MD318 – Blog 2

Lucy, Niamh & I met on Tuesday in the Mac labs to discuss what stage we are at with the project and to see if Lucy had gotten any email replies. Conveniently, Javad was also there so we were able to discuss further with him. Lucy had received a reply from Bare Conductive, the company that sells the Interactive wall kits. Unfortunately, they were unable to answer a lot of our questions and referred us to their Q/A page. Lucy had checked it out and advised there were some tips that could come in useful as we build the project so at least we have somewhere to revert to if we run into any issues! Thankfully they did recommend a suitable projector. I suggested Lucy should forward the email onto Jack, our tutor, as we had recently enquired about the projectors available to us in the college already – hopefully the department has this specific one! I went into our meeting on Tuesday with the hope of sorting out what we need to order, finding out what is already available to us and what we can start working on in the meantime. Jack had mentioned the college already has access to the software ‘Mad Mapper’ which we can use for the project. However, we couldn’t find the application on the Macs and honestly, I started to worry. To add ‘Mad Mapper’ onto the list of things to order would add roughly another €250-300 to our budget. I understand the money will not be coming out of my pocket, however asking the department to fund our project could be a small leap of faith that they may not want to take. If our Interactive Map costs €800-1000 to create, it may be asking a lot – especially if they cannot reuse the equipment (as Javad has pointed out). If the project is a success, the college will definitely benefit from it as it is designed to aid students. Although, as we all know, issues will always arise. What if the project is a failure and the money goes to waste? We have to get this right. Jack has assured us the college definitely has had access to ‘Mad Mapper’ in the past and he is currently looking into it for us. While my group awaits answers from the department, The girls and I are going to work away on the design aspects of the map. Luckily, I am studying animation this semester with Javad as my lecturer. With newfound access to ‘Wacom’ sketch boards, creating visuals on the Macs has become so much easier. Using these boards to design the map will benefit not only the project, but improve my skills for my other module! Two birds, one stone?