So I must say that this semester of CHI was very interesting. I obviously stopped my blog posts about half way through, but this allowed me to concentrate more on the other aspects of this class and others. I worked really hard on the projects, and the user study was especially helpful for my video game! Overall, it was a fun course that I think had a little too much busy work. I hope that my lack of blogging does not hurt my final grade too much! Thanks everyone for a fun filled semester.
Brett
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
OMGLOL!!!
So yeah, I am making a note to myself of how far behind I am on these blogs just in case I decide to catch up... It has obviously been pretty busy over the last few weeks.
- CHI 2009 - choice of any 4
- IUI 2009 - choice of any 3 + An interactive, smart notepad for context-sensitive information seeking
- UIST 2008 - choice of any 3 + Iterative design and evaluation of an event architecture for pen-and-paper interfaces
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Emotional Design
OK - here is what I got from Don Norman's Emotional Design. Emotional appeals are subconscious, we are not aware of them. There are three types of emotional appeals:
Aside from that, the only new ground that Norman covers that interested me was the last chapter (which seemed a bit out of place). Here he talks about robots in the future and how they should understand our emotions. This can help them interact with humans more efficiently than before. I personally think that getting robots to that level of understanding is scary. If we can learn how to make robots function exactly like us, who's to say that we were not made by some other creatures... Anyways, that is kind of a different topic that I could talk about for a really long time.
Back to Norman: if he would have just called me in 2004, I could have told him what to do. I would have told him not to write another book. Everyone makes mistakes... We understand the need for him to have written TDOET, but everyone saw its flaw. That includes me, check my blog post on the book:
- Visceral - The way that something appears speaks to us.
- Behavioral - We want to feel in control.
- Reflective - The voice inside our head that separates us from others.
Aside from that, the only new ground that Norman covers that interested me was the last chapter (which seemed a bit out of place). Here he talks about robots in the future and how they should understand our emotions. This can help them interact with humans more efficiently than before. I personally think that getting robots to that level of understanding is scary. If we can learn how to make robots function exactly like us, who's to say that we were not made by some other creatures... Anyways, that is kind of a different topic that I could talk about for a really long time.
Back to Norman: if he would have just called me in 2004, I could have told him what to do. I would have told him not to write another book. Everyone makes mistakes... We understand the need for him to have written TDOET, but everyone saw its flaw. That includes me, check my blog post on the book:
There is one part where I stray from Norman's thoughts. I think that visibility is important in design. However, I do not think that it should trump elegance. If something is aesthetically pleasing to look at, consumers are naturally inclined to buy it. Especially compared to something that looks like... Ugh! Hopefully designers can find a way to integrate elegance and functionality, but elegance should never be completely disregarded.Come on Norman... I knew this was coming and so did everyone else. We all know that emotions speak to us louder than functionality. Why did you feel the need to write a book about it?
Monday, February 22, 2010
How Well do Visual Verbs Work in Daily Communication for Young and Old Adults
Summary:
A couple of students from Princeton created a method by which to study the ways that visual verbs work for young and old adults. They consider young adults to be 20 to 39 years old, while old adults are considered 55 years old and up. They are trying to study how visual verbs can be displayed differently and how the meaning is effected in the two age groups. They have four different visualization methods:
- Single static image
- Panel of four static images
- Animation
- Video clip
Pictured above is the example they give for the four visual models for "work". The researchers wanted to make it known that verbs are more difficult to visualize than nouns because nouns typically represent a tangible thing. To collect a sample of verbs, they found 48 frequently used verbs from the British National Corpus. They got all of their images (for the single image and the panel of images) from web pages which had been tagged. To select the best images, the researchers got people to rate a sample of images. They then selected the four top-rated images for the panel. They got their animations from a website for visualization, and they conducting the video making themselves.
The study showed that there was a significant aging effect on interpreting visualizations. The young adults scored higher on average in all four methods of visualization. The score was on a 6 point scale (an exact match was worth 6, synonym was worth 5...). They came up with a collection of results from the experiment:
- Multiple pictures are better for conveying verbs
- Utilize common gestures, but be wary of cultural differences
- Use symbols carefully, especially when ambiguous
- Simplify backgrounds and use common scenes
- Use special effects carefully because elderly might not understand
- Consider age-related effects
Comments:
I think that, like most research in the CHI papers, the experiment was pretty interesting. I did not really catch onto the application of the research though. In their conclusion, they mention that visual communication is helpful in multilingual settings - I would agree with this. They assert that "verbs must be well illustrated in visual languages...as an essential part to most languages". This part I find hard to agree with - where is the application?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Fast Gaze Typing with an Adjustable Dwell Time
Summary:
Gaze typing, also known as eye typing, is using a gaze as input as opposed to normal keyboard use. It is primarily used for people who have severe disabilities and motor skill deficiencies. This is how it typically works:
Experiment Specifics:
Comments:
I think that the research presented took an easy idea and applied it to an interesting, novel topic. After all, don't we all know that practice makes perfect? That is basically what the paper concluded. Allow the user to learn at their own rate and the results were pretty good.
Gaze typing, also known as eye typing, is using a gaze as input as opposed to normal keyboard use. It is primarily used for people who have severe disabilities and motor skill deficiencies. This is how it typically works:
- The user's eyesight is tracked.
- They keep their focus on a certain point for a certain amount of time (dwelling).
- After the allotted time has elapsed, the gaze is considered input.
Experiment Specifics:
- They studied 11 college students who had normal vision.
- They used a QWERTY keyboard layout.
- Users could vary dwell time from 2000 ms to 150 ms.
- An animation was used to show dwell time elapsing (circle around the key).
- The activation area of the key was bigger than the actual key visualization - this was done to boost accuracy.
Comments:
I think that the research presented took an easy idea and applied it to an interesting, novel topic. After all, don't we all know that practice makes perfect? That is basically what the paper concluded. Allow the user to learn at their own rate and the results were pretty good.
The Inmates are Running the Asylum
Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
When I started to skim through this book, the first thing I noticed is how much the computer industry has changed. It seems like Cooper is really mad at every person he used to work with... Back in the day, programmers were in charge of everything, even if that meant designing a program for computer noobs. We have all been there before - sometimes it requires too much effort and it is easier to say never mind. It is easy to take that road, but usually it is not constructive.
I do have some experience in industry, and I have to say that it is completely different than what Cooper describes. I really believe that poorly designed systems are a thing of the past... Lets face it - if you don't subscribe to interactive design, your product is going to fail. The methods used by the programmers Cooper talks about are nostalgic to my early programming years. Writing code that even the writer cannot understand a few months later. Ah, those were the days.
But enough reminiscing. There are some pretty good points that Cooper makes in between his angry rants. I think breaking users into apologists and survivors is a really neat idea. However, I do not think that just the two categories can fully explain all users. I think they are more of a stereotype to get a point across. Programmers used to be apologists - we would defend all systems because we knew that there was some merit behind them, regardless of how difficult it was to understand. After all, programmers were the authors of some of that nonsense. When I think of an apologists, I think of my parents...
Now, I think programmers are starting to realize that we cannot be apologists anymore. There was a renaissance (sort of) amongst the computer world not too long ago - products should be easy to use. Wow, what a novel concept! I think the main reason this came to be is because people generally got tired of crappy software. And all it took was a few good companies to notice that and start developing for the user. Look at where we are now...
When I started to skim through this book, the first thing I noticed is how much the computer industry has changed. It seems like Cooper is really mad at every person he used to work with... Back in the day, programmers were in charge of everything, even if that meant designing a program for computer noobs. We have all been there before - sometimes it requires too much effort and it is easier to say never mind. It is easy to take that road, but usually it is not constructive.
I do have some experience in industry, and I have to say that it is completely different than what Cooper describes. I really believe that poorly designed systems are a thing of the past... Lets face it - if you don't subscribe to interactive design, your product is going to fail. The methods used by the programmers Cooper talks about are nostalgic to my early programming years. Writing code that even the writer cannot understand a few months later. Ah, those were the days.
But enough reminiscing. There are some pretty good points that Cooper makes in between his angry rants. I think breaking users into apologists and survivors is a really neat idea. However, I do not think that just the two categories can fully explain all users. I think they are more of a stereotype to get a point across. Programmers used to be apologists - we would defend all systems because we knew that there was some merit behind them, regardless of how difficult it was to understand. After all, programmers were the authors of some of that nonsense. When I think of an apologists, I think of my parents...
Now, I think programmers are starting to realize that we cannot be apologists anymore. There was a renaissance (sort of) amongst the computer world not too long ago - products should be easy to use. Wow, what a novel concept! I think the main reason this came to be is because people generally got tired of crappy software. And all it took was a few good companies to notice that and start developing for the user. Look at where we are now...
Sunday, February 14, 2010
PrintMarmoset: Redesigning the Print Button for Sustainability
Summary:
This paper begins by introducing sustainable interaction design (SID). SID deals with conventions of learned perceptions and behaviors. That means that SID motivates users to pay attention to sustainability, while still concentrating on usability issues. The research mentions that SID demands a deep understanding of the social and evolving aspects of design.
When evaluating SID, usually task-centric techniques are used. In this paper, they come up with a SID for printing to prove their hypothesis that behavior change is a more convincing metric than attitude change. A primary use of the study is to examine a new design of the print button that will reduce the amount of paper we waste.
The researchers conducted a study amongst several different people and concluded that printing is here to stay. Most subjects agreed that when you print something it holds more importance. Some said that printing directions is easier than using a GPS. When asked about printing a large amount of pages, most subjects said they would think twice. They generally agreed that wasting paper was bad. They also said that given the overhead of sorting through content needed and not needed on a website, they would overwhelmingly choose to print the entire page.
After doing some prototyping, they found that a solution required the following:
The paper did not get into great detail about methods used for implementation. Instead, they discussed their goals in the research. Their first was to bring SID to light. Their second was to use an easy exercise (printing) to show the potential of SID.
Comments:
I think that the paper brought a very interesting idea forward. Printing usually is a hassle, especially off of a web page news article. Using a sustainable design proved to allow users to interact minimally with the program to achieve goals. SID is a cool area that I think can help a lot in CHI studies.
This paper begins by introducing sustainable interaction design (SID). SID deals with conventions of learned perceptions and behaviors. That means that SID motivates users to pay attention to sustainability, while still concentrating on usability issues. The research mentions that SID demands a deep understanding of the social and evolving aspects of design.
When evaluating SID, usually task-centric techniques are used. In this paper, they come up with a SID for printing to prove their hypothesis that behavior change is a more convincing metric than attitude change. A primary use of the study is to examine a new design of the print button that will reduce the amount of paper we waste.
The researchers conducted a study amongst several different people and concluded that printing is here to stay. Most subjects agreed that when you print something it holds more importance. Some said that printing directions is easier than using a GPS. When asked about printing a large amount of pages, most subjects said they would think twice. They generally agreed that wasting paper was bad. They also said that given the overhead of sorting through content needed and not needed on a website, they would overwhelmingly choose to print the entire page.
After doing some prototyping, they found that a solution required the following:
- require neither developers to modify existing web sites nor users to change existing print flow
- require the least amount of user input effort, if not zero
- offer flexibility that allows users to choose what to print in addition to pre-defined filter or template
- maintain a history of print activities for collecting and organizing web clips
- raise awareness of the tool among people and build a “green” community around it
- Go to a web page - use a news article, for example.
- Press print, PrintMarmoset automatically selects content.
- The user can then 'stroke' over content to remove it.
- Print out the remaining content.
The paper did not get into great detail about methods used for implementation. Instead, they discussed their goals in the research. Their first was to bring SID to light. Their second was to use an easy exercise (printing) to show the potential of SID.
Comments:
I think that the paper brought a very interesting idea forward. Printing usually is a hassle, especially off of a web page news article. Using a sustainable design proved to allow users to interact minimally with the program to achieve goals. SID is a cool area that I think can help a lot in CHI studies.
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