We at Carnegie Mellon are interested in how you play Foldit. To learn more about your interaction with the game, we are looking for volunteers to participate in user studies during which we can watch you play Fold.It. If you are interested, please contact us at ndfishel@gmail.com. If you are not located in the Pittsburgh area, we can set up screen sharing. Happy Folding! :-)
I was one of the creators of the game when I was a postdoc at UW. Now I'm a professor at Carnegie Mellon and we're still working on the game. So the Foldit family is expanding, which is exciting. I'll let the students involved in the user study reply to the rest, but if you're in the Pittsburgh area, you should sign up!
Can you fix the web site and get the closed puzzles scored?
Probably a bit more important than some survey...
Hello. My name is Noah Fishel and I will try to take over where Adrien left off. We are group of Master's students in Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon working with Adrien on a project involving massively multiplayer online games with educational components. We are interested in almost all aspects of Fold.it gameplay but particularly the user interface and controls. We will be happy to explain more about the scope of our project in the future.
To be clear, we are not doing a "survey." We would like to observe Fold.it players while they play the game so we can get a better understanding of the physical and mental processes involved. The session would take less than an hour and we will pay you $5 for your time. You would not need to travel as we would prefer to observe you playing in a place that you normally play. The pay is not much, but we are paying you to do something that you already do. If you are anywhere near Pittsburgh and interested, please contact me directly at ndfishel@gmail.com . Thanks!
As for the website fixing. I will be taking over the communication on this thread. Since I am in no position to help with the website or scoring, this is probably not the right medium for that sort of comment. Sorry Brick!
-Noah
Project management seems to have disappeared - I guess I was hoping that someone - anyone - would show at least a little bit of interest.
Good Luck with your survey or study or whatever it is.
Brick, what is this scoring problem? It takes a little while for scoring updates to take after a puzzle closes, is that what you mean?
The last 3 puzzles to close, 194 thru 196, never got scored until Seth Cooper did it yesterday morning. The automated scoring scripts were not running at all, evidently.
Here we go then, I knew there was a "LOST" type scenerio going on in the background somewhere, with someone. I will donate my time for free, but good luck trying to decypher what's going on in my head.
Dr Hekal and Prof Hyde.
Aotearoa.
Hello Aotearoa,
That sounds great, we would love to interview you. Please send me an e-mail at ndfishel@gmail.com so we can talk about scheduling in a more confidential atmosphere.
-Noah
How far is it again from Pittsburgh to New Zealand??
I was thinking the same thing... but maybe he's going to be on the east coast sometime soon? ;-)
Notify Homeland Security
Change of plans. We are no longer just focusing our search for users in the Pittsburgh area. We would welcome anyone who is interested to contact us and we will set up a time to observe you play remotely. Our research will contribute to the future of online science gaming. Send me an e-mail: ndfishel@gmail.com.
Brick, are you interested?
hi, i don't know about medical but i am interested to play this foldit. i don't know how to get start this game so please help me what are all the steps to do when i enter this site.
If you go back to http://fold.it/portal, there are icons to download the installer in the upper right area of the page. Select the appropriate installer for your OS, download and install, and you should be able to start up the application. Log in with your account, and select intro puzzles or competition puzzles to find the puzzles.
I can't log on online...it keeps saying my user name/password is incorrect...and it's not. The tech help page was useless...I'm using Firefox...told me to " see if there is anything in the configure proxies box." is there supposed to be...is there not supposed to be anything...that's a dead end. The feedback page only lists the issues...but nothing will actually link to a useful page, it just reorganizes by a filter. There is no way to contact any support...I understand that this is a beta page...but come on. Why can I not log on and how am I supposed to find any useful advice or help on how to correct the problem? Love the program offline..but what's the point if there is not any way to make it work beyond that. Help, please post a viable link for tech issues, thanks.
Hi swalaut -- it's customary to use the Feedback page for problem reports. But wherever you post it, a little more detail would be appreciated. Could you attach your log.txt (see the FAQ for how to do so)?
Most time, this error occurs, when you have registered (I suggest here on the foldit page, not the game interface)
and there was a download problem when starting Foldit the first time, or canceling the first download, when FoldIt gets its files (I've found out this by coincidence).
If you use Windows 7, try disabling IPv6 and only using IPv4 in the internet protocols.
Try reinstalling FoldIt and make sure the first download is not skipped or terminated.
...it helps, if you close all other applications which use CPU- and network-ressources (in the background)
I mean progs like BOINC or some download-Managers like uTorrent or Chatprograms like ICQ, and set Foldit's task priority higher, so it can perform the download better (I even had to do this on a band-new dual-core system).
TMHO, it's a server problem.
Another thing:
What about the interviews?
Did I miss it?
but why dont you just post your ideas about how you would interview and talk about here for all of us to read.
have fun.
Aot. (use the force luke aroha)
Yes. Interviews are finished. Thanks all of you for your help. It was extremely valuable.
By all means, please post additional comments on this thread.
According to the Credits screen, and everything I've read about this, it's a University of Washington enterprise "This game is a product of a collaboration between University of Washington Departments of Computer Science & Engineering and Biochemistry." , eseentially an offshoot of the Rosetta reasearch done by the Baker Labs at UW.