It is the third week of May 2023 and I have started conducting my in-situ study more than six weeks ago. During this time, I have faced many challenges – most of which were either related to my research equipment or the weather or both…
As you might have seen in the news, we have had a very strong winter here in Santa Barbara; this resulted in lots of clouds and fog during April and is still continuing. Apparently, the difference to other years is that it is often still foggy around noon; so, collecting data before 1pm has been almost impossible as both, the eye tracker and the full-body motion capture system are very prone to any kind of moisture…
In addition to that, my eye tracker was broken; it stopped working without any prior malfunctioning which was very bad news. The very good news, however, was that my fellow group members in Vienna mailed a spare device to me immediately. Unfortunately, it got stuck in Memphis, Tennessee for custom clearance for more than a week… When it arrived, its USB-C cable broke within the next three trials…
But, I was able to overcome all these issues and I am very excited to have 11 subjects this week!