Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Paper Reading #24: The Why UI

Comments:
Comment1
Comment2

Reference Information:
Title: The Why UI: Using Goal Networks to Improve User Interfaces
Authors: D. A. Smith, H. Lieberman
Presentation: IUI '10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary: This paper discusses the idea of integrating the user's goals into interfaces in order to provide users with better experience and results when using the interface. In the first part of their development they analyzed data from 43Things.com, a web site that gathers goals from users. The data is analyzed to determine the sub goals that the user might also want to consider in order to accomplish their goal. The second part of their work was to develop an application where users could indicate their goal and they would receive information about what other people did in order to accomplish their goals.


Discussion: The idea of analyzing the users goals in order to aid the user in accomplishing them is really interesting. However, I'm not sure in what kind of settings would this tool be of much help. The paper presents a scenario where the goal is to buy a house, thus the user obtains information about relaters. However, they do not present any data demonstrating the application's efficiency or appeal to users.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Paper Reading #23: Automatic Generation of Research Trails in Web History

Comments:
Adam Friedli
Zack Henkel

Reference Information:
Title: Automatic Generation of Research Trails in Web History
Authors: E.R. Pedersen, K. Gyllstrom, S. Gu, P.J. Hong.
Presentation: IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary: This conference preceding discusses the development of an interface providing researchers with automatic generated trails of their research. Based on an ethnographic study, they realized the lack of such a system that would provide users with information about the websites they visited, when they visited them and what information they could find in there.

As previous works they describe the History features provided in most web browsers, and the Google History feature. However, these interfaces are not specific to one topic, and do not provide users with more information but URLs. Their system would actually keep track of individual research trail objects, it would analyze the data semantically as wells as the events of each visit.

Their system is currently implemented using a user interface and a model server. Their user interface can be obtained from the New Tab feature that most web browsers have. From there, users can see the most recent research trails. Their model server is currently using Google history data. They assessed their development internally, by using colleagues history data, and as they were developing the system, they were assessing it using this data.

Discussion: This is a great idea! I can't believe there isn't something like this available already. I think it has happened to everyone that while doing web searches we forget what website we were on, and how to get there. Something else I liked was how they describe their motivation, and how they believe this tool can be useful for people performing different types of research, not just continuous research. If someone goes back to work on something they haven't worked on for a while, they can know exactly was was the last things they worked on.

However, I would have loved to see some images of their implementation, and a user study. With a user study they can find out more accurately how appealing this would be to users. We know it would be useful, but would users really use this tool?

Source
The picture above show the current implementation Google provides for its users. Something similar and mentioned in the paper.

Paper Reading #25: Finding Your Way in a Multi-dimensional Semantic Spce with Luminoso

Comments:
Reference Information:
Title: Finding Your Way in a Multi-Dimensional Semantic Space with Luminoso
Authors: R. Speer, C. Havasi, N. Treadway, H. Lieberman
Presentation: IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

The selected point is a canonical document representing the
expected content of a good review. The gray line connecting the point
to the origin is always shown, as a reference for comparing with other
points.
Summary: Luminoso is a system that allows researchers and users to associate data. Th input data are text files that are dropped in the the folder where the analysis of the data can be found as well. The interface then "grabs"  point, and allows the user to see the related data and analysis. Such actions are also known as data mining, and it has been known that when the user is active in the processes better results can be obtained. To obtain such common sense from the user, the are utilizing an interface called ConceptNet. The way data is analyzed is for example by looking into word repetition and semantic context associations.One of the applications mentioned in the paper is that of creating semantic networks. Because Luminoso provides a visual way for displaying data, it becomes relevant when great amounts of data are to be displayed.

Discussion: Even though I think a really interesting concept they are trying to develop, their explanations about the system and motivations were not very clear described. They also did not present an evaluation to he system, which makes me doubt how useful the system could be. If they would have included some type of user study and discussed it, the reader could obtain a more clear understanding of what things such an application is useful for. The image presented above demonstrates the user display of the interface.

Paper Reading #22: Vocabulary Navigation Made Easier

Comments:

Reference Information:
Title: Vocabulary Navigation Made Easier
Authors: S. Nikolova, X. Ma, M. Tremaine, P. Cook
Presentation: IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Related words in ViVA are displayed above the basic
hierarchy, e.g. tea and dessert are associated with food.
Summary: This paper discusses the development of ViVA, a visual interface that makes navigation easier when trying to find words. The challenge they are faced with is implementing such an interface that will help individuals with lexical disorders, such as aphasia. Majority of the past and current work on this area includes interfaces with some kind of hierarchy or category of words, which may lead to disorganization and long search trials.

ViVA is a visual vocabulary interface which allows a more  efficient way of finding words by modeling a "mental lexicon." ViVA will organize vocabulary based on contextual organizations. For example, if you are looking for the word milk, you can find it in the kitchen category. They based their development in an already existing vocabulary hierarchy called Lingraphica, and added the associative features.

They conducted a user study with sixteen individuals. They were provided with a set of missing words, and the users task was to find it. The roup was divided into two, one using a simpler hierarchical language, and the other using ViVA. The results show that there was great improvement in the user's experience with the interface.

Discussion: Reading about technology that aids people with disabilities is always appealing to me. It helps me see that technology is not just about making things simpler or more productive, but it is also there who really need their help. 

I had never heard about this condition before, but from the point of view of an English Second Language speaker I ca n tell that even for us, this kind of interface could work more efficiently than only a translation dictionary. This interface may aid in our thought process, thus learning new words and exercising our language skills. 

Living With Complexity

Living With Complexity
Don A. Norman
Source
Summary:
Chapter 1: In the first chapter of this book, Norman differentiates between complexity and complicated. Something that is complex is described as a state of mind, however something that is understandable, just maybe difficult to master. Something that is complicated is something that is confusing, difficult to understand. Norman claims that complex things can be enjoyable and desirable. When things are too simple, they may appear as boring. 

Chapter 2: Norman discusses the idea that simplicity is in the mind of each individual. Depending on the scenario and the situation the individual is, that is the level of complexity that he will give to a certain task. Norman again discusses Conceptual Models, and how they are created either simple or complex depending on the individual. Norman also demonstrates that not even the things we believe the most simple, are in fact simple. Each artifact should have an appropriate level of complexity. Norman also reaches to the conclusion that individuals prefer an intermediate level of complexity. As previously states, individuals may find simple stuff to be boring and unworthy.

Chapter 3: Norman discusses how things that are supposed to be simple and non trivial can in fact complicate our lives. He gives the examples of door locks and passwords to demonstrate this idea. If we had only one door knob or only one password, then that would be an easy task to remember, however, technology allows for more than one door knob and requires more than one password. This idea then leads us to put information in the world, making it easier to be accessed by undesired people. Norman claims the solution to these problems is in the quality of a design.

Chapter 4: Social signifiers are those indicators that are either deliberately or incidentally placed that provide information to an individual. Signifiers are similar to affordances, in fact they are the perceived affordances. Norman discusses how culture affects these signifiers and how effective they really are.

Discussion: One of the main topics so far in the book is the idea that we should be able to differentiate between something that is complex from something that is confusing. The fact that certain device looks simple, does not necessarily mean it is better, in fact in many of the cases means that the device is even more complicated than it really looks like. 
 
When reading about this, it reminded me about the example Norman gave in one of his previous readings, and how we may think that a phone with less buttons is simpler, however, the telephone does not provide enough information to create an appropriate mental model.
 
Something I did enjoy reading about in these chapters was about the irony technology is what some times introduces complexity, however technology is also able to automate or somehow deal with this high complexity.
 
Even though the ideas are interesting, these were previously introduced by the other Norman books, so it is not something new really. As in the previous readings, Norman examples are useful and applicable to life, which in my opinion makes the book more readable. 

Now that I look back after reading the first chapters of the book, I can now understand the meaning of its cover page. How something that should be really simple, such as salt and pepper containers, can actually complicate our lives if they are not well designed and maybe even standardized.

Book Reading #52: Living With Complexity

Living With Complexity
Don A. Norman

Summary:
Chapter 3: Norman discusses how things that are supposed to be simple and non trivial can in fact complicate our lives. He gives the examples of door locks and passwords to demonstrate this idea. If we had only one door knob or only one password, then that would be an easy task to remember, however, technology allows for more than one door knob and requires more than one password. This idea then leads us to put information in the world, making it easier to be accessed by undesired people. Norman claims the solution to these problems is in the quality of a design.

Chapter 4: Social signifiers are those indicators that are either deliberately or incidentally placed that provide information to an individual. Signifiers are similar to affordances, in fact they are the perceived affordances. Norman discusses how culture affects these signifiers and how effective they really are.

Discussion: Even though the ideas are interesting, these were previously introduced by the other Norman books, so it is not something new really. As in the previous readings, Norman examples are useful and applicable to life, which in my opinion makes the book more readable.

Something I did enjoy reading about in these chapters was about the irony technology is what some times introduces complexity, however technology is also able to automate or somehow deal with this high complexity.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Book Reading #51: Living With Complexity

Living With Complexity
Donald A. Norman

Summary:
Chapter 1: In the first chapter of this book, Norman differentiates between complexity and complicated. Something that is complex is described as a state of mind, however something that is understandable, just maybe difficult to master. Something that is complicated is something that is confusing, difficult to understand. Norman claims that complex things can be enjoyable and desirable. When things are too simple, they may appear as boring. 

Chapter 2: Norman discusses the idea that simplicity is in the mind of each individual. Depending on the scenario and the situation the individual is, that is the level of complexity that he will give to a certain task. Norman again discusses Conceptual Models, and how they are created either simple or complex depending on the individual. Norman also demonstrates that not even the things we believe the most simple, are in fact simple. Each artifact should have an appropriate level of complexity. Norman also reaches to the conclusion that individuals prefer an intermediate level of complexity. As previously states, individuals may find simple stuff to be boring and unworthy.

Discussion: One of the main topics so far in the book is the idea that we should be able to differentiate between something that is complex from something that is confusing. The fact that certain device looks simple, does not necessarily mean it is better, in fact in many of the cases means that the device is even more complicated than it really looks like. When reading about this it reminded my about the example Norman gave in one of his previous readings, and how we may think that a phone with less buttons is simpler, however, the telephone does not provide enough information to create an appropriate mental model.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Why We Make Mistakes

Why We Make Mistakes
Joseph T. Hallinan

Summary:
Chapter 0:In this introduction to the book, Hallinan discusses how frequent mistakes are done. He claims people more than often attribute the fault of a mistake to the person who committed the mistake, instead of anything else (the car example). We are willing to take the bad of things in order to get the good part of it, and world we live in is not helping us. Hallinan claims that being aware of our acts should help us decrease our mistakes (the multiple item sale).

Chapter 1: Not being able to see (observe and catch details) of things in front of us is a cause of mistakes. We only see a fraction of what we think we are seeing, our focus is in only one thing, and what is in the background is very blurry. We notice on a Need-to-Know Basis, noticing only things that are important or relevant to us, and ignoring the rest. 

Chapter 2:  We are able to better remember things when they have a meaning to us, than meaningless things. For example remembering the features of a penny, remembering faces better than names, being able to remember random things by giving them some kind of meaning, and how we can mistakenly recognize a face by things that are not enough and easily confused.

Chapter 3:  Individuals make choices based on "invisible" factors. For example making judgments of people based on pictures only, how a woman's physiology affects men reactions, and how students feel about chaining answers in tests (something contrary to what researchers have discovered). 

Chapter 4: The overall idea of this chapter was about the tendency to see and remember things in a way that is "self-serving," it makes us look better. Creeping determinism: suppressing some facts at the expense of others. Also, knowing the outcome of events affects the way we remember past events, say predictions (hindsight bias). Stereotypes and conflict of interests also lead to misremembered events. Trying to disclose a bias does not cancel the bias, it even increases it ("Hey I warned you" Principle).

Chapter 5:  It is not possible to divide our attention into more than one event (multitasking), we can only jump back and forth. Inattentional blindness as a condition where a person is looking directly at something but is not really seeing it.

Chapter 6: We-re in the Wong Frame of Mind. The framing of mind (looking at an issue in the wrong way) is influenced by the environment (French v. German music example),  by the risk involved in decision making (NFL example), by time and events (9/11 example). Studies show that when people are asked to decide over an issue, they will "anchor" they responses to a number, especially if it's the first one they are given (the grocery store prices example).

Chapter 7: We Skim. People will learn how to skim through text, music notes, and even images. Once the person is so familiar with what they are seeing, they will tend to not focus completely on it, thus only skimming through the piece of information.Also, when context is missing, or a situation is set in a unique context, the outcomes of the observed situation are different.

Chapter 8: People like to straighten things up, make them simple or even rationalize them in order to understand them better. Some of the examples given include those of straightening streets in New York, the Seine river in Paris; simplifying or shortening maps, stories that we re-tell and even the national anthem. We don't do it in purpose, in fact we truly believe what we do.

Chapter 9: Men and women behave differently, and in majority of the cases, men tend to do better than women. Men are overconfident, and this overconfidence is then transformed into taking risks for example; men are more likely to take risks than women. One of the roots of this difference is attributed to the early years of men and women; men are given more freedom to 'tinker' (explore) around than women.

Chapter 10:  Overconfidence is one of the main reasons why people believe they are better at something than they really are. It is observed in almost everyone, except those who are depressed. Businesses have learned how to take advantages of this overconfidence, and individuals end up loosing money thinking they will do better than others, for example going more often to the gym, paying off credit cards before interest rates get higher, and thinking we can diet better than the average person. The term for this concept is calibration, we are poorly calibrated thinking we are better than we in fact are. We think that the more information we obtain the better equipped we will be, which actually leads to information overflow.

Chapter 11: We'd Rather Wing It. Practice is what makes experts. Almost 10 years of serious practice are required for someone to become an expert at something. This fact is attributed to experts practicing creating a library in their minds, where they use patter recognition to allow them to anticipate evens and learn how to respond quickly. Cognitive maps are what people and how non experts rather try doing things themselves without reading manual, just guided by how they think work, but unfortunately this leads them to make many errors.People become accustomed to a way of doing things, that they ignore new and simpler ways to getting things done.

Chapter 12:  Employing constraints and affordances could avoid many of the "human errors" we make. Some of the examples given include the deaths of many patients when given the wrong prescription or the wrong amount of doses. How these errors could be avoided if we give meaningful names and descriptions to things, such as the names of the points in the sky given by the FAA. Misattributing the error to the correct reason is one of the reasons why we haven't been able to prevent us from making so many errors. FAA has taken in order to reduce the amount of human error, something medical societies have not. 

Chapter 13: Individuals are not very accurate at predicting how happy they and other will feel as a consequence of an event. For example moving to California, and how everybody thinks they will be happier if they lived there, but in fact, there are many people who decide to move from there after trying to live there for a couple of years. One of the causes is that of having hope that things becoming better. If there is hope that a situation can become better, individuals are not adapting to the current situation, thus not living it to the best of their abilities.

Conclusion.  Hallinan recommends that we give close attention to those things we have opted not to choose, this is a good exercise to realize the why of our mistakes and we can learn from them. He also invites the readers to think a bit negatively sometimes, not always positive. To allow ourselves to learn even from those who are not such experts as we think, since their non-expertize will allow them to see errors that the experts have overlooked. He also recommends people to sleep well, since he claims that sleepiness is one of the main causes of error. And to be happy with what we have, learn how to love what we currently have because if we keep thinking about what we could have we will be unhappy.
Source

Discussion: This book discusses ideas that were introduced in the Norman books, such as claiming that the world we are living in is pushing us to make mistakes for example when we have to learn so many PINs and passwords. He also claims we can only remember a few things at a time, just like Norman explained. The concepts of constraints and affordances are later discussed in this chapter, and it was surprising to see the similarities in the explanations about these concepts from both Hallinan and Norman.  

Hallinan provides concepts and factors that affect individual's choices, factors that we cannot see. For example the meaning we give to things is one of the most efficient things to remember them. Also, he explains how things that we do or believe unconsciously, affect our acts. idents was really interesting. The fact that it is intended to do good but ends up doing the opposite can take us back to design concepts. He even mentioned some things that could be done to the design in order to decrease distraction, but the problem is that these should be there since the beginning in order to avoid these horrible deadly accidents.

It was interesting to read about examples that one way or another I have thought about before and now, I can read about the logic or explanations behind them, and why we behave as we do. It is also interesting to see how majority of these scenarios have been researched and experiments have been performed in similar situations.

One of the discussions that most called my attention and that was somehow linking a few of the chapters was overconfidence. It's amazing how being overconfident can be both, good and bad, depending on the situation you are in.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Book Reading #50: Why We Make Mistakes

Why We Make Mistakes
Joseph T. Hallinan

Summary: 
Chapter 12: We Don't Constrain Ourselves. In this chapter, Hallinan discusses concepts such as constraints and affordances, and how employing these two concepts could avoid many of the "human errors" we make. Some of the examples he gives include that of the deaths of many patients when given the wrong prescription or the wrong amount of doses. How these errors could be avoided if we give meaningful names and descriptions to things, such as the names of the points in the sky given by the FAA. Misattributing the error to the correct reason is one of the reasons why we haven't been able to prevent us from making so many errors. Through out the chapter, Hallinan discusses actions that the FAA has taken in order to reduce the amount of human error, something medical societies have not. 

Chapter 13: The Grass Does Look Greener. This chapter was dedicated to discussing how individuals are not very accurate at predicting how happy they and other will feel as a consequence of an event. Some of the examples he used were about moving to California, and how everybody thinks they will be happier if they lived there, but in fact, there are many people who decide to move from there after trying to live there for a couple of years. One of the causes he discussed is that of having hope of things becoming better. If there is hope that a situation can become better, individuals are not adapting to the current situation, thus not living it to the best of their abilities.

Conclusion. This is a summary chapter of the complete book. Hallinan reviews and summarizes the main ideas of the book, and provides readers with some of the most important examples he had given. He recommends that we give close attention to those things we have opted not to choose, this is a good exercise to realize the why of our mistakes and we can learn from them. He also invites the readers to think a bit negatively sometimes, not always positive. To allow ourselves to learn even from those who are not such experts as we think, since their non-expertize will allow them to see errors that the experts have overlooked. He also recommends people to sleep well, since he claims that sleepiness is one of the main causes of error. And to be happy with what we have, learn how to love what we currently have because if we keep thinking about what we could have we will be unhappy.
Discussion: The ideas from chapter twelve were very easy to understand since they were concepts we learned from the Norman readings. I think it is really interesting to see how these concepts are applied throughout many books, and how relevant these ideas are in order to avoid error. 

In chapter thirteen, the idea of high expectations leading us to be unhappy is something I had encountered before. I think this is linked to the idea of having so many choices that after we have picked one, we stress ourselves thinking maybe we did the wrong decision and we would be better off if we had made a different decision in the first place.

I really enjoyed reading the conclusion of this book. Even though he summarizes the previous chapters and key ideas, he also gives advice to the reader regarding how to live a better life with a reduced amount of errors.

Book Reading #49: Why We Make Mistakes

Why We Make Mistakes
Joseph T. Hallinan

Summary: 
Chapter 10: We All Think We Are Above Average. Hallinan describes overconfidence to be one of the main reasons why people believe they are better at something than they really are. He claims overconfidence is observed in almost everyone, except those who are depressed. He mentions various examples of how businesses have learned how to take advantages of this overconfidence, and individuals end up loosing money thinking they will do better than others, for example going more often to the gym, paying off credit cards before interest rates get higher, and thinking we can diet better than the average person. The term for this concept is calibration, we are poorly calibrated thinking we are better than we in fact are. He also discusses the fact that we think the more information we obtain the better equipped we will be, which actually leads to information overflow.

Chapter 11: We'd Rather Wing It. Practice is what makes experts. Hallinan states that almost 10 years of serious practice are required for someone to become an expert at something. This fact is attributed to experts practicing creating a library in their minds, where they use patter recognition to allow them to anticipate evens and learn how to respond quickly. He then discussed cognitive maps, and how non experts rather try doing things themselves without reading manual, just guided by how they think work, but unfortunately this leads them to make many errors. He also discussed how people become accustomed to a way of doing things, that they ignore new and simpler ways to getting things done.

Discussion: In chapter ten, Hallinan discusses how we think we are better than average, and how we can do better than that, however, I think majority of us are actually in than average standing. I think this belief comes from the idea of being always positive, but what if we were not always positive, what if we were always thinking negatively? If we were, then we would never strive to be better, to become better individuals than we currently are. 

In chapter eleven, one of the ideas that called my attention the most was towards the end of the chapter, and it was about becoming used to do things one way, that we become blinded to see what other new ways there are to do things better. Reading about this reminded me of the discussion we had in class regarding teaching individuals to use shortcuts in a computer. I think this is some how contradictory with the discussion in chapter ten, and the idea of staying positive and trying to do better.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Paper Reading #21: Epistemology-based Social Search

Comments:
Comment 2

Reference Information
Title: Supporting Exploratory Information Seeking by Epistemology-based Social Search
Authors: Y. Mao, H. Shen, C. Sun
Presentation: (Conference Paper) IUI'10, Febrary 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary: In this paper the authors present a system called Baijia, an epistemology-based social search solution for the problem of finding the proper keywords and evaluating results in search engines. The system reuses and refines previous successful searches to provide users with successful, accurate and desired information.

The system uses packages of information derived from a number of resources such as search processes, queries, results, ranking, annotation, comments, etc, in order to provide the user with a successful search process even if he entered keywords that are not as relevant or are vague. Basically, the system has an epistemology repository, and every time a user adds a query, it is added, and can then be linked to previous epistemology records, comments, web pages, etc. all with the purpose of presenting the user information about previous searches.

Even though they have not yet performed user studies, their experimental evaluations have showed that such a system outperforms conventional search systems.

Discussion: Even though I think this may be a good idea to improve search results, I don't think the paper did a great job in explaining the system. I suppose such an application can be useful for people who are trying to find out about something, but they don't really have the words to describe it. Also, if users have the capability of commenting on the results of the search, that can allow users to warn each other about certain websites that are not useful.


Monday, April 11, 2011

Ethnography Results, Week 8

Paola Garza
April 7th, 2011 (Thursday)
9:00 am-11:00 am

·    
·         Reading: 1
·         Computers:  ( M 3 P 2 )
·         Headphones on: 2
·         Studying (with studying materials w/wo computers): 4
·         Visiting: 2
·         Alone  (I could see from where I was sitting, including me): 6
·         Two or more  (I could see from where I was sitting):   7 groups
·         Patrons that seem not be students (if any): 12
·         People that came in and left while I was here: 2
·         People that were before I came in and left while I was here:  4
·   
·         Guys: 5
·         Girls: 13

My Location:
Today I’m sitting in a very particular location, and under very particular circumstances. I had never been here during the week at a morning time. I’m sitting in one of the couches that were recently set in the space right to the door. I have a view of the counter. I was able to observe more drive-thru activity, as well as well as more frequent purchases. There was actually a line… During the past weeks I would come at times where even though it was crowded, there wasn’t a long line waiting to order.

The Customers:
As I mentioned above, a really different crowd from what I’m used to.

There were two men sitting in the middle room, dressed with suits. Businessmen, maybe. There was also an old men who had some coffee and pastries, and was reading the news paper. Then he went back to the counter to buy some more coffee. He reminded me of a man  I saw on a Sunday morning who was a drinking some coffee but instead of reading the newspaper he had a computer on his lap. I figured he was reading some news online.

There was also a young man who seemed not to be a student because of the way he was dressed, but he was reading a book and taking notes on a computer.Other students, majority girls, also went up to the counter to buy some breakfast and came back to the tables to do some studying.

Majority of the students that were coming in at this time were buying some breakfast, including me for the first time, and started studying right away.

At this time in the morning, I observed more activity in the drive-thru. Even though it was really quiet, the place wasn't empty at all.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Book Reading #47: Why We Make Mistakes

Why We Make Mistakes
Joseph T. Hallinan

Summary: 
Chapter 8: We Like Things Tidy. In this chapter, Hallinan discusses the idea that people like to straighten things up, make them simple or even rationalize them in order to understand them better. Some of the examples he gave included those of straightening streets in New York, the Seine river in Paris; simplifying or shortening maps, stories that we re-tell and even the national anthem. Hallinan explains we don't do it in purpose, in fact we truly believe what we do.

Chapter 9: Men Shoot First. Throughout the chapter, Hallinan gives different examples of actions where men and women behave differently. In majority of the cases, men tend to do better than women. Hallinan attributes this to men being overconfident. This overconfidence is then transformed into taking risks for example; men are more likely to take risks than women. One of the roots of this difference is attributed to the early years of men and women; men are given more freedom to 'tinker' (explore) around than women.

Discussion:
This is something I really hadn't though about. After I read part of chapter eight, I went to a lecture series and the program for the even had the map of the American continent drawn on it. I looked at it, and realized that it was really simplified. I am not sure what the reason for this was, but it made me think back about the chapter. Do we really simplify things just to understand them better, or do we do it to make things easier?

Chapter nine made me think back at my childhood growing up in a small town in Mexico. Ever since I was eight or nine my mom would give me permission to go to my friends' houses which were around 4 or 5 blocks away. I remember just taking different routes to their homes, not sure if its because I was lost or not! I found this chapter really interesting given I'm a woman in Computer Science. It just made me thing about my level of confidence and if it was in fact affected by my childhood.
 

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Things That Make Us Smart

Things That Make Us Smart
Donald. A. Norman

Summary:
Chapter 1: A Human-Centered Technology. Norman opens the chapter by stating that technology not only has positive effects, but negatives as well. The main idea of this first chapter is that technology has been developed with a focus apart from humans. It has not been design to accommodate humans, but humans must adapt to technology. He also introduces the two types of cognition relevant to his studies, experiential and reflective.

Chapter 2: Experiencing the World. In this chapter, Norman goes more in depth in describing experiential and reflective cognition. In summary, they differ in the way information is processed. Norman describes the experiential mode as of data-driven processing. It is automatic, it is our reactions to events. The reflective mode in the other hand is the one concerning concepts, planning and evaluation. He also describes three kinds of learning: accretion (accumulation of facts). tuning (practice to become experts), and  restructuring (not losing practice).
 
Chapter 3: The Power of Representation. In this chapter Norm talks about how we represent the world utilizing cognitive artifacts. He defines the Represented World (Real World), and the Representing World (symbols which represent the represented world). He also discuses various ways in which data can be represented, and explains how some lead to experiential cognition while others to reflective cognition.
Chapter 4: Fitting the Artifact to the Person. Norman introduces the concepts of surface and internal representation. Surface representation is when what we see is all there is to it (a book), an internal representation has more in the background that we cannot see (calculator). He also discusses how representations must fit the task or the person, depending in the situation. He also brings back the concept of affordances in terms of technology. He claims technology also has affordances.
 
Discussion:  Overall I like the way Norman is presenting the concepts of the book, however I think the examples are too long. Even though the chapters are long, they are still interesting to read. I really enjoyed the first chapter since I think it deals more directly with CHI, and how our designs should be of positive results for users. On the third chapter, the discussion about representing numbers was really interesting. It made me remember my days of school when I had to learn Roman numerals. I think it is really interesting how each representation allows you to do different things easier than the others. For chapter four, the discussion about affordances in technology was the best part in my opinion. I like how Norman bring this concepts back from The Design of Every Day Things, and includes it in this chapter.

Book Reading #45: Things That Make Us Smart

Things That Make Us Smart
Donald A. Norman

Chapter 3: The Power of Representation. In this chapter Norm talks about how we represent the world utilizing cognitive artifacts. He defines the Represented World (Real World), and the Representing World (symbols which represent the represented world). He also discuses various ways in which data can be represented, and explains how some lead to experiential cognition while others to reflective cognition.

Chapter 4: Fitting the Artifact to the Person. Norman introduces the concepts of suface and internal representation. Surface representation is when what we see is all there is to it (a book), an internal representation has more in the background that we cannot see (calculator). He also discusses how representations must fit the task or the person, depending in the situation. He also brings back the concept of affordances in terms of technology. He claims technology also has affordances.

Discussion: Even though the chapters are long, they are still interesting to read. On the first chapter, the discussion about representing numbers was really interesting. It made me remember my days of school when I had to learn Roman numerals. I think it is really interesting how each representation allows you to do different things easier than the others. For chapter two, the discussion about affordances in technology was the best part in my opinion. I like how Norman bring this concepts back from The Design of Every Day Things, and includes it in this chapter.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Paper Reading #20: A Multimodal Labeling Interface...

Comments:
Comment 1
Comment 2

Reference Information:
Title: A Multimodal Labeling Interface for Wearable Computing
Authors: Shanqing Li and Yunde Jia
Presentation: (Conference Paper) IUI '10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong China.

Summary: In this paper, the authors provide a solution for the inconvenience of labeling objects with portable keyboards and mice when using wearable environments. They developed an interface that uses visual and audio modalities which work together in order to achieve the desired results. How it works is that the wearer visually tracks the the object with the integrated camera and the pointing gesture tracking feature, and then using a speech recognition library the user can speak out the label for the object. Besides the gesture tracking system, they also propose a virtual touchpad interface where 
the wearer can identify the object in a more intuitive 
way. 

The evaluation of the system was carried out by encircling several circle regions with different radii and giving it labels. The application given for this interface and discussed in the paper consisted of online learning under wearable computing environments.




Discussion: Even though I think this is a really interesting interface, I think their evaluation methods were really poor. I think this development gives room for some really interesting user evaluations that would of provided researchers with better feedback than what they got. Also, I feel like this system can be implemented for a variety of application and if they would have discussed them in the beginning of the paper it would have made a great difference in, at least my reactions about the paper.

Book Reading #46: Why We Make Mistakes

Why We Make Mistakes
Joseph T. Hallinan

Summary: 
Chapter 6: We-re in the Wong Frame of Mind. This chapter discusses two main ideas, frames and anchors. The framing of mind (looking at an issue in the wrong way) is influenced by the environment (French v. German music example),  by the risk involved in decision making (NFL example), by time and events (9/11 example). Studies show that when people are asked to decide over an issue, they will "anchor" they responses to a number, especially if it's the first one they are given (the grocery store prices example).

Chapter 7: We Skim. For the most part of the chapter, Hallinan discusses how people will learn how to skim through text, music notes, and even images. Once the person is so familiar with what they are seeing, they will tend to not focus completely on it, thus only skimming through the piece of information. Another idea he discussed was the importance of context. When context is missing, or a situation is set in a unique context, the outcomes of the observed situation are different.

Discussion: All the examples given in these chapters were really interesting. Even when majority of them are not new to me, it is still interesting to learn about the logic behind them, and why we behave as we do. It is also interesting to see how majority of these scenarios have been researched and experiments have been performed in similar situations.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Book Reading #33: Things That Make Us Smart

Things That Make Us Smart
Donald A. Norman

Summary:
Chapter 1: A Human-Centered Technology. Norman opens the chapter by stating that technology not only has positive effects, but negatives as well. The main idea of this first chapter is that technology has been developed with a focus apart from humans. It has not been design to accommodate humans, but humans must adapt to technology. He also introduces the two types of cognition relevant to his studies, experiential and reflective.

Chapter 2: Experiencing the World. In this chapter, Norman goes more in depth in describing experiential and reflective cognition. In summary, they differ in the way information is processed. Norman describes the experiential mode as of data-driven processing. It is automatic, it is our reactions to events. The reflective mode in the other hand is the one concerning concepts, planning and evaluation. He also describes three kinds of learning: accretion (accumulation of facts). tuning (practice to become experts), and  restructuring (not losing practice).

Discussion: Overall I like the way Norman is presenting the concepts of the book, however I think the examples are too long. I really enjoyed the first chapter since I think it deals more directly with CHI, and how our designs should be of positive results for users.

Book Reading #44: Why We Make Mistakes

Why We Make Mistakes
Joseph T. Hallinan

Summary:
Chapter 4 - We Wear Rose-Colored Glasses. The overall idea of this chapter was about the tendency to see and remember things in a way that is "self-serving," it makes us look better. Hallinan claims this is not done intentionally.Creepring determinism: suppressing some facts at the expense of others. He also explains that knowing the outcome of events also affects the way we remember past events, say predictions (hindsight bias). Stereotypes and conflict of interests also lead to misremembered events. Trying to disclose a bias does not cancel the bias, it even increases it ("Hey I warned you" Principle).

Chapter 5 - We Can Walk and Chew Gum - but Not Much Else. In this chapter, the concept of multitasking and how it leads to errors is discussed. Hallinan claims it is not possible to divide our attention into more than one event, we can only jump back and forth. Hallinan defines inattentional blindness as a condition where a person is looking directly at something but is not really seeing it.

Discussion: I definitively enjoyed reading both chapters; the only thing I'm starting to notice is that Hallinan is explaining his concepts through long examples. Which might be good in some cases, but it could also lead to forget what exactly the topic he is discussing is about. However, once you look closely and look for the concepts you realize the examples are really well linked to the topic.

The discussion about technology causing accidents was really interesting. The fact that it is intended to do good but ends up doing the opposite can take us back to design concepts. He even mentioned some things that could be done to the design in order to decrease distraction, but the problem is that these should be there since the beginning in order to avoid these horrible deadly accidents.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Source
Coming of Age in Samoa
Margaret Mead

Summary:
In this first chapter, the author introduces the purpose of her ethnography, which is to compare and maybe find an answer to the difficulties teenagers face during puberty. The question is whether the changes are caused by this period of changes itself, or if it is influenced by the society where teenagers are raised. The author explains why Samoa is the place she chooses for her investigation, and presents the idea that having knowledge about such a different culture and way of living will affect in a positive way our own behavior.

After chapter one, and in the majority of the book, Mead describes different aspects of the Samoan life, always focusing on how teenage girls lived their lives and how society affected them. In chapter two, from the smallest kids, to the elders of the villages, Mead captures their daily lives and customs, giving a general idea of how the life at a community like this one is.

Mead then discusses the education that both, boys and girls receive ever since they are born until they become adults. Most of the early education they receive comes from older siblings, mostly girls, since they are in charge of their younger siblings since they are about five or six months old. Mead explains the distinctions that are observed between the education boys and girls receive, as well as the expectations that their village has from them. 

One of the main ideas in chapter four is the relationship held between relatives.. Mead also spent a big part of the chapter discussing the titles the highest men and women would hold in a household. For men, it is the chief title, and she described the process and considerations taken when it was time to select a successor. She also discusses the title of princess of the household, and the factors that affected the selection.

Mead describes the relations between the age groups formed between children. She describes the different kinds of friendship between the girls, and what are the ties that allow such friendships, this also defines the level of confidence between them. Mean also explains that boys are more open to friendships or to belong to friendship groups. She also notes that the guys' grouping is given more social value than that of girls. 

Source

In chapter six, the type of society and titles that the highest ranking individuals in the community would hold are described in detail, including younger and older men, as well as younger and older women; how these titles were recognized by the rest of the community members and visitors. Mead focuses on the role that the girl plays in society and how it relates to the rest of social groups (less relevant than that of men). 

Mead describes how the attitude of little girls towards boys is first one of avoidance, however this changes a few years after puberty. She continues to talk about the recognized forms of sex relation, focusing in those outside formal marriage.Mead goes in much detail about the relationships between the unmarried young people. Virginity is nor really important or required from girls, except the taupo.

In the following chapter Mead describes dancing as a very unique activity where all the common customs seen elsewhere do not apply. Dancing allows children to show their 'education' and are able to display their skills and abilities without being criticized for trying to do better than others. Also, adults instead of scoffing children as usual, encourage them to dance, and sit back to allow them to be the main focus of the activity.

In chapter nine Mead introduces a few specific characteristics and words that describe the personality of Samoans. She opens the chapter by describing the musu attitude and a peculiar answer to questions that want to be avoided Ta ilo. Mead also explains the lack of privacy, and how this leads to much secrecy; she discusses how attitudes are describe by Samoans (very differently from Americans) and how are judgments made about people with different titles.


Chapter ten discusses in depth the Samoan customs about sex, focusing more in the young (past poverty) girls than in the rest of society, but still explaining a bit about each age group. In the Samoan culture, children are exposed to situations like birth, death, and sexual relations, at a very young age; Mead states this fact does not seam to affect them in a negative, traumatic way.

Mead then describes the main reasons why a girl could become in conflict with society. The first reason was that of girls who were just different (in a good way) but non traditional from their culture. Girls who wanted to study and become more than just wives were not appreciated by their community. The other type of conflict would come from girls who were "delinquent", bad girls. The few girls she met with these characteristics were raised in the non traditional household and with a more noticeable lack of affection.

In chapter twelve, Mead discusses the changes that men and women go through after they are married or are considered adults (even if unmarried). She covers two major topics: the changes when individuals get married, and when they become old. When a couple gets married, they do not become a "unit" like we do; they are still under the household of either of the families. The changes impact men more than women, since their social roles are more relevant than those of women. However, when they age, man's importance in the village is decreased, while the knowledge and power of a woman is increased. This was the last chapter where Mead discusses her findings about her investigations. In the last part of the book Mead comes to some conclusions and comparisons to the American society.

The next chapter is dedicated for contrasting the Samoan civilization to our own, trying to answer the question about trouble in adolescence in America. There are a few main points she covers in great detail such as a lack of affection and caring, not many choices open for teenagers (which lead not not many contradiction around the adolescent), and overall the lack of privacy which leads to more open knowledge about sex, birth and death.

The last chapter, Mead gives a more detailed description of what the life of an American girl is, for the point of view of the girl. She is focusing on the number of choices that adolescents are presented with, and what sort of things are leading adolescents to behave as they do. As the title suggest, Mead states that parents need to decide how to educate their children, and her view point is to educate them no know how to handle the so many choices that they are presented with.

Appendix II is dedicated for describing what assumptions Mead makes, what methods she chose to follow, and clarifies certain points that are important for the basis of her study.

In this Appendix III, Mead gives a description of the Samoan civilization and how it became what it was before then. She basically describes Samoa as it is in the time frame when she did her research, but describes how it became more flexible from what it was before.

Appendix V presents detailed explanations of the information she obtained from the girls and how she obtained it. She also gives some numbers, and tables containing some of the information she gathered. This information includes family, social and sexual interactions of each of the girls, as well as the topics of the intelligence tests that she gave to these girls. 

Discussion: This was a really interesting book to read, and for the most part very easy read. There was so much description about the community and society, that anyone with a non really creative mind can still visualize Mead's descriptions. 

Their was just so different and "liberal" that I cannot imagine the American society being like that at any point in history. It is really difficult for me to form any conclusions about her research and if it was effective or not responding to the issue of teenagers, and this is for two reasons. 1) I was born and raised in Mexico. I know more about our culture and past than I know about the past culture in the U.S. However, I do not think it could have been so different, at least not to the point has the Samoan society was from the American civilization. 2) I did not live in those days, not here, not in Mexico. Thus, how can I really understand her comparisons. However, one interesting thing I found out when reading the book, is that I was doing comparisons to our current society, and how different they are anyway.

In a future, I would like to read about the critics this book received. I would like to see the other side of the story, since I have been hearing that this was not such a great book. Which I must differ with, at least for now.
 

Paper Reading #19: A $3 Gesture Recognizer

Comments:

Reference Information:
Title: A $3 Gesture Recognizer - Simple Gesture Recognition for Devices Equipped with 3D Acceleration Sensors
Authors: Sven Krats and Michael Rohs
Presentation: (Conference Paper) IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary: In this paper, the authors present a very simple  gesture recognizer for input devices with 3D acceleration sensors, such as a Nintendo Wii control.  Their development is really simple, not complex to use or implement. Thus, it is a great system to use for testing prototypes. The authors based much of they research and design on the "$1 Recognizer" by Wobbrock, a 2D gesture recognizer. Their recognizer is an extension of it, but also a really simple one. The main advantage and major contribution of this system is their "true" ability to recognize 3D motion.  
Figure 1. The reference gesture vocabulary containing
the gesture classes used for the preliminary evaluation.
(b) describes a clockwise circular motion, (c) a wrist
rolling motion (e) stands for a gesture resembling the
serve of a tennis player and (j) represents a repeated
rapid forward-backwards motion.
They evaluated the system with a user study with twelve participants and a set of 10 unique gesture classes.The study consisted in having each participants to enter a gesture class fifteen times using a WiiMote. Their results demonstrate an 80% recognition rate. However, the individual recognition rate varied from 58% to 98%. The authors do state that their recognition rate is lower than  than that showed in previous works. But, they believe this is an expected rate since they utilized simpler methods and implementing more gesture classes but less gesture training per class.

Discussion: I don't really know much about this type of recognizers, so I wouln't be certain if there is any other developments supporting 3D gesture recognition. Even though it seems like a very simple development, and the results are not very high or better than previous works, this may just be a start. I like the idea of them finding a use for their system. Using this for prototype testing sounds like a reasonable application for it.




Sunday, April 3, 2011

Paper Reading #18: Activity Awareness

Comments:

Reference Information:
Title: Activity Awareness in Family-Based Healthy Living Online Social Networks
Author: S. Kimani, S. Berkovsky, G. Smith, J. Freyne, N. Baghaei, D. Bhanari.
Presentation: (Conference Presentation) IUI'10. February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary: In this paper, the authors describe an activity awareness user interface combined with a social network system. They believe that social relationships and family involvement can improve the family members' health management techniques. Thus, they developed a system where more interaction between family memebers' can be achieved and where each one can track and access tools relating to their healthy living activities.

The social network system is structured for families, where a community has many member families. The Activity Awareness Interface allows them to interact online noting their healthy activities in interactions such as forum posting, an activity diary and a blog. Their activity diary is where individuals can write about their real world healthy living activities. Each activity recorded in the diary can be later display as a report card with graphs about their performance, as well as their social interaction performance. 

In order to evaluate the system, a user study was carried out. They were measuring how the Activity Awareness Interface contributed to the healthy living in contrast to just the family-oriented healthy living social network. They targeted families of 4, two parents and 2 children. Part of the families utilized the social network on its own, while the rest used the social network along with the activity awareness interface.  

Their studies where divided into three stages, pre interaction, interaction, and post interaction. In the pre-interaction stage, participants where introduced to the system. In the interaction stage, participants utilized the system for 3 weeks, and in the post interaction stage participants filled out experience questionnaires.
Overall they noted the benefits of using both system together, instead of just the social network.

Discussion:
I think that this is definitively an innovative way to help families maintain healthy lives. However, I do not think the paper was really information as it could have been. I would have liked seeing more explanation about how the social network worked, and how it interacted with the interface. In the study they mentioned how they compared the effectiveness of the interface comparing it against the results obtained from the families using the social network only. However, they did not explain what features were available in the social network and how that would also help them maintain a healthy life. 


Emotional Design

Emotional Design
Don A. Norman

Source
Summary: 
Chapter 1: Attractive Things Work Better. In this opening chapter, Norman exposes the idea that attractive things work better, like the title says. He claims when a device is aesthetically more attractive than another, but both share the same functionality, users will prefer to use and will rate higher the one that is more attractive. He also discusses the three level of processing: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.

Chapter 2: The Multiple Faces of Emotion and Design. Norman discusses how the three levels the cognitive and emotional system work together to provide the user an overall experience of the product. He also discusses objects that evoke memories and the effect they have for example souvenirs and photographs. The feelings that design, marketing, and the use of products bring to individuals and how they change the way we think of ourselves.

Chapter 3: Three Levels of Design: Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective. Norman explores more in depth of what factors are considered and affect these three levels of design. Visceral design consists of emotions, appearance, and the first impression of an object. It is important because it hooks the user's attention, sometimes without knowing what the item really is or what it is for. Behavioral design is concerned with usability - basically the topic of The Design of Everyday Things. And finally, reflective design relates to our perspective to the product. How it affects our lives, culture and other factors may affect this level of design.

Discussion: I really enjoyed reading about aesthetic design from Norman's point of view, since in The Design of Everyday Things he completely ignored and even made it seem irrelevant compared to usability. I was curious about how this change came about, so I skimmed through the prologue and found that Norman states he has actually changed his mind and now understands how important the aesthetic part is.

Reflecting on the examples given by Norman, about the personality of items (video game consoles) and how the use of different things makes us feel (cake mix), and they are true. There are still many products that are designed and geared for only part of the population, but other people still use them. However, there are others that have changed. My computer is pink! Just like its cover, and my backpack! I usually don't like buying products marked with the "Just add water!" phrase because I think they are only for those who want to avoid the hazel of going through the process, and personally I don't think they taste the same way (I may be wrong).

It is a big change from the readings from The Design of Everyday Things, but at the same time Norman is integrating both sides of design, and understanding not only usability is important. "I want it, I don't know what it is, but I want it." I've heard this before, from me and from others... my little cousins and their toys, they don't even what the toy is for, but they want it. I do think that appearance is a major part of design that is how users' attention is called in the first place.