BLUI - UIST 07

Comments: first, second, third

Summary:

By using a single microphone near a computer monitor, they can detect where on the screen you are blowing. This can be used for games, scrolling, selecting, etc. This could especially be useful for disabled people that can't use a mouse and keyboard.

My Thoughts:

I think Blui is awesome. It doesn't seem practical as the only method of input, but along with a mouse and keyboard, it could come in handy. I think it would be great for scrolling. While viewing a webpage, scrolling is usually the most difficult and annoying part. By blowing slightly at the screen, you could scroll with ease. It would be amazing. Also, it doesn't need to be precise. If you blow down, then it scrolls down, and the same for up, and possibly left and right.

Inmates

Comments: prev, this, next

Summary:

Programmers are given way to much control over design decisions. Programmers should be the last people to have control over design decisions. As seen from our other readings, programmers usually think their design is perfect, and if no one in the world knows how to use it, then it is the users fault for being too stupid. The book went into detail about this and a variety of other topics such as managing and software engineering. It was another one of the books that has a ton of words, but doesn't actually have that much information in it. Im starting to think people write long boring books just so people think they are smart.

My Thoughts:

Again, it was long and boring. It had some good points. Programmers usually do make awful designers. From my experience, I've been in groups were people make stupid design decisions, although they think they are great decisions. I probably make some stupid decisions as well. If I were to make enough good design decisions that my future employer wanted me to continue to do so, then that would be fine, but until one proves themself capable, they shouldn't be in charge of such an important area.

Donkey Konga! - CHI 08

Summary:

People prefer using the drums in Donkey Konga over a regular controller. That's pretty much all the paper said. It went into detail about how users tend to communicate more when using the drums over regular controllers. It went into detail about the type of communication (eg. verbal vs non-verbal), but they didn't say what the users actaully talked about. The users could have been bad mouthing the drums while using them. Even if it was all positive communication, it doesn't mean it applies to all games.

My Thoughts:

Whatever this paper "proves," it doesn't really mean anything. You have to look at games on a case-by-case basis. Using the guitar hero guitar to play halo, for instance, is very difficult and would be frustrating if it was the only means for playing halo. This paper didn't prove anything, and it is amazing to see what can get excepted in CHI.

Useability Evaluation Considered Harmful

comments: a, b, c

Summary:

This paper talking about how too much emphasis is put on useability evaluations. Useability evaluations can be very useful, but too often they are put together at the last minute, because even good ideas are considered bad if they don't have a useability study. This leads to useability studies that only use a handful of people, and those people could be close friends of the researchers leading to bias. In addition, there are potentially good ideas that do bad on useability studies because the researchers don't have time to implement a complete program utilizing the new interface. They usually have a prototype or "sketch" and so if it fails during an evaluation, it could be that the program was incomplete, not that the interface is bad.

My Thoughts:

I agree with this paper. In many fields outside CHI, it is the same way. They do studies that have many biases just to prove their point. Whenever I hear about a study that proves something, I never trust it unless I hear exactly how the study was performed. That's how CHI should be. If someone conducts a study, it shouldn't mean anything unless you look at how the study was perfomed. You also need to consider that biases are most likely involved. One great point the paper made was that studies are hardly ever repeated. A key point about using a study to prove something, is that you need to be able to repeat it and get the same results. Since people don't repeat studies, researches can get away with using a ton of biases in their usability studies.

Stanley Milgram

Summary:

Stanley Milgram shocked a bunch of people. He did a series of experiments to measure how far people would go if a person of authority asked them to do so. People ended up thinking they were shocking people for an experiment, which shows that people are capable of doing bad things if a person of authority asks them to. The book also talked about his life, and other experiments he did such as the 6 degrees of seperation and the mail thingy.

My Thoughts:

I love his experiments. I think that the show a harsh truth about humans. We are capable of bad things. When talking about WWII and the nazis, I feel as though a lot of people think that only the germans would have acted in that manner, but the truth is that it could have been any country, even the US. His experiments show that humans tend to act in this way, even though there are some cultural differences. His work was controversial, but it lead to a lot of rules to protect people being experimented on.

Human Centered Design Considered Harmful

Summary:

Don Norman talked about how we always rely on what the user tells us in order to design our products. This leads us to change our product, even if we think it's ok. This leads to other problems coming up just because a few people didn't like something. We, instead, need to think about the changes we are making. We can't do something just because a few people may like it. The solution could be worse than the problem.

My Thoughts:

I completely agree with him. Designers too often take the user's word, even when their word is stupid. Users tend to see things from one perspective. It is good to see things from their perspective, but following them blindly doesn't help anything. One thing I disagreed with him on was the users adapt to technology, so it's ok to make things that are hard to use. I partially agree in that we do adapt to technology, but only if it is something really useful, and there isn't a better version available. If you want to sell a product faster than your competitors, then you had better have it adapt to the user.

Ethnography Considered Harmful

Summary:

The writers were just trying to follow in the footsteps of the other considered harmful papers, but this time, they were talking about ethnographys. This was a really boring paper, which just said that ethnographys can be missused to say what people want them to.

My Thoughts:

This paper sucked. It didn't help knowing that it was a joke paper while reading it. I usually hate reading assignments that talk about nothing, so reading one and knowing it was talking about nothing before I even starting reading it sucked. 

Bigger is Better - Fitz Law

Summary:

Fitz law is basically a rule for how bigger buttons that are not far away increase usability. This makes sense because small buttons are hard to position the mouse directly over, and if a button is far away, it feels like it slows you down a lot. This is an important law because interfaces that can increase width and decrease distance are a lot more effecient. An example is the wheel selection. You don't have to move the mouse far, and the area the mouse has to be in to select a piece is pretty big.

My thoughts:

This law seems really useful. Whenever I make an interface, I will definitely consider this law to insure that it doesn't take someone forever to use my interface. I especially like how games often use this law. When playing a game where speed is important, you can't have people slowing down to use your interface. The wheel interface gets used a lot to speed up weapon selection and such. Usually when a game gets criticized for a bad interface, it is because it doesn't follow fitz law.

Never in Anger

Summary:

Never in Anger is an ethnography in which Jean Briggs goes to live with an Eskimo family. She originally wanted to observe their religious practices, but couldn't, since they had already been converted to Christianity by missionaries. She then took a different approach by studying their social interactions. She eventually got shunned by the group, although they didn't kick her out, since that would have meant her death, and they were a kind-hearted group. Eventually they started talking to her again, and they had even formed an emotional attatchment to her.

My Thoughts:

It was ok. I'm not sure if this counts as a "real" ethnography since she did have an effect on their lifestyle. I realize that, due to her situation, she didn't have much of a choice, but when reading this book, people should keep their mind open that some of their actions may have only been due to her being there. Had they not noticed her being there, some of the results could be entirely different. Once again, this seems like a book that could get the same point across with a lot less words. It's good that there are a lot of details recorded, but in most cases, people don't care about the details. It's like the Lord of the Rings books. It's great that they have so many details for those that want it, or for turning it into a movie, but I'm lazy and easily distracted, so I want books that get the point across without boring me.

CHI '09 - Body and Mind: A Study of Avatar Personalization in Three Virtual Worlds

Paper By: Nicolas Ducheneaut, Ming-Hui "Don" Wen, Nicholas Yee, Greg Wadley

Commented On: n/a

Summary: 

This paper talks about avatar creation specific to three games, World of Warcraft, Maple Story, and Second Life. The authors administered a questionnaire to more than a hundred users of these games, to see which features users most cared about, and what goes on in the head of a user when they are making an avatar. They found that users generally try to make an idealized version of themselves by cutting off a few pounds or reducing their age by a couple years. Also, they tend to focus on hair when creating their avatar, and they focus least on shoes. People also associate personalities with their characters that resemble what the person wants to be.

My Thoughts:

This was a good paper. Since I want to go into game programming, it is good to know what people look for in avatar creation. If I ever have to design one, I'll be ready. Having played a few games in my life, I have noticed that avatar creation things usually have a ton of hair options. Now I know it's because people care about hair a lot more than the other options. One thing I didn't like was that they used the BMI to judge if people were compensating for their weight. BMI doesn't measure how fat someone is. It messures their weight relative to their height. That weight could be mostly muscle. For example, my BMI says I'm overweight, but you probably wouldn't think that by looking at me. By using the BMI, they are coming to conclusions that are not justified.

Emotional Design

Commented on: TBA

This book was writen by the ever popular Don Norman. Unlike his other works, this one is writen as a correction to his previous book, The Design of Everyday Things. In his previous work, he talked of devices in a purely behavioral approach. People liked things that worked, and hated things that didn't work. In Emotional Design, on the other hand, he decides that people like things that are pretty, or that bring back memories. 

I didn't like this book. Just like his other books, there were a lot of words that didn't say anything or that said the same thing over and over. He seemed to talk about visceral, behavioral, and reflective design for far too long. He got his point across in a chapter or two, but for some reason, he kept on talking about it. 

The Design of Future Things

comment: I, II, III

So, this is another book by Don Norman, and it is similar to his Design of Everyday Things, but this book seems to be less about complaining, and more about actual solutions. He talks about devices such as cars, and how they can be designed to be more effective when humans use them. He mentions a lot about how humans and machines end up fighting for control over each other. One example is how "intelligent" machines will sometimes take over control of your car if you pull up to close to another car. This causes problems when you switch lanes really fast, but your car senses another car is too close, and then slams on the brakes. This becomes really dangerous. His solution is more of a feedback system where the car is resistant to running into other cars, similar to a horse avoiding running into objects. This allows you to have control, but keeps you from making careless mistakes. Another point of the book is that when devices are made to be too safe, people get used to not thinking about the device. This means that if it fails, then people will be unprepared and unable to correct the mistake. This could be disastrous in vehicles. By making some devices less safe, people are better prepared to correct any problems, leading to less accidents.

I liked this book. Although it seemed a little repetitive, it had some really good points. The ones mentioned earlier, I especially liked. I feel that if cars handled similar to horses, people would still be required to focus on their driving, but would get that tactile feedback from the steering wheel letting them know that they shouldn't keep going that way. I agree that when machines take over control, it is more likely to cause problems, but then again, humans tend to make a ton of mistakes themselves.

My Ethnography on Facebook

Comment: one, two, three

My ethnography was on how people use facebook. The goal was to find the areas of facebook that are used the most, and those that are not used often. This information could then be used by the makers of facebook to know which areas of the site to focus on. The study followed 8 individuals and how often they used each of 10 features of facebook. Their use was followed back one month. 

I found through this ethnography that the 3 main features used are status updates, wall posts, and picture posting. The 3 least used features are application boxes, fan pages, and events. Using this knowledge, facebook can direct their attention towards those features. For the most used features, facebook should try to make them easier to use. An example is the picture posting. Earlier in facebook's existence, the uploading of pictures took a lot of time and effort. Now, it is extremely easy to upload a ton of photos. They could continue this by making tagging and other things quicker. For the least used features, they need to find out how to make them more accessible and noticable. I've noticed that facebook will create events and have notifications of these events on the side of the page. This appears to be a way to make events more popular. Even though observing only 8 people doesn't give enough data for proper conclusions, this can easily be expanded to get results that are a better representation of the entire facebook population.

ILoveSketch - UIST Paper 2008

Commented On: 

1, 2, 3

Link to Video: http://vimeo.com/1669862?pg=embed&sec=1669862

The UIST paper I read was about an application called ILoveSketch. It is used to draw 3D images in a way that mimics pencil and paper drawing. There are many applications that do this, but ILoveSketch introduces a lot of functionality aimed at making the application more like a sketch pad. The first thing is that it mimics ink drying. Many times when sketching, artists will draw a few lines or curves very lightly, and once they draw a curve they like, they will make it darker, and then erase the other curves. ILoveSketch mimics this by drawing light colored curves that change color as they simulated drying. This means that an artist can draw a curve multiple times until they like the shape, and then the preliminary curves will be erased, and the wanted curve will stay as a "dryed" curve. The next feature is for combining curves. Usually, if an artist draws two cruves that are touching, they are meaning for them to be one combined curve. So a 'c' shape on top of a backwards 'c' shape should be combined into an 's' shape. ILoveSketch automatically handles this. Occasionally, this isn't wanted, so it allows the user to undo it by a motion of the pen. The last main feature is the automatic paper rotation. They realized that certain curves are easier to draw when the paper is rotated a different way, due to hand position and movement. To decide if a user is in an uncomfortable position, they measure a pause between the first stroke of a multi-stroke curve as a sign that the user is having trouble drawing the curve, so an automatic rotation is applied. This seems like a great idea, but whenever you automate, you are taking a chance that you will annoy the user. Later on in the article, when they bring in someone to test their product, he does find the automatic rotation to be annoying, since he likes to pause occasionally to look at his sketch.

Overall, I liked the article. It mentioned a number of useful features for making the interface much more intuitive than existing applications. I especially liked that they based their features off of natural mappings. Pen and paper drawing is used by almost everyone throughout their entire life. By appealing to something almost everyone knows, they can greatly increase their usability. The ink drawing and curve connection appeared to do this incredibly well, while the automatic rotation does a bad job by assuming what the user wants, and then forcing itself upon them. The main points from this article that everyone can take, is that automation must be used very carefully, and that natural mappings are the most intuitive form of control.

Why I Like That I Hated The Media Equation

Commented on: George Lucchese, Brian Salato, and Adam Griffin

So, I am torn about this book. On the one hand, the book really made me think... on the other hand, the book really made me think about why I hated the book. At first, the book was intriguing, then it became boring, and once I got to the chapter on negativity, it became exciting in that I couldn't believe the author believed what they were talking about. That chapter is ridiculous. First, the author talks about negativity affecting memory, which he calls proactive enhancement and retroactive interference. These are real terms, which I remembered from taking psyc 107, but luckily, I also remembered that they have NOTHING to do with negativity! They have to do with memory in general. They have to do with previous memories affecting your ability to learn new memories, or vice versa. The author manipulates those terms to "prove" that negativity affects you differently than positivity. This is completely untrue though. His experiments test images like blood and guts verses smily faces. Of course blood and guts are gonna effect your memory more. A smily face is a common occurence everyday, but how often do people see blood and guts? It's not a question of good and bad, its a question of expected and unexpected. Humans have adapted to notice differences rather than constants. We feel acceleration more than velocity, we notice light in a dark room and shadows in bright room. Pain and pleasure represent changes from our normal state. If the author had compared the blood and guts to positive sexual images, then the results wouldn't have been the same. There is also the question of what is negative to some might not be negative to others, and the authors do nothing to account for that. What really bothers me about the book is the very next chapter on Arousal. The authors actually get it right! They acknowledge that the more something arouses, wether positive or negative, the more it will affect memory. This is great... except that the authors still think that negativity is a special case. It's NOT!!!! They act like there are two different factors affecting memory, negativity and arousal. It is only arousal!!! In the book, the authors compare a few things that they decide are positive or negative and calm or arousing. For example, a rocket ship blasting off at night is arousing and positive, while a guy in a rocking chair is calm and negative. Makes sense, right? Well it shouldn't! I think of a rocking chair as a positive because it reminds me of my grandparents house. And why the hell is a rocket ship positive?!?!? And why the hell is it arousing?!?!? Maybe the first rocket launch was positive and arousing, but its become normal for our time. I would classify it under neutral and boring. Now if you were watching it in person, then it would be totally different... but that contridicts everything the book is trying to prove, so that may be why they didn't mention it. There is a lot more I can say about the book, but I need to go to work, so I'll sum it up. I did like the book, not in the sense that it was a good book that made some revolutionary claims that will forever change mankind, but I liked it because it made me think. I disagreed with so many things, that I often stoped reading to think about it for a few minutes. This made reading the book take forever, but at least it was fun to think about how stupid some of the experiments were.

The Design of Everyday Things Response

Commented on: Devin McKaskle, Brad Twitty, and Tyler Hennings

This book was basically about how things today (well... 20 years ago) are designed in stupid ways. The author mentioned ways in which these simple design flaws can be fixed, and how they got to be poorly designed. The book is pretty old, but the fundamentals it mentions still apply today. It mentions how a lot of problems are caused because of poor testing, and about the misconception that if something goes wrong, then it is the users fault. The author did a good job to show that designers are usually biased, and that careful attention needs to be payed to the people using the products. Many times the designer gets used to their idea, so it seems simple to them, but when new users try it, they have trouble getting started with the product.


So, the UI that I like is Windows Vista! Now I know everyone else in the world seems to hate it, but I actually believe it is a much improved interface. I'll start by explaining why I think people hate it. People hate change! It seems that every interface that goes through a major change is hated (such as vista, facebook, and office). Why? I believe that people hate change because we like positive feedback. We like UIs where we can find what we want to do quickly, and get that instant positive feedback. Vista moved many things around, so when people try to do one of those actions that used to provide instant feedback, they have to slow down and search for it. This causes negative feedback, making the user feel inadequate. Once you get used to the new UI, I feel that Vista is way better than XP. The newly designed Media Center has a ton of new features, yet is easy to navigate. Finding files no longer requires navigating through an endless number of folders. You can jump to many of the important folders instantaneously, and you can back track to the folder you want instead of having to back up many layers. I also like the new aero style, although that isn't as important as other features. There is one big feature that I can't seem to remember, but I know that I liked it. If I remember it, I'll post it later. I guess the overall reason I love vista is that there isn't anything I hate about it. I can use it without getting pissed at it (I wish I could say the same about XP). In UI, that's one of the most important features. People will less often remember the parts of the UI that work well, but the will quickly remember the parts that they hate.

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