The score so far
by Kirsten Peters
I entered the project class in my fourth semester knowing I was interested in exploring the Nintendo Wii’s new game controller method. Due to the irregular nature of my project I was given Dr. Freund as an advisor. Over the course of the first month I talked with him about different aspects of this idea and with his help was able to narrow the project down a bit.
I then started an in-depth literature review. Once I knew more about the background research and theories, I started to form the ideas of a rough experimental design. From there, I continued an iterative process of research and experimental design as the ideas and design grew into something solid and feasible. Also, since I chose to use motion capture as one of my measurement techniques, I took extra time to work with Dr. Jim Kao of the Kinesiology department to learn the constraints and requirements of the equipment he was allowing me to use. The last couple of weeks of the semester were focused on polishing up my report and preparing my proposal for Dr. Freund. In the end I chose to investigate the influences of bowling proficiency on performance and upper extremity movement characteristics during first-time Wii-bowling.
Over the summer I took a full time internship so I wasn’t able to start on the next phase until I was back in school. Once I was back I got straight to work. I met with Dr. Kao to review the measurement equipment and met with Dr. Freund to regroup and revise some minor changes to my experimental design. Once I applied for IRB approval, I drafted up my exact test protocol and script, bought supplies, and investigated recruiting options. Once I had IRB approval, I started recruiting via the Psych 1 pool, Craig’s list, the SJSU HFES Yahoo! Group, a network of friends, and posters and signs posted on campus and at local game stores. I chose to use 30 participants (three groups of 10) so I needed to find more people than usual.
While recruiting and scheduling participant appointments, I ran multiple levels of a pilot study. It was during this period that I made a couple of changes to my protocol based on some unforeseen complications due to the motion capture system. However, once the bugs were ironed out I started running participants like crazy. It took about 2 months to finish recruiting and running 24 participants – which was much longer than I expected. Since, by this time, it was early November, I decided to give up finding the last 6 participants and move on to the next phase of my project.
Because I chose to use motion capture data, I was forced to complete an extra step before moving on to the data analysis phase. Without boring you with the details, I needed to ‘digitize’ the video data before I could find out the dependant variable I was interested in knowing. That process has taken me the longest and I have only just completed digitizing the first group of data, which is actually only 1/3 of the simple data.
My plan is to use this first group of data to complete an initial statistical analysis of my data. If I find no significant results, I will need to digitize the remaining 2/3 of the simple data before I can use it for additional statistical analysis. Once I have finished my data analysis, I will be ready to report my findings in my final report. Right now, the plan is to finish this semester.
My advice to any student reading this is to pick an interesting topic you are passionate about and find a simple question you want to answer with your project. You do not need to reinvent the wheel with this project. This project has taught me the importance of good research with a scientific design. I have also learned patience, restraint, perseverance, discipline and the importance of a good network.
If you have any questions about my project or experience, I encourage you to attend a Thesis/Project Café meeting which is usually held every other week. Regardless of your stage in the program or project, we welcome your input and interest. Or feel free to email me at engineerkirsten@yahoo.com
