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.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
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.
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.
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