use-us.ie

For an assignment that we had in our last year of college we were asked to conceptualise a business and develop a business plan for it. This was a group project and I joined a group with Gary Flatherty, Damien Burke, Andrew Vaughn and myself.

To decide what business idea we wanted to do we decided to use bubbl.us for brainstorming. We came up with a number of different ideas and conducted a swat analysis on each but the one we settled on was a website that users could submit links to their own websites and get them reviewed for usability, seo, design etc and get feedback from experts and regular users.

We used email and text to communicate and set up a Google wave as a means of collaboration. During these interactions we decided to divide the project up into equal pieces. My section was the revenue mechanism and financial projection.

I developed a projection for what were going to need for one-year vs. what our expected revenue was going to be for the year. After one year we had a loss of just €100, after this point we began to make money. By the third year we had developed the company so that we were able to expand and hire an extra 6 people. Below is a full outline of the project; the executive summary, including is a general description of the product, a description of the customer benefits, the innovative characteristics, a description of our expected users and the revenue mechanism and financial plan.

After we had developed the business plan we also gave a presentation in front of our classmates to 'sell' our product. The PowerPoint is also included below.

Business Plan


Executive Summary

Here is a copy of the PowerPoint we did also.

The Hacking Community

In this blog post I will talk about the Hacking community, with special attention paid to the Hack This Site community. The hacking community is one of many different but related strands. In this paper I talk about the different subcultures of hacking; the computer security culture, the programming subculture and the hacking hobbyist. I also pay particular attention to the hack this site community; talking about the main activities that go on, the channels of communication and the media reports of the group.

Hackers Community

An example of a documentary describing the fight between good hackers(white hats) and bad hackers(black hats)

Multi-touch Table

The third piece of work that I really enjoyed was a project and research paper that we built in second year, in a module called Directed Study. This project, which was done in a group, consisted of writing a paper on a subject which we were interested in and also making a video that related to the topic.

Our group, which consisted of Olivia Kennedy, Mark O'Leary, and I choose the subject of multi-touch tables. We wrote a paper which described three different multi-touch systems, the first was Microsoft Thinsight which was developed by Microsoft in Cambridge, the second was The DiamondTouch Display developed by Mitsubishi Electronic Research Laboratories(MERL), and the third was F.T.I.R (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection), used in a number of different touch screens.

Along with describing the three types we also made an MT mini and an interactive whiteboard. We built the whiteboard using a wii controller and some inferred lights; here is an example of how we did it. Below is a video which shows us giving a description of each system along with a demonstration of our MT mini.

This project was a very enjoyable project, it gave me great experience with the different multi-touch systems that where out at the time and it was really good to work in a team. We also as a surprise got a comment on our video from the developer of the MT mini Seth Sandler, complimenting us on our descriptions of the three systems.

Below I have put a link to a tutorial video showing how to build an MT mini for anyone who wants to build one.
The MT mini

Flash Project

This second post is of a Flash project I created which I particularly enjoyed. I created a sequencer using Actionscript in Flash, and used Illustrator and Photoshop to create the interface. It was part of a 3rd year module called Interactive Multimedia. This is it up and running!!



In designing this application I tried to create a sequencer that primarily was easy for the user to use, and was astatically pleasing. I designed all buttons and sounds using illustrator and audacity respectively. I based the design of my sequencer loosely around a wind chime. I hoped that basing it on a familiar everyday object would help the user understand the sequencer better.

The sounds I used were based around a wind chimes sound. I used a 'kind of' pentatonic scale to match all the sounds together. To get the right pitch I brought a xylophone sound I got from The Freesound Project and brought it into audacity.



I started off with a mid range G flat. I altered it by cutting and fading out the ring at the end so that I got a sharper sound and I also brought the pitch down to C saved that and went back to the original and did the same for D, E, G, A, high C, high D and high E.

I also included some keyboard shortcuts which you are shown when you hover over the info icon. This was a very rewarding project and I learned a lot using Actionscript and Audasity. I look forward to working more with these programmes in the future.

The Watch and Boot Design

These next three posts are to show examples of some of the projects that I particularly enjoyed working on. The first one I'm going to talk about is an assignment I was given in 3rd Year in Design Visualisation to create a watch design and ski boot design from scratch. Here I will describe the steps we went through. The design itself wasn't the point of the assignment it was an excuse to get good experience using Illustrator and Photoshop.


We did the basic vector sketch in Illustrator:

Then we did monochromatic shading using some Photoshop brushes:

We then added some colour and gave it a logo to make it look more like an advetisement:



For the boot project we were asked to do the same thing, I researched on some ski boot websites for inspiration and this is the final project that I came up with:



I really enjoyed this project and learned a lot when using Photoshop and Illustrator.

United Visual Artists

Some guys I admire at the moment are the collective of designers/engineers that work at United Visual Artists, they started the group with an aim to improve bands live performances with innovative uses of technology, but have diversified away from just working with bands and live performances to creating a whole host of different installations and pieces.

They predominately work with lights creating installations that try to involve the audience in the performance. For an example there installation called Volume DV where they have great tall monoliths of light that respond to how close someone is to each individual one, they also give out individual sounds that also correspond to the interaction between the audience and the piece.

They also work with a number of different bands creating videos and live performance shows for the likes of Massive Attack, U2, UNCKLE, and The Chemical Brothers.

They try to blur the lines between the audience and the performance; this is something I would love to work on either with bands where the crowd somehow interacts with the light show etc. or in a museum or gallery setting where the people the visit make the installation come alive.

Check out the interview below and some of their other work!

Music Video