Tag Archives: interns

What I’ve learned this summer: Julie’s last post

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Pulling it all together and making sense of things proves one of the hardest tasks for Julie:

“I can’t believe this summer is about over.  I only have 3 days left at Hatfield.  Those 3 days will be filled with frantic work getting the rest of my exhibit proposal pulled together as well as my Sea Grant portfolio and presentation done for Friday.  I go home Saturday morning and I haven’t even figured out when I’m going to pack.  Eek.

But back to the point at hand.  Doing social science has been such a fun experience.  I really loved talking to people to get their feedback and opinions on Climate Change and the exhibit.  I’m so excited for this exhibit.  I want it to be fantastic and I’ve been working very hard on it.  I am stoked to visit next summer to see it in the flesh!

One thing that I find really challenging about doing this kind of research though, is pulling together the data and putting it into a readable format for something like my End of Summer Final Presentation on Friday!  The big survey I did, for instance, was 16 questions and the data collected is very qualitative and doesn’t fit neatly into a table on a power point slide.  So I have to determine which things to pull out to show and exactly how to do it.  I feel confident that I’ll get it down, it’s just going to perhaps rob me of some sleep the next couple days.

Today (Tuesday) I finally got to do something that I should’ve done long ago.  Mark took me into the “spy room” as some call it and showed me all the awesome video footage being recorded in the visitor center.  It’s really incredible!  I was able to download a few videos of myself interpreting at the touch tank which Mark suggested would be a good addition to my portfolio.  Now I feel like a real member of the Free Choice Learning crew.”

This summer has given me a wealth of experiences that will really benefit my future…I can’t wait to see what that future holds.

Some last thoughts (for now?) from Diana

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Our Summer Scholars’ time is drawing to a close at the end of the month, so we’re hearing some final words, at least for the moment, from some of them, starting with Diana:

“These past weeks have been filled with things that I never thought would happen and have surprised me in the most spectacular ways.  First, I went on vacation to Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA which was a memorable experience.  I was able to see behind the scenes tanks and animals at the Vancouver Aquarium and even got to see Leonardo Da Vinci’s works in person as well as King Tutankhamen’s burial chamber items.  This vacation was a nice break from the craziness of the visitor’s center and refreshed me for another few weeks as an education intern.  The moment I returned many volunteers and other workers at Hatfield were asking about my vacation.  Even this little thing made me feel fully welcomed into the Hatfield family.  One of the first things that occurred when I returned was that many unannounced summer camps came into the visitor’s center which is always an experience.  Yet, one of the most progressive things I did was creating new signs for me shoreline erosion tank.  This time one of my mentors Mark Farley and I created 2 different signs compared to one long sign.  One sign said “The Erosion Problem” with photos of me showing how to use the paddle to create waves and see the erosion of the sand.  The second sign said “The Erosion Solution” and gave the visitors a chance to try 1 of 3 different protective strategies for beach/shoreline erosion.  These new larger signs seem to be working well for now.  I can already see a difference in the behavior of children and families when they come to wave tank; instead of sand castle building, they actually read the sings and follow the directions.

The visitor’s center also had some crazy moments.  We had Micro A and Micro B tanks overflow into the VC overnight and leave a lake in the surrounding area an inch deep.  That lake was an interesting mess to clean, but created a wonderful learning moment.  I was able to watch the aquarists and learn how to put on new filter bags as well as rework the tanks.  I was challenged to follow the pipes and figure out where the water went such as the outflow and inflow pipes.  Other crazy moments that occurred were people trying to put their whole hand inside of anemones or trying to crawl inside of the touch tank to touch the different fish.  While all of this was going on I also got to have some spectacular moments in the VC.

These spectacular moments occurred when the Aquarists took me under their wing and showed me some impressive things.  First, I got to see a fish necropsy which was highly informative and taught me new dissections skills.  I was also taught how to kill invasive coral apitasia with lemon juice.  I was able to inject a few micrometers of lemon juice into each invasive apitasia, which kills it almost instantaneously.  The apitasia tries as a defensive mechanism to spit its own guts out, but the lemon juice is too acidic.  I also learned through this process how to siphon a tank and change out the water while balancing the acidity in the water with baking soda, thus making the seawater more neutral.  Yet, the most spectacular thing I learned with the aquarists was how to feed all the animals in the Hatfield Marine Science Center.  I learned how and what to feed each animal except the octopus in the visitor’s center, which took a long time but was completely worth it.  The amount of knowledge I learned during that time was amazing and I will not forget anytime soon.  This entire summer has been a learning experience, but definitely a fun one that I shall remember for the rest of my life.”

 

From sketch to mock-up

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Summer Sea Grant Scholar Julie catches us up on her prototyping for the climate change exhibit:

“Would you like to take a survey?”  Yes, I have said that very phrase or a variation of it many times this week.  I have talked to more than 50 people and received some good feedback for my exhibit.  I also began working on my exhibit proposal and visuals to go along with it.  This is so fun!  I love that I get to create this, and my proposal will be used to pitch the plan to whatever company they get to make the exhibit program.  How sweet is that?

So, the plan is to have a big multi-touch table – here is what it looks like, from the ideum website:

 

You can’t see very well from that picture but people can grab photos or videos or other digital objects, resize and move them around and place them wherever they want using swipe, pinch, and other gestures as with tablets and multitouch smartphones.  It allows multiple users to surround the table as well and work together or independently. This is a video showing this table tested here at Hatfield- it has a lot of narration about Free Choice Learning, and you can see the table in action a little bit.

People will be able to learn about climate change and then create their own “story” about what they think is important about climate change or global warming.  My concept of the interface for this has gone through a metamorphosis.  Here are the various transformations the interface has gone through:

Stage 1: My initial messy drawing to get my thoughts on paper and make sure I was on the same page with the exhibit team.  At this point I thought we would just have a simple touch screen kiosk.

 

Stage 2: Mock-up made by Allison the graphic designer, using stage 1 as a guide.  I showed this to people as I interviewed them so they’d have an idea of what the heck I was talking about.

 

Stage 3: My own digital version I’m currently working on, now more in sync with the touch table.  The final version will go into my exhibit proposal.

 

Here’s what it looks like with a folder opened – upon touching a file, an animation would show the file opening and spilling the contents on the workspace to end up kind of like this:

 

This is a very exciting project to work on, and I’m glad to get to use and hone my skills in creativity, organization, and attention to detail.  This exhibit proposal will certainly need a lot of all 3 of those things.  It’s also very interesting to interview people- I find my preconceptions dashed often, which is very refreshing.  And it’s great to be able to tailor the exhibit to several different audiences, in hopes that the message will be well received by all, no matter where they currently stand in relation to the issue of climate change/ global warming.  Talking with folks helps me know for sure what kind of material each group wants, so I can maximize the success of the exhibit with that group.  I can’t wait to see this thing in the flesh – I have already decided I will have to take a vacation out here next summer just to check it out!

Wave energy device progress report

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Since we last heard from him, Summer Scholar Brian has made progress on his wave energy device model, but that progress has in turn revealed more work to be done:

“With the successful design of the ”Pelamis” prototype it’s now time to reconstruct it using materials that are more durable and can stand up to the wear and tear of public use.  The next step for me is to actually incorporate a working public-friendly version of the Pelamis into the wave tank.  The first design used wood to attach the hinges to and after a few weeks in the water the wood has started to mold and disintegrate.  This upcoming Tuesday I hope to find a replacement material such as PVC or aluminum that won’t corrode in water.  Another material that I have to replace is the pipe insulation foam inside the PVC that keeps the whole thing afloat.  I have noticed that the foam is getting more and more saturated with water so the buoyancy of the entire device is decreasing.  Luckily for me ping pong balls bit perfectly in the 1 ½ in pipe so I am going to try and use those for floatation because they will hopefully never lose their buoyancy.

I am really impressed with the way the model moves in the water right now and I am hoping that the new materials won’t impede or hinder the movements seen with the first prototype.  This model does not actually create any energy from the motion of waves. The idea behind the whole design is that the public will be able to create waves in the tank and see how this particular WEC captures the energy of the waves through the snake-like movement.  As long as the motion is consistent, it should be fairly simple for anyone to understand how energy is captured.”

Wading in to visitor research

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Here’s an update from intern Julie Nance as she wades in to gathering data from the public:

“Last week I began front-end evaluation – talking to people out in the Visitor Center to get their opinions for the climate change exhibit.  I had them choose what case study they would want to learn more about, from a set of 14 pictures (species affected by global warming such as salmon, pteropods, etc).

 

I wrote down what everyone said and came up with some interesting trends, such as how the majority of women in their 20’s and 30’s as well as school age girls chose the emperor penguin over the rest.  This wasn’t a huge surprise given the options.
So the next round, I removed the penguin and turtle to force a harder choice, so many in that age group switched to the next most familiar and cute creature: the clown fish.  As my fellow intern Nick puts it, they’re only interested in “charismatic mega fauna”.
However, there were many people who chose things that were more local and meaningful to them personally.  My favorite comment I found funny was, “I chose Dungeness Crab, because I like to eat them, and I’m interested in keeping that going.”
The two most surprising comments were from gentlemen who were roughly age 60 to 70.  This demographic is kind of stereotyped as being very skeptical of climate change, and I will admit that I pegged them as probably being in that group.  One chose phytoplankton and said, “they are basic foodstuff.  They’re at the bottom  of the food chain, so that has effects all the way up.”  The other chose algae and said, “some people don’t believe [climate change] and think it’s ‘business as usual’, but I don’t think so.  Algae will probably be one of the first affected.”  Wooohoo!  You go dudes!  Thanks for changing my perception.

This week I’m preparing for the next phase of evaluation in which I will get into more detail with visitors about the exhibit itself, how it will work, and what types of resources they would want available on it.  A graphic designer, Alison, who works on projects for the VC is making a graphic for me to print and show to visitors while I talk to them about the exhibit.  This will really help them to visualize what I’m talking about.

The psychology behind talking to people and getting their opinions is staggering.  Every question, phrase, graphic, etc. I use goes through this complex interview process in my brain.  I wonder things such as, “how might people misinterpret this?”  “Will using this picture bias people’s responses?”  “Will using this phrase turn people away and change their answers?”  “If I color code, what are these colors going to make people think?”
That last one is big right now, along with positioning of things.  I am going to ask people to self-categorize into one of the groups from “Global Warming’s Six Americas,” but the graphic I was going to use from that study has different colors for each and I wonder if people will choose their favorite color, or think that one color is better or more desirable or think that I as the researcher want to lean them a certain direction based on the color or position.  If I lay out the 6 options top to bottom, it makes the top seem to be best and the bottom worst.  Colors- are warm or cool colors more acceptable and which do I appear to be favoring?  If I lay them left to right it might feel best to worst on a spectrum, or perhaps even political left wing/ right wing.  When you are doing research with human beings, whose thought patterns are so complex, you really can NOT control for every variable and you just have to do your best and realize that the results are influenced by many things.”

Duplicating Wave Energy Small-Scale

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Today our HMSC VC Intern Brian Verwey gives us an update on his work for the summer:

“This summer the Visitor Center is working on opening three new exhibits explaining three separate aspects of wave energy on the Oregon Coast.  Part of our internship for the summer is tackling these new displays and making them “public friendly.” Diana is working on erosion due to wave action along the beach.  Nick is creating tsunami proof structures.  I am designing wave energy converter (WEC) models. Tuesday is our project day at the Visitor Center so instead of working on the floor we spend most of the day in the new wave energy section of the VC (closed to the public for now).

The idea behind the WEC exhibit is to demonstrate how energy is created from waves.  To do this we are simplifying a working WEC design called a point absorber.  A point absorber works by moving a magnet through as coil of wire that then creates an electromagnetic current.  It’s a pretty basic concept that has proven very difficult to show in our wave tank in the VC.  The most challenging part of the exhibit so far is getting our version of the point absorber to create electricity that can be displayed on a computer monitor and in turn will be easily recognized and understood by the public. As of yet it isn’t easy to understand. So for now I’ve focused my efforts on creating other models of WECs that don’t actually create energy but give the public an idea of how they work [such as the one below].

 

 

Last Tuesday I worked on creating an attenuating wave energy device similar to the Scottish “Pelamis.” It’s about 36” long and fits perfectly in one of our wave tanks.  It works pretty well and for the next few project days I will be working out some kinks in the design. The main kink is creating an anchor system to attach it to the tanks so it doesn’t float away when waves are produced, and the other big kink is somehow orienting the model so when waves hit it, it doesn’t flip onto its side.”