The Recipe

The entire project took a lot of hard work and time, and the end product was the direct result of the whole team's sweat, blood, and tears.

What was our process, exactly? We'll share our experience with you...


Beginning

A lot of time was spent into formulating this idea of a reinvented keyboard. It was not until later we finally came up with this project idea, so we started a bit late compared to other project groups.

We had agreed on a couple of things:

- wood would be used as the frame for the keyboard

- dimensions of the keyboard and keys, and what keys we would use

- push buttons and Arduino must be used to read input from the users
--> It was noted that people might want to review their conversation, and the audience could also be involved by having a chance to look at the conversation that was happening (and also because people have bad memory, so participants might want to look back at what was said). This was decided on after discussion with our lovely T.A., Eylul. 


Middle

Plenty of endless days and sleepless nights were spent at Carol's house working on the physical display. It took all of the team's skills to put the display together: with Boyee's amazing artistic ability (and quick problem solving/thinking), Quinn's mighty cutting and photographic / filming skills, Carol's geeky programming and electronics knowledge, and Emily's fantastic editing and organization of the overall process were we able to even finish everything. Detailed below is the order in which we completed things in:

1. Bought materials together, made a few prototype buttons to test with, wrote Arduino code
2. Brainstormed ideas and ways to make the physical display
• Came up with idea of sandwiching the button in between the foam core so that the button was workable from both sides, effectively halving the amount of work we had to do; instead of 96 keys, we would only need 48
• Constructed frame out of bamboo skewers for the keys to sit on
• Decided instead of using a wooden frame for the overall keyboard, we would use foam boards - cheaper, lighter, and much more portable.
• Arranged the placement of keys on the keyboard - letters on one side, numbers on the other, and special keys placed around
3. Cut up circuit boards and drilled holes for the rest of the keys, soldered wires to the boards (for an in-depth walk-through of the tech component of our project, see The Technical Corner)
4. Taped foam onto all the keys, finished applying rubber bands to the wooden bamboo skewer frame, placed the keys into the frame with the rubber bands
5. Glued the two pieces of foam together, supported by skewers so that the board could withstand the force of people pushing on the buttons 

End

We showcased our project at the mezzanine at SFU Surrey Campus. As it was currently death exam season, the mezz turned into a study area for students - tables were placed and scattered about the open area with chairs set around. We were able to make great use of this set-up as all we needed was a table (to put the keyboard on) and two chairs (for the two users to sit on). 

Many people were interested as we got plenty of looks and stares our way, but in the end only a couple of people managed to play and interact with the keyboard as the participants took a long time with the keyboard.

Accolades

As all good things must come to an end, there are some fabulous people we just have to give credit and mention to:

A big thank you to Carol's high school teacher from Killarney Secondary School, Mr. John Roselli, who provided soldering tools, the circuit boards for the keys, a number of other electronics equipment / material, as well as valuable advice. Without him, we wouldn't have been able have keys at all. 

A moment of appreciation for users from the Arduino forum who helped point to the use of the Keypad library for Arduino to process all the keys... otherwise, the Arduino code presented would have been much, much more complex (and semantically displeasing).

Kudos to all the participants who took part in our project! We hope you enjoyed it, and sincere apologies that not more people were able to participate.

We also have to thank our wonderful instructor Niranjan Rajah for giving us useful pointers and advice on our project! 

Of course, we cannot forget our awesome T.A. Eylul, who was always there to listen to our endless stream project ideas, never giving up on us despite that, and even helping us brainstorm in the process as well. Thank you so much! 

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Recipe and ingredients go hand in hand, but to avoid a long, tedious post, we have separated the two. So, if you've missed looking at our Ingredients post, make sure to check it out!