A Playday Post Mortem (part 1)

Hmmm... that title looks alarming like some sort of murder mystery. But here I mean post mortem in the "project review" sense. It seemed like a good time to draw a line under Together Through Play, and since Playday was pure Grand finale,  I thought it would be a good time to review what went right, what went wrong,  and what I've learned for the future. As ever, let's start with the "What was good", before "What could have been better" (you can tell I've done a teaching certificate,  eh? ). Time is short today,  so I'll do what was good today,  and the improvements in my next post.

What was Good

1) That we did it at all.  That's my number one.  It was great to actually show our work of and talk to the public about it. It was great to see the reactions we got,  even the unexpected problems ( as we shall see next post!). I always enjoy showing off what we're doing.  Partly because I'm a show-off, but also because I like to know whether what I'm doing actually means something.

2) Taking a trial run that morning. I'd made some late improvements to the Button Bash code on my laptop. Upon copying it back to the Windows tablet we were using, it wouldn't run at all. I found this out when I did one last check on the morning before setting off. The problem was the number of the COM port for the arduino in the code. Trivial,  easily corrected,  but a headache,  and it would have beem a load more hassle trying to fix during set up. I've demo'd enough kiss to know that you should always test on the morning!

3) Charging the Tablet beforehand.  There was a delay in getting power to us.  In the end it got sorted out in good time before starting,  but knowing I had two hours' charge on the tablet meant there was no stress at all. We had a buffer, even if we didn't need it.

4) Bright posters, bunting and horsey seats. These were courtesy of Sinead Dumigan, one of my Product Design students who supplied the graphics for the game. When you're working on a game,  it's easy to focus on what's on the screen.  You forget that from even four feet away, or just looks like a tablet. Add the posters, bunting and horse seats, and you suddenly have something that looks interesting from a distance and pulls people in.

These were the good.  But what could we have done better?  Tune in next time!

PhD studentship in rehabilitation of grip function

In case you're interested, I've got a potential PhD Studentship up for grabs on Development of a Biofeedback Device to Restore Grasp Function in Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury (click on the link to go the application page!).

This is co-supervised by Drs Sarah Astill and Rachel Coates over in Sports and Exercise Science. Well co-supervised by Rachel Coates and me since Sarah is the lead supervisor!

Anyway, this will look at extending the work I've been doing on the manipulandum to measure grip forces (currently being refined and souped by the outstanding Stuart Watt, a phenomenal undergraduate here at Leeds - thanks to the financial generosity of National Instruments who have sponsored the work!), and developing it to provide feedback to aid the recovery of grip function in individuals with Spinal Cord Injury.

It's a 3.5 year studentship funded via EPSRC, preferred start date is this October, but could be delayed as far as April 2015. The deadline for applications is the 29th of August (two weeks tomorrow - yeah, I know. I know.) Most importantly, it's a super-exciting area for us to be moving into, and I'm champing at the bit to get the manipulandum doing more than just measuring, and actually building in the therapeutic functions. Help me out, people - let's get this show on the road!

I came, I saw, I... played

Or rather, we came, we saw, and we played - since Playday was as much work for Anne-Marie Moore (PhD researcher on Together Through Play) as it was for me.

Anyway, we made it through Playday without the Button Bash kit breaking or the solder giving out, or Windows crashing - or the (at times torrential!) rain stopping play. And I'm bushed. Who knew Play was such hard work? :op 

A lot of fun, though - pics are up on Twitter (You can find me on @rayjholt). Not many of the kit in use (just one, I think). There wasn't much time to grab them. I'd started the day with the idea that I'd be providing a steady stream of Tweets, but that really didn't happen. It's telling that the tweets cover the set up - and then the back end of the day! I soon discovered that trying to "live tweet" an event by taking photos and then posting twitter from your phone makes you look a) anti-social and b) a bit creepy, since the people you've just photographed don't really know what you're doing. 

Anyway, I'll try to get a proper post-mortem of what went well and what we could have improved (you can tell I'm a lecturer, eh?) up here in the next few days. For now, I'm off to have a rest - by getting back to the day job.

Playday Approaches...

Next Wednesday (6th of August) is Playday 2014 - the official day of play! To celebrate, and we've actually got ourselves organised, and arranged to take one of the Together Through Play games, Button Bash, down to the Breeze on Tour event at Roundhay Park.  If you're in the area, feel free to say hello!

In the meantime, to whet your appetite, here's a screen shot, and a photo of the whole system:

I'll see you there!