Kontynuując listopadowy temat przewodni – użyteczność – zamieszczam dziś wywiad z p.Agnieszką Matysiak-Szóstek, którą miałem okazję poznać na wrocławskiej edycji WUD Tour de Pologne’09. Z ciekawością oglądałem prezentację “Trzy poziomy UX”, a p.Agnieszka była uprzejma odpowiedzieć na moje pytania. Myślę, że ta lektura jest naprawdę wartościowa.

1) Skąd zainteresowanie tematyką user experience i usability?
Historia mojej drogi do dziedziny Interakcja Człowiek-Komputer zaczęła się chyba od buntu nastolatki. Oboje moich rodziców było umysłami ścisłymi i naturalnie przekonywali mnie, żebym i ja zdecydowała się na kierunek ścisły w liceum a potem na studiach. Ale, jako zbuntowana nastolatka, postanowiłam im się sprzeciwić i wybrałam dla siebie kierunek językowy. Szybko okazało się, że rodzice mieli rację i że moje zainteresowania i predyspozycje wskazują na umysł, może niezupełnie ścisły, ale też i nie zupełnie humanistyczny. Po skończeniu studiów magisterskich zaczęłam szukać dla siebie nowego kierunku i usłyszałam o podyplomowych studiach w Eindhoven, które łączą specjalistów w naukach humanistycznych z tymi z nauk ścisłych i które uczą jak projektować interfejsy użytkownika. Moja wiedza o dziedzinie była w tym czasie przerażająco niewielka, ale wystarczająca, żeby zostać przyjętym. Szczególnie wiedza lingwistyczna okazała się przekonywująca w kontekście projektowania naturalnych systemów głosowych, które w tamtym czasie były bardzo wziętym tematem badań. Zaczęłam studia na USI w roku 2000 i od razu wpadłam po uszy w tematykę UX. Niesamowite było też to, że nagle znalazłam się pośród ludzi, którzy myśleli podobnie jak ja i byli równie wielkimi pasjonatami tak ludzi jak i technologii.

2) Jakie przedmioty ze studiów MTD ocenia Pani jako najbardziej przydatne w pracy?
Chyba byłoby mi ciężko wybrać, który z tematów był dla mnie najbardziej pasjonujący. Choć muszę się przyznać, że od początku niesamowitą frajdę sprawiało mi tłumaczenie potrzeb użytkowników na koncepcje projektowe i szczegółowe opisywanie tych koncepcji dla programistów przy użyciu metod UML. Ale tak naprawdę największą wartością tych studiów było nauczenie mnie nowego sposobu myślenia, takiego, który zawsze wracał do pytania: – czego tak naprawdę chciałby użytkownik? Pamiętam swój pierwszy projekt w pierwszej pracy zaraz po studiach w belgijskiej firmie konsultingowej Namahn. Mój szef Joannes zabrał mnie na spotkanie z klientem a potem powiedział: “No dobra, to teraz bierz się za planowanie i egzekucję tego projektu.”  W pierwszej chwili się po prostu przeraziłam, ale zaraz przypomniała mi się mantra do znudzenia powtarzana przez wszystkich naszych wykładowców: “zawsze zaczynaj od zdefiniowania użytkownika…” Potem już wszystko poszło z górki a klient poprosił, żebym pracowała dla niego w kolejnych projektach.

3) czy może Pani przybliżyć nieco projekt Smart Surroundings?
Projekt Smart Surroundings to jeden z dużych projektów badawczych sfinansowany przez rząd holenderski. Jego celem było stworzenie podstaw technologicznych do produkcji i implementacji inteligentnych sieci sensorowych w różnych środowiskach (w biurach, szpitalach, domach opieki, parkingach, itp.) Zadaniem projektu było zaproponowanie nowych rozwiązań dla takich sieci, standaryzacja protokołów komunikacyjnych pomiędzy istniejącymi sieciami, stworzenie architektury dla tego typu rozwiązań oraz zastosowanie powstałych technologii w różnych aplikacjach i rozwiązaniach dla użytkowników. Projekt składał się z mniej więcej 14-u partnerów (mniej więcej ponieważ niektórzy w trakcie odchodzili a inny przychodzili). Partnerami były zarówno uczelnie wyższe, instytuty badawcze, duże firmy przemysłowe (jak Philips czy Oce) a także małe start-upowe firmy (np. Smart Home). Ja sama znalazłam się w projekcie jako przedstawicielka firmy Oce, w której w tym czasie pracowałam. Naszym zadaniem było wymyślenie warstwy aplikacyjnej dla rozwiązań skierowanych na wspomaganie pracy mobilnej i tzw. flexible offices.  Temat ten spodobał się bardzo i w projekcie ,i w mojej firmie, a dzięki temu zainteresowaniu udało mi się nawet zorganizować zawody studenckie w kreowaniu wizji biura roku 2016, które odbyły się w ramach konferencji EUSAI 2004.  Niestety, wkrótce potem Oce zdecydowało się rozwiązać moją grupę badawczą. W związku z tym faktem prowadzący projekt  (Paul Havinga i Maria Lijding) zaproponowali, żebym w ramach Smart Surroundings zrobiła doktorat, na co z ogromną przyjemnością sie zgodziłam. Do dziś zresztą współpracuję z Marią, która na bazie powstałych w projekcie pomysłów otworzyła własną firmę produkującą inteligentne systemy do nawigacji wewnątrz budynków i kompleksów budynków. Więcej informacji o jej projekcie można znaleźć na SmartSigns (niestety po holendersku).

4) Jak ocenia Pani wagę badań jakościowych w usability?
Dla mnie osobiście badania jakościowe w całym procesie projektowania zorientowanego na użytkownika to jedyny sposób na znalezienie odpowiedzi na pytanie: – czego użytkownik tak naprawdę chce?  Oczywiście nie chcę tu podważać ogromnej wartości badań ilościowych, jednakże koniec końców wynik statystycznie znaczący niewiele znaczy, jeśli nie wie się, dlaczego się go uzyskało. Według mnie wyniki ilościowe pozwalają na obiektywną ocenę pewnych wzorców zachowań ludzkich, ale dopiero wyniki jakościowe pozwalają na wiarygodną interpretację takiego wyniku. Dlatego w moich badaniach zawsze staram się łączyć te dwa elementy. Co więcej, wraz z kolegą z mojego wydziału coraz częściej dyskutujemy i próbujemy, w jaki sposób można w sposób ilościowy przedstawić wnioski jakościowe bez utraty ich wartości semantycznej.

5) Czy projektowanie to bardziej nauka, czy sztuka?
Dobre pytanie i bardzo aktualne na moim wydziale tu w Eindhoven. Wiele elementów dziedziny Interakcja Człowiek-Komputer co najmniej zahacza o naukę. Badamy przecież zarówno zachowania ludzkie, jak i tworzymy innowacyjne rozwiązania technologiczne. Jednak, HCI nie stałoby sie aż tak rozpoznawalne na świecie, gdyby nie aspekt sztuki, czyli projektowania systemów tak użytecznych jak i pięknych. Dla mnie rzeczy piękne  i jednocześnie użyteczne są najdoskonalszym wyrażeniem umysłu twórczego projektanta i jego pasji dla użytkownika. Uważam jednak, że całkowite skupienie się na formie z pominięciem części naukowo-poznawczej może spowodować przeoczenie nieoczywistych i często innowacyjnych rozwiązań.

6) Jaki projekt związany z użytecznością był dla Pani najciekawszy?
Chyba najbardziej utkwił mi w pamięci projekt, w którym tworzyliśmy system zarządzania dokumentami w dziale sprzedaży Oce.  W tym czasie firma zakupiła aplikację do zarządzania sprzedażą  z bardzo zaawansowanymi systemami zabezpieczeń. Sam system był całkowicie nieużyteczny, a naszym zadaniem było zaprojektowanie dla niego nakładki aplikacyjnej dostosowanej do potrzeb użytkowników. Moi szefowie byli przekonani, że pracownicy działu sprzedaży będą zachwyceni możliwościami systemu a okazało się coś całkowicie odwrotnego. Wszyscy pracownicy działu zgodnie powiedzieli, że wręcz domagają się tego, żeby ich koledzy mieli dostęp do dokumentów ze wszystkich projektów. Dlaczego? Ponieważ, jeśli jakaś sytuacja spowodowałaby, że dana osoba nie byłaby w stanie obsłużyć klienta, projekt mógł być szybko i bez żadnych utrudnień przekazany kolejnej osobie. Tak właśnie funkcjonowały archiwa analogowe – teczki w szufladach biurka nigdy nie były zamykane na klucz, a zwyczaje dotyczące zaglądania w cudze papiery były regulowane kulturą samego działu. Co oznaczało, że nie zaglądało się do cudzych akt bez powodu. Podobną kulturę chcieli pracownicy wprowadzić do systemu cyfrowego – mianowicie chcieli udostępnić wszystkie dokumenty, ale jednocześnie chcieli, żeby system zapisywał, kto i kiedy do tych dokumentów zaglądał. Dzięki takiemu rozwiązaniu tworzyła się pewna kontrola społeczna, ponieważ każdy mógł być poproszony o wyjaśnienie, dlaczego zaglądał tam, gdzie nie powinien był.

I came across this video about a relatively new high-tech oriental restaurant located in London. Even though the restaurant is not using multi-touch technology, I think that their interaction is more down-to-earth and useful than the applications shown in the cheesy (and degrading) Microsoft Surface ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2R24CfeZoY) .  The concept seems to be quite simple: the video is projected on each table by an overhead projector.  Customers interact with the application using a touchpad so there is no need for the whole table’s surface to be touchable.

What I found particular interesting is that the designers thought about several ways to customize the customers’ experience such as allowing them to choose the virtual tablecloth and to have each entrée being displayed right unto your dish as opposed of just seeing the pictures on the menu.  Additionally, while their waiting for the food, customers can play digital games, get info about tourist places nearby, order a taxi, and even see (via video stream) how the chef is preparing their food.

Also, the interaction seems to be very intuitive: other videos located in the restaurant’s website show first-time costumers and kids interacting with the applications without any problems.

A multi-touch solution would have been quite expensive for a small restaurant so I think that it is really creative how the owners of this particular restaurant explored other alternatives and came out with an interaction that might have even surpassed the success of implementing a much more expensive and sophisticated solution (such as Microsoft Surface).

In last week’s lecture we were introduced to the concept of iterative evaluation. Basically it is the process of evaluating your system, product etc. during all stages of the design and development, and before publicizing it or shipping it out to the customers. This is a very important step as you will be able to get a second chance to fix any problems before the product is out in the world. There are many ways to evaluate a product. It can either be done by involving users and gathering their opinions in an informal way, experimenting with the user, involving experts etc.
I remember when I was working at the e-learning department back home we used to follow a model called the ADDIE model when developing an online course. ADDIE stands for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation. The evaluation part was very significant as it occurred at every stage of the development processes. This helped us ensure and maintain high quality standards when delivering materials online. It also gave us a chance to debug problems before they were published on our learning management system. Evaluating actually lengthened the process of developing the material but the major benefit is that students rarely had to struggle with the material in hand in terms of usability and functionality.

So, some of you seem interested in semiotic approaches, but also are uncertain as to how to pursue one. For example, Yujia writes in her blog post,

I don’t see how camera angle, depth of the field and montage can be applied to interaction

More generally, Yujia writes that she is not quite sure how to use some of the semiotics readings to do her own. I suspect that she is not alone in this, and so what I want to do in this post is maybe shed some light on how you can use those papers as models for your own thinking. I’ll start with Yujia’s point about some of the film theory.

Those aspects of film she mentions all have an effect on the way (or style with which) reality is presented. A low camera angle (looking up at the actor) magnifies the actor, making her or him look bigger, more imposing; a high camera angle likewise diminishes the actor. Thus, decisions like that establish a relationship between the audience and the actor–of superiority or inferiority, in the case of vertical camera angle.

How do interactions present reality? How do they structure users’ relationships with their reality? What paradigmatic alternatives could have been chosen that were not? (Example: every shot of an actor must have a camera angle; there is no such thing as no camera angle at all. But among all the possible camera angles–close, far, low, high, etc.–that could have been chosen, why was that one chosen for that shot?)

Notice what I am doing here. I am not trying to directly apply a concept from film semiotics to interaction in a literal way (though I would say that you can apply some film theory directly to interaction in the case of cinematic interactions, e.g., contemporary video games). Instead, what I am doing is asking, “what does this semiotic theory actually do for film?” Then I ask, “what could fill the same kind of role for interaction”? Thus, instead of trying to apply camera angle or depth of field to interaction, instead I ask, “given that camera angle and depth of field get at issues of ways that cinema presents reality in certain ways to viewers, how do interactions present reality to users, and what are the techniques and options interaction designers use to present reality in certain ways?”

We can apply a similar approach to other readings.

Let’s look at Entwistle’s power dressing paper, which looks at ways that clothes are enmeshed in discourses that construct subject-positions for people who wear them. If a woman wears a feminine uniform, she is constructed as a “laborer” with no upward mobility. If she wears a power suit, she is constructed as a “professional” and even an “entrepreneur.” (We talked about this in class last week.)

How might that apply to interaction? Well, what are the ways that interactions construct subject-positions for people to inhabit? Example: OneStart and Oncourse look different for students and faculty. What views, data sets, and operators are available to faculty but not students? And vice-versa? How are these two types of users constructed as subjects by the system? To what extent do these discursive constructions align with the empirical reality/needs of actual users (to rephrase: what is the difference between Oncourse users-as-addressees and Oncourse users-as-recipients)?

Another example.

In the resume cover letter example we talked about weeks ago, the phatic relationship between addresser and addressee was one of polite, formal submission. The addressee was constructed in a position of power–to decide who gets a valuable resource (the job)–and the addresser is constructed as a candidate seeking both the job itself, and more immediately, the approval and interest of the addressee. The point here is that the cover letter establishes a phatic relationship between addresser and addressee that is inscribed with a power relation.

Can you think of a software application that just by using it puts people in phatic power relations? I can imagine, for example, project management software differentially empowers managers and employees. I can imagine even a calendar application in which some types/classes of users publicly post their entire calendars for all colleagues to see, while other classes of users do not, and the latter class signs themselves up for meetings with those whose calendars are always available. There is a surveillance aspect to such calendars, and while one person (the latter) is always able to take the action of signing up to meet the other (the former, whose calendar is always posted online), the former cannot sign up to meet with the latter, because the latter’s calendar is not available to view!

So these are some examples I just made up. The point is that I encourage you to abstract a little from your readings in order to apply them to interaction; don’t try to apply them directly. Instead, ask the question, what does the semiotic approach get for a film/fashion critic, and then seek to get that same thing for yourself for an interaction.

The Android GUI

I can’t remember whether my fascination with graphical user interfaces (GUI) began with Pong or the Mac SE, but somewhere along my long journey down the digital highway, I became convinced that the concept of GUI was as critical to the evolution of technology as the concept of brand management has been to the evolution of marketing.

Until recently, this conviction has diminished my technical credibility. In the ’80s, when I worked at SAS, I argued that statisticians were not computer scientists (what we called software developers back then) and therefore required a more intuitive manner with which to interface with our software. In the ’90s, when I worked at SGI, I fought the GUI battle for technologies such as email and web browsers, making little headway against UNIX engineers who believed GUI was a costly, inefficient, and irrelevant overhead to perfectly understandable command-line interfaces. I remember thinking then that if SGI—a company built on the vision of computer graphics—didn’t understand the power of graphical interfaces, no company would. Still, when I started my own company, Pie Digital, I stuck to my GUI guns. As my partners and I schlepped Sand Hill Road, I found myself eyed mockingly any time I would tout the holistic UX (User Experience, inclusive of GUI) of the Pie System. It was as if I were talking about our HR practices (nothing against HR—I’ve spent much of my career in HR—but other than being able to recruit engineers quickly, you don’t bring up the strategic relevance of HR practices in a VC pitch). My co-founders eventually convinced me to quell my UX/UI evangelism so we could appear more serious.

Then came the iPhone. Suddenly business folk from all walks are comparing capacitive versus resistive touch screens, arguing over the importance of muti-touch and gesturing, and engaging in all sorts human factors buzz talk. Last week Pie was visited by a CEO from an industry not known for caring a rat’s aorta for UI. He talked to me of the importance for anthropological human-computer interaction (HCI). Stunned, I opened once more the closet door of my evangelism and replied that I believed UX/UI was a primary differentiator for consumer-focused technologies. He nodded in agreement. It was liberating.

The second speaker at the SIG USE Symposium was Dr. David W. McDonald (note to self: read some of his papers), who comes from a background in HCI. His presentation, entitled “Issue of Scale: Mass Participation Computing”, gave us a glimpse of some of the cool projects that he worked on. He was a very lively speaker with a sense of humour. I was inspired by the ways in which live projects were implemented in existing “systems” (both online and offline) in order to gage participant’s reaction and feedback, and the fact that he is on faculty at Washington’s iSchool. His appointment reflects the truly interdisciplinary nature of what iSchools should be today.

He presents his projects in terms the theme of his talk, which is, how scale is transforming the paradigm of computing. What should be observed, studied and scrutinized in networks that represent an entire society? What types of questions are legitimate in such inquiries? How should the question be stated? And how should the results be evaluated and interpreted? We don’t know, but they sure make interesting inquiries and social experiments, as can be seen below.

Visual Conversations Online. Conversations online are becoming more and more visual, but wait a minute, do pictures really talk to each other? With enough critical mass of people participating on sites such as flickr and facebook just to name two big ones, there are definitely visual dialogues happening. An online picture sharing community was studied, observing interactions and engagement with each other. Artists and designers already know that images convey messages, but this study teased out the visual layer of conversations that are going on online that is not tracked by your typical datamining methods.

Proactive Public Display. At a conference (I think it was an HCI conference, probably no where else that you can implement this without at least one person freaking out), every conference participant was assigned a RFID tag on their badges. During question periods of any particular sessions, the faces of the indivdual stepping up to the microphone to ask question is projected onto a screen behind the speaker. Useful for people who don’t like to turn around to look at the speaker. The microphone also has a receiver for the RFID signal, which then overlays particular information about the person speaking, such as their name, affiliations, position, and other information that are readily available to all conference participants already. There were “social connection/network window” stations in the more public space, and anyone who was within signal range was plotted on a map projection, showing where they are based, as well as the social connections that they have with each other (think 6 degrees of separation, I don’t know how they got that info in the first place though). The findings from this experiment has many implications for public displays and ubiquitous computing, the results of which I’ll have to look up as he moved quickly on to his next cool thing.

Wikipedia Barnstars. (Link to PDF paper.) Wikipedia is probably one of the first example of a massive online community, and thus have a unique history of existence compared to other more recent and much larger online communities. Granted there are differences in the purpose they serve. A barnstars reward system was implemented on Wiki, to identify the type of work that is valued by members. The categories were developed iteratively, and refined by member suggestions, and became a framework for data-mining purposes. What they found was that 26% of the barnstars were given out to recognize the editing work that individuals do, but a equally substantial 24% felt that providing social support to other members was just as important. This is pretty awesome quantitative data to support what qualitative studies have learned about online communities, don’t you think?

Online “How to” Expertise. Just when I thought his presentation couldn’t get any better, he nails one of my research interests right on the head: How do people produce “How To” instructions on the web? And how do people find them? Some of his findings were not surprising, but there are new things learned (for me anyway). Simple technology is insufficient, as people use multiple technologies to facilitate the creation and consumption of “How To”s. There is a maintenance of control on the part of the instructor, in their decisions to limit their presentations to certain content, and what they decide to share. The physical or kinesthetic nature of learning “how to” do something is a major issues. Tacit knowledge cannot be conveyed online, which is a given. What’s interesting to me is how relevant this is to music education online, but perhaps I’ll have to expand on this at another post, after I’ve had time to dig up the paper in which McDonald talks about this study.

Next edition: Marcia Bates, the woman I had heard so much about.

Blog: “http://apark120.wordpress.com/“
Book:  “Interaction Design” by Rogers, Sharp, Preece.

Course required weekly commentaries on reading material.  Peppered throughout are assignments to apply what we have learned and to tangibly and experientially interact with the material in our everyday lives.

• Sample posts are: Problem Space, Conceptual Models, and Interface Metaphors, Hall of Fame and Shame Assignment, the posts concerning the final project and our interview notes.

In the final paper, I was responsible for enumerating and explaining the Significant Data we encountered in our interviews and research.  I also go into detail about the implications for our redesign.

To concert our efforts, we made use of Facebook by creating a Facebook group called ROJA.  To see our paper, click Ralphs Self-Checkout Paper.

Overall, it was an exercise in ethnography, analysis and redesign as well as teamwork.

Blog:  “http://apark121.wordpress.com/”

The course begins with creating a rudimentary website with HTML, gradually integrating Javascript and CSS.  And as a final project, I was part of a group that created a Facebook application called TopsBottom.

TopsBottom allows Facebook users to display bottle caps with random facts on their walls.  They can save their favorites or send them to their friends.  To see a full description of TopsBottom, go here.

• Sample posts:  progress report on a website assignment, post on technical difficulties, creating TopsBottom.

I was mainly responsible for the graphics and design of the application.  I also was responsible for creating the powerpoint presentation with the information and slides of my team members.

To download the presentation, click TopsBottom Presentation.

For the paper, my part was:
1.  Intro (inspiration, description)
2. Method (artistic- Photoshop, Illustrator)
3.  Discussion (problems, solutions)
4.  Conclusion (what we learned, future)

To download the paper, click TopsBottom Paper.

Overall, I gained experience in programming and solving the inevitable difficulties and bugs that crept up.

Project Overview: The analysis and redesign of UCSD Events Websites.

Our group’s work is recorded across 3 blogs.

1.  The first, “http://ucsdevents.blogspot.com/“, contains required weekly commentaries on our readings in “Contextual Design” by Beyer and Holtzblatt was required.  We also posted progress reports of our goals, schedules, and meetings.  It was used for the first 6 weeks.

• Sample posts by me are the following: Personal Commentary, Progress Report.

2.  The second, “http://ucsdevents102c.wordpress.com/presentation-paper/“, was created for collaboration for a powerpoint presentation.  In the tabs for “Presentation/Paper” we have files created in preparation for a presentation.  The “Project Files” contain all the gathered data of our design process.  We walked through the entire process of user interviews, interpreting sessions, consolidation of work models, affinity diagram, visioning sessions, storyboarding, and prototyping and then testing our prototypes on more users.

• Sample posts by me are the following: Personal Commentary, Final Powerpoint Presentation.  Because of my design background and familiarity with Adobe Illustrator, I decided to create digital mockups to enhance our presentation.

In the presentation, I was responsible for gathering all the data and organizing it into a clean and attractive presentation.  I explained the categories and calendar section of the presentation.

3.  The third, “http://eachpaper.wordpress.com/“, was to facilitate organization for the paper.  I was responsible for the consolidated models, design changes, visioning, and UED.  Please look under the tab “Rough Drafts” to view the files.

• Sample posts by me are the following: Paper Distribution.

Overall, I had the opportunity to walk through the entire design process; from user interview to prototype.

An increasingly mobile workforce will demand learning methodologies that are not only “just in time” but are also “where I am, right now.” Mobile learning is advancing blended learning into “learning surround” –to learn literally wherever you are. Although related to e-learning and distance learning, m-learning takes advantage of mobile devices for productivity, and serves to buttress and augment other forms of learning (classroom, webinars, e-learning, etc.). With devices such as iPhones and Blackberrys becoming ubiquitous, M-learning is poised for significant growth and has the potential to foster tremendous improvements in performance and productivity. This webcast will help your organization advance in the newest wave of learning for productivity.

Presented by: Judy Brown and Steve Wexler
Duration: 60 minutes
Recording date: December 4, 2008

view webcast recording

To gain a little perspective.

So as any of you who read the Platypus Poems knows, I’ve been feeling pretty “meh” to the 20th this week. Per usual via the quarter system, these are the two weeks of every quarter where the huge term projects are due nearly simultaneously. Normally this isn’t too big of a problem, it’s just a matter of good time management. That is, when I’m the one responsible for getting things done… Unfortunately, these projects are group projects, with all the bags emotional luggage that goes with it: egos, stubborn refusals to adapt, nightmares of scheduling where both sets of people are only available on Sunday… yeah, it hasn’t been going well, and as a result, I’ve been feeling more and more stressed out frustrated, and ready to break down at any moment. Sunday, after some family tension and a lousy meeting, the waterworks sprung a leak.

Disillusionment is tough, and I think sometimes we all don’t realize how much we romanticize things until we’re disappointed. I’ve definitely been guilty of romanticizing an escape from old burdens of the past, and this is the moment in my life when I now just have to accept my personal ghosts and remember that escape is overrated; adaptation and acceptance is much cooler.

Now, this is the midpoint of the blog post where I switch gears and tell you the good news. After a really tough week, last night’s design class was the most fun I’ve had all quarter. At first, I have to admit I was less than thrilled to get my teacher’s note that said we were doing a prototyping workshop during class, and to bring in boxes, bottle-caps, markers, and strings. “What are we in, kindergarten?” I remember snarling at the screen. Turns out, Google, IDEO, and a lot of other companies are right on the mark: sometimes, you’ve just got to play. So, an Adobe designer (who works on In-Design) comes into our class and tells us to prototype the HCI (human-computer-interaction) of a product that solves a current problem with a green (sustainable) twist. My crew designs a Waste-i-nator that sorts trash from recycling from compost and removes the needs for trash bins by sending everything to a city/community repository. Technical challenges aside, simply pretending to build a machine that does all this and then “acting-it-out” and making all my classmates laugh/giggle/chortle… ah, it felt so good.

And now, I leave you with the following YouTube video that never fails to make me smile

Ok gang, that’s all for now… if I can make it to Thanksgiving, life will be good… and I’ll be very thankful.

Cheers!

In last week’s HCI lecture we touched upon the issues of using poorly designed icons. I think that designing clear, self defined, diversely understood and attractive icons are not just important but a very challenging thing to do. I remember when I first started using the university’s email, the icons displayed to represent the various functions, confused me.

The second and last items were pretty obvious, to compose and to print. However at that moment I wanted to reply to an email and didn’t know which icon represented that particular action. By looking at the following icons I immediately thought that the first two are dimmed and don’t work, so I figured that the third one may be the reply button. I was wrong, that button was to forward. I went back and moved the cursor on top of the other two dimmed icons and to my surprise they worked, and the first was the reply button. The other thing that I hated about these icons is that no caption would appear upon hovering over them, which was actually my initial step to understand what those icons meant.
The third icon gave me the impression of either search (because of the glasses) or spell check (because of the check mark). Again I was wrong; it represented the action of marking the emails as read, unread, flagg etc. I am still not sure how such icon relates or defines that action!

Sequence of Analysis

Feedback is appreciated.

by James, Emily, and CJ (with inspiration from Ben)

What’s in the eyes for context-awareness?
Andreas Bulling
Nov 13, 2009 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM

Wearable computing is not a new concept, but it can truly be one of the hardest subjects to master in terms of creating a unit that not only produces the required calculations but also something that is comfortable and more importantly, non-intrusive. Andreas Bulling’s work has focused mainly on eye based HCI, more specifically eye movements based on EOG (Electrooculography) technologies. The hope is that not only could this technology be utilized to figure from the context what subsequent eye movement is required, but the reverse in that the context is derived from the eye movements. This is an important topic because eye movements and eye usage is so crucial to not only visual tasks, but physical tasks and cognitive processes.

The limitation of other eye movement systems is that the user is constrained to looking at a monitor in a sitting position. This can provide great abilities because so much can be done on a computer, but there is little to no real world applications that are able to be done. EOG, because they are goggles and can be worn without restricting vision, can increase the range of the experiments and allow for more degrees of freedom including standing, walking, sitting, and other pervasive activities. There were some experiments that were completed sitting down and looking at a computer monitor, to help compare to other eye movement systems. The tasks would range from copying another screen, reading, browsing, watching a video, and typing. The interesting result of this work was that browsing seemed to correlate to most eye movements. This technology seems like a great step forward for not only everyday computer use, but for individuals that are limited in their ability to move or communicate. This could be a great gateway for giving them a well deserved voice.

I spent some time on a website looking for a particular link. It was my first visit and I couldn’t find it so I sent a comment via the feedback section. Once I’d sent it and returned to the main site, I saw it straight away!

Welcome to the Amateur-Expert Traveller blog, run by Amadeus.

Over the next few days we’ll be looking at major trends we see emerging in the world of travel and technology, and making some important announcements along the way.

Are you an Amateur-Expert traveller?

Patients can sometimes rival their doctors for specialist knowledge, and we see this happening in the travel industry too.

Who do you turn to for specialist advice? Friends and family? Colleagues? The web?

We’re betting a combination of those people, none of whom are specialists – unless you’re married to a travel agent – but most of whom you value as advisors.

And perhaps people ask you. Perhaps they ask you because you’ve been to the destination, or because you’re crafty at online searches.

Isn’t this curious? We think so.

We think of these people as Amateur-Experts. They don’t have any formal training or qualifications. Only a few years ago you would have been much more likely to walk into a travel agent for advice, actually to talk to someone ‘qualified’. Not any more.

This is a major trend in the travel industry. It’s being driven by readily available information, especially from user-generated information, and it’s only going to grow. The challenge lies in how to harness this phenomenon.

More tech is less tech

While the web empowers the rise of the Amateur-Expert traveller, as we’re able to access it throughout our journey – from home, to airport, to destination – the tech goes on the journey with us. We think this presents staggering opportunities for the travel industry, in improving the customer experience before, during and after a trip.

But if the industry is to make the most of these opportunities it really does have to embrace the technology. It needs to see that it can make the travel experience more comfortable, secure and personalised. It has to humanise the technology.

So, if we accept that people are Amateur-Experts, then instead of overwhelming them with information, we need to think of ways to help them. How do you pluck meaning from over 4,000 reviews? How do you measure and compare experiences?

In short, how do you fit the technology around the person, and not the other way around?

Search technology is getting there – sort of.

We already have algorithmic search – you may even have used it to find this blog post, if you used a search engine – and increasingly social search is pointing the way through users tagging pages, pictures and videos. Vertical search engines specialise in deep, specific areas of knowledge, such as law or medicine. And semantic searching, which looks for meaning in language rather than simply recognising keywords, connections or tags, is looking like a promising technology for the future.

But you still need a certain amount of know-how to make these work. You cannot put anyone in front of a machine and tell them to find ‘stuff’.

So again, there’s a challenge here. We need to find smart ways to shape information so that people can use it to their advantage, almost without thinking about it.

Time for change

We think the time is ripe for massive change in the travel industry.

We believe there are going to be significant changes in the way people use travel information, driven by the interplay between technology and human behaviour.

And we say that it’s time for the travel industry to recognise this, and the potential for this, and make it work.

So that’s what we’ll be talking about! And shortly we’ll be making some major announcements that are going to address some of these issues too.

If you think this is interesting enough to know about, then subscribe, or simply drop by over the next few days. If you think it’s interesting enough to talk about, then talk! Feel free to comment on this, or any aspect of the travel industry.

Tag us, share us, talk about us. As Amateur-Experts, you have control!

Business professionals face a steep curve to be comfortable with the array of available e-learning tools and the burgeoning increase in reference materials. Learning professionals are shifting their attention from doing the training to recommending on-line learning. What guidance can learning and development departments offer to ensure e-learning is building competencies that improve job performance? How does talent move from “learning to know” to “learning to do” and knowing how to find out? This webcast will cover critical aspects of e-learning such as competencies to access e-learning tools, communities of practice to share applied learning, and what you can do as a learning professional to shift your organization to leverage e-learning for business results. You’ll discover how your organization can leverage e-learning in the web 2.0 world, as learning on the job becomes inseparable with delivering performance.

Don’t miss these webcast take aways:

• Creating a shared context for learning and performance
• Organizational impact of shifting responsibilities for learning
• Imagination, improvisation and technical competencies for e-learning
• Re-negotiating support from IT
• Examples of effective global communities of practice

Presented by: John D. Smith and Beverly Trayner
Duration: 58 minutes
Recording date: February 18, 2009

View webcast recording

Thanks Yujia for finding the link in her last post. Today, when I was reminded of task analysis(TA) by sequence analysis(SA), I knew there are some similarities, but also some difference, but I could not articulate at that time. This paragraph from Jeff’s post helps me think,

“But whereas task analysis if often used as a means to measure efficiency to ascertain usability, sequence analysis in film is used to gain insight into the objective basis of a subjective phenomenon: the experience of a film.”

Here is a definition of task analysis from Dan Saffer’s book, Designing for Interaction,

“A task analysis is a raw list of activities that the final design will have to support.”

“[it] is especially useful later in the design process as a check to see whether the design supports all the tasks required. … the designer can make sure the design meets all the requirements.”

From Jeff’s analysis about the SA, I got the sense that it is to make the invisible visible, and the unconscious conscious by seeing the break down of a sequence from the film, and find out and analyze what exactly shape the experience. While TA is about logic, exploring all possibilities of an interaction. The purposes are different.

However if going further, by laying the two out, I can see the possible connection here. If TA could also be used to analyze the sequence of interaction, instead of just examining whether something is missing, but also exposing the elements that consist of the design, we could also make the invisible visible, in terms of finding out how they affect the user experience. Any thoughts?

Ha, it seems that I should explore Jeff’s old posts as supplementary class readings.

I was on the bus and thought about iPhone keyboard. I don’t have an iPhone, but I have several experiences using the iPhone soft-keyboard. Compared to the physical keyboard, one difference I suppose is every time when you input you have to look at the soft-keyboard, while you don’t have to do after a while using the physical one. Does that mean the iPhone keyboard is always present-to-hand, since it always causes your attention when inputting?