Finally!

Sound the fanfare, we finally have a fully functional haptic harness!

It's by no means perfect, and half of it is still held together with tape (though it is black electrical tape now, which is far classier than masking tape), but hey, at least it does something.

We performed our first user test today. Our victim/participant did make it through our entire test course, after much circling and aimless wandering and pauses for confusion. The whole process was really quite helpful. Whereas before we were just kind of working on nitpicky little tasks without a strong sense of direction, the user test immediately pinpointed loads of things that need to be fixed. Structural modifications for the vest, signals that were unclear, suggestions as to how to better document our proceedings, etc.

The only downside of testing: it is far, far too hot outside for such shenanigans.

That's going to be our main issue when testing, methinks. Because the GPS can't get a clear signal when traveling between tall buildings, we have to test out in the open, where the shining Texan sun can smile (evilly) down upon us as we meander along our (too lengthy) course. It is really ridiculously hot in the middle of the day to do such things, and our poor participant today had an excellent harness-shaped sweat stain on his back, lovely. We'll have to perform our tests earlier in the day or in the evening, after the sun has set. It's far too unpleasant to do anything else. We'll never get any participants, and the IRB (the board responsible for keeping research from doing harm to their test subjects) will be on our back when all of our subjects die from heat stroke (or skin cancer, your pick).

But hey, again... IT WORKS. Pats on the back all around.