Dormulator Up for Two Awards

September 1, 2005 == MEDIA ADVISORY

A Calvin student's imaginative program for arranging a residence hall room has
landed her two nominations in the 2005 Macromedia Student Innovation Award
Program.

Emily Brondsema, a junior from Midland, Michigan, majoring in Spanish and
visual communications, has been nominated in the program's "People's Choice
Award" and "Editorial Award" categories for her work on "The Dormulator," an
online program that allows students to view a virtual image of a residence hall
room, scaled to the dimensions of an actual Calvin dorm room, and to arrange
the room, rotate its furniture and change the furniture colors.

Though she based it on a similar program from another university's website,
Brondsema has added several distinctive features to the Calvin version. For
example, because the furniture in Calvin residence halls is stackable,
Brondsema designed her virtual room using an isometric view - an approach
commonly used in technical illustrations. Using this angled perspective, the
virtual designer can see which furniture arrangements are actually workable and
which are not.

Brondsema's program also allows users to add personal touches to their virtual
rooms: a poster of a favorite musician, band or movie and a fishbowl complete
with a swimming goldfish. And the virtual view from the dorm room window is a
shot of the campus from the Calvin webcam.

As for the Macromedia contest Brondsema says it's "cool" that she's one of the
finalists in a worldwide competition (her fellow nominees hail from places such
as Singapore and the Netherlands) but she says the real reward was the project
itself.

"It was a lot of fun to do," she says, "because I got to play around and learn
a lot of new things."

The Macromedia Student Innovation Awards are open to entries that were created
using Macromedia products. If The Dormulator, made using Macromedia's Flash,
Fireworks and Dreamweaver programs, wins the "People's Choice Award" category,
Brondsema will receive an iPod; if the program wins an "Editorial Award," she
will receive $1,000.

Since its June launch, The Dormulator has received over 14,000 hits, and over
1,000 room configurations have been saved to the database by visitors who
e-mailed their room designs to friends and family.

Contact Emily Brondsema at ejb8@calvin.edu or 526-0183 or see her website at
http://www.calvin.edu/~ejb8/

For the complete story on The Dormulator, including links to The Dormulator
and the Macromedia contest site, see:
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2005_06/dormulator.htm

-end-
Received on Thu Sep 1 09:36:22 2005