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From 2011.igem.org

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Week by Week

30 May-

Tuesday was my first day in the HCI lab. Some lab mates and myself went over some basic Microsoft Surface programming to get ready for the upcoming iGEM project.

Wednesday-Friday, and Monday, I went with the Wellesley team to BU for Boot Camp! I haven't taken a biology class since 8th grade so all the material seemed new. It wasn't until the Software day on Friday that I was in my element. We broke into small groups and designed basic apps for Clotho. My team definitely wrote our program fastest!

6 June-

All of this week was spent working on other HCI lab projects. Michelle and I worked on adding a component to the Green Touch iPhone application. This new component, the Bloom Survey, is meant to take notes on what plants are in bloom at what times. Hopefully, I will be able to use my iPhone programming skills to work on projects with iGEM later in the semester.

13 June-

This week was also spent on another HCI lab project. Michelle and I worked on and application to track the progress of Beetles eating and invasive plant species outside the Wellesley College Science Center. Michelle also started making plans for a "Notebook" design for the iPad that the BU Wet Lab team can use. Looks like all the iPhone programming will come in handy later this semester!

20 June-

I finally started working on iGEM this week! Consuelo and I started working on BLAST visualizations. Since Boot Camp was three weeks ago, and my bio knowledge is limited, it took a while to get a handle on what we needed to represent. Good thing Kathy (our Wellesley Bio student) could clarify some points for us.

Consuelo and I started on a BLAST visualization meant to display about a hundred results. We used principles of Information Visualization to help users see the score, relative length, and starting point of the various results. Later in the week, Consuelo and I learned that our BLAST visualization did not work very well for Primer BLASTs, which generally have way fewer results, zero being the desired result. So we made a new BLAST visualization for Primer BLASTs. Since we were displaying much less information, screen real estate was not an issue, so we could add more information about each result. We added information about the Restriction Enzyme Cut sites for each result, which will hopefully let the users know how to work with the result better.

Since the BU Team was coming to Wellesley on Monday, we had to be sure our BLAST visualization was ready to be presented. This required a little bit of work on the weekend, but everything was ready by Monday morning!

27 June-

Monday the BU iGEM group came to see all of our progress on the surface software. We also shared our ideas on an iPad application to help the Wet Lab team in the lab. After sharing these ideas, we had a large brainstorming session with all participants. One group focused on Primer Design, another group focused on overall design, and the last group focused on the iPad application. I brainstormed with members in the iPad group. We focused mostly on how users will interact with the application.

Later in the week we began focusing on the design for the iPad application, currently titled Lab Buddy. We began researching different styles of hands free interaction techniques, including gestures and verbal commands. Once we had a stronger grasp on the feasibility of each option we proceeded towards design. We tried to come up with three different designs for each main function in the application. Through process of elimination we decided on a final design and began an electronic prototype.