uCampus Release 0.03a

Today is another important day to mark in the weCAMP project history. After 12 working days since the release of uCampusClient 0.02a, Dr Darren Roberts makes Release 0.03a available this afternoon. This version implements User Account Management (UAM) and various refinements to the user interface.

Why User Account Management?
UAM is something that I have always wanted since the old days of SUCoD. It has been widely reported that End-User Privacy is an important requirement to be fulfilled in order to achieve a higher level of usability of an interactive urban contextual modelling platform. Design practitioners are reluctant to make their early design ideas known to the public. They want to try out some initial ideas in privacy until the designs are developed to a certain extent that they are happy with.

What Darren has delivered through the current UAM is exactly the privacy that end users need when performing personal online experiment. A registered user of uCampus will be given a username and password controlled account where all the models uploaded by the user will be hosted. No other users can see these models held in private accounts until the owners of the models explicitly make them published in the "public" domain.

UAM can also be used in team working by a group of users sharing an account with the same usernsame and password as set up by themselves. When this group of users login to uCampus with their joint account, they will be shown all the models they have uploaded as a team.

How well uCampus UAM will be received by the users is yet to be tested. The first weCAMP Project Workshop will be an ideal occasion to work this out.

Seeing it on uCampus!

To echo Howard's latest post, I would like to post some snap shots of the new Learning Hub as proposed by the Team A students working up to the Review 2 session on 20 March 2009 at the School of Architecture.

I have uploaded their core design onto uCampus on their behalf to make it viewable to other students as an example of how the uCampus platform could be used to visualise 3D design proposals in the University campus context as modelled by the JISC Project Team.

Starting the evaluation process in earnest

Now the project is underway, and looking very impressive, it is time to start the evaluation process in earnest. The first external group of users are beginning to get to grips with the platform. This group is an MArch group co-ordinated by Chengzhi. They are developing 3D visualisations of assorted schemes for the development of the Jessop Edwardian Wing and the vacant Jessop East site. They are now three weeks into the project and the schemes are developing well. All groups have appeared reticent to engage fully with UCampus but those that have made some explorations are beginning to show some interesting results. Perhaps the most graphic of these - and certainly the one that has caused the greatest discussion within the project team - is the team that have exported the model and then texture mapped building facades onto the model.

The impact on the team has been one of really focusing what we are trying to achieve. It is interesting that this discussion has occured in the same week that Google Maps Street View has gone live. The focus of the model is not a photorealistic representation of the campus, and in this we cannot compete with Street View. We are creating a conceptual and analytical tool that allows the exploration of the campus at a variety of levels. One criticism levelled at the model in its current guise is that at times it becomes difficult to read as buildings tend to merge into one another from certain view points. It is now important that we start to work on how we are representing data within the buildings as this will directly impact on how the exterior of the buildings are mapped. Now is the time to start refining the graphical representation of the platform and maintain a real architectural quality to the information available.

A quick check on uCampus initial results

The Project Team have been working on the Jessop site for sometime aiming to produce some initial results to carry out the first test bed case involving a groups of 20+ real users. I did a quick check on the cluster of models for the Jessop Edwardian Building, Jessop Victorian, and BioIncubator (the upper snap shot below) in relation to a Bird's Eye view of the site from Live Search Maps (the lower snap shot - before the Jessop West was built). Will users have a high level of confidence on the uCampus models as produced?

Project Board Meeting 25.02.2009

The project board meeting took place two weeks ago and marked an important milestone in the project development. The meeting was the first opportunity for the board to see project outputs, including the first release of the user interface and 3d models mapped onto their terrain.

The project board were impressed by the results after such a short time period and expressed their interest and excitement at the potential of the project. A range of issuees were discussed during the meeting about possible developments and in particular the benefits of the project to the university internally, externally and in the JISC community.

There were no significant changes of direction suggested by the board members, who confirmed the importance of being aware of potential project applications whilst enriching the existing project path.

The first uCampus Platform Release (version 0.01a)

The first trial version of the uCampus Plaform was released this morning. The Team (Darren, Panagiotis, Puja, and Chengzhi) did a presentation to a group of 25 taught masters students at the School of Architecture. The students working in four groups will be using uCampus to develop 3D design proposals for (1) Reuse of the Jessop Edwardian Wing as the University's new Learning Hub, and (2) Redevelopment of the Jessop East Site.

For the initial phase of data development, several types of 3D models in the X3D format have been made available through uCampus: (1) 100m x 100m Terrain blocks representing the campus lands and roads etc, (2) Non-university buildings of surrounding local cummunities, (3) University buildings, (4) Floors of selected University buildings.

The students were shown how to install the uCampus Client package, lastets Java platform and a choice of some free downloadable X3D viewers/players. The team then demonstrated how the various kinds of 3D models can be selected, combined to generate user-defined campus models all in-realtime.

All 3D models generated on uCampus can be downloaded to the user's own desktop/laptop that can be further used as the basis for developing 3D design proposals. Students were also shown the Uploading facility of uCampus for them to submit their own models to the server which can be further combined with other models generated/submitted previously.

The idea is that the students are asked to work on the uCampus platform in anger with specific design briefs to fulfill. The JISC project team will then collect questions, feedback and comments from the students as the first group of real users. We have organised regular weekly project reviews in which each student team will present their work in progress and their user experiences with uCampus.

The 0.01a release is a result of about 30 working days since the whole team were put together. In these 30 or so working days, the team also centended with relocation from the Arts Tower to the Crookesmoor Building, two weeks' snow/ice, and a late delivery of the Dell server rack cabinet.

In the next few weeks, the team will continue developing more datasets and interactive function as the students are developing their project works. This phase of platform development and working directly with the first group of end users will prepare us to better undertake the first major project workshop scheduled in late June or early July 2009.