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Morton Heilig was one of the earliest known pioneers in virtual reality technology, and was also a filmmaker. With the help of his partner, he was able to apply his cinematography skills to develop the Sensorama from 1957 to 1962. The Sensorama was one of the earliest known examples of a machine that provided an immersive, multi-sensory experience to the user. That said, it is widely considered as one of the earliest virtual reality systems. Similar to an arcade racer, the machine featured a game that provided a user the experience of riding a motorcycle through the streets of Brooklyn. It included wind, vibration on the motorcycle, a 3D view, and even smells of the city. Heilig’s whole idea was to create the “cinema of the future”, of which he ultimately ended up discovering. Heilig’s work relates to my thesis project in how I want to create a physical interactive experience for users to use and explore.

Jaron Lanier is also another known earlier pioneer in the field of virtual reality. His interest dates back to 1985 when he left his job at Atari to create his own startup VR company, VPL Research Incorporated. It was here that the first VR goggles and gloves were actually developed, but had not hit the popular stride these accessories had hit today. Since then he has gone on to work in a research department of Microsoft, and is still viewed by many as one of the prime gurus for VR technology. Lainer’s work relates to my thesis in the sense that his developments created the essential pieces necessary to experience a simulation that I want to create. 

Palmer Luckey is famous for his development of the Oculus Rift, which ultimately sparked a gold rush in the market. In early stages of development, the Oculus Rift was but a few scrapped cell phone parts fit into ski goggles. Amazed at how bad VR technology was at the time, Luckey was determined to bring his product to the market, and partnered with John Carmack to bring an audience to his creation. Multiple tech companies, including HTC, Sony, Google and Microsoft, all hopped on this bandwagon, and the rest is history. Similarly to Lanier, Luckey’s work is an essential part to my thesis in which it provides a system to host what I want to simulate. Palmer’s work is probably the most widely recognized by the general public, the Oculus Rift is a worldwide sensation.

While my thesis might focus largely on the process of 3-D printing, I have to admit that there is more to it than just that. The 3-D printer is indeed important, but it is also very convenient means to an end. A large part of my influence comes from my time building plastic model kits and more recently being introduced to the world of Maker-spaces. For model kits, I primarily have built robotic figures known around the world as GUNPLA. Gunpla comes from a Japanese Animated Universe known as Gundam where giant humanoid mecha are the focal point of the many series’. Gunpla is scaled down plastic kits of these robots where you use craft tools like specialized clippers, sandpaper and paints to put together and customize your own miniature mecha. The ones behind this are the amazing engineers and designers at BANDAI in Japan. It is the work of the many designers and engineers that figure out how to get a giant robot in a TV show into a form that is not only smaller, but still retains the same details. They also make sure that each plastic figure can be constructed with stability and in the most efficient way possible. They way they put parts together in the instructions still boggles my mind. Its almost putting together this crazy 3-D puzzle. It is thanks to them that I had the inspiration to make a toy of my own that focuses a lot on the idea of customization and the act of putting it together on your own. Everyday I try to figure out how they did with each plastic kit and somehow find a way to incorporate it into mine. It will be tough, but once I find a way, I want to also make figure that has a strong level of detail while also being something that can fit on your desk.

While these plastic models and their creators might be the influence of the past, the present and the fact I even known what 3-D printing is is thanks to a more college related role model. If anyone was a role model for this, it would be IMM’s very own John Kuiphoff. John Kuiphoff’s is a professor of many talents and he has a passion for the physical creative aspect of IMM. Through his digital fabrication class, I was introduced to this aspect that I never really knew existed. His class introduced me to things I’ve come to relate to IMM like woodworking, laser cutting and of course 3-D printing. People forget that IMM isn’t always about whats on the screen. Sometimes its whats in your hand. John was always excited to show off his maker-space stuff and work to us students. He didn’t care for skill level at all, just as long as you were satisfied with the end product. Through him, I learned that the maker-space is the bridge that connected IMM’s digital and physical aspects. You weren’t stuck with a picture on a screen. Now you could laser cut it out and give it to someone as a gift. You could design something practical like enclosures for electronics, or get crazy and creative and make silly key chains to show off. It was through him that I found myself in the maker-space almost everyday that it was open, spending ours trying out ideas whether they were big or small.

As for a leader in my field, I do have to thank Josef Prusa for his great contribution to the 3-D printing community. He is a large part of making the 3-D printing movement more accessible to the average Joe. At only 19 he became part of the Rep Rap community, one aimed at making open source free 3-D printers. Now he has moved on to his personally designed PRUSA series which has be hailed for its quality not in just construction and print results, but also for the companies customer service. The company has less than 100 people working out of HQ in Prague and yet, they are able to produce all of their 3-D printers through his own farm which is literally 3-D printer building new 3-D printers.

1. Suichiro Nishiya has directed almost all of the mainstream Mario Party titles except for the first few, in which he worked as a standard developer. Nishiya’s ability to explore different iterations of the classic Mario Party formula illustrates his passion for giving long-time Mario Party fans a new and exciting way to play. Take Mario Party 10, for example. Typical Mario Party games have players individually move around a board, but in the 10th iteration of the series, Nishiya established a new mechanic of having all of the players journey around the board together. This brought a whole new element of strategy to the game, and surprised many players. Altogether, Mario Party is one of the most beloved series in Nintendo’s history, and much of its success is thanks to Nishiya. However, Nishiya has worked on other titles as well, including Wii Party, a more generic version of Mario Party with wider varieties of modes. Although Wii Party wasn’t as resounding a success as any of the Mario Party game, it has a special place in my heart for bringing me and my family countless hours of fun.

2. Palmer Luckey used his experience with working for a military technology company to create the Oculus Rift, one of the world’s first commercial VR headsets. He had always been interested in virtual and augmented reality, even going as far to make prototypes in his parents’ garage at age 17. While these prototypes were rather ineffective, Luckey’s Oculus Rift was a massive success, earning $2.4 million dollars to fund the project back in 2012. Fast forward to today; Luckey’s invention is as successful as ever, especially with developers leaning more to creating VR games and applications.

3. Piotr Iwanicki developed Superhot, a game where time only moves where you do, in 2016. Since then, the game has grown a pretty sizable cult following, especially due to its minimal and stylish look. The game is not very long, but the replay potential is through the roof, especially considering the game gives you multiple ways to execute the red crystal guys that chase you through each level. Superhot was one of the first bigger games to get VR support, and I can confirm the game is SO COOL in VR. This game was definitely one of the reasons I became so interested in VR, and it’s all thanks to the brilliant design of Iwanicki.

My idea for the senior thesis project is to create AdPrice.io, a social media marketing reference tool for the internet. This will be a website that marketers can use to quickly view the current Pay Per Click (PPC) and Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) for advertisements across the most popular social platforms.

While researching the topic, I used many relevant keywords on Google to try and find the existence of such a tool already online. However, all I came across were social media marketing blog articles, mostly written by advertisement agencies, which sporadically mentioned potentially outdated price figures. There does not seem to be web tool that has been built for this purpose, where the important PPC and CPM numbers for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat, Pintrest, etc. are all easily viewable and updated on a single page. Like I previously mentioned, the closest thing I could find was a cluttered list on an old blog article, written by a social media marketing agency which was trying to sell their services. AdPrice.io would not have ulterior motives, and wouldn’t clutter the webpage, making for a fast and friendly experience.

I have purchased the domain, and am thinking of building the site on a TBD wordpress template. With some templates, it is impossible to tell the site is wordpress. I love working with wordpress, graphic design, and learning about social media marketing (something I do a lot of during my free time), so this project would definitely leverage my skills. Hopefully this project can help me land a dream job of working in content marketing for a startup, and helps me to learn a ton about the subject.

Ideally, I would love the price values to be as updated as possible, but I believe it is impossible to gather real time values. I will do more research, but it does not seem like there are any APIs or bots around that grab the current values, and it would be difficult to create these. Since price values do not change very quickly, I was thinking this site could be more of an educational experience where I update the going rates a few times a week (easily viewable on the top of the page), and then break down the individual nuances and strategies for advertising on each of the platforms on the rest of the page. I could also attach a blog as a separate page, which would help for google rankings. I still need to spend time thinking about the type of content I want on the site, in addition to the actual PPC and CPM’s.

As far as backup plans go, I would make a content strategy and video for my startup Vey.io, but right now I’m confident in AdPrice.io and am currently trying to figure out a logo. Thanks for reading!

It’s a game where you play minigames. In VR. That’s pretty cool!

I’m not great at making games, so I’d like to design games instead. Having made games before, I know the kinds of things that go into them and the different kinds of workflows that development includes. As such, this document will be the “everything you need” to make my game: Minigame Masters.

The ups will definitely come in designing each of the minigames. However, there is so much more that goes into a game other than just the games itself. I have to think about the UI, the music, the player experience, and so on. It’s going to be a lot less fun when I get into the actual building part. My skillset just isn’t as proficient as it should be for that kind of work.

If all else fails, I could jump into one of the other 30 ideas I have: Esports set design, voice acting an interactive meta/4th wall-breaking story, Dragon’s Lair-esque game…

I’ve already posted my design document, but here it is again: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JhwvaiGwqwkBxH0IY7rEHbV4f1-gaTnqvjX4YQjqyTA/edit?usp=sharing

For my thesis project, I’ve decided to create an interactive video relaxation program targeting people with mental, physical, visual, auditory, and sensory disabilities. However, everyone will be able to use it as well. The name of this project so far is called Engage-Me-Now, as seen in the title, to promote engagement for everyone. Using sensory-friendly visuals and audio, it would be an entertaining form of interactive media that engages and relaxes its users. Now, there are apps specifically for this, using meditation and tracking behaviors, but I wanted to do something else that everyone can do and enjoy doing, looking forward to relaxing and playing it. That is what would be a huge strength of this project, since it’s something that hasn’t really been done before.

I came up with the idea based on my childhood, as a person with learning disabilities that stem ADHD and Auditory Processing Delay, and my time in occupational therapy. I played a game called Interactive Metronome that consists of clapping your hands together every time you hear a “ding”, like a metronome, for a certain amount of reps. However, the program has evolved much more since I last used it, so I would often get bored with it due to the lack of actual entertaining engagement, which I know they have more of now. In a way, this program helped me relax over time and significantly increased my focus, memory, and cognition. Although I’m not exactly striving for a program just like this, I do need to give credit where credit is due, and I would’ve never thought of this thesis idea in the first place without my experiences with Interactive Metronome.

For my thesis, I would likely use Adobe After Effects for the visuals, Adobe Premiere to tie the program together, possibly some programming, and Adobe Audition for the audio. I would also be researching different examples of sensory-friendly interactive media, such as museum exhibitions, projects, videos, and games, which I have already started. I think a weakness in my project would be that I don’t really know much about programming, so that could impact the amount of which I want to accomplish. Also, everyone has different needs and sensory triggers, so it might be very hard to actually get something to work in the way that it won’t upset anyone.

I don’t have rough sketches just yet, and I’ve summarized the notes of my early findings throughout this post (very sporadically). However, I am updating my thesis slide deck as I do more research. I will be contacting my old speech pathologist, who worked with me since I was a toddler, and also get into contact with other people with disabilities on campus to learn more and create better prototypes. I also don’t really have any other ideas, at this point it would just be minimizing the amount of work I actually can do in this project.