Fitts's Law

Commented On:
Brad Twitty
J Chris Elgin
Jared Wright

Summary:
Fitts's Law is a + b * log(1 + D/W). This law is used to describe how long it takes humans to use a device. A is the start up time, b is the movement speed, d is the distance to the target, and w is the width of the target. This law can be used to make your device faster to use.

Discussion:
Fitts's law has been in use for over half a decade. Clearly his law has use and is useful. The law is easy enough to understand and interpret. The key to the law is what you can gain from it. You can either make objects closer or bigger to make things faster. It doesn't matter that there is a logarithmic function in it. Simply the D/W is what matters.

Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful

Commented On:
Brad Twitty
Jared Wright
(No one else has written on it)

Summary:
This paper takes shots at people who say that all things should be usability centered. They are not pushing that usability design should be stopped, but rather it has a time and place and that is not every time, everywhere. The author makes many points that Don Norman does in Human centered design harmful. He talks about things such as cars that were not originally designed for usability, but rather for someone's grand plan.

Discussion:
I liked this paper. I think the authors do a great job of pointed out times when usability centered design is not the best choice. He points out patters of when it won't be a good time instead of just pointing random cases out. As with the other 'harmful' papers the authors just push to use different approaches in different situations. He even goes so far as to point out different parts of the life cycle that could use different design approaches. I thought it was a good read.

Ethnography Considered Harmful

Commented On:
Brad Twitty
Jared Wright
(No one else has written on it)

Summary:
Ethnography considered harmful talks about the flaws in ethnographies. Similar to Norman's on human-centered design, they are trying to say that we use ethnographies too often. We do not realize the flaws of them and so we use them when there may be better alternatives.

Discussion:
This paper is similar to Norman's but on a different topic. It seems that complacency is their main complaint. I don't have a lot to say on it since I don't really know the extend of ethnographies in the field. I did not think it did as good of a job in its argument though as Norman did. It did not really convince me there was some grand flaw with ethnographies.

Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful

Commented On:
Brad Twitty
Jared Wright
Kevin Kwan

Summary:
Norman talks about how human-centered design is not always the best way to design. He gives examples of times when very common things were not designed with the user in mind and how they have worked out. He talked about how design for function sometimes needs to be done to achieve the early goal of a project. The main point he is trying to make is that if designers get complacent and just accept that things should be done only one way, then it is hurting the design in the end.

Discussion:
As I said above, I really believe the main point of this paper was that there is no end all way to design. If we stick to one way of designing, it can be just as bad if we use poor designs to begin with. I don't think Norman is trying to really say that Human-centered design is harmful at all, just complacency.

Inmates are Running the Asylum

Commented On:
Brad Twitty
Kevin Kwan
Tony Gu

Summary:
This book discussed ways that programmers fail at design. It also went into some of the reasons that current software is set up wrong that causes poor design. This includes having the wrong people do the designing. He then went on to discuss ways and techniques that can be used to create better design in software.

Discussion:
This was my favorite book we read. This is probably due to the fact that it was all of the design concepts we read but applied to software. I wish he would have given some more concrete examples of his design so that I could see patterns, but you only have limited space. I feel that is one of those books that is giving good advice, but if I tried to go out and use it I would mess up and be no better than when I started. I would definatly suggest it be read by all computer scientist.

CHI 2009

PlayByPlay: Collaborative Web Browsing for Desktop and Mobile Devices

Commented On:
Adam Griffin
Ben Carsten
Brad Twitty

Summary:
PlayByPlay talked about a way for someone on a cell phone to interact with someone on a computer for the same session. It used a chat program for the interaction. Its main feature was it would convert actions taken to human text and send the message to the other person. This way the person on the other side could follow along also. Its other main feature was the ability for a person to effect the browsing session of the other person. If one person needed a password they could send the field to the other person how could enter the password for the person.

Discussion:
This was probably one of my more favorite papers I read. I am sure most people at some time or another called someone to get directions. With this data could be transferred back and forth easily. It also would make helping people much easier. Instead of guessing if the person on the other side is actually doing what you are telling them to, you could see what they were doing. While I am fairly certain that this would not be needed by everyone, I am sure there are plenty of niche cases in which it would greater make life easier for the user.

CHI 2008

You Can Touch, but You Can't Look: Interacting with In-Vehicle Systems

Commented On
Adam Griffin
Ben Carsten
J Chris Elgin

Summary:
This paper wanted to test different ways of interacting with a car radio. They used three types of input: buttons like in our cars currently, a touch screen, and gesture based. They then tested the driver for how long they took to finish the task, how many mistakes they made, as well as how many driving mistakes they made while attempting the task. Tactile input (our current way) caused the driver to make by far the most driving mistakes while at the same time taking the longest to complete the task. Touch based allowed the user to complete the task the fastest, but they had to look away from the road more often than gesture based to do it. Completion time for gesture based was almost as long as tactile, but the driver did not have to look away from the road for long periods of time.

Discussion:
This report was interesting because it could make driving safer. Just like cell phones are dangerous while driving, looking at the radio is also dangerous since you aren't looking at the road. It was interesting that touch causes so fewer errors than tactile since both require you to look away from the road. I would like to see some kind of combination of touch and gesture to see what results happen. They could use the touch for more advanced commands while using gesture for simple commands.

UIST 2007

Rethinking the Progress Bar

Commented On:
Adam Griffin
Ben Carsten
Brad Twitty

Summary:
This paper dealt with how to make progress bars more effective. The researchers had 9 different ways for a progress bar to fill. They all ran the same time length but some would have pauses, some would accelerate, and some would slow down. They have people watch one and then the another to see which they thought ran faster. After all of the users went through tended to favor progress bars that would have have no pauses near the end and especially ones that were moving fast at the end.

Discussion:
I think the experiment was interesting to read about. I think a more interesting experiment is the one they propose in their future work. In this they talk about seeing how long bars would have to run so that the people would think that both progress bars finished at the same time. There research is a quick way for programmers to make the user happier. It would not take much effort of time for them to implement it so that their progress bar moves faster at the end.

Emotional Design

Posted On:
Adam Griffin
Benjamin Carsten
Brad Twitty

Summary:
This book talked about the three parts of design: visceral, reflective, and behavioral. These cover the look, the use, and what we think about objects we use. It did not go into too much depth of each type, but instead gave a feel for why each type was important. The book seemed to be more of an overview in which you should go on to make your own conclusions versus the source of knowledge. This book is a jumping point for moving on.

Discussion:
This book for me was the accumulation of the semester. It took many of the books we read and combined them into one giant lesson. As I read Don Norman's other books I felt that they always missed the other parts such as reflective choices. This one seems to balance all of the choices into one book. The first 3/4 of the book were probably my favorite book of the semester so far. Chapter 7 seemed off topic to me as he discussed emotions in robots. It seemed to be less about design and more a social commentary on what could happen. I probably liked the book because I believe that people buy on look as much as use. Even if they narrow it down by use, they probably take the one that looks better. Human's are pre-wired to start make judgments as soon as we see something. A very useful product may never be touched because it does not look good. I am not sure how useful the book will be looking back, but I do feel that his points were mostly correct and insightful. Long story short is that his other books offered depths into topics, but this one seemed to get the bigger picture.

The Man Who Shocked the World

Posted On:
Adam Griffin
Benjamin Carsten
Brad Twitty

Summary:
The is the biography of Stanley Milgram. It covers his whole life but by and large it focuses on the obedience experiments and the effects they had. The data on the obedience experiments covers what he did and what the results were. It covered his other experiments but in no where near the detail. It gave large detail not just to his life, but how the obedience experiments effected the scientific community.

Discussion:
The effect of the experiments was interesting to read. To see how little was needed to get people to commit what they thought were violent acts was surprising. Other parts of the book seemed to be filler, but them again everyone's life is full of filler. No one has an action packed life 24/7. I will admit that I am not sure how much of the book was useful to the class's goals, but it was not a waste of time to read either. I am curious how much of the book was pure postulation to why people treated Milgram the way they did versus having good basis for guessing why they acted as they did. I was surprised by the amount of quotations that the author got for the book. The book was full of information from other people as opposed to just story telling.

The Design of Future Things

Commented On:
Adam Griffin
Brad Twitty
Steven Rychlik

Summary:
This book focused on more modern technology to technology not yet developed. He made points about the control we give technology and how it can backfire. He spent a lot of time talking about how much control you can give technology before people get frustrated in it not working how they want. He discusses limitations such as poor communication between machines and people. The central theme is that no time in the foreseeable future will the machine know what the person wants if the task is not mundane so be careful if you let the machine to the thinking.

Discussion:
I was not a huge fan of this book. I felt that the writer had few real points and just kept bringing them back up. He kept using the examples of the car and the house over and over. I feel as if he could have written the book in two chapters and got the same points across. I only got two real points: be careful how much control you give the machine and that machines and people do not communicate with the same language. I think his point on taking care of giving automation when people cant control it is important to remember. The trend today is to make the program do as much as possible for the user, but if we don't let the user have control there is no way to guarantee they get their results. I wish this book just has more lessons to it. If I was to make the book better or write another book it would have more substance to it.

Design as Exploration: Creating Interface Alternatives through Parallel Authoring and Runtime Tuning (UIST 2008)

Commented On:
Adam Griffin
Benjamin Carsten
Brad Twitty

Summary:
This paper discuses a new program they wrote that allows for the fine tuning of interface settings called Juxtapose. This program has a few primary features. The first of which lets the designer view multiple versions of the interface at once. Each of these correspond to separate tabs of the same code. The designer can then modify the code separately to make real time changes to the interfaces he sees. The other main feature it has is a board with sliders that is separate from the computer. These can be programmed with variables so that sliding the variables will change the values in real time. A third main feature was the ability to have the events being done to one interface happen on all of the interfaces concurrently. The final main features was the ability to save setting of variables so that they could be restored at a future time for testing.

Discussion:
This technology seems to be early in its lifetime. You can only control booleans and integers currently. I do believe that if the technology could be refined and incorporated into common IDE such as visual studio or eclipse than it would be extremely useful. A good program with a poor interface is just as sure to fail as a poor program. This software makes it very fast to quickly change the setting for fine tuning interfaces to what works. The multiple interfaces at once make it not only good for your own testing, but for showing to the stakeholders of the project. You could have multiple interface options and then if they want to pick and choose from the interfaces, you could quickly take parts of one and apply it to the other ones. This would make it easier to create the interface they want instead of only have part of it. The idea seems good, although bringing the board around would be a hassle. If given time I am sure part of the idea will become more common for projects.

Ethnography - Basketball seating

Posted On:
Adam Griffin
Brad Twitty
Eric Scott

Summary (Taken From abstract of paper)
The main things that this study did well was to show the areas that people seemed to fill last. While I originally wanted to look for small groups of seats and what was in common with while they were missed, this was not feasible. I had to instead look at what sections people would fill in slower than others. The study itself showed that people tended to sit in seats closer to the door or middle. This makes sense since when people first walk in they have no knowledge of were there open seats are. To their knowledge all sections have an equal chance of seating and they will take the closest door. The second thing that I noticed is that people will tend to take the best seat they see open first. They will not go searching for better seats possibly in fear of losing the seat they already found. This means that a few open seats down lower can stay open for a long period of time as people do not go and steal them. This experiment did not help me directly find areas that I should go to to find great seats, but it does give me a starting point such as to go far from the door. In the future I would like to apply it to non sporting events that have free for all seating and to take some recording device to further be able to track the seats.

The Mole People

Posted On:
Adam Griffin
Eric Scott
Lei Gu

Summary: The mole people is supposed to be an ethnography about the people who live in the tunnels underneath New York City. It was really a collection of stories strung together about the people who lived there. It attempts to show all of the different types of people that live in the tunnels.

Discussion:
From what I had gathered about ethnographies, The point was to have a guess as for what you wanted to learn ahead of time, then study the people, and then see what you learned about the topic that you were hoping to learn. I felt that Jennifer Toth had a purpose to her ethnography, and that was to put out a story that would show the people underneath the tunnels as normal as possible. I am assuming she did this because she was going to write an article for her paper and putting out an article titled, "The Mole People: Yeah they are really weird" would not have sold as well. People love when the little guy wins. Look at sports, people love to cheer for the underdog. I just don't think she would be willing to use all that time out if she couldn't get an article out of it.

On the bright side, I thought her stories were not something you would normally hear. She brought out stories that I would not have heard otherwise. Some of the stories showed people that were down there could be down for different reasons. Some people seemed to like being down there.

As for extending her work, I am not sure of the feasibility. To get a real feel you would have to watch all of the underground people. Many of them would not let you watch them, nor could they be found. Others would be a threat to the person watching them. Since you cannot get information on these people, you cannot get the full picture. The problem is that these people are a very different dimension to the same population that Jennifer Toth studied.

The Media Equation

Posted On:
Adam Griffin,
John Book,
Nick Harris


Summary:
This book describes how when people interact with computers they apply some of the social concepts used when dealing with humans. It includes everything from social norms such as being polite to object recognition to teamwork. It seems to cover more on how humans interact with their environment more than with computers in particular.

Discussion:
This book's usefulness can be broken down by chapters. Certain chapters such as as the ability to recall images seems very common knowledge in that we remember objects that are larger better than objects that are further. It points out things that I already knew such as that you can use perspective techniques to make objects appears further away even in a two dimensional image. Other chapters such as teamwork and labels were more of a surprise and could be used to enhance usability in computers. The ideas would take time to implement and may not be straightforward, but if done right it could be a revolution. As for furthering or applying his work, you need to be careful. Things like praising a user could easily become mundane or even an annoyance to a user who is trying to do something. I think it is important to take away that making a computer look more human like is not necessarily the answer to everything. You can see in 3D animations of humans that we never seem to get certain parts right such as the hands and eyes. This causes some people to be even more turned off to the median. It may be better to get of the basics down first before moving on.

The Design of Everday Things

People whose blog I have posted on:
Josh Myers, Jared Wright, John Zachary

Summary:
The Design of Everyday Things (DoET) was a book that used examples of poor design cases to make points about what designers should do. The predominate point that the author is trying to make is that when designing objects, it is more important to consider how easy to use the object is than to consider how the object looks. He covers topics such as natural mappings, the gulfs of evaluation and execution, among other design considerations. Not only does he discuss things such as the previously stated that should be considered for making objects easy to use, he also talks about common misconceptions that people forget to take into account such as that you as the design will be more familiar with the control of you object than the user no matter how ignorant you try and act. This book does a good job of getting the reader back to looking at the basics of good design before trying to do more advanced design aspects.

Discussion:
The best part of this book was that it had a counter-culture approach to design. In today's world we seem to push more and more to aesthetic appeal than usability appeal, but if we were to stop and think about life, I think we would find more complaints about things not working like you want them to than things not looking good enough. The author also does a good job of using multiple examples of design instead of just trying to describe faults in design. If the author had just stated problems I would probably have tended to blame the user of the device of doing something stupid. By vividly describing situations I was able to relate to the person who had trouble using whatever object it was and see that the problem was not with the user but the object. In the end the book was a success because it managed to get me to go against common theme in the world that tell me that everything should do as much as possible while looking as good as possible, and instead focus on the user being able to do what they want as easily as possible.
Even though I believe the book was a success, that does not mean it did everything well. My biggest complaint with his arguments is that he seems to look at things primarily from the usability aspect of design. In the modern world you cannot focus so much on this aspect exclusively. Even if an object is highly usable, if it look like junk then the customer will most likely walk right past it in a store. Things such as cost of development and aesthetic appeal are important to customers. He seems to talk about things in a world will each customer will test each item before buying, or if they don't like using an object will go get another type. Great design is only useful if you can get the customer to use it. If you have the greatest product, but no one ever sees it then you have nothing worthwhile.
My second complaint is that the author talks about mental maps as if changing the controls to model the actual system would make it easier for the user to use the product. I disagree that this is not always the case. If we map the control on a refrigerator to model the actual system, then the user would be upset since the controls would be more complicated to understand. If I gave one control for the temperature and one for the amount of air going to the freezer versus the refrigerator, I predict either the user would only use the temperature control, or they would never be sure exactly how to change the temperature in just one and get frustrated trying. By keeping the controls the way they are the user is able to turn the freezer knob and the freezer will get colder. The fact that the refrigerator may change temperate is not noticed by the user and the user is still happy. Ignorance is bliss. I believe the user is happier with simplistic controls than if they had controls that accurately mapped what was happening in the system.
If I was going to extend this work I would try and focus more on common misconceptions or fallacies in poor design. I would focus on this aspect because they are probably the hardest to notice. It is easy to see that you are sacrificing usability for aesthetic appeal, but to notice that you are using certain learned knowledge like it is natural restrictions is harder to learn.

The design that I liked is that of a light socket from many lamps. I like the design for three reasons. First there is only one real way to control it at first sight and that is to turn the knob. The second is that if you turn the knob the wrong way, nothing bad happens. Lastly is that opposed to pull string I do not have to worry about knocking the lamp over as I operate the device.
Image from http://www.paxtonhardware.com/products.asp?dept=118&grp=1

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