Author: Vasant Menon

Pittsburgh Walk of Fame

Week 15 & 16

Welcome to the final post of this development blog! After undergoing our last project sprint, we had the opportunity to showcase our app at the Entertainment Technology Center’s annual fall Festival, during which invitees from all over the globe come to see what students at the ETC have been working on over the course of…
Read more

Week 14

This week was all about making our last push towards finishing off our Pittsburgh Walk of Fame app, as well as preparing for the ETC Festival, final presentations, and final playthroughs. During soft opening (a pre-Festival event during which all of the faculty at the Entertainment Technology Center playtest teams’ product), we got a lot…
Read more

Week 12

It’s been a busy week before the ETC closes for the Thanksgiving break because immediately after the break we have Softs Opening. Softs Opening is like the beta release of a software product, and after this point you’re only expected to polish your product and not add any features. We faced a challenge with the…
Read more

Week 11

Greetings from the Walk of Fame squad! This week we put our heads together to determine how our second celebrity, Rachel Carson, should be represented. Our initial design was to have a before/after interactive contrast which helps convey the impact of Carson’s book Silent Spring. The book describes the dangerous effects of DDT, and our…
Read more

Week 10

So after halves, this week we spent a lot of time preparing for the playtest day event on Saturday. According to our event schedule, we had almost 50 visitors in our room throughout the day.  So our main focus for the week was to have a good build ready in time for our visitors. We…
Read more

Week 9

Week 9 at the ETC is the Halves Presentation week for all project teams. It’s an important milestone in the ETC project journey and something that all project members take very seriously, as it could not only be a  crucial turning point of the project as we’re publicly presenting our work for the first time,…
Read more

Week 8

This week was spent mostly in preparation of our halves.  We needed to have several iterations of our presentation to make sure we delivered the best version of our product and process to our faculty, peers, and clients. For this, we divided the slides up (with a universal art style though) and molded the content…
Read more

Week 7

  It’s been a busy week again for Project City of Stars. We were working on developing the application with one eye on the halves presentation and the midterms due next week. It was crucial that we nail down the design soon as we had to scope out for more celebrities in our list, other…
Read more

Week 6

We started off reflecting on all the feedback we received the previous week from the quarters walkarounds and sitdowns. It was important to incorporate changes as soon as possible, as we have one eye on the halves presentation a couple of weeks from now.  We designed and prototyped a new layout and a slightly modified…
Read more

Week 5

Week 5 is a pivotal period in an ETC Project semester, because week 5 is the quarters week. Quarters Walkarounds is when all the ETC Faculty and staff visit each of the projects and offer quick advice, in a 15 mins time-slot, before moving on to the next project. So this was a good chance…
Read more