Done Manifesto

        As the project deadline approaches, the Done Manifesto is increasingly a useful set of ideas. Much of the remaining work will carry a risk of perfectionism and the concept of finishing the project without worrying about making it perfect could be very valuable. Accepting that everything is a draft could especially benefit the project because as various pieces come together at different stages of polish or functionality, it can be a struggle not to go back and try to fix things rather than moving forward to the pieces that really need to be completed. Getting comfortable with the project as a draft could result in a final product that is more even and of higher quality that if the pieces that are implemented earlier are highly polished and developed as far as possible, while later parts are unfinished or hastily put together at the last minute. Other ideas, like banishing procrastination by giving up on ideas that you wait more than a week to get done, are also highly applicable to the project, which has suffered from a buildup of ideas that are not necessarily achievable in the remaining time frame. Overall, the Done Manifesto could help get my project done, and could improve the quality of the final product.

Teacher vs. Student vs. Human Centered Learning

    Kevin Broohauser describes the three basic learning types as being teacher centered, student centered, and human centered. The difference between each type of learning is whose preferences guide the project most strongly. Teacher and student learning types are guided by teachers or students respectively, while human centered learning is based on the eventual consumer of whatever is being produced. Each type of learning is appropriate for different level tasks. While teacher centered learning is effective for memorization and student centered learning is a good fit for tasks involving understanding and applying concepts, human centered learning might be a better choice for creative endeavors like the 20% project. After learning Broohauser’s views on this subject, I believe that my project has unfortunately existed almost entirely in the realm of student oriented learning when it could probably benefit from a human oriented approach. While the current student centered approach has allowed me to explore programming and design to the extent that I am interested in, if the project was guided by the type of empathy for the user that Broohauser describes it could result in a more interesting or useful final product while also forcing me to explore avenues of learning that I have so far ignored because on the surface they seem unappealing. In the future I will try to incorporate more human centered learning into my project in the interest of producing a simulation that is actually desirable to the user.

 

 

end of february progress

    February is drawing to an end, and so far I am roughly on schedule with my original goals. I have a lot that I am proud of, especially the progress on the asteroid belt simulation. However there remains a lot of work to do on programming the universe to be entirely random and realistic to some degree. I am still confident that my original proposal is realistic considering what I have done so far and how much work I have left. Progress up to this point has required consistent effort, with about 3-4 hours of work per week, close to what I predicted in my proposal. While little of the work I have done so far has been particularly painful or frustrating, it has been mainly creative rather than technical, and I can foresee  a decrease in productivity unless I begin to work in a more disciplined way as the project becomes more about small improvements and balance now that the large mechanisms are largely in place. At this moment, the simulation is made up entirely of asteroid belts and planets, the latter of which are currently represented by spheres while I work on gravity and loading objects as the player moves through space. I am planning to finish sun simulation by the end of next week, at which point I can begin to focus more on finalizing assets and fine-tuning the mechanics to bring the simulation closer to the composition of an actual galaxy.