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?

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:

1. The user's eyesight is tracked.
2. They keep their focus on a certain point for a certain amount of time (dwelling).
3. After the allotted time has elapsed, the gaze is considered input.

Some research has been done in the area, but the researchers behind this paper suggested that previous work was conducted by novices. The previous work used fixed dwell times and yielded undesirable results: 5 - 10 words per minute (wpm) with a dwell time of 450 - 1000 milliseconds (ms). A different study was conducted with a faster dwell time (330 ms), but still slow gaze typing (7 wpm). The last previous research mentioned was that of automatically adjusting dwell times. The results were promising, but that research suggested letting the user decide their own pace for setting dwell time. The research presented in this paper is mainly about making gaze typing faster by allowing users to adjust dwell time.

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.

Each participant was studied a total of ten times each. Through these investigations, the average wpm increased from 6.9 to 19.9 and the average dwell time dropped from 876 ms to 282 ms.

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...

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:

• 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
  

In the end, they designed a system that had a minimalist user interface, lightweight document image processing, and printmark sharing and print data visualizations. This is an example of how the system would work:

1. Go to a web page - use a news article, for example.
2. Press print, PrintMarmoset automatically selects content.
3. The user can then 'stroke' over content to remove it.
4. Print out the remaining content.

The paper has a good demonstration of this with a nice picture: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1520000/1518720/p109-xiao.pdf?key1=1518720&key2=5893816621&coll=&dl=&CFID=77922518&CFTOKEN=72378500

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.

Busy

I have been really busy with my other classes... I will have my posts for the CHI papers soon!

Using Improvisation to Enhance the Effectiveness of Brainstorming

This is a research paper written by Elizabeth Gerber from Northwestern University.

Summary:

This paper starts by giving a general idea of what most of us consider 'brainstorming' - a popular method used by design teams to generate new ideas. Some keys to good brainstorming she presents are from a book called Applied Imagination by Osborn. They are to withhold judgment, build on the ideas of others, generate a large quantity of ideas, free-wheel, and identify a leader. She argues that these concepts have helped teams of cross-discipline to tackle complex technological problems. She also mentions that when team members are able to break loose from cognitive and emotional bounds they are more likely to produce novel and valuable solutions.

The paper then moves on to discuss using technology to enhance brainstorming. She notes that technological support can help some brainstorming imperatives - "fluid idea expression and the generation of a large quantity of ideas". However, the technology does not allow for help in all parts - "building on each other ideas and taking turns speaking". Her desire is to come up with some form of technology that can assist teams in the keys mentioned earlier from Applied Imagination. To do this, she proposed the idea of using theatrical improvisation - improv.

Her research continues on to explore (in depth) integrating improv with brainstorming to support the keys from Osborn's Applied Imagination: withhold judgment, build on the ideas of others, generate a large quantity of ideas, free-wheel, and identify a leader. She concludes her paper by mentioning that improv fosters a healthy environment for brainstorming. She also tells that brainstorming is a great method by which leading companies can discover innovative ideas for the future - a valuable asset.

Comments:

I thought that the paper had some very interesting ideas about using improv in brainstorming activities. For example, the improv method used for 'free-wheeling' was to start with a familiar object. The group would then pass the object around and come up with alternate uses for it. I think that brainstorming is sort of an improvisational activity to begin with, and that is where I think the research is lacking. Teams naturally use improv to help them brainstorm. The research also seemed to lack a computer-human component. It briefly mentioned how computers can assist and constrict brainstorming, but the research of improv did not really get into CHI.

The Design of Everyday Things

This is a blog post for the summary and discussion of our first reading assignment: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman.

This book is all about analyzing 'everyday things' - figuring out why they are successful or failures. As we can see by the cover, not everything is a success. Norman covers all types of things - phones, doors, and watches seem to reappear quite often in his analysis. In this analysis, the main objective is to find principals of good design. In fact, he encourages the reader to not feel discouraged when they cannot understand simple things. Instead, he says the designer is to blame... Interesting.

When reading the book, I noticed that Norman would come up with an idea then share a story about how the idea occurred. I liked that structure. Norman would then go into some detail about the idea and why it was important to good design. While reading, I tried to take note of some of these features:

• Conceptual models allow users to understand how to use something just by looking at it. An example he gave of this was scissors - it is obvious that your hands go into the holes and there is then only logical way to move your fingers. This is also an example of physical constraints which limits the actions one can perform with the object.
• Feedback is essential in design. When a user is performing options in a word processor (an example Norman uses), they need some response to what actions they have taken. If there is no feedback, the user can become confused and perform the same action multiple times without realizing that the action has been noted by the processor.
• Mappings are important to design, and natural mappings are something that all designers should strive for. A natural mapping that Norman mentions is a steering wheel in a car. Turn it left and the car turns left... Natural, what a great idea! Seems simple enough, but some designs really mess up here. If there are 10 buttons on a machine, the designer should strive to have around 10 functions, not 30.
• Visibility is an area that is interesting as well. This idea possibly takes away from the elegance of something, however it is essential in a good design. Of course we all like large, glass doors that are aesthetically pleasing. But is it worth the cost of being confused when you arrive at the door - push or pull? Norman argues that good design comes before beauty.

It was pretty cool to read through the book and soak in all the experiences that Norman discussed. My favorite part of the book was reading through all of the different stories he shared about encounters with good and bad design. It was also interesting to read why he thought each was good or bad. I have not really broken down everyday things with such scrutiny, it is almost humorous how much we take these devices for granted. However, we all remember that really crappy soda machine that never seems to work precisely how you expect it to. Bad design is something that we take note of - it can be really frustrating! Good design is something that is natural to understand and use, so we often discard merit of good design because it is expected. If there is anything to take away from this book, I would say it is to take note of good design in everyday things - really take the time to learn why it is so natural to use.

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.