Matching Items (5)
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- Creators: Electrical Engineering Program
- Creators: Hosman, Laura
Description
The quality of user interface designs largely depends on the aptitude of the designer. The ability to generate mental abstract models and characterize a target user audience helps greatly when conceiving a design. The dry cleaning point-of-sale industry lacks quality user interface designs. These impaired interfaces were compared with textbook design techniques to discover how applicable published interface design concepts are in practice. Four variations of a software package were deployed to end users. Each variation contained different design techniques. Surveyed users responded positively to interface design practices that were consistent and easy to learn. This followed textbook expectations. Users however responded poorly to customization options, an important feature according to textbook material. The study made conservative changes to the four interface variations provided to end-users. A more liberal approach may have yielded additional results.
ContributorsSmith, Andrew David (Author) / Nakamura, Mutsumi (Thesis director) / Gottesman, Aaron (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
I analyzed a non-profit's educational content website called SolarSPELL and proposed to redesign its interface. SolarSPELL is a solar-powered, offline site that can be accessed without wifi. It looks and behaves exactly like a real website. SolarSPELL is used by children and community members in developing countries across the world, including Africa and the Pacific Islands. The original site was not intuitive or easy to use, which deterred users with low technical literacy, lowering its effectiveness and defeating its purpose of providing educational materials to schools in the community, because users were less likely to use it to access educational content. The website was not responsive, meaning that it did not resize well to fit tablet and mobile devices. I redesigned the site's UX based on user feedback and expert advice to create wireframes that improved the site's layout and user flow to make it more intuitive. I pulled user comments from past surveys on the site and designed solutions to each of the user's complaints. I implemented a filter system and a universal search bar to improve the process of finding specific pieces of content. I designed prototypes using Adobe Illustrator to create the visual side of the interface. I designed my wireframes and prototypes with responsiveness in mind, creating versions for desktop, mobile and tablet. I also illustrated banners for the East Africa and Native American versions of the site, featuring landscape and wildlife from the respective regions. This interface redesign will be coded into a working site and distributed to communities around the world.
ContributorsThielen, Bethany Meishal (Author) / Hosman, Laura (Thesis director) / Ralston, Laurel (Committee member) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The use of conventional weather radar in vulcanology leads to two problems: the radars often use wavelengths which are too long to detect the fine ash particles, and they cannot be field–adjusted to fit the wide variety of eruptions. Thus, to better study these geologic processes, a new radar must be developed that is easily reconfigurable to allow for flexibility and can operate at sufficiently short wavelengths.
This thesis investigates how to design a radar using a field–programmable gate array board to generate the radar signal, and process the returned signal to determine the distance and concentration of objects (in this case, ash). The purpose of using such a board lies in its reconfigurability—a design can (relatively easily) be adjusted, recompiled, and reuploaded to the hardware with none of the cost or time overhead required of a standard weather radar.
The design operates on the principle of frequency–modulated continuous–waves, in which the output signal frequency changes as a function of time. The difference in transmit and echo frequencies determines the distance of an object, while the magnitude of a particular difference frequency corresponds to concentration. Thus, by viewing a spectrum of frequency differences, one is able to see both the concentration and distances of ash from the radar.
The transmit signal data was created in MATLAB®, while the radar was designed with MATLAB® Simulink® using hardware IP blocks and implemented on the ROACH2 signal processing hardware, which utilizes a Xilinx® Virtex®–6 chip. The output is read from a computer linked to the hardware through Ethernet, using a Python™ script. Testing revealed minor flaws due to the usage of lower–grade components in the prototype. However, the functionality of the proposed radar design was proven, making this approach to radar a promising path for modern vulcanology.
This thesis investigates how to design a radar using a field–programmable gate array board to generate the radar signal, and process the returned signal to determine the distance and concentration of objects (in this case, ash). The purpose of using such a board lies in its reconfigurability—a design can (relatively easily) be adjusted, recompiled, and reuploaded to the hardware with none of the cost or time overhead required of a standard weather radar.
The design operates on the principle of frequency–modulated continuous–waves, in which the output signal frequency changes as a function of time. The difference in transmit and echo frequencies determines the distance of an object, while the magnitude of a particular difference frequency corresponds to concentration. Thus, by viewing a spectrum of frequency differences, one is able to see both the concentration and distances of ash from the radar.
The transmit signal data was created in MATLAB®, while the radar was designed with MATLAB® Simulink® using hardware IP blocks and implemented on the ROACH2 signal processing hardware, which utilizes a Xilinx® Virtex®–6 chip. The output is read from a computer linked to the hardware through Ethernet, using a Python™ script. Testing revealed minor flaws due to the usage of lower–grade components in the prototype. However, the functionality of the proposed radar design was proven, making this approach to radar a promising path for modern vulcanology.
ContributorsLee, Byeong Mok (Co-author) / Xi, Andrew Jinchi (Co-author) / Groppi, Christopher (Thesis director) / Mauskopf, Philip (Committee member) / Baumann, Alicia (Committee member) / Cochran, Douglas (Committee member) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The use of conventional weather radar in vulcanology leads to two problems: the radars often use wavelengths which are too long to detect the fine ash particles, and they cannot be field–adjusted to fit the wide variety of eruptions. Thus, to better study these geologic processes, a new radar must be developed that is easily reconfigurable to allow for flexibility and can operate at sufficiently short wavelengths.
This thesis investigates how to design a radar using a field–programmable gate array board to generate the radar signal, and process the returned signal to determine the distance and concentration of objects (in this case, ash). The purpose of using such a board lies in its reconfigurability—a design can (relatively easily) be adjusted, recompiled, and reuploaded to the hardware with none of the cost or time overhead required of a standard weather radar.
The design operates on the principle of frequency–modulated continuous–waves, in which the output signal frequency changes as a function of time. The difference in transmit and echo frequencies determines the distance of an object, while the magnitude of a particular difference frequency corresponds to concentration. Thus, by viewing a spectrum of frequency differences, one is able to see both the concentration and distances of ash from the radar.
The transmit signal data was created in MATLAB®, while the radar was designed with MATLAB® Simulink® using hardware IP blocks and implemented on the ROACH2 signal processing hardware, which utilizes a Xilinx® Virtex®–6 chip. The output is read from a computer linked to the hardware through Ethernet, using a Python™ script. Testing revealed minor flaws due to the usage of lower–grade components in the prototype. However, the functionality of the proposed radar design was proven, making this approach to radar a promising path for modern vulcanology.
This thesis investigates how to design a radar using a field–programmable gate array board to generate the radar signal, and process the returned signal to determine the distance and concentration of objects (in this case, ash). The purpose of using such a board lies in its reconfigurability—a design can (relatively easily) be adjusted, recompiled, and reuploaded to the hardware with none of the cost or time overhead required of a standard weather radar.
The design operates on the principle of frequency–modulated continuous–waves, in which the output signal frequency changes as a function of time. The difference in transmit and echo frequencies determines the distance of an object, while the magnitude of a particular difference frequency corresponds to concentration. Thus, by viewing a spectrum of frequency differences, one is able to see both the concentration and distances of ash from the radar.
The transmit signal data was created in MATLAB®, while the radar was designed with MATLAB® Simulink® using hardware IP blocks and implemented on the ROACH2 signal processing hardware, which utilizes a Xilinx® Virtex®–6 chip. The output is read from a computer linked to the hardware through Ethernet, using a Python™ script. Testing revealed minor flaws due to the usage of lower–grade components in the prototype. However, the functionality of the proposed radar design was proven, making this approach to radar a promising path for modern vulcanology.
ContributorsXi, Andrew Jinchi (Co-author) / Lee, Matthew Byeongmok (Co-author) / Groppi, Christopher (Thesis director) / Mauskopf, Philip (Committee member) / Cochran, Douglas (Committee member) / Baumann, Alicia (Committee member) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The purpose of this project is to analyze the MIT OpenCourseWare coffee can radar design and modify it to be better suited for drone based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) applications while maintaining the low-cost aspect of the original design. The MIT coffee can radar can function as a ranged radar, a Doppler radar, or as SAR. Through simulations and research, the suggestions for how to modify the radar resulted in swapping the coffee can monopole antennas for patch antenna arrays or helical ordinary end-fire antennas, adding an Arduino for automatic recording of output pulses, and switching from a breadboard construction to a PCB to shrink form factor and keep costs and construction time low.
ContributorsRivera, Danielle (Author) / Trichopoulos, Georgios (Thesis director) / Aberle, James (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-12