Hectic!

28 January 2017 (Saturday)

Chaotic week. Things achieved within the past weeks:

1. FRGS Grant submission

2. Geran Putra Siswazah Grant submission

3. CHIUXID paper on Gesture Sets

4. CHIUXID paper on Loose to Tight Corporation Strategy in Teaching HCI

5. Grant submission to another cultural and music program 

6. Proof reading students articles to be submitted to our yearly HCI Postgraduate Students' Colloquium

Hectic!

Results of InnoHub Grant on Virtual Training for People With Disabilities Empowerment

26 January 2017 (Thursday)

Received the results of our InnoHub grant submitted from the recent cycle today - grant application is ACCEPTED! Alhamdulillah, this means that the Virtual Training for PWD can be carried out pronto. Sincerest thanks to Dr. Nor Wahiza and team for including me in the team - I humbly look forward to work forward together on this project.

This means that the basic training kit which has been copyrighted will be pushed to the next level - commercialization. However, may steps will have to be carried out prior to that, which includes carrying out the market validation. Next meeting which will discuss the next steps will be held when everyone comes back post-Chinese New Year holiday with the rest of the team members from Institut Pengajian Sains Sosial (IPSAS), where I am also an associate researcher there. The grant is expected to last until end of 2017. Since the total of the grant in RM is quite modest, so we might have to further apply the UPM's Product Promotion grant within the next year to see that the project carries through. Can't wait to get started on this benefit. May it benefit those in need. Link to Geran Dana Promosi Produk UPM can be found here.

Teaching Files Organization Workshop

25 January 2017 (Wednesday)

A file which is completely organized with no ISO document missing signifies the end of a semester, long after the last student has left the compound, home-bound. As academics, we need to mark,  key in marks, present, justify and sometime argue the results of the semester e.g. why so  and so student receive such and such grades. As UPM rigidly enforces the ISO 9001:2008 standard, each case is documented and transparent, albeit it being another additional step for the academics to sit and sift through piles of documents in this twice a year workshop. Thanks for those who sponsored the Nasi Lemak and Kuih Keria Gula Melaka to keep our momentum going. Just what we needed!

Co-Creation Workshop

19 January 2017 (Thursday)

A group of us from the Multimedia Department went on this half day workshop at the UiTM Sungai Buloh Campus (Medical and Dentistry). We were looking forward to meet up with our collaborators, Prof. Dr. Zamrin Dimon and his team of surgeons, and also our partners from the Industrial Design Department, Faculty of Design and Architecture UPM to see where three fields (medical, design and computer science) and merge together to benefit others. 

Associate Professor Dr. Rahmita Wirza is already a familiar name in this type of research and this was some other new project she is keen on working on. I am grateful that she had been generous in extending the invitation to me regarding this workshop as she thought I might wanted to join in on the mock prototyping session because of my HCI background. Indeed, I had a great time that afternoon, and I learned something new too. 

My appreciation for doctors and surgeons, in particular has gone up several notches too, by understanding the problems they face daily with some of the current medical devices they are using (which we are invited to solve - thus, the purpose of this workshop). Nevertheless, their invitation to see how the devices work first hand, in an operating theatre, on a living patient, had to be turned down by me. Youtube is enough for me to look at heart bypass surgeries, thank you very much.

Visit to the Virtual Reality Convention, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya

16 January 2017 (Monday)

A group of staff from the Multimedia Department at FSKTM UPM went on a visit to attend the Virtual Reality Convention held at MMU, Cyberjaya. We were interested to see several new VR technologies which were on exhibits from various VR companies who took part showcasing their products. We also managed to attend a VR seminar and interacted with the VR projects (systems / games) from MMU students which were on display. Hope to secure some money from the faculty to get our VR equipments up-to-date. We also managed to talk with several companies such as VR Lab, Integrasi Erat, Streamline Studios and a few more regarding the possibility of sending our undergraduate students to do their internship there, as well as staff to do their Industrial Attachment there too.

Final Year Project Completion

13 January 2017 (Friday)

My heartiest congratulations go to all three of my Final Year Project students on the completion of their project presentations and these. It has been a hard and treacherous semester for them (and me too). Although there are still some areas to be improved regarding the project, it has been a good learning experience for them, and also a chance for them to take on new programming skills. Hopefully, this will serve them well when they start working after their graduation. As they say, 'It's not the destination that matters, but the journey to get there'.

As your former supervisor, I wish all the best to Syahirah 'Atikah Syahrin, Nur Athirah Hassan Basri and Chan Zhen Yong with your future undertakings!!!

Teaching Schedule Is Out

12 January 2017 (Thursday)

Teaching schedule for Semester II 2016/17 has been finalized. Looks like I'll be teaching SKM4311 (Animation for Multimedia Production) and SKM3300 (Multimedia Application Development). The former is an elective course, intended for Seniors (final year) undergraduate students undertaking Multimedia major and following the Games stream, and the latter is a core subject for third year Human Development and Information Technology students. Both will require lab sessions, and overall, I am looking at 8 hours of teaching a week. This is by far the most I have been assigned to teaching (UPM is a Research University, afterall), but budget cut has stated that the Uni will no longer pay for lab instructors, but will be taught by lecturers instead. Time to buckle up!

Quality Award Day

Our Faculty held the Quality Day on 11 January 2017. The Q-Day is a day where awards are handed out to all deserving members of FSKTM on their excellent performance the year prior. Some of the awards include, Best Teaching Award, Highest Grant, Highest Number of Publications, etc. The Multimedia Department bagged the Most Active in Industrial Relations and Community Work Award. Well done, team!

Supervision: Semesterly Lunch Date, Our Tradition

We had our semesterly lunch yesterday (10/1/2017) afternoon at Johnny's in IOI City Mall. It was nice to gather all five of my postgraduate research students together in one setting. It was extremely pleasant to see Bella again after she had delivered her baby boy, Syabil and also her husband who joined us at the lunch. Syabil is only a month old, such a cutie! Semesterly lunch is definitely a nice tradition worth keeping :)

Supervision: Master Presentations

On Tuesday (10/1/2017), three of my Master students presented their works to their assessors and myself. First up was Nametso, who presented her proposal on her Gesture-based Virtual Piano. Nametso needs to add a few more things on her LR, but more importantly, she needs to start developing, at least to get a working prototype done, so she can actually understand and solve the issues at hand. She has one more semester to complete this (Project for Master by coursework in UPM typically takes two semesters - one semester is for coming up with the proposal and the next semester is for actual development and dissertation writing).

Later in the afternoon, Bella presented her proposal, which was also her 1-year defense. Bella is currently away on maternity leave, and had only came in that afternoon for the presentation. She needs to get her hands dirty and starts working on her proof-of-concept as soon as she gets back in the lab in a few weeks' time.

Amy's turn followed after. Amy's presented her Literature Review. Glad that the assessors found that her project seemed interesting and they were happy with her materials. Alhamdulillah, a step in the right direction.

Teaching: Last Paper

Invigilated my own paper (SKM4311) last Sunday afternoon (8 January 2017). Last paper of the semester for me, last paper EVER for them. These final year students are done with their formal education, as they part ways to their respective industrial placement for the next semester before graduating in October. Well done students of Bachelor Computer Science (Majoring in Multimedia) Cohort 2013/14. It was a pleasure teaching you guys (three subjects in total). See (some of) you in your ties and shirts next semester at your internship companies!

PhD Students Presentation

6 January 2017 (Friday)

Two of the students whom I co-supervised presented their semester progress report. Syura and Faiz are in their fourth semester of their PhDs, under the main supervision of Dr. Azrul.

Teaching: Eleventh Hour, Well, Almost

Invigilating exam today. Sorry, crossed that, TONIGHT. My very own Creative Design Elements paper, which started at 8.30 p.m. and ended at 10.30 p.m. Phew... it was a LONGGGG night. I even made a mistake of announcing in the hall that there was only 15 minutes left on the clock left at 9.45 p.m., which the students all gasped in horror. I was then corrected by my co-worker stating the exam was not scheduled to finish at 10 p.m., but 10.30 p.m., so the students (and me) still had another 45 more minutes to go. Haha. Seeing that we already got to work at 8 a.m. in the morning, and only to clock out at 11 p.m. (tidying up after the exam), it was a rather justified error on my part. Nevertheless, we all survived to the eleventh hour. I just hope these students didn't start revising on the eleventh hour - I had not designed this to be an easy paper :)

Supervision: Progress Meeting for Teo

Today was Teo's turn to present his progress update with the rest of the supervision committee members. Associate Prof. Dr Rahmita was there today to evaluate the content of his work, as was myself. Teo started his journey the same time as Ong, and Alhamdulillah, I am happy to report that he has been given the clearance by all that the contributions from his work was more than enough and with the exception of doing one little tweak, he could already start writing his thesis in full gear now. Again, we are working around the October 2017 graduation, so full turbo on now, guys!

Supervision: Progress Meeting (Ong and Hoo's)

These two students presented their progress update to their co-supervisor, Dr. Azrul. Although meetings are held fortnightly with me (their Main Supervisor), this was the first meeting for this semester with all the committee members together. This was partly because Ong was already finishing off his experiments, and it was better that he had analysed all his findings before it was presented to the committee members. Alhamdulillah, everyone on the supervisory committee board agreed that Ong's work was conclusive and significant, and that he could now wrap up on the experiments and focus on thesis writing 100%. This was the news awaited by all. So the next step is to elect the Examiners for his thesis and viva. We're aiming for Ong to be able to graduate Ocotber this year, God willing.

Hoo also had his progress meeting right after Ong. He presented his findings on his last experiment, where he tried to map different gestures to different manipulations intended during a musical performance. He had successfully done that, and found around 30+ gestures which were in total consensus among the human subjects. This meant that Hoo can now use these data on the gesture mapping to guide him during the development stage. This is what he will be focusing in the next few months before a final user test is conducted by the end of this semester.

Overall, I'm glad it all went well. I am excited to see how these students progress in the next coming weeks.

Hello World!

This blog is intended for me to lightly document the progress of my research projects and my life in the academia in general. Since my research interests and passion revolve around Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Music, I foresee that many entries will be related to these fields. A short biography of myself is included on the tab on the right of this page. I can be reached through the details also provided on the right of this page. The same tab also lists current projects I'm working on, selected publications, courses I teach (or have taught), research students and members of the HCI Research Group at FSKTM, UPM and other random writings. I welcome potential students and collaborators - feel free to drop me relevant emails or comments. It is certainly nice that the first entry coincides with the first day of the 2017 year. Hope there will be many more exciting entries and happenings to come from this day on. Check this space out frequently for more updates later!