Documentation

At last stage, we have sort out individual work for our group game. Everything goes well till now and then we need to shoot footage for our final video. We are going to head out on Saturday and following the game path with the audiences.

Luckily, the weather on the day we head out for our video shooting is nice and sunny. So that I-Paq was working properly and smoothly. It helps our target audiences to finish the game successfully…Sweet. We documented the whole progress and the footage also goes well as we desired.

Click here to see final

Completed Location drawings

I have illustrated out all the buildings along the path of our game. Jackie is working on the flashing part of location. They look well when put together on the map. And then, we decided to change the saturation of the 2D map, which is the background of visual interface. We changed and merged the tones I used in the map drawing. Finally, it looks good.

Map drawings continue...

Law school:




Continue from last presentation, we have discussed the way to make the visual map more dynamic and interesting for users to experience. In that case, we decided to extend the buildings along the whole path that the audience will walk through. Following the way of dynamic map, audience will much easier to realize their current location and interact with the good and evil characters. The map style is continued. And also it determined the style of the whole game. Hope they will make the game much more visible and interactive.

2D&3D map combination

Railway Station on Bunny Street:


Civic Center besides Water Front:



We have almost finished our map combination. It looks well...
our group are now working on the PPT staff for Beta presentation tomorrow.

Location drawings

Map design idea:

Jackie:“We reckon that by drawing up the whole map using isometric view will make the map looks very complicated and especially hard for the user to view it on Ipaq. After discussion we have agreed on the style of the map to be a combination of 2D and 3D. The map will be based on a simple 2D top view, and for the specific spot that we will be using (civic square, water front, railway station etc), the area will be drawn out more detailed. This way, it will not only make the overall look of the map much more clean and tidy, also it attracts the participant’s interest as it highlighted the spot that they’ll be going.”

Jackie and me are in charge of the GPS map drawing for our group. I am focusing on part of the map drawings such as Railway Station and Civic Square. As Jackie mentioned, we have changed our map style from isometric view into the combination of 2D&3D top view. Spots will be detailed drawing and drawn by the 3D top view on the map. Overall, its drawing is based on goggle map satellite view. All of us think that it will make the map simpler, easier and much more attracted for our participants. Generally, the simple 2D map view and satellite detailed map view enables participants much easier and concentrate on the spots they are going to.

Here by the drawings I have done:

Civic square:

&Wellington railway station:

Final installation

Problems during experiments

Problem with Arduino uploading


The problem about uploading sketch onto Arduino board occurs when I want to update my blinking code. Fortunately, it has been solved when I copy my sketch on my desktop and then uploading becomes successfully.

Another roblem is Arduino battery support, I am still unable to find the problem with the Arduino battery support. Right wire with the right position and soldered well in my personal view...right voltage of battery and right size of plug...need to figure it out with Doug or Kah.

Lighting box

Due to the power problem with Arduino board, I have to choose the nearby computer which can use Arduino program to set up my installation. The sensor which sense the paper and LED inside the white box both work well. However, the LED was not bright enough to turn the white box into green when it stays under normal light.


I turned off half light in the lab at night...then it looks much better. So that I try to add more LED into my Arduino sketch to achieve this result even under the normal light. If it is bright enough, it will attract the eyes of people. Then I want to paste some character label onto the sides of the box to persuade people "think before print".

Think before you print:the box with label and 4 LED lighting.

LED lighting test

In order to bright the green box, I have added 3 more LED.

LCD interface

Arduino is a amazing staff that I have learn from this project. Fortunately, the Arduino coding is not hard to understand but hardly to type them out line by line...T_T With the help of Steven, my counter which called printIn() is working well.
For my counter installation, I need a LCD interface as a counter to show the number of printed paper. I have bought a mini LCD display from Jaycar. Need to check it out with Doug tomorrow in class, hope it is the right one suits for Arduino and not too complex to figure out in coding & something else. Now looking through some tutorial for wiring the LCD to Arduino microcontroller board. Actually, still have no idea that if I need a breadboard to connect the LCD and Arduino.

Arduino-LCD library
Useful Arduino tutorial

After checking the product with Doug, I realized that I can not operate it without a completely introduction of the product. And I ought to get the same one with the Arduino tutorial online and then I can follow the tutorial step by step to achieve my aim. However, when I get the similar LCD with 14 pins, I found that it maybe a bit late to get a Arduino shield kit board to control the LCD and connect it to the Arduino board. The counter display concept is going to be failed without a LCD display for the installation. In that case, I have to change my concept.

LCD Display Panel 2 Line 16 Character Wide Viewing Angle:

Counter experiments

Paper cut

User Environmental Impact - Summary

• Highlights the environmental impact of the printing of all users in your organization (ranked)
• Useful for drawing users' attention to their printing habits

My initial idea for this project is setting up an installation to persuade people to stop wasting paper and make a contribution to recycling paper in the school. After discussing with Kah, I am going to focus on the printer. The program called Papercut Kah showed me is quite interesting and really amazing. The most important part Papercut attracts me is it counts each user's environmental impact and shows the appropriated data. However, these data are not showing on the user's computer interface. If my installation is capable to show these data in front of user's eyes, it will be cool. My concept is the data appears beside the credit label while each paper printing out.

Arduino&LED experiment

Infrared sensor is used as a button to control the LED to swich on and off. So that in my installation the sensor will sense the paper when they come out from the printer and send the data to Arduino. The image below shows the circuit board of infrared sensor. Use the 2 points of sound speaker as inout and output plug into the pin2 and GND on Arduino board.

Arduino & LED testing...

LED blinking code:

The input leg of infrared sensor goes into pin2 and output leg goes into GND.


After several experiments on the Arduino & LED, finally got the input and output in the right pin position. At last, the LED was controlled well by the Arduino which was blinking once each time the LED was switched on.

Site visit

1. Start point: Civic center


2. End point: Wellington station

Arduino circuitboard

Connect Arduino board
This is the main material I am going to use during this project. Actually, I have no idea that how to deal with it exactly. It is time to think about what other materials I need for my installation.

Think before you print.

The printer is ready all the time. The paper tran always filled up with paper. We print what we like to print, we print what we need to print.



However, sometimes what we have printed are not exactlly what we need. We didn't think carefully before we print. Then they become waste...
It is easy for us to press the print button when we decide to print document out. When we print at school except the free printer in 401 lab, the most thing we maybe care about is credit balance on our desktop. Each A4 paper costs us 0.05cent. When we print in the school library, we can not see our credit on the desktop, we will be reminded when our credit has been runned out. However, apart from reminding the credit, no reminder tip indicates us to save the paper to save the trees and environment. Think before we print, not just think about the credit but the trees as well.

The tip underneath tells us the document has been sent to the printer, it is in processing.

The credit label shows our credit balance, it is decreased each time we print.

Concept of saving printing paper

Green print
Papercalculator

Reseach-
Paper fact:

• 1 ton of paper = 400 reams = 200,000 sheets¹
• 1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333 sheets¹
• 1 ream (500 sheets) uses 6% of a tree (and those add up quickly)¹

Printing fact:

• Average cost of a wasted page $0.06²
• Average employee prints 6 wasted pages per day, that's 1,410 wasted pages per year!³
• The average U.S. office worker prints 10,000 pages per year³
• While 3 out of 4 office workers print from the Internet, 90% of people with a printer at home print Internet content⁴
• 56% of people ages 45-54 print pages from the Internet for their archives, and only 33% of people ages 18-34 do the same⁴

According to these calculate data, I have a question that how to let people know these information directly when they are planning to print out something unnecessary from computer. What can I do through interactive designing with printer to remind them the environmental impact?
In this project, I intend to let users learn the environmental knowledge about papers and get data from the computer screen during the process of printing.

• Provide a simple statement on your e-mail footer such as “Think Before You Print.”
• Provide a green installation including statement beside the printer.

^{Paper tips: THINK BEFORE YOU PRINT}

• Use both sides of the paper. It's called "duplex printing" and it is the single best way to reduce paper use. So choose copiers, digital printers and multifunction devices that can print on both sides of the paper. Add duplex as your "default" mode.
  
• Go digital. Save on postage by sending electronic files and let your recipient decide whether to print them. Replace paper files with electronic ones using the scan-to-file option on multifunction devices.
  
• Be selective: Print what you need when you need it. For example, print only the portion of the report you need, not every page. Preview your print to avoid printing pages with boilerplate. Print on demand. Don't stockpile forms, letterhead, or instructions that will go out of date.
• Recycle. Collect used paper so the fiber can be used again. Recycling the fiber saves trees, reduces energy and water use, requires fewer chemicals, and keeps paper out of landfills.

Map zoom in

During the Alpha presentation, our group has shown the developing ideas and works on our project. The growing trees on map is a way of encouraging game players to do good things for contributing the social society and protecting the environment in the game as well as educating them.

The general idea of growing trees is that when players’ contribution to the environment arrives a certain level such as reducing a ton of carbon pollution, the street or place nearby will be grown a tree as a consequence and they will be visual evidence of your grade record.

Furthermore, following with more and more contribution from the player, the trees will be grown stronger and stronger.
However, if player play as an evil character during the later game process, the trees will be reduced and even cleared.

Public Transport is Insurance against Emissions Trading Impacts

Town planners should take note that investment in public transport is a highly effective tool for insulating against carbon costs, says an international expert on sustainable land transport.

Professor John Stanley of the University of Sydney was speaking yesterday (14 July 2008) at the New Zealand Bus and Coach Association (BCA) conference in Invercargill.

“Increased investment in public transport is certainly the best insurance against any future impacts of emissions trading. Authorities need to work together to introduce good public transport for all socio-economic groups and to create walking and cycling friendly urban areas.”

He told the 300 conference-goers that car use was a main greenhouse gas emitter so even small moves to encourage people to take either public transport or active (walking, cycling) transport could make a real difference.

In Australasia, transport is the 3rd largest sector (behind agriculture and stationary energy) and 2nd fastest growing sector (behind stationary energy) for greenhouse gas emissions.

In turn, 88 percent of transport emissions came from road transport, with the main culprit being the car: cars generate about 60 percent of the road transport emissions. In comparison, buses only generate about 3 percent.

Professor Stanley said reaching a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to below the year 2000 levels by the year 2020 could realistically be achieved through a mind-shift away from intense car use.

But the onus was on central, regional and local authorities to improve land-use planning and public transport to make it easy for people to leave the car in the garage.

Raewyn Bleakley, Chief Executive Officer of the Bus and Coach Association, said that many people were probably not aware that cars contributed such a large percentage of overall carbon emissions.

“Urban transport needs to shift away from private car use and hopefully information of the type Professor Stanley shared today will provide some impetus to officials to increase investment in public transport in New Zealand.”

Some idea for game design

At the start point of the game, the game player will be given an amount of bill for using during the game journey. As we know, car will cost more energy and produce more pollution to the environment. However, public transport will cost twice less than the private car and walking cost the least. During this game, you can choose your transport tool from several types of transportation tools supported. If the transportation tool you choose cost more energy, the more money you will lose. On the contrast, the less energy you use, the less money you will lose.

At the same time, if you drive car as your transport tool, you will prepare more money and time to spend during your game journey such as car parking fees and looking for car parking place. You will lose your game if you make the choice of costing too much of your money.

Research on transportation issues

• Environmental effects of transportation

Transport generates a number of adverse environmental effects from both transport infrastructure and vehicles. The effects can be direct, indirect and cumulative. Indirect effects may have greater consequences than direct effects, but are not generally well understood.
Transport infrastructure and the operation of vehicles can affect rural and community character, and can sever communities. Discharges and road crashes have a significant impact on health, and the form of the transport system can be a deterrent to exercise by walking and cycling.
The development of car-dependent environments imposes higher average living costs on families and can also restrict mobility for the elderly, children, the poor, the disabled and those who do not wish to own a motor vehicle.
Congestion also imposes some significant costs on communities. These include:
environment costs through higher levels of air pollution
economic costs – Auckland’s congestion is estimated to cost the national economy more than $1 billion per year
social costs, for example, increased levels of stress and less time available for other activities.

Effects including Emissions, Byproducts,Expansion,Biosecurity,Noise.

• Transport:

Our high dependence on cars has some significant environmental impacts. Cars use energy less efficiently than other modes – walking uses 10 times less energy and cycling uses around 100 times less energy than a car… and food is a renewable resource......

• Sustainable transport

Sustainable transport is about finding ways to move people, goods and information in ways that reduce its impact on the environment, the economy, and society. Some options include:.....

• Benefits of using public transport

Public passenger transport offers an alternative means of transport for those who do not drive a car, because of age, disability, income or inclination.

• Vic commute

With more than 22,000 staff and students spread across 4 campuses, the VUW community generates a lot of public and private traffic. Vic Commute has been launched in partnership with Greater Wellington Regional Council to meet the needs of Victoria commuters by providing better transport options. Rather than simply investigating options to increase the number of carparks, Vic Commute will take a wider approach, looking at strategies to reduce the University's environmental footprint by encouraging the use of public transport - buses and trains - and walking and cycling. It will also consider what other facilities might be necessary to support any new initiatives...

Environmental Policy
In August 2006 the University approved the Environmental Policy. The policy directs the University to actively apply the concepts of sustainability and defines its environmental obligations. The key principles of the policy are that the University commits to:

The principles and implementation of sustainability and environmental awareness
Implementing sustainable and environmentally sound business practices
Organisational and personal ownership of the policy
Ensuring that the University’s environmental footprint is managed
Providing community leadership and environmental awareness
Implementing the University’s Treaty of Waitangi statute

• Environmental issues -Mar,2007

Good management of our region’s resources is crucial if we want to live in a sustainable environment. Greater Wellington is currently reviewing its Regional Policy Statement (RPS), which identifies ways of managing resources, such as water and ecosystems, and dealing with the things that affect our environment, such as waste and transportation.
Greater Wellington published Our region – their future last year as part of the review. The report outlined the successes and shortcomings of the current RPS and asked for feedback on how issues could be managed differently in the next RPS.
“We received a pleasing response with 92 comments on environmental problems that the submitters believed should be tackled,” says Greater Wellington’s Environment Committee Chair Cr Chris Turver.

Key issues included:

Waste management
Transport
Air quality
Energy use
Soil quality
Water use/conservation
Protection of native vegetation
Pollution of water
Climate change and hazards.

Cr Turver says he was interested to note that submitters were particularly concerned about issues concerning urban sustainability, such as waste and transport.
Greater Wellington will use this information to develop the next RPS, to be published for consultation later this year.
The public can also get updates on the progress of the review by subscribing to the RPS newsletter.
“The review is a chance for people to suggest better ways for us to manage our region’s resources, so I hope people will take the opportunity to have their say,” says Cr Turver.

Debrief

Project 1 Debriefing:

To be considered carbon neutral, an organization must reduce its carbon footprint to zero. To become carbon neutral is not only the environmental goal for the Victoria University, but Wellington and countries all over the world. Determining what to include in the carbon footprint depends upon the organization and the standards they are following. The carbon footprint is a measure of the exclusive global amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases emitted by a human activity or accumulated over the full life cycle of a product or service. The life cycle concept of the carbon footprint means that it is all-encompassing and includes all possible causes that give rise to carbon emissions. In other words, all direct (on-site, internal) and indirect emissions (off-site, external, embodied, upstream, downstream) need to be taken into account. An alternative definition of the carbon footprint is the total amount of carbon dioxide attributable to the actions of an individual (mainly through their energy use) over a period of one year.

The carbon emission is the main carbon pollution resource, what can we create to contribution to reduce this pollution through designing a game as a interaction tool? Inspired by "fly buys" that concerning a range of supermarkets in New Zealand, generally the game is about taking bus each time can get a fly buy point bonus and by this way if users collect a required points in a limited time will be given a gift finally.

Based on the issues about carbon neutral, how can we create a product using temporary techniques and software we are learning? Researching based on practice is necessary and play an significant role during the production process. Also, is there any potential game theory we need to consider such as the interaction between users and product? Moreover, what kind of information can users obtain when they experience it?

Debriefing.pdf