Inmates are Running the Asylum - Part 2 (Ch. 8-14)

Inmates are Running the Asylum
By Alan Cooper

Comments: Zach Edens

Summary:

The second half of the book wraps up Cooper's explanation of why programmers are not interaction designers and then begins by introducing useful design tools that promote good design.

These design tools are as follows:

1) Personas - An imaginary user that is described with great detail. It is the primary focus for the design. Examples of success: Roll-Aboard Suitcase & Sticky Notes
2) Goals - A person has personal goals and defining a person's goals is the purpose for the design.
3) Scenarios - This is how a persona uses the product to achieve their goals. The steps taken to reach the final goal are called tasks.

Thus,Cooper concludes by reiterating that by applying these tools, one can achieve well designed and highly usable products.

Discussion:

I found this half of the book to be much more interesting of a read. By Cooper providing applicable design tool concepts, it is easier to see how they can be implemented in future products. Also, he provided interesting examples of project successes and disasters. Overall, the significance of goals and personas was clearly explained and I think it is important for goal-directed design.

UIST2008 - Scratch Input

Scrath Input: Creating Large, Inexpensive, Unpowered and Mobile Finger Input Surface
By Chris Harrison & Scott Hudson (Carnegie Mellon University)

Comments: Jill Greczek

Summary:
This paper discusses the idea of using an acoustic based input technology that can travel with the user. It will be implemented by Scrath Input with its goal to transfer common surfaces, such as tables or walls, into an input device.

Scratch Input
It consists of a small sensor that can detect the sound of "scratching with a fingernail" on a surface area. Once the signal is received, it maps to a list of gestures. The goal is to implant Scratch Input into a mobile device to enable any solid surface that it is placed on to become an input device. Due to it only having one sensor and one microphone, it can detect position of an object. Examples of gestures include scrolling, seeking, and volume control.

Evaluation
Fifteen participants were shown how to use the sensor and had a cellphone placed on top of the sensor. Then each participant was positioned with a laptop and were given six gestures to exercise. Overall, 89.5 % were able to perform the gestures consistently and accurately.

Discussion:
At first glance, I could not see any benefit in scratching your finger as the input device. But, after reading the cellphone example and the study, it could be useful to have this type of capability. I could be sitting here, typing away, and not have to be completely interrupted to silence a call. This technology is interesting and due to its budget friendly implementation, I am curious to see if this will become a part of mobile devices in the near future.

UIST2008 - Foldable Interactive Displays

Foldable Interactive Displays

By Johnny Chung Lee, Scott E. Hudson (Carnegie Mellon) & Edward Tse (Smart Technologies)

Summary:

This paper discusses how portable displays can be implemented on foldable, non-traditional display surfaces. They utilized image projection and tracking capabilities through a PixArt camera to build their prototypes. The four foldable designs are described below:

1) Newspaper – This prototype is highly intuitive due to the large portion of users who are familiar with the newspaper format. It was able to show from one-half of a page to two full pages in a side by side manner. Also, the user can alter the display screen by folding or unfolding the paper.

2) Scroll – Scroll use is less popular than newspapers, it is still a valid format to use as a prototype. One benefit of the design is that it can easily be compacted into a small storage space but still allows the user the ability to choose a display screen size.

3) Fan – This design is the one the researchers feel will be the most easily adaptable to a mobile technology. It offers sufficient display size while being compact and foldable.

4) Umbrella - Even though this design offers a large viewing area, it seems to be limited by the handle in the middle of the display. However, it has the potential to fit into many applications.

Lastly, the researchers allowed for interaction through a stylus and offered multiple viewpoints depending on the display’s movement/tilt.

Discussion:

I found the idea of foldable displays to be quite interesting. It is easy to imagine that you could fold up your screen and place it into a drawer or your pocket. The prototypes appear to be colorful and lightweight...I think I like the newspaper prototype best. Also, the tracking implementation seems fairly simple and inexpensive. I would have liked for the article to have contained a user study to show how a typical user would interact with the device.

UIST2008 - SideSight

UIST2008 - Taskpose

Taskpose: Exploring Fluid Boundaries in an Associative Window Visualization
By Michael Bernstein (MIT), Jeff Shrager (Stanford), Terry Winograd (Stanford)
Summary:
Taskpose is a visualization tool to aid users in managing their open windows. As the paper states, today's computer workspaces are filled with many tasks and it is difficult for the user to manage their "open windows".

Taskpose
The design of Taskpose is similar to the Expose feature available on Mac OS. It places all open windows on the screen in a 2 dimensional layout and shown as a thumbnail. As the user uses several windows together, they will be placed closer on the screen. Also, the interface incorporates the WindowRank algorithm to change the window's size to increase with perceived importance to the user. Lastly, the prototype was implemented by C# and the .NET platform.

User Study

Ten college students had Taskpose installed on their computers and used the interface for one hour a day over a one week time period. The study showed that the users used the application 40.8 hours on average over the week. Overall, the users expressed that it was helpful when trying to manage a large number of windows. However, the participants would have like to have had a greater ability to customize grouping and to be able to resize the thumbnails.

Discussion:
This interface, Taskpose, seems useful and reminds me of the new way Windows7 lets you tab through windows. Being able to run through thumbnails is easier and it provides a visual cue to the task's identity. It will be interesting to see if this interface becomes readily available in the near future for the average user.

IUI 2009 - From Geek to Sleek

From Geek to Sleek: Integrating Task Learning Tools to support End users in Real-world Applications
By: Aaron Spaulding, Will Haines, Melinda Gervasio (SRI International), and Jim Blythe (USC)

Summary:
This article discusses how users can benefit from an integrated task learning system (ITL). It will gain task information by instruction learning and programming by demonstration. Thus, it will help the user get rid of time-consuming, repetitive tasks. To conclude, the application was integrated in a military framework and initial results shows the users interacted well with the interface.

Discussion:

This article was somewhat interesting. For the targeted audience, it showed to improve the user's interaction and save time by the application learning how to do some of their repetitive tasks. However, due to the specific audience, the article does not properly give examples of how this could benefit an average user and in turn, lost my interest.

IUI 2009 - Parakeet

Parakeet: A Demonstration of Speech Recognition on a Mobile Touch Screen Device
By Ketih Vertanen and Per Ola Kristensson (Cambridge University)

Comment: Eric Engleking

Summary:
Parakeet is an application to aid the user in correcting entered text in a mobile device. The text is entered by speech recognition.

The study was performed by 4 participants and it used the Nokia N800 as the application platform. Additionally, users were allowed to correct errors by tapping, crossing, copying, replacing, or typing. The study showed that the users greatly lowered their word error rate and used the touch action over the other available methods.

Discussion:

Parakeet seems like a useful addition to a mobile device. With the ease of correction shown, it would be quick and fun to dictate your text messages. Of course, I am sure privacy concerns could arise, but it would be interesting to see its full implementation.

IUI 2009 - Rich Interfaces for Reading News on the Web

IUI 2009 - Discovering Frequent Work Procedures From Resource Connections

Discovering Frequent Work Procedures from Resource Connections
By Jianqiang Shen, Erin Fitzhenry, & Thomas Dietterich (Oregon State University)

Summary:
The goal of this paper is to design an intelligent office assistant to aid users in the workplace. Their approach consisted of identifying desktop workflows and placing the data into a graph. The information gathering was handled by the TaskTracer system. It would observe the user’s desktop activity and look for repeated actions.
First, the system gathered information flow actions or provenance links. These information flow actions were defined as copy/paste, attach file to email, save email attachment, download file, upload file, and copy/rename a file. Next, a work procedure was identified as a directed graph with its arcs being the information flow links. Lastly, the researchers modeled two workflow examples: comments on a document and preparing a quarterly report. The overall system goal was to be able to aid the user in the automation of common tasks and status tracking on a task.

Results
TaskTracer was used on real users in December 2007. It was successful in identifying and tracking workflow procedures. However, the article does not offer any information on how it benefited the user or the user’s opinions on the system.

Discussion:
This article described in great detail workflow procedures and it made me realize that we lead complicated lives. Any small assignment involves many resources and steps. I don’t think this application could be applied to the tasks for a college student since our assignments are quite varied. However, this could be beneficial in the workplace if there are many repeated tasks with very similar procedures.

Emotional Design

Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things
By Donald A. Norman

Comments: Monty Garner

Summary:

Norman takes a different approach to design in his book, Emotional Design. He emphasizes that emotions aid the design process. First, he describes the two brain processes: cognitive and affective. The cognitive part assigns meaning to objects and the affective level assigns a value. Understanding these two processes combined with the three main levels of the brain (visceral, behavioral, and reflective) are the platform for Norman's new approach to design.

Also, the emotional appeal of the product must be considered in the design process. Examples of the importance of emotional appeal are souvenirs and photographs. Similarly, self-image and a sense of accomplishment are key factors to be considered. As Normans states, "The concept of self appears to be a fundamental human attribute." [53] However, one must ensure that positive emotions are triggered by your design. This is best accomplished by a consistent system image and feedback to promote understandability. Overall, Norman clearly reiterates that a good design should be human centered and satisfy a need.

Lastly, Norman discusses the value of fun in a design. Examples can be seen with the Japanese lunchbox design and the Google trademark logo. The user must appreciate the object's richness and complexity to promote fulfillment with the product. Thus, one must incorporate an emotional appeal in design and consider how the three levels of the brain will respond to ensure a successful design.

Discussion:

This book is significant due to Norman's explanation of the importance of emotional appeal and fun in the design process. It is a stark contrast to his previous book, Design of Everyday Things, where all value is placed on usability and function. Also, the examples (Google, MiniCooper, and Video Game Machines) presented in Emotional Design are more vivid and identifiable. Additionally, it offers a thorough explanation of how the three brain levels are in constant interplay on every product we encounter. Lastly, Norman has a strong opinion about the role of future machines/robots. He is correct that an emotional attribute must be added to machines but it has to be natural and ordinary. All points combined, user interaction with products is deeply rooted in the three brain levels and its emotional appeal. The role of technology and products are best summarized by Norman, "their real value can be in fulfilling people's emotional needs...".

CHI - Dynamic Mapping pf Physical Controls for Tabletop Groupware

Dynamic Mapping of Physical Controls for Tabletop Groupware
By Rebecca Fiebrink (Princeton University), Dan Morris and Meredith Ringel Morris (Microsoft Research)
Summary:

Interactive tabletops allow for multi-touch interaction but lack precision and feedback control. This paper studies how the addition of virtual controls with physical controls can affect tabletop use. First, physical controllers were given to the users that mapped with the available application. The intention of the controllers is to increase precision and control.


Implementation
The researchers defined key guidelines for the study:
1) Users can use direct touch or indirect control
2) Only one shared multi-touch area
3) Physical controllers for precise control with feedback
4) Allow for mapping and remapping of controllers
4) Saving controller settings/mappings
The study will be performed on the tabletop audio editing application, Ensemble. Forty Microsoft employees are the participants and they are divided into ten teams. Each team then had to perform a series of "matching" tasks in a thirty minute time frame.

Outcome
The groups were successful in the tasks with a median of 75% correct on the available parameters. Additionally over 85% of participants agreed that they had improved knowledge of edits made by their teammates.

As shown below, the graph represents the total edits by parameter and manipulation type.




Finally, the majority of participants preferred the physical controllers since it improved accuracy and provided feedback.

Discussion:

This paper was quite informative and the results seemed intuitive. Physical controllers aid in allowing the user to have the ease of a collaborative tabletop display with tangible feedback. Per Norman, proper feedback is a key to good design and it was interesting to see it implemented in the tabletop. Overall, I enjoyed the article and it was a good extension to the previous paper I read about in the Augmenting Interactive Tabletop (see previous blog post).

CHI - From X-Rays to Silly Putty via Uranus

From X-Rays to Silly Putty via Uranus: Serendipity and its Role in Web Search
By Paul Andre (University of Southhampton), Jaime Teevan, and Susan T. Dumais (Microsoft Research)

Summary:

The researchers performed a study on today's web search engines to determine if their accuracy has removed the "serendipitous encounters" of new information. These events are quite beneficial to problem solving and determining new interests. However, search engines must balance being direct and relevant in their resulting queries while maintaining the possible for the unexpected.

Study

Thirty-six -participants (Microsoft employees) were to define their search results by either relevance (relevant, partially, or not) and interestingness ( interesting, partially, or not). Also, only the odd numbered results from the top 50 were presented to the user by Live Search and all had to be classified. Then, they analyzed the search logs for a 1-month time period.

Results showed that search engines are accurate in their query results but there is still room for serendipity. As they measured, click entropy is correlated with serendipitous queries.

Discussion:

This article introduced the topic of the ability of search engines to deliver related information but not exclude the possibility of finding unknown and unexpected information. I agree with the paper that sometimes it feels like luck that you discover information that helps with solving a problem or exposes you to a completely different solution.

CHI - Turning the Tables

Turning the Tables: An Interactive Surface for VJing
By Stuart Taylor, Shahram Izadi, David Kirk, Richard Harper, and Armando Garcia-Mendoza (Microsoft Research Cambridge)

Summary:

The article discusses how to improve interaction and simplify the software interface for VJing performances. VJing is a live video performance art that is the entertainment background for night clubs and music events. The researchers studied how the implementation of multi-touch interaction tabletops could improve the ease of use and interaction for the Video Jockey (VJ).

In order to improve usability, the researchers created VPlay, as a tool to create the live video performance but with a simplified interface and controls. It treats the objects as connected in graph form and they can be dragged together to form a larger system. Multiple graphs can be created concurrently and then displayed to the audience. Lastly, the interface supports a new user the ability to quickly start arranging videos, while still maintaining sufficient complexity for the expert user. Lastly, VPlay was brought to a nightclub setting for an observation of how the VJ and the audience responded to the system. Due to the multi-touch capabilities, the VJ's were able to collaborate and compose several video pieces. Additionally, the interface gained interest from the audience members and they were able to interact with the art process.

Discussion:

Interactive tables are a versatile technology that seems to improve all forms of interaction. In this case, it aids in the creation of live video art. I find this work interesting and it sparks my curiousity. It seems that by a properly designed interface, it can reach a broader audience and does promote quick understanding. This type of art brings a new twist to dee-jaying.