Student Research Week 2014 was held March 24—28 at Texas A&M University. Department of Computer Science and Engineering senior capstone design students Ruiz Akpan, Stephen Chen, and Stephen Ten Eyck took second place in the poster competition's Mathematics/Statistics/Computer Science category with their project called Spiral.
Spiral is a revisualization of the modern calender and is "inspired by future concept visions that are occasionally released by Corning, Microsoft, and other groups," said the three Spiral designers. "Spiral is a proof of concept that focuses on giving users a new perspective of calendars by steering them away from the traditional grid-like design and towards a new one that is different, yet intuitive."
Their design choices included diagonal lines, rings and spirals. The students ultimately went with a 3D, tunnel-like spiral, which visualizes Time as continuous, but also repetitive.
Under the supervision of Sketch Recognition Lab Director Dr. Tracy Hammond and Teaching Assistant Paul Teale, the capstone group developed a spiral calendar that can be used from a web browser without downloading unnecessary software. Spiral is a work in progress: Chrome is currently the only browser supported but this capstone group will be considering others, and the group will be putting together a user study where the participants will use touch gestures on a flat surface.
Ruiz Akpan is a computer science student whose skills include computer maintenance and repair, game development, android apps, and arcade controller building and customization. He will be graduating this May and plans to work for IBM as a software engineer.
Last summer Stephen (Te Yang) Chen interned with Thomson Reuters, the world's leading news and information company, in quality analysis. Stephen's current project priority is in perfecting the spiral calendar. He will get his B.S. degree in computer science in August 2014.
Computer science senior Stephen Ten Eyck currently works as a Computer Systems Assistant for Texas A&M's Department of Chemistry. In 2013 he interned for HomeAway, the world's leading online marketplace for the vacation rental industry, where he developed and launched a web application to serve as an end to end testing dashboard.
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Photo: (l-r) Stephen Chen, Ruiz Akpan, and Stephen Ten Eyck with Spiral