DONALD 2021

© 2021-2023 Maarten Meijer / AUAS

Introduction

Donald-2021 is named after Donald Norman, one of the fathers of Interaction Design and is a short-term memory tester to be used in various applications.

The learning goal is to experience using hardware to gather quantitative user data for optimising human-machine interaction and to determine a threshold for satisfactory performance for certain tasks.

Donald used to be a hardware device implemented as an Arduino, an AUAS electronic board, and a Raspberry Pi based device using 4 touch controls and a 12 color LED ring for visual feedback and display.

In course year 2021 this was changed to a web application due to the corona pandemic. Using a mobile phone to simulate hardware allows easier at home prototyping for students.

If you just want to look at the interface part without server setup please see project donald_2021_local.

state machine

The memory tester is implemented using a state machine

The animation steps are as follows:

F0 IDLE

F1 WARN

F2 SHOW

F3 DECAY

F4 COUNTDOWN

F0 TIMEOUT

F0 SUCCESS

F0 FAILURE

User Interaction - Timings

The User Interaction can be optimized by editing the timing parameters in a copy of the animations-x.js files.

Timing Param	PARAMS-0	PARAMS-1	PARAMS-2	PARAMS-3	PARAMS-4
T0_IDLE	10	20	20	30	30
T1_WARN	60	60	120	120	180
T2_SHOWTEST	20	40	40	30	30
T3_DECAY	60	120	120	90	180
T4_COUNTDOWN	240	300	360	420	420

Timing is in 'frames' where we assume a frame rate of 60 fps. So a T4_COUNTDOWN of 240 means 240 / 60 = 4 seconds.

User Experience - Animations

The User Experience can be improved by changing the animation functions in a copy of the animations.js files.

An animation function is called every couple of frames and looks like this:

//
//  F3 decay is where your short senory and term memory slowly fades away
//
//
var decayColors = new Array(
  'blue', // named color
  'blue', // named color
  'blue', // named color
  'blue', // named color
  'blue', // named color
  'blue', // named color
  'black', // named color
  'black', // named color
  'black', // named color
  'black', // named color
  'black', // named color
  'black' // named color
  );

function showDecay() {
  if (frameCount % (T3_DECAY / 12) == 0) {
    showLeds(decayColors);
    decayColors.rotateRight(3);
  }
}

Result Data format

result sets retrieved with the form look like this:

T-00ZI	1	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	3,0	3,0	correct	139	0	412x766	2021-01-22 16:49:10.791342
T-00ZI	2	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	3,2,2	3,2,2	correct	100	0	412x766	2021-01-22 16:49:21.104859
T-00ZI	3	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	1,3,3,0	1,3,3,3	wrong	238	1	412x766	2021-01-22 16:49:34.688279
T-00ZI	4	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	1,3,2	1,3,3	wrong	80	1	412x766	2021-01-22 16:49:44.488560
T-00ZI	5	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	0,2	2	wrong	50	2	412x766	2021-01-22 16:49:52.845412
T-00ZI	6	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	2	1	wrong	39	1	412x766	2021-01-22 16:50:00.389465
T-00ZI	7	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	0,1	0,1	correct	67	0	412x766	2021-01-22 16:50:11.589195
T-00ZI	8	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	2,0,0	2,0,0	correct	100	0	412x766	2021-01-22 16:50:21.464358
T-00ZI	9	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	2,3,0,1	2,3,3	wrong	74	2	412x766	2021-01-22 16:50:31.689789
T-00ZI	10	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	3,3,0	3,3,0	correct	111	0	412x766	2021-01-22 16:50:41.561363
T-00ZI	11	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	3,0,1,0	3,0,0	wrong	105	2	412x766	2021-01-22 16:50:52.018799
T-00ZI	12	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	0,2,0	0,2,0	correct	108	0	412x766	2021-01-22 16:51:02.092671
T-00ZI	13	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	2,2,3,3	2,2,2	wrong	69	2	412x766	2021-01-22 16:51:11.945056
T-00ZI	14	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	0,1,2	0,1,1	wrong	80	1	412x766	2021-01-22 16:51:21.529807
T-00ZI	15	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	3,0	3,0	correct	78	0	412x766	2021-01-22 16:51:30.589170
T-00ZI	16	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	3,3,2	3,3,2	correct	129	0	412x766	2021-01-22 16:51:41.207195
T-00ZI	17	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	0,0,1,3	0,0,1,3	correct	197	0	412x766	2021-01-22 16:51:53.891014
T-00ZI	18	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	0,3,2,1,3	0,3,2,1,1	wrong	163	1	412x766	2021-01-22 16:52:06.367124
T-00ZI	19	PARAMS-0	10	60	20	60	240	3,2,3,2	3,2,3,3	wrong	120	1	412x766	2021-01-22 16:52:17.210425

This sequence is composed of:

• testID
• testCounter
• test PARAMS set
• T0_IDLE
• T1_WARN
• T2_SHOWTEST
• T3_DECAY
• T4_COUNTDOWN
• requested sequence
• recorded sequence
• status correct | wrong | timeout
• elapsed time in frames at 60 fps
• remaining levels at which error or timeout occurred, the current level is the length of the requested sequence
• windowHeight x windowWidth in pixels (see whether it's a phone)
• date+time stamp

Microsoft Excel (Dutch) tips

Achieved and Requested Level

Extracting the requested and recorded levels can be done from requested and recorded sequence

• =AFRONDEN.BOVEN(LENGTE($I1)/2;1)
• =AFRONDEN.BOVEN(LENGTE($J1)/2;1)

Date + Time stamp into values

Extracting the date and time form the date+time stamp field can be done

• =DATUMWAARDE(LINKS($O1;10)) and set the cell display to jjjj-mm-dd
• =TIJDWAARDE(DEEL($O1;12;8)) and set the cell display to uu:mm:ss

Tools

Javascript developed using p5js with Processing. Web backend developed using python and Flask