begin working on the software side of the frontend and have part of the feedback page done.
