Day 26

        Today I mainly worked on preparing the presentation for Friday. There wasn't much work to do but I did schedule a meeting with Gabe, Kamran and John for tomorrow to go over the data we collected. It was a pretty slow day but most of the presentation is completed with only a bit of work left to be done.

Day 25

        Today I worked with matlab and the data we've collected. Using matlab and the events I tagged I created graphs that show the movement of the right and left foot of the person doing the experiment. Then using matlab I created lines on the graph that show where each eye event occurs, color coding them and labeling them for easy identification. For lunch we grilled outside again and played volleyball. There were hot dogs and soda with the added bonus of cookies!On Monday the plan is to look at the graphs I made and see if the data can be used to confirm or deny some of the hypothesis we have. After that we will meet with the rest of the lab to discuss our results.

Day 24

        Today I spent the morning working with the data from the trials again. When I first turned on the computer I couldn't get into the campus WiFi because I forgot the password to my account. I had to go with Bob to the service desk where they were able to reset it for me. After I accessed the internet I began to work with the data. I managed to finish up recording events for the 20 trials we recorded. While I was working on that, John worked on our presentation for next Friday.  After that John and I worked on our abstract, polishing it , and then sent our final version to Bob, After lunch Kamran showed John and me some basics of how to work with MATLAB and for the rest of the day we worked with the data in MATLAB. Using code that Kamran provided we were able to graph the movements of both feet during the trials as well as the position of the obstacles. Tomorrow the goal is to plot the times of eye movements on the same graph.

Day 23

Today I spent time working with the results of the trials we conducted yesterday. Using a text file that contained data from the VR equipment as well as the video and gaze track data I created a spreadsheet showing the major events in each trial. Such events include looking away from the tv, looking at the obstacle, and the start and end of the trial. I spent most of the day figuring out how to work with the data in order to streamline the process of recording events. By the end of the day I had the events from a bit less than half of the trials recorded and hope to finish them tomorrow morning.

Day 22

        Today John and I started the day off by setting up a tv and Xbox in our room. The Xbox is for people to play a game while they participate in the walking experiment. The game serves as a constant distraction. After that we spent time using the glasses as well as motion trackers to run trials in the 3d environment. By the end of the day we had run 20 good trails and we should be able to start working with our results by tomorrow.

Day 21

        Today was my first day in the PerForM lab. I started the day off with an overview of the project from Gabe Diaz as well as having him answer questions. After that I spent the day working with the eye tracking glasses. I attached them to the shutter glasses used in the VR environment. Then I worked to make sure that the glasses could still track the eyes and that readings weren't altered by the shutter glasses.

Day 20

        Today I finished analyzing the data. For lunch we went outside to grill hotdogs. We also played soccer during lunch. After lunch I met with people from the Perform Lab to discuss what I'd be doing for the next couple weeks. After that  I met with with the rest of the people involved in the experiment and compared results. This wrapped up the eye track experiment. Next week I'll be working on a new project.

Day 19

         Today I continued to try and find a correlation between time spent on the images and time on the surveys as well as if there was an affect on ratings. After analyzing all the data I can't find any correlation between the two times so I believe they are not dependent on each other. During lunch today we went for a bike ride as a group. We biked from rit to Mt. Hope cemetery. At the cemetery we saw Frederick Douglass' grave as well as Susan B Anthony's. After that we ate lunch at Pelligrinos and then biked back to rit. I wrapped up my analysis for the day as well as putting on the finishing touches to the outline, then headed home.

Day 18

       Today was once again spent on data analysis. I looked further into the survey results. Specifically I looked at the amount of time people spent viewing the images and if it had any correlation with ratings. So far I haven't gotten far enough to reach a conclusion. For lunch today I had pizza with the other interns and then listened to a talk on wildfires and research related to them as well as what the life of a scientist is like. The talk was actually very interesting and enjoyable. After lunch I continued to work with the surveys until it was time to go home.

Day 17

        Today was spent on data analysis. Throughout the day I continued to work with the surveys participants took two days after they did the eye test. The information I found had some clear patterns. People who were given more specific instructions when viewing the art tended to give it a higher rating. They also tended to take longer to complete the survey. Both groups rated landscapes the highest and abstracts the lowest. The group that received fewer instructions tended to rate cubism art pieces higher. For lunch today I ate with the other interns again. After lunch I continued to work with the surveys looking for patterns. Tomorrow I hope to compare time participants spent taking the survey to how long they viewed the art as well as how the comparison affects ratings.

Day 16

        Today was spent starting to analyze the data we've collected so far. This morning I averaged all of the ratings that test subjects from the first group gave to the paintings. I had to wait to do the second group because we had one more person who had to take the questionnaire, In the meantime we decided what data we would look for when analyzing. Some ideas were fixation times, number of saccades, areas of interest, time subjects look at the image and time spent on the questionnaire. After that we took a lunch break and went with most of the other interns to eat lunch outside. After lunch we went to the color science building and participated in a grad students experiment. We each looked at different colors, trying to differentiate them from backgrounds. After participating in the experiment we went back to the Carlson building. I spent most of the afternoon averaging the surveys from the second group as well as comparing the two averages. After a surface glance at the two sets of averages, its clear that people who were given more detailed instructions tended to rate the images more favorably. They also tended to spend more time taking the questionnaire. Now that I'm home I put all of the averages in a spreadsheet to make them more clear and easy to work with. The day ends with me wrapping up this blog!

Day 15

       Today we continued to test people from the dual eye experiment. We also finished our final tests for the remote eye tracker test. We had several more people volunteer to do the dual eye track test as well as several more failures at getting a read on a person's eye. We also met with our advisors and discussed the next steps in our experiment. We plan on analysing the data we've collected next week. We also are thinking about having test subjects take a questionnaire showing their interest in art. For lunch we grilled hot dogs outside again and played a hardcore game of volleyball. After switching to a weird version of soccer/volleyball we continued to wrap up testing for the day. Next week analysis will be started to see our results.

Day 14

        Today we started off with the morning meeting where we discussed new aspects in our projects. After the meeting John and I ran two people we tested on Tuesday through part 2 of our experiment. After that we had lunch in the MVRL room where we were celebrating a couple birthdays as well as wishing Jeff good luck on a year long trip. After lunch we worked with the dual eye tracking experiment. Now that the glasses are working we were able to run our experiment using both the glasses and the remote eye tracker. Although many of our fellow interns volunteered to be participants when we tried to track them we found that only around half of the were traceable. For some of them the smi glasses couldn't get a fix on their eye movements so we were unable to use them in our experiment. The rest of the day we tested people who the glasses could actually get a read on.

Day 13

       Today we ran a few more tests as well as doing part two of the tests for several people. For lunch we had pizza and soda the listened to a talk on remote sensing. We learned more about the use of imaging in areas such as agriculture where satellite images can be taken using specific filters to identify certain crops. After lunch I continued to run tests as well as explore some of the results.

Day 12 continued

       After the normal day of work we went to the mees obser. First we stopped for lunch a a sub shop and ate together with the reu students. After that we drove to the observatory. At the observatory we first looked at the moon through a smaller telescope. Then using the big telescope we got to see Saturn as well as several stars. A satellite happened to be passing over when we were there and we were able to spot it going by in orbit. Overall the trip was pretty great!

Day 12

       Today we didn't have a morning meeting. We spent the day testing a couple more people. After we tested the people we looked at the data to see similarities. Later we're going to mees so I'll update the blog then.

Day 11

        Today I didn't go in because we're going to the mees observatory tomorrow.

Day 10

        Today morning we did part two of the experiment with the two people we tested on Wednesday. After completing their testing we looked at the data from our tests. During lunch we went outside to grill hotdogs and kebabs. While we were outside we were eating at a picnic table when everybody on one side of the table stood up to get more food. The table tilted spilling all the drinks on it and almost dumping the people on the other side. However a couple people jumped up rebalancing the table. After a hardcore game of volleyball we went back to work. We met up with our advisor and a couple other people to work on calibrating the smi glasses. Today we were actually successful in calibrating the glasses correctly and tested a couple people using the glasses and the remote sensor.

Abstract

       Our experiment is on tracking eye movements as subjects look at a set of art. This experiment is part of a larger study on using gaze guidance to enrich the viewing of art. Test subjects view specific images and their gaze patterns are recorded. Currently we cannot reveal anymore details about the experiment because it is still ongoing but later on we will have a more thorough explanation.

Day 9

       The day started off with prepping for the second part of the experiment. We put together the materials we needed to and then had them printed out. Then we went around the building to the people who we tested on Tuesday and had them take the second part of the experiment. After lunch John and I worked on our abstract to have it ready for tomorrow.