Testing and all its crap

Updated the internal testing document.

Comlpeted more testing for documentation purposes and converted the document from a text file to an excel document... much easier to manage now.

Also did a lot more work on the flash application. Had a few problems with getting AS3 to work with my dodgy AS2 knowledge :p It's not perfect, but at least I'll have a good grounding to work off. It'll mainly be tweaking from here now on in terms of the actual core mechanic of the application.

Thankfully the AppleSpeech scripts are as simple as one line of code for each word we have in the database. Very simple, very quick, copy&paste-able... just the way I like it :)

Next stage will be to create and link the database which will be done in SQLite (compatible with AS3). I'm hoping that won't give me too much trouble since I haven't gotten to the design of the application yet.

That brings me to the next point... Liz will be working on the design over the next few days. She's compiled a list of words that are commonly used and grouped into categories. We'll be able to split those words up into difficulty ratings then later entered into the database.

Working on a couple of major project concurrently is proving difficult in terms of scheduling... especially if one of them isn't as exciting as the other :s

Studio 3 = lose.

- B

Assignment 3: Prototype Demonstration

We presented for the prototype demonstration on Wednesday. The class was split up so the tutors and Ralf could get through everyone by 12pm. As the last group, we went into overtime and had to present jsut outside the room. No major hassles though.

About the presentation... all in all I think it went well. I think we demonstrated proof of concept so it should be all good. Before I got started on the technology, I showed the clip we made from assignment 2 since we only presented to the tutors, Ralf and Michael.

To the nitty gritty...

I had some problems getting everything to work at the same time. I could get the components working by themselves, but not together due to how you apply the custom scripts to AppleSpeech and Flash. The Flash application itself was no problem since it's just comparing two strings. If it is correct, then it gives the user feedback letting them know that they were successful. If it's incorrect, then it does nothing.

I actually ran into a problem when I began coding the app. It compiled fine and the code looked good... after much grief of staring at what I thought was perfect coding, I turned to Dekker. He wrote a test one for me to compare it with... when I opened it up I saw what I missed immediately... "package"... a retarded mistake by a retarded person :)

I started looking at AppleScript and how to code within AppleSpeech. AppleScript so REALLY REALLY easy... especially for what I needed. In the end, it came down to one line of coding per word :p

Because of the ease of the coding, I'll be able to do what I wanted and concentrate more on the user testing and interaction side rather than spending all semester getting the technology to work.

Anyway, Liz presented some theory on colour and font as a means of design and what will be suitable for the final app. It was the first time she had presented anything in about two years so (except for presenting assignment 2) she was a little nervous. Though having said that, I don't think she was all too confident with what she was saying. Honestly, I felt like she didn't know the content and wasn't actually the person who did the research. After four to six weeks of research on the same topic, you'd think you would be fairly knowledgable (at least in general) in that area... she was basically reading off the sheet. Being her partner, I was a little embarrassed.

Also with the appraisal report, her performance was nothing short of sub par. I can understand the presentation but I couldn't feel anything but disappointed with her work on the appraisal.

I won't get into any details of why she failed to present her research or really give any good input for the report... we did discuss the problem so hopefully she'll shape up and really produce some great results.

Anyway, when I get home, I'll upload the PPT presentation and the appraisal report. I'm hoping to see our own appraisals so we can improve. Since I've been busy with the Rumble Pictures project (see my other blog), I haven't been giving 100% of my concentration to Play and Speak (though I've probably put in much much more than 20~25hrs/week on this). I wouldn't be surprised if I missed something really major.

Ah well... time to knuckle down and really smash this assignment.

Project plan submitted

After a week of research, testing and making up a lot of stuff, the project plan is completed and handed in. Liz and I aren't too sure about the SWOT related tasks part of the project plan, but whatever... it's submitted now.

Much of our work over the past week or two has been solely on this document so reading through it will give updates on testing, research and other information.

To view the document, please click here.

On to the Project Plan

After getting the digital mock up done and presented, I completely forgot about posting another blog. Anyway, click here to view the digital mock up. It should be processed by the time people read this post. It's basically how I think the application would work and how users would interact with it.

So the results of the presentation... I haven't checked yet :p The tutors did give us a lot of feedback since everyone had some sort of experience with either voice recognition software or early child education. One notable suggestion that could potentially be molded into our project is moving the entire application to another platform... PC based -> Nintendo DS.

It turns out that the DS already has something similar to what we're proposing. I think it was called Brain Training which is comprised of a lot of mini games, one of which being a voice training application. If DS coding isn't too complex and there are existing voice recognition libraries that are importable, the scope of the project could completely change.

After researching the development of DS games, I was informed that the general name for DS coding is "homebrew". I later came across a site called NDS HomeBrew, which as the name suggests, has a lot of support for anything DS.. especially develop. I've posted a thread on there asking about voice recognition with the DS in the hope that someone can help with it. If not, I may have to go back to using Dragon and Flash. Developing on the DS would be much much nicer :p

The thread can be found here.

Getting back to Dragon, I did some testing with it... so... setting up an account after it's been trained to your voice works to an extent. Of course it's not perfect so there are still a lot of limitations with this type of technology. Stuttering certainly doesn't help. It was a lot more rigid than I thought it would be.. for stuttering, it needs to be a little more flexible. Though I do understand that making it more flexible will probably make it less accurate.

After the initial setup, I ran through a few test cases speaking with various accents, pitch changes and tones to see how much the results would be affected. The accents I tried were: Indian, Asian (generalised and really obvious), intentionally stuttering, talking with a high/low voice and asking someone else to talk.

The results... well, some things changed. A lot of problems came up with recognising even slightly complex words when accents were concerned. Stuttering sometimes gave null results. Asking someone else to talk gave similar results to accent changes. As it stands now, training will be crucial to accuracy.

However, all of these results could actually be nulled since after I played back what I said just to test the mic, I found that the mic itself was slightly damaged and was letting in an annoying clicks and pops which may have affected the voice recognition. Until I purcahse a better mic, I won't be testing too much more since the results may not be so accurate.

I'm hoping to get a reply on the NDSHB forums ASAP so I have a little more focus and gauge if this will be possible or not. If the coding is too intense, I don't think I'll have the abilities to really do this with the DS :/

Presenting Tuesday

So after talking to Bonnii, we've been able to confirm a present this Tuesday. Everything should be good to go by then... until then, voice recordings to go then I can finish the animation!

I'll upload a compressed version somewhere so everyone can get the gist of our project.

... NOT getting started

So we're starting off on the wrong foot already and did NOT present yesterday. It wasn't anyone's fault but for the moment, I can probably guess that Bonnii is a little disappointed with me (I'm not surprised nor can I blame her :p).

Due to Liz's flu, any group work for the past week has been rather difficult. Most of the SWOT is done but the finishing touches that were to be made has yet to be completed. Also, the digital mock up needs some voice recordings that has yet to be recorded. The sketches however, have been done for a while now... just waiting on those recordings.

Liz did email Ralf but we haven't gotten any feedback as of yet. Hopefully we'll get a chance to present this soon without any penalties.