Abstract

Synchrony is the interpersonal phenomenon that occurs when humans or any social beings interact. It can influence the actions or outcome, both positively as well as negatively. It is measured using physical gestures and audio clues. Researchers conduct synchrony experiments in person, and it is challenging to control all the conditions of the experiment. With the world going virtual beginning 2020, the Synchrony Hub was started to facilitate researchers to conduct their experiments online. This also gives them elevated control and the ability to automate and customize their experiments with more freedom without having to worry about the mundane procedures. The Synchrony Hub has mainly 3 user types - the expert researcher, the experiment participant and the hub developer. In this thesis, we have focused mainly on the developer user type with a minor focus also on the expert researcher and the participant. The interviews with the expert researchers inspired the decisions for many user workflows within the hub. We conducted an onboarding diary study for the developer and identified heuristics for a good open source project, current challenges in getting started with the Synchrony Hub and also executed some basic technical evaluations across a varied range of devices. We improve the Synchrony Hub with the insights drawn from this user study, to make our open source project a successful one. A new feature introduced to the frontend via this thesis is the concept of “Filters”. A filter is able to manipulate or analyze the media streams (both audio and video). The synchrony researcher can use some of the built-in filters, or even build a new filter using the extensible code architecture. There is also emphasis on improved user interface with the re-developed pages of the hub using component libraries. The user interface was designed keeping in mind certain usability heuristics, to improve the overall look and feel of the Synchrony Hub. This work can be used as a reference to understand the frontend code structure and how to extend it with new features.

Results/Implementation/Project Description

Conclusion

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