PCEC News
Faculty and Students win grant to improve Spherical Easel application
November 17, 2023
Summer was spent deep in research by students Hannah Cline and Dat Nguyen as they worked to improve usability and add features to Spherical Easel, a functioning (but incomplete) web-based application for researching, teaching, and learning spherical geometry. The Spherical Easel application allows users to dynamically explore the geometry of the sphere by drawing and controlling the behavior of spherical objects including points, lines, and circles.
This interdisciplinary research project was supported by an Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarships grant and was under collaborative supervision of Professor Dulimarta from the Computer Science department, Professor Dickinson from the Mathematics and Computer Science department and Professor Lima from Visual and Media Arts department.
Professor Dickinson and Cline worked together to rethink the UI for the application and formed recommendations that we implemented by Nguyen under the supervision of Prof. Dulimarta. Nguyen also implemented an Earth Mode that allows users to view, mark, and zoom in on locations on the earth during the summer period.
Cline said she enjoys the teamwork that blends coding with design to improve the user experience. "The website and app are designed for both students and teachers and can be integrated into a curriculum," Cline said.
Professor Dickinson likened the experience to what the student scholars will see in the workplace. "This is a very realistic real-world problem," Dickinson said. "On a team project, you may not see the end product. You could be joining a project at midstream."
Read more about the Spherical Easel here.