SUMMARY:
The author starts the book out by talking about what you get when you cross a computer with another product. These include an airplane, a camera, an alarm clock, a car, a bank, and even a navy ship. The point he is trying to get across is that you still get something that behaves like a computer. This can lead to problems. For instance, what if a navy ship's computer system crashes in the middle of a war? I think we would have a problem.
In the second chapter the author brings up a new term, cognitive friction. Basically cognitive friction is the resistance by human intellect when it engages in a complex system of rules that change as the problem changes. Software for instance has a lot of cognitive friction. A violin on the other hand has very little. Even though it is complex to play, nothing about the violin ever changes. The author also mentions he prefers interaction design over interface design. Interface design suggests the program is just a medium between the user and the computer. Interaction design suggests the designer should consider behavioral design and cognitive design. Another problem programmers run is to is they keep adding features rather than change the design. This can make the programs even more confusing. The author also brings up the concept of apologists and survivors. Most programmers are considered apologists. They blame themselves when they can not figure out how to use a program correctly. They tend to tout the benefits and ignore the negatives. Survivors tend to know whats wrong but they can't figure it out. This is where most of the general public falls.
The third chapter talks about wasting money. Many software managers have trouble with deadline management. If hey understand Parkinson's Law(90% of the work takes 90% of the time and 10% of the work takes 90% of the time) they should be reasonable about shipping late. If a manager obsesses about a product that never ships relevant features may be left out. The author also talks about prototyping. It should be used to understand how the programming will work but shouldn't be the final code.
In the fourth chapter the author talks about some general problems with software. He claims software is lazy, forgets, inflexible, blames users, and won't take responsibility. These are things every software designer needs to consider when designing a program.
In the fifth chapter the author talks about customer disloyalty. A product should be capable(engineering), viable(business), and desirable(design). The author also says when considering time to market a programmer needs to consider behavior of the program before features.
Chapter six talks about how programmers are in control of the design of software. Companies that put features before behavior have failed before. Software engineers need to be in "harmony with silicon" to be professional. This causes them to see the product differently than most users.
Chapter seven brings up the term homo logicus. He uses this to describe the behavior of a typical software engineer. He claims that normal homo sapiens want things to be done for them. The metaphor he uses says they would ride in the passenger part of the plane. A homo logicus wants to be in control. He/she would go in the cockpit and control the airplane. He also mentions programmers act like jocks because they expect everyone to know technology as well as them.
DISCUSSION:
This book takes an interesting approach to try and get the reader to understand why user interaction needs to be carefully considered software design. So far the author has explained how programmers differ from normal users of a software program. I assume in the second half of the book he will get more into detail about how a programmer should design for desirable user interaction.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
CHI 2009a: Social Computing Privacy Concerns
SUMMARY:
This paper discussed privacy issues on social networking sites such as Flickr and Facebook. The authors believes that when a member of an online community shares information it makes them feel vulnerable because they don't know who will see this information. This leads to a restrictive amount of information sharing in the online community. The study proves the author to be correct. However this is something that is difficult to measure.
DISCUSSION:
This paper was interesting to me because I am a member of Facebook. I can remember the privacy policy changing many times in the past few years and this paper points out one of the reasons. Sharing too much information online can be dangerous. One fault of this work is that this is a difficult thing to prove is happening. The author studies private photo sharing in the study as an example of restrictive sharing. While I think this is a good measure of restrictive sharing, there also might be other reasons why some wants to private share a photo. Future work may be on tracking how much restrictive sharing is occurring each time facebook's privacy settings change.
This paper discussed privacy issues on social networking sites such as Flickr and Facebook. The authors believes that when a member of an online community shares information it makes them feel vulnerable because they don't know who will see this information. This leads to a restrictive amount of information sharing in the online community. The study proves the author to be correct. However this is something that is difficult to measure.
DISCUSSION:
This paper was interesting to me because I am a member of Facebook. I can remember the privacy policy changing many times in the past few years and this paper points out one of the reasons. Sharing too much information online can be dangerous. One fault of this work is that this is a difficult thing to prove is happening. The author studies private photo sharing in the study as an example of restrictive sharing. While I think this is a good measure of restrictive sharing, there also might be other reasons why some wants to private share a photo. Future work may be on tracking how much restrictive sharing is occurring each time facebook's privacy settings change.
CHI 2009a: Team Analytics
SUMMARY:
This paper is on a software program called team analytics. It helps synchronize employee directories and connect people in different time zones. It also creates group profile pages that contains information relative to the group. After deploying this application within a company many users claimed it was very helpful in phone calls. Over 75% of the participants used it once a week, while 31% used it on a daily basis.
DISCUSSION:
This paper was interesting to me because it reminds me of a facebook for companies. It has individual profiles and group pages. It is a great way to learn things about people without having to spend the time talking about it. I could see how this could be very useful for managers who have to interact with a lot of people. A fault of this work is that the time zone feature was not as successful as the programmers thought it would be. The authors talk about integrating this software with an instant messaging client in the future.
This paper is on a software program called team analytics. It helps synchronize employee directories and connect people in different time zones. It also creates group profile pages that contains information relative to the group. After deploying this application within a company many users claimed it was very helpful in phone calls. Over 75% of the participants used it once a week, while 31% used it on a daily basis.
DISCUSSION:
This paper was interesting to me because it reminds me of a facebook for companies. It has individual profiles and group pages. It is a great way to learn things about people without having to spend the time talking about it. I could see how this could be very useful for managers who have to interact with a lot of people. A fault of this work is that the time zone feature was not as successful as the programmers thought it would be. The authors talk about integrating this software with an instant messaging client in the future.
CHI 2009a: Designing Digital Games For Rural Children
SUMMARY:
This article discusses how to design educational games for poor children in India. The authors start out by explaining that some Western games are not understood by Indian children. They observed Indian children playing four different Western games and found out that most of the children didn't immediately understand how to play these games. To understand how to develop a game that Indian children better understand the authors looked at traditional Indian games. They noted there are two main differences between Indian and western games. First, most actions in traditional Indian games appeared to be atomic. Second, players would usually have their own "turf", in which they are safe from harm. To incorporate these ideas into video game, the authors came up with a game called Tree-Tree. It is meant to help Indian children learn English words for fruit. In the study most of the children grasped the concepts of the game immediately. They gave fuzzy numbers at the end but between 25-50% of the children seemed to enjoy playing it.
Discussion:
This paper was interesting to me because I didn't know rural Indian children had easy access to video games. The paper mentions mobile games are most popular among them. Educational games could be a great tool for helping India's poor people become more educated. One fault of this work is that they don't mention how helpful the game was in helping the children learn. They talk about proper use and enjoyment but never mention results on learning. One possible work that could come from this study is an iphone game aimed at Indian children.
This article discusses how to design educational games for poor children in India. The authors start out by explaining that some Western games are not understood by Indian children. They observed Indian children playing four different Western games and found out that most of the children didn't immediately understand how to play these games. To understand how to develop a game that Indian children better understand the authors looked at traditional Indian games. They noted there are two main differences between Indian and western games. First, most actions in traditional Indian games appeared to be atomic. Second, players would usually have their own "turf", in which they are safe from harm. To incorporate these ideas into video game, the authors came up with a game called Tree-Tree. It is meant to help Indian children learn English words for fruit. In the study most of the children grasped the concepts of the game immediately. They gave fuzzy numbers at the end but between 25-50% of the children seemed to enjoy playing it.
Discussion:
This paper was interesting to me because I didn't know rural Indian children had easy access to video games. The paper mentions mobile games are most popular among them. Educational games could be a great tool for helping India's poor people become more educated. One fault of this work is that they don't mention how helpful the game was in helping the children learn. They talk about proper use and enjoyment but never mention results on learning. One possible work that could come from this study is an iphone game aimed at Indian children.
Monday, February 8, 2010
CHI 2009a: A Comparative Study of Speech and Dialed Input Voice Interfaces in Rural India
by Neil Patel12, Sheetal Agarwal2, Nitendra Rajput2, Amit Nanavat2i, Paresh Dave3, Tapan S. Parikh4
1) Stanford University HCI Group
2) IBM India Research Laboratory
3) Development Support Center (Gujarat, India)
4) UC Berkeley School of Information
SUMMARY:
This paper presents a study comparing speech and dialed input voice user interfaces for farmers in Gujurat, India. India has over 480 million illiterate people who need an access to information. For some of them spoken language is the only way for them to obtain information. They could possibly obtain information anytime using a phone that gets information from a recording. Of course this is restricted only to people who have access to a phone.
In this study the authors performed a study on 45 participants. All of them were people living in rural India. 87% of the participants had never used a computer. 73% of the participants had less than an 8th grade education. The participants were both male and female. Due to some traveling constraints 7 of the women had to be observed within their own residence.
The authors tested two methods of interaction with the user. The first is called Voice User Interface (VUI). VUI is where the application will get user input by them speaking a word. Most of the questions in this study were yes-no questions. The authors managed to get a 2% error rate by using just 15 voices to compare to. Previous work shows that users prefer VUI for non-linear tasks. An example of this would be checking voicemails in a certain order.
The second method the authors used was called Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF). This works like voicemail. The user is presented with several options and then hits the corresponding number on their phone. Previous work shows that users prefer DTMF when they are doing linear tasks. An example of this would be listening to all your voicemails in order.
The prototype that the authors built was called Avaaj Otalo. It is a Gujarati language application that allows farmers to access agricultural information over the phone. The farmers could perform any of three tasks: listen to announcements, listen to radio archives, and post questions. These are in order of increased difficulty.
The overall completion rate was 74% for DTMF and 61% for VUI. The third task was the most difficult because it involved categorizing a question, recording the question, and recording your name and location. The completion rates for task 1 were 48% and 42%. The completion rate for task 2 was 81% and 67%. The completion rate for task 3 was 86% and 54%. Each time DTMF outperformed VUI. However, there was no significant difference in user satisfaction. Over 80% in both groups said they found it easy to access information on the system and 75% said they would use such an application. Most farmers said an ability to access such information anytime would dramatically change their lives.
DISCUSSION:
Although most people don't realize it, they use DTMF whenever they check their voicemail. This seems like such a simple task but this could be a useful application for farmers in India. I am not surprised DTMF outperformed performed VUI because I never use VUI on my phone. One fault in this work is that for VUI the questions were mostly yes/no questions. I believe a true VUI should accept any word as input. If this were the case error rates would probably be much higher.
Its hard to imagine but a product like this could change the lives of millions. We tend to take it for granted that we have such quick access to knowledge on the internet. Many people are still living in a developing world. Technologies such as DTMF that we take for granted could improve the lives of millions of people on the other side of the world.
1) Stanford University HCI Group
2) IBM India Research Laboratory
3) Development Support Center (Gujarat, India)
4) UC Berkeley School of Information
SUMMARY:
This paper presents a study comparing speech and dialed input voice user interfaces for farmers in Gujurat, India. India has over 480 million illiterate people who need an access to information. For some of them spoken language is the only way for them to obtain information. They could possibly obtain information anytime using a phone that gets information from a recording. Of course this is restricted only to people who have access to a phone.
In this study the authors performed a study on 45 participants. All of them were people living in rural India. 87% of the participants had never used a computer. 73% of the participants had less than an 8th grade education. The participants were both male and female. Due to some traveling constraints 7 of the women had to be observed within their own residence.
The authors tested two methods of interaction with the user. The first is called Voice User Interface (VUI). VUI is where the application will get user input by them speaking a word. Most of the questions in this study were yes-no questions. The authors managed to get a 2% error rate by using just 15 voices to compare to. Previous work shows that users prefer VUI for non-linear tasks. An example of this would be checking voicemails in a certain order.
The second method the authors used was called Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF). This works like voicemail. The user is presented with several options and then hits the corresponding number on their phone. Previous work shows that users prefer DTMF when they are doing linear tasks. An example of this would be listening to all your voicemails in order.
The prototype that the authors built was called Avaaj Otalo. It is a Gujarati language application that allows farmers to access agricultural information over the phone. The farmers could perform any of three tasks: listen to announcements, listen to radio archives, and post questions. These are in order of increased difficulty.
The overall completion rate was 74% for DTMF and 61% for VUI. The third task was the most difficult because it involved categorizing a question, recording the question, and recording your name and location. The completion rates for task 1 were 48% and 42%. The completion rate for task 2 was 81% and 67%. The completion rate for task 3 was 86% and 54%. Each time DTMF outperformed VUI. However, there was no significant difference in user satisfaction. Over 80% in both groups said they found it easy to access information on the system and 75% said they would use such an application. Most farmers said an ability to access such information anytime would dramatically change their lives.
DISCUSSION:
Although most people don't realize it, they use DTMF whenever they check their voicemail. This seems like such a simple task but this could be a useful application for farmers in India. I am not surprised DTMF outperformed performed VUI because I never use VUI on my phone. One fault in this work is that for VUI the questions were mostly yes/no questions. I believe a true VUI should accept any word as input. If this were the case error rates would probably be much higher.
Its hard to imagine but a product like this could change the lives of millions. We tend to take it for granted that we have such quick access to knowledge on the internet. Many people are still living in a developing world. Technologies such as DTMF that we take for granted could improve the lives of millions of people on the other side of the world.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Book: The Design Of Everyday Things
SUMMARY:
In The Design of Everyday Things Donald A. Norman discusses the design of all sorts of products. He repeats some of his ideas over and over but he is just trying to get a few key points across to the reader. Right from the beginning of the book he mentions designs should contain natural mappings to what the product actually does. His main example for this is a heating/AC unit . Although you can set your AC to any temperature there is really only two modes it can be set to, ON or OFF. If you increase the temperature more to get your house to heat up faster you actually aren't doing anything but wasting energy. Norman claims this to be bad mapping from the designer.
Another concept he talks about is there is information in the world and information in your head. Letters on a keyboard are a perfect example of information being in the world. He also talks about learned and taught helplessness. These ideas just prove that designers should always design for error and try to avoid user helplessness.
DISCUSSION:
Even thought this book was a bit repetitive at times I still found it to be useful for a computer engineering student. Whether you are designing hardware or software one of the most important parts of the design is its ease of use. This book gave a lot of different ways humans make errors when trying to use all sorts of products. By realizing common errors discussed in this book it is easy for me to apply them to making software. Themes such as correct mapping, information in the software, and feedback are very important in software design. The designer is not the typical user and it is important to try and find anything in your design that may mislead users. It is also important to realize that people will make errors when using your product so your design needs to lead the users who err back in the right direction.
In The Design of Everyday Things Donald A. Norman discusses the design of all sorts of products. He repeats some of his ideas over and over but he is just trying to get a few key points across to the reader. Right from the beginning of the book he mentions designs should contain natural mappings to what the product actually does. His main example for this is a heating/AC unit . Although you can set your AC to any temperature there is really only two modes it can be set to, ON or OFF. If you increase the temperature more to get your house to heat up faster you actually aren't doing anything but wasting energy. Norman claims this to be bad mapping from the designer.
Another concept he talks about is there is information in the world and information in your head. Letters on a keyboard are a perfect example of information being in the world. He also talks about learned and taught helplessness. These ideas just prove that designers should always design for error and try to avoid user helplessness.
DISCUSSION:
Even thought this book was a bit repetitive at times I still found it to be useful for a computer engineering student. Whether you are designing hardware or software one of the most important parts of the design is its ease of use. This book gave a lot of different ways humans make errors when trying to use all sorts of products. By realizing common errors discussed in this book it is easy for me to apply them to making software. Themes such as correct mapping, information in the software, and feedback are very important in software design. The designer is not the typical user and it is important to try and find anything in your design that may mislead users. It is also important to realize that people will make errors when using your product so your design needs to lead the users who err back in the right direction.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Ethnography
For my ethnography I am going to study whether people are more likely to cut through the dirt or the grass from the sidewalks on campus.
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