CHI 2009b: NewsCube Delivering Multiple Aspects of News to Mitigate Media Bias

Souneil Park, Seungwoo Kang, Sangyoung Chung, Junehwa Song
KAIST Computer Science, South Korea  

SUMMARY:
     This paper discusses a web service called NewsCube.  NewsCube aims to mitigate the effects of media bias.  They are the first know experiment to tackle the problem computationally.  They mention they can reduce bias, but underlying causes make it impossible to eliminate bias.  Look at the picture below to see how news gets from reality to print.

Some groups such as fair.org, NewsTrust.net, and skewz.com have tried to serve as watchdog groups on media bias.  Problem is these news is usually immediate and can't wait for user reviews.  NewsCube focuses on letting the user develop their own view on media bias. 

NewsCube uses news structure-based extraction which involves classifying bias of a news article based on the aspect the author is writing the story from.  For example, a news article could state Obama passes health care.  While an article on the same topic from a different aspect might say McCain criticizes Obama's health care plan.  NewsCube aims to distinguish the two views and present both of them to the user.

The authors claimed that NewsCube was effective.  They stated they were planning on incorporating it as a service with a major internet news company in Korea.

DISCUSSION:
     It is hard to evaluate NewsCube without actually using it but according to the study it works.  The main problem is that there is no perfect algorithm for evaluating bias on a news article with an undefined subject.  However, this product still interests me since I believe at critical times mainstream news can often be very biased.

CHI 2009b: How Well do Visual Verbs Work in Daily Communication for Young and Old Adults?

Xiaojuan Ma, Princeton University Computer Science
Perry R. Cook, Princeton University Computer Science/Music
 
SUMMARY:
     This paper studies how verbs are visually conveyed in daily communication for young and old adults.  There are four visual modes compared in this study:

• Single static image
• A panel of four static images
• An animation
• A video clip

Keyword

• Verb visualization - represent verb by using photos, signs, and other graphic designs

Verb visualization can help people overcome language barriers.  It is becoming more popular on the world wide web.  The verb is the most critical part to translate in a sentence.  The study compares the results between young (20-39) and elderly (55+) adult participants.  They test representing the 48 most common verbs in each way listed above.  In the end the younger people interpreted the verb correctly more often than the old people in every category.  The authors concluded that the best animation type depends on what verb you are using.

DISCUSSION:
     This paper caught my eye at first but wasn't as interesting as I thought.  I was hoping they would go into further detail about how to design images that communicate cross culture.  I felt rather than focus on age difference, this study should have focused on people from different cultures.

CHI 2009b: The Performance of Touch Screen Soft Buttons

Seungyon "Claire" Lee
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia

Shumin Zhai
IBM Almaden Research Center
San Jose, California

SUMMARY:
     This paper discusses the performance of soft buttons on different types of touchscreens.   A soft button refers to any button that is generated by the hardware.  A hard button is an actual hardware button either on the screen or on an input device.  The advantage of soft buttons is they can appear and disappear according to the user's context.  The disadvantage of soft buttons is that it is difficult to give user feedback as to whether or not it is being pressed.
     A previous study at the University of Maryland showed that when the cursor was placed 1/2 inch above the finger tip, less errors were made.  More recent studies have shown complex techniques that amplify the fingertips movement and placement which is a tradeoff for detection speed.
    One issue the authors plan to investigate is the accuracy of a soft button click with a stylus versus the accuracy of a fingertip.   Another issue is button size.  A previous study at grocery stores suggested 22mm as the minimum suggested size for a soft button.

The authors performed tests on five products:

• Apple Iphone (capacitive sensor, finger)
• HTC Touch phone (resistive sensor, finger or stylus)
• Canon DK10i (calculator with hard buttons)
• HP iPAQ 6315 smartphone (resistive sensor, finger or stylus, big like calculator)
• Nokia 6269 (mass market hard buttons) 

Thirteen users were studied. 7 of them used touchscreen devices on a daily bases.

Experiment 1: Operating Mode and Feedback

• Enter a multiplication operation, required 8 digits and 2 operator (x,=)
• Tested  Canon calculator vs. HP smartphone
• Tested 4 different categories of feedback
• No feedback
• Audio feedback
• Tactile feedback
• Audio + tactile feedback
• Speed was similar in both cases
• Error rate was high with no feedback for the touch screen
• Audio + tactile feedback isn't necessary, just choose one

Experiment 2: Contact Force vs. Force Activation

• Iphone, HTC Touch, Nokia 6260
• Task was to dial 7 digit phone numbers
• In this experiment very few errors were made, speed was similar
• There wasn't a significant difference in any of the phones at this task

 Experiment 3: Button Size and Mode of Activation

• Tested soft screen button sizes on the iPhone(contact) and HTC Touch(force)
• User had to enter a number, performance was measured by clicks per second
• Two phones had similar results
• Showed wide buttons(7.2mm) had better performance(clicks per second) than narrow buttons(4.9mm)

In general there was no difference between the two types of touchscreens.  I believe they should have used a phone that has a hard flip out keyboard.  They also should have tested sending SMS messages in one of their experiments.

IUI2009: A Low-Order Markov Model integrating Long-Distance Histories for Collaborative Recommender Systems

SUMMARY:

      This paper discusses a method to extract the most pertinent resources for a given user.  This is a challenge for applications in areas such as e-commerce, resource acces, web navigation, and online communities.

     One previous method, known as collaborative filtering, determines what resources to recommend based on similar users.  Resources that have been highly rated in the past by similar users are recommended to the user.  The traditional problems with this method are most calculations are done online and the context of the user is not considered.  This causes a lack of speed and accuracy.

 

Sergei Brin - Co-founder of google, famous for his data mining techniques

     One way of improving upon online collaborative filtering is to use data mining techniques.  This requires having a database of user histories to analyze.  The data is made up of a set of users(U) and a set of resources(R).

     Two techniques explained in the paper are association rules and sequential patterns.  An association rule is when one resource U1 usually leads to another resource U2 being pertinent for the user.  Thresholds are need to determine if there is an association between resources.  Association rules can contain more than just 2 resources.  Sequential patterns are similar to association rules but here the order matters.  This results in sequential patterns being more constrained than association rules.

     Another approach used in this paper is know as Markov Models.  Markov models limit the window of history that is used for data mining on the user.  A kth order Markov Model looks at k+1 history of resources.  In this paper they use a second order markov model which looks at a history size of 3.

    The final technique used in this paper is skipping.  Skipping simply means that you skip over certain resources to save either time or space.  The authors talk about several time when skipping might be applicable.

     The authors of this paper combined several of these techniques to create a Skipping Based Recommender.  In their study they investigate some of the tradeoffs between the methods to see what works best.

     The most important finding in there study was that a window size of three for their Markov model worked fastest but was least accurate.  They decide that the best solution is to calculate resources from a Markov model of three, then if there is more time, calculate pertinent resources based on higher order Markov models.


Discussion:
     
     This article was confusing at first but became very interesting after I got a better understanding of what the authors were creating.  The Skipping Based Recommender system would be very useful for a program like iTunes when they want to display songs that a user is most likely could by.  This would result in a user being more likely to buy the song resulting in increased profits. There are many programs and websites who could benefit from this sort of sytem. 

BOOK: Emotional Design

SUMMARY:
     The first chapter talks about why attractive designs work better.   This is because machines can cause people to experience emotions.  This results in people perceiving that beautiful things work better.  Norman claims there are three levels of thinking: visceral(automatic), behavioral(every day), and reflective(contemplative).  In this chapter he also mentions that it is trick to design things that accommodate both creative thinking and focus.

Three levels mapped to product characteristics
Visceral     ==> Appearance
Behavioral  ==> Pleasure & effectiveness of use
Reflective ==> Self-image, personal satisfaction, memories

     In the second chapter Norman says to create a product that is truly long lasting it must evoke memories.  This will help a person become emotionally attached to an object.  Another way to induce positive emotions is for a product  to get the user to feel positive about themselves.  Products also contain a personality.  This is another important aspect when designing for a positive emotional response.
    The third chapter talks about the visceral, behavioral, and reflective design in products already out there.  It reinforces the three levels mapped to product characteristics.  In the fourth chapter he talks about designing for fun and pleasure.  He also mentions designing for seduction.  Another way to design for emotion is to use sounds.  Music and sounds can bring out all kinds of emotions.  He then talks about how people video games and movies seduce people.
     The fifth chapter mentions how people often get mad at inanimate objects.  This is a perfect example of people having emotions from design.

DISCUSSION:
     I thought this book started off interesting then slowly got off topic as the book went on.  I thought the distinction between three levels of thinking was clever.  It allows software engineers to think on how people will react to their programs on three different levels. Towards the end of the book he started talking about robots.  It was interesting at times but i felt like it contained little applicable knowledge.  The last two chapters were more science fiction than fact.

BOOK: The Inmates Are Running The Asylum(Chapters 1-7)

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.

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.