nbChiBlag

Commendable Comments on Content

2010-03-21T22:49:00.008-05:00

Here are some of my comments:

Comment on Jill's Blog
Comment on Eric's Blog
Comment on Patrick's Blog
Comment on Jesus's Blog
Comment on Jesus's Blog
Comment on Justin's Blog
Comment on Kerry's Blog
Comment on David's Blog
Comment on Gus's Blog
Comment on Justin's Blog
Comment on Bill's Blog
Comment on Jacob's Blog
Comment on Jacob's Blog
Comment on Ross's Blog
Comment on Jill's Blog

Baseball Cards [✯IUI '09]

2010-03-21T22:07:00.004-05:00

Rich interfaces for reading news on the web by Earl Wagner, Jiahui Liu, Larry Birnbaum, and Kenneth D. Forbus; Northwestern University.

Summary:
The authors of this paper created a system, called Brussell, that assisted in reading news articles by providing additional information and summary background information from within the article and other related articles. They started by defining several templates for article types (kidnapping, acquisition, etc) for testing. For each of these templates there is a set of a information such as previous events. This information can be used to provide additional details to the users or to give a simple overview. (Like the information in the box on the right side of Wikipedia examples.) The information is gathered from previous articles. The articles are cross-referenced to remove incorrect information. When a current article is processed relevant information is linked. The benefit of all this is that people can find background information for current articles. To test the system they first used a database of old articles to build a knowledge base for Brussell. Then they looked at 100 articles to see how many "references" were identified by Brussell. The mean was 4.1 per article and the median was 3 per article.

Discussion:
This article was pretty dry. The idea definitely could be useful, but it seems like a lot of effort for something so small. It would really be idea to use a central database for everyone and allow authors of articles to add information. This way it could be made even better than the technology allows and if technology becomes better than human tagging then people don't have to do any work. (Basically, it would just be nice if now the authors could confirm information and help train it.) I liked the idea they had of right clicking on things and getting suggestions such as "what happened in ____ ."

A Brief History of History [✯UIST '08]

2010-03-19T18:03:00.005-05:00

An application-independent system for visualizing user operation history by Toshio Nakamura and Takeo Igarashi.

Summary:
In this paper, the authors create a generic system for visually annotating operation history. In simpler terms, they used images for undo/redo type history and put notes on them to help improve utility. The paper discusses the limitations of prior works such as a visual history being tied to a single program. They create a system for annotating visual histories by adding symbols that indicate what the user did at that stage. The system was independent of any application and used a combination of mouse/keyboard monitoring and screenshots to create the annotated visual history. The main annotations were arrows to represent dragging and stars to represent clicking. They performed a user study to determine if the annotations would improve user performance over a visual history without annotations. The users were half expert (graduate computer science students) and half novice (non-cs undergrads that "rarely used" computers). They had three different types of GUIs that they gave the users to test the history with. The three GUI's (seen in the second image) were a 3D drawing program (a), an icon manipulation system (b) and a GUI widget system (c). The users were given tasks to find in a visual history and their performance was recorded. The results were that both novice and expert users had overall improved speed and reduced error rate with the annotated histories. The best performance improvements were with the 3D drawing program (a). In this case errors and time were cut to a third for both novice and expert users when using annotations. The other cases did not do as well. In the icon GUI (b) the time was better with annotations but error rate was actually higher. The researches postulated this may have been due to the cryptic nature of the stars to the novice users (since there were different representations for single, double and right click) and the fact that some icons were obscured by the annotations. For the GUI widgets (c) there was no significant improvement in speed but some improvements in error rate. Overall they determined that the system has some definite applications and can be applied without knowledge of the task being performed.

Discussion:
First, let me say I don't recommend the video. The paper makes many good points and helps progress something that is complex for users in a fairly straightforward way. They didn't have to make plugins or use special cameras they just wrote a small program that acts as a middle man. Histories can be difficult to understand when not visualized. I can look through my Photoshop history and see my last 20 operations were selections, but that doesn't help me: I want to know what I selected. They expanded upon basic visualization, however, filling in gaps where it might not be clear how the state changed from just two snapshots. It makes sense that it would be most useful in 3D programs because that is where such visual histories are most cryptic. If you have a shot of the front of an object and then the back you need something to tell you that the view just changed. A simple arrow (as used) does the trick because, after all, it mimics the natural dragging movement the user made to perform the state change. The downside of the visual history is it is large and can be unmanageable for large numbers of operations, but these are limitations the researchers have recognized and hope to address in the future.

Advanced Meta Scripting or The Ultimate Computer [IUI '09]

2010-03-19T14:51:00.005-05:00

From geek to sleek: integrating task learning tools to support end users in real-world applications by Aaron Spaulding, SRI International, et al.

Summary:
This paper discussed how the authors created a system to assist military personnel in automating tasks by creating procedures. Their system, called ITL (for Integrated Task Learning) combined the utility of several automation systems to provide a common system for creating learned procedures. Learning procedures involves having users perform those procedures while the system observes and then the system attempts to programmatically repeat them. The system makes loops, assigns variables and determines choices to be made based on the examples given. The user can then modify what the computer has created for better and more correct functionality. For their contributions they simplified the textual display of the steps to increase human readability, added a graphical interface for adding new steps and restrictions, and enabled users to copy steps between procedures. None of these were trivial and they involved both interaction with the users to gain an understanding of what would be useful as well as intelligent processing of the procedures. For instance, to copy the steps from one procedure to another required that the program attempt to map variables from one context to another.

Discussion:
This paper was okay. I don't know how useful this is because even as simple as it is there are still few people that would find such a system useful, especially off the clock. A problem faced by simple scripts and automations in general is that they are limited in what they can do by the dictionary, the programming paradigms and the clarity of what they do. In other words the more you simplify the less control users have. This means it may work really well for some things but for others users will hit a dead end for the automation. However, this system does have distinct advantages. It may seem more appropriate to have "technical people" create scripts programmatically but given the simplicity of such mechanism (in terms of programming abilities) it is all too easy for those who don't know what they're doing to cause problems. With a procedures system in which the actual execution is done by a separate program, security and stability issues can be addressed and even controlled on a global level. In addition, since the creation and maintenance of the procedures is placed in the hands of the users there is no room for miscommunication between the user and developer. This means the only limits are in the tools, which is what these researchers aim to improve.

09:09 on 09/09/1999 [IUI '09]

2010-03-19T14:17:00.004-05:00

Data-driven exploration of musical chord sequences by Eric Nichols, Indiana University; Dan Morris and Sumit Basu, Microsoft Research.

Summary:
In this paper the authors created a system whereby new musical cords could be created based on combinations between chord characteristics of preset groups. They had a 2D "polygon slider" (think radar chart) that controlled the mix of features between different "genres" to create an overall chord sequence. They created these genre based axis in four different ways: human tagged genres, genres with AbsDiff Clustering, Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and random groupings with AbsDiff Clustering. The user study had 10 users use each of these four methods and move the points in the polygon slider to create chord sequences. Everything was blind in this study and the axis were not labeled by the genres but rather as "A", "B", etc. They found that all participants preferred the computer assisted groupings to the label based genres alone. These allowed for greater creativity and better "exploration" by participants. The PCA was less favored for being too sensitive to small changes. Study participants noted they would like more fine controls such as locking certain parts of a chord or limiting the affect of continued changes.

Discussion:
This was an interesting way of looking at music and an interesting use of their evaluations. It seems like this would also be a fun tool for those without a musical background to allow them to create simple chord based rhythms. I have used programs to create simple compositions for use as background music in videos, but that is mostly just combining loops. Since I don't have a knowledge of chords I am stuck with adding simple melodies if I want anything more, even if I know what I want. Still, this use, although interesting, seems limited in utility. The ability of a computer to understand properties of the music and aid in composition is what could really be interesting.

I'm A Frayed Knot [IUI '09]

2010-03-13T20:27:00.005-06:00

Pulling strings from a tangle: visualizing a personal music listening history by Dominikus Baur and Andreas Butz, University of Munich.

Summary:
This paper proposes a means of using a visual history to allow a media program to create playlists based on the previous listening sessions of a user. They begin with the prior works, notably Last.fm and Pandora, and move on to the methods they used to allow users to visualize thier listening habits and then create playlists. The first method they use to visual listening history is a tangle. To create a tangle they connect all songs that are listened in succession to each other (directionally). This means that if you listen to "Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)" and then "The Rockafeller Skank" and then "The Spirit Of Radio" then they are connected in that order. If you then listen to "The Everglow" and then "The Rockafeller Skank" then the "The Everglow" is connected to a new visual representation of "The Rockafeller Skank." Tangles form in the chain of songs when the different portions are brought together to place identical songs or songs by the same artist in close proximity. Another way they visualized listening history is by using strings. Strings are simply individual listening sessions ordered by time. (Think of strings as a collection of linked lists.) They then took the strings and combined identical songs into single nodes to form knots. (Knots being stronger because they are actually the same node for a given song, not just duplicate nodes placed nearby.) They used both tangles and knots to create new playlists using route mapping algorithms. By selecting a starting song and ending song and a route efficiency a playlist is generated that can be seen visually as a route between two points. Users can also click to add desired waypoints just as in Google Maps.

Discussion:
I use Last.fm and find it interesting to see my music history displayed graphically. That being said it is a curiosity at best. However, creating playlists by picking a route between two songs from my existing play history is amazing. That could be useful and entertaining. The only changes I would make would be to allow for user definable break. (Sometimes I am listening and say "and now for something completely different." Of course, leaving these in may make the experience more interesting.) A really neat idea and I look forward to seeing it in action.

People don't draw straight lines [UIST '08]

2010-03-13T18:46:00.004-06:00

Kinematic templates: end-user tools for content-relative cursor manipulations by Richard Fung, University of Waterloo, et al.

Summary:
In this paper the authors introduced Kinematic Templates. They attempt to fill the area between strict objects in images (such as circles) and free hand user drawings. They accomplish this with what they call Kinematic Templates with various behaviors. They defined two types of templates: Passive and Active. Passive merely alter the drawing the user is creating. This changes the pointer movement to drawing ratio to something besides 1:1, depending on how the movement is made and what the template is. Active templates actually move the pointer when the mouse (or pen) remains in the same location. They defined a number of different templates in both categories and allowed the user to set the "strength" of the template. Examples: The sandpaper template (passive) assists in fine details by slowing down drawing in an area. The compass (passive) makes drawings fit to a circle so that with a lesser strength small imperfections in a drawn circle are fixed and in a stronger setting a square mouse movement is drawn almost circularly. The orbit template (active) moves the pointer in a circular motion. They allowed for combining of templates. They combined the orbit with the compass to make spirals. The overall goal was to allow users to have a grey area between rigid shapes and free hand drawings. They conclude they have done fairly well in this in that the user may create more precise and visual appealing drawings that maintain a human element.

Discussion:
This seemed like a really neat tool. It would make a great addition to many drawing programs, particularly those focused on fun and creativity. This paper also seems like a suitable prior work to our second project as it involves computer aided manipulations of a persons hand drawings to fit a preset template. This is something that when you see (and you can on the video) you want to play with (and you can by downloading the GPL'd library and example here).

Fan the Flamers [UIST '08]

2010-03-13T18:01:00.004-06:00

Foldable interactive displays by Johnny Lee, Carnegie Mellon, et al.

Summary:
This paper outlined four possible foldable displays and discussed general design concepts of foldable displays. The writers used surfaces with LEDs in set locations as the displays. They had a projector project onto the surface based on its location and orientation. The location was determined by having Wiimote cameras track the LEDs. They had four designs: newspaper, scroll, fan and umbrella. The newspaper folded as a newspaper would so that you can change the size of the display. Scroll can change to a variable size, a fan is nice because it can be held in one hand and an umbrella is useless but fun to twirl. By flipping the surfaces they could display different information. One such application is having public information displayed when a display is on a table top and private information when it is facing the user.

Discussion:
This paper didn't really do much for me. They had a pretty neat toy, but I don't really see what the point of the experiment was. It is a cheap way to fake somewhat distant technologies but I don't see that the actual implementation had any benefits in increasing understanding or bettering the state of the technology. If you want to be entertained by resizable displays I'd recommend an episode of Caprica: it looks far more convincing and (presumably) has a plot.

Huge Images and the Google Earth Museum Experience [UIST '08]

2010-03-13T17:37:00.006-06:00

Annotating gigapixel images by Cohen et al, Microsoft Research (et al).

Summary:
This paper outlines how the authors created a system for appropriately presenting text and audio elements when viewing a large (gigapixel) image. You might of seen these large images that you can zoom and pan around then Internet. They added to this by giving a creator the ability to tag areas with audio loops, audio annotations and text annotations. They used the location and size of these items with a rough depth map of the image to present the user with the appropriate content depending on where they were. (The bulk of the paper dealt with how the weights were calculated.) The result is a museum like experience where you can zoom in and see labels and hear sounds based on where you are. You can also hear audio clips with information about an area. When moving towards or away from a sound they fade in or out and are adjusted to the left/right channels to sound as if they are coming from their location.

Discussion:
The paper wasn't incredibly interesting but the results were pretty neat. It gives a feel of a museum exhibit from the (near) future. I can see this being a neat system for education and virtual exploration, especially if put on a large display. Best of all it is useful, though. The method of zooming in and out with label appearing appropriately makes it like Google Earth. Google Street view would make much more sense with this kind of functionality. Then the user could move from space to the street without any sense of borders. The demo doesn't seem to be online anymore but check out the video if you are feeling like a museum tour of Seattle.

On Lightweight Tagging and LOLCats [✯CHI '09]

2010-03-13T14:18:00.005-06:00

Lightweight tagging expands information and activity management practices by Gerard Oleksik et al.

Summary:
In this adventure, a group with members from Microsoft Research, Instrata Ltd, Future Interaction Technology Lab and Georgia Tech worked on a system to easily tag files based on activity. They created a program for users to try, called TAGtivity Manager (TM), and gathered data on how the users interacted with the program and how it effected their existing organization. They also had plugins for Office, IE, and Outlook that allowed users to tag from those programs. The key paradigm of this tagging was to allow users to group items together that existed in multiple locations but where used for the same project. The implementation ends up being similar to a multiple virtual desktop program with persistence. They conducted user studies over three weeks with large interviews at the end of the second and third week. The results showed that users preferred tagging in the plugins. When using TM to switch to an activities, users preferred to select the tagged activity and then select the item from it's list. They rarely used the drop down under the activity (although many were not aware of the feature) and they also did not frequently use the graphical representation of the items. They found four triggers for users creating tags: desiring a temporary placeholder for future information, needing a tag for a new project being started, needing a tag for a project already started, and to allow them to set aside certain tasks for later. They also defined four tag usage scenarios: short term projects, central repository for (mostly) single activities, filtering across single or multiple activities, and metastructures across multiple activities. Primarily users created tags for medium projects (both in duration and size). They found that the tagging tools did not completely replace people's structures but that they did complement them well.

Discussion:
These sorts of organizational schemes offer some advantages over what we currently have, but most importantly they fill areas that are currently problematic. For instance, email organization was a big part of what this was used for. Right now there are two types of email organization widely employed: complex folder based organization with heavy use of rules and no organization. Although this seems more useful to me than virtual desktop spaces (which I have mostly found a waste), there are still many scenarios this does not help with. The primary focus of this system, like most, is on usability for organizing different projects. It is a work related paradigm. Many (if not most) early adopters, however, are not concerned as much with work as with fun. This is why I ask why we don't have a system for organizing LOLCats and other Internet findings. This problem is non-trivial. Think about what most entertainment on the web offers: either very similar items of interest (memes) or incredibly dissimilar items of interest (things that are interesting because they are different, obscure or unusual). To understand the difficulty just try to imagine how you would classify LOLCats. All LOLCats share the common features of being pictures of cats with funny (poor grammer) captions. How do you distinguish between these? Number of cats? Type of cat? Grammer mistakes per word? File size? All of these measures are useless. How about level of funny? Does a rating system satisfy our needs? But then there are exceptions to the rules as well. What if I also have LOLSpiders? Can I have a system that allows them to sometimes be a part of the group and sometimes not? So far as our other Internet finds go it is just as bad. Where do I file my Frozen Russia links? How does one categorize optical illusions? How about top 10 abandoned cities? Norway's most attractive models? Homes made out of cargo containers? Super macro photography of European coins? Why has nobody addressed these concerns? Surely a system sufficient to organize them would have no bounds.

Slap Bet [CHI '09]

2010-02-25T10:43:00.007-06:00

SLAP Widgets: Bridging the Gap Between Virtual and Physical Controls on Tabletops by Malte Weiss et al.

Summary:
The authors created a reconfigurable physical interface using a touch surface and silicon controls. They used a combination of DI and FTIR for sensing touches and input from the silicon objects on a table surface with rear projection display. They created cheap silicon "SLAP Widgets" such as sliders, buttons, knobs and keyboards to allow the user to interact with digital controls as physical objects. You just place a silicon widget on the table and it is recognized by its feet placement. Then it can be paired with a window by simultaneously double tapping on the area near the widget and the area near the window. They had knobs for adjusting values and fine tune video control, sliders, buttons, and silicon keyboards. These tools could have images and menus under and around them change based on what the user did with them. For example, when holding down ctrl on the keyboard the shortcut keys could change to icons. (Certainly this has been done in the Optimus keyboard, but this way isn't obscenely expensive.) They did user studies and found that not only were users more pleased with the slap widgets than digital interfaces but that they also were able to complete tasks faster and with less error. They proposed improvements to the keyboard to make it easier to use and they will likely use proximity in the future to pair rather than the double tapping on the table surface.

Discussion:
These are impressive. I wonder why this wasn't an obvious solution for the Optimus keyboard. This is easily reconfigurable (by the user) and has the possibility of creating a huge accessories market. In short, it is both technologically and economically feasible and reasonable. They used video in their user study and from my usage of Final Cut Express (a product from Apple, the user friendly company) to edit video I can say that it is one of the more difficult tasks on a computer and could benefit greatly from a reconfigurable physical interaction. I see now reason why companies couldn't charge thousands for these cheap systems and throw in the software for free. Now all the system needs are some games.

Interactive Reactive Proactive Art (With Wiimotes!) [CHI '09]

2010-02-24T23:42:00.006-06:00

(Perceived) interactivity: does interactivity increase enjoyment and creative identity in artistic spaces? by Amy L. Gonzales et al.

Summary:
This paper studies users feelings about interactive art displays. They set up an audio room and sent two people in at a time. Control groups listened to prerecorded sounds without any interaction and test groups were given Wiimotes to control the sounds. Most of the control groups lied on the floor while the test groups danced and had a good time. The study wanted to see if the interactivity increased enjoyment and if it increased the user's since of creativity. They hypothesized yes to both. The results showed that the interactivity did increase enjoyment but did not increase user creativity. (The results were determined by surveys after the exposure to the system.) They were careful to point out that the increased enjoyment with interactivity does not necessarily mean all increased interactivity will increase enjoyment. They also postulated that other systems could increase user feelings of creativity, or that perhaps theirs did but only temporarily. Overall they found that interactivity can lead to increased enjoyment but that it doesn't necessarily give the user an increased since of creativity.

Discussion:
I can't decide if the authors are trying to be funny or are just incredibly detached. This article is not just interesting, but entertaining (and short). As a future work they suggest letting the non-interactive group hold Wiimotes that do nothing to establish that it isn't the Wiimotes themselves that are fun. Right. Another great comment was their instructions to the participants (described as intentionally vague) to "reflect on themselves, the sound and the space." I would like to add that participants should also "feel the weight of a minute and become one with the universe." And lastly, the caption for the figure I am using was "Many interactive groups were highly active..." Really, "highly active," is what you call that? Passive voice does wonders. But this is interesting without the funny lines and it is actual research into what is, apparently, a controversial area.

An Enjoyable Graphing Experience [CHI '09]

2010-02-24T22:56:00.009-06:00

Graph sketcher: extending illustration to quantitative graphs by Robin Stewart and M.C. Schraefel

Summary:
This paper discusses the Graph Sketcher program Stewart created. The impetus for the work is a need to be able to create graphs which are conceptual in nature and are comprised of more than just simple sets of points. The previous solutions, such as adding plain objects to graphs in Excel, are problematic and difficult since those tools were not designed for the task. Graph Sketcher uses snapping points and allows for a variety of lines as well as fill areas. Another benefit is that parameters and scaling can be changed and all the elements move to the correct locaitons. They did studies and found that not only did users make use of the unique features and that users were also able to use it for the same purposes as traditional graphing programs. Overall a variety of users made use of this simple tool and found it useful.

Discussion:
I think this is great. I for one would usually choose Photoshop for such a task over a program made for graphing and it seems unreasonable that direct image manipulation would be easier for anyone than a program made for graphing. I think I will actually buy this program (student license is $20) because even though it is limited in use the few times you would want to use it I can now imagine using nothing else. The interface pieces aren't especially new or amazing but putting them together to solve this problem is new. The usefulness of such a niche product is clear from its commercial success as the author (Stewart) has actually sold the program to The Omni Group and has joined their ranks. (For those not familiar with the Macintosh, The Omni Group is actually a big name in small mac software.) If you do have access to a mac you should download the trial and use it as a guide for how to make a complex set of tools simple to use. (And, yes, I will shamelessly promote good software.)

I Am Not A Prisoner [Asylum part 1]

2010-02-21T16:08:00.009-06:00

The Inmates are Running the Asylum (Ch 1-7) by Alan Cooper

Comment on Brett Hlavinka's Blog

Summary:
Alan Cooper discusses problems with computer design and usability. He gives examples of devices which have "cognitive friction" that prevents the items from being useful. He talks about feature bloat and how it is detrimental to usability. He describes "cognitive friction" as the resistance people face when using technology. "Dancing Bear-ware" he describes as feature laden software that is only impressive because it can manage to do what it can, not because it can do it well. He discusses how software meeting this description comes to be. The author believes that the software design process is flawed. He discusses problems with the timing of development and the development process. The author discusses the insufficiencies of requirements and other means of defining the product. At the end of the first seven chapters the author says that programmers should have nothing to do with design, that programmers are incapable of design and that the reason they cannot design well for humans is because they are not humans. He says technologically minded peoples are non-human bullies that are "inmates running the asylum."

Discussion:
I have made my summary brief because this book sickens me. It is more offensive to me than vulgar language and personal attacks. Many of the points the author makes may have been valid 10 years ago but we have come a long way since then. More upsetting, though, is that he concludes that programmers cannot do any better. He points out problems with requirements documents but also says they can illuminate the discrepancies between the customer's mindset and the developers. However, in the same breath he says that developers can't possibly understand what it is they should be making. He says that no programmer should be responsible for interface design and that outside designers should. I reject the notion that the problem of developers not knowing what they should make can best be solved by recognizing that they can't know what they should make! If the developer can't possibly understand it and detailed requirement documents can't get the developer to do it right then how is hiring a non-developer to design it going to improve anything? The author then says that programmers aren't human! I get it: despite the most detailed description of the task they still fail; QED they must be treated like mindless, soulless, robots and forced to do the bidding of those greater than they. ABSURD!

To add to the insults the author discusses his own "tech bully" behavior and announces that all programmers are the same. In his mind, he alone is enlightened and able to see the truth of computers and what they should be. I absolutely could not disagree more. Many people are tech bullies but I am not. I could write a virus, I could break into a computer or I could charge $50/hr for tech support but I do none of these abhorable things. I would prefer to give free advice, to help people learn, to show people possibilities and to contribute to open source software. I want to give to the world and improve the things I see around me. Saying that the greatest ambition of any "nerdy looser computer guy" is to lord his knowledge over the less knowledgeable is an insult to my integrity.

As a last note, the ACM/IEEE Computer Society joint code of eithics, established mere months after the first printing of this book, state that "Software engineers shall advance the integrity and reputation of the profession consistent with the public interest." Cooper does just the oposite and goes so far as to say (on page 89) that "Software programming is not a true profession...".

Seasonal Decorated Evergreens in Human Dwellings [CHI '09]

2010-02-07T14:53:00.007-06:00

Extraordinary computing: religion as a lens for reconsidering the home by Susan Wyche and Rebecca Grinter, Georgia Institute of Technology.

Summary:
This study examined the ways that people used Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in their home in relationship to their faith based practices. The study consisted of informal interviews with 20 different protestant Christians while examining their homes and the objects therein. The study looked at material artifact, routines and ICT use as they related to religious practices. The authors made several interesting points and drew several conclusions based on their observations.

One important aspect of artifacts seen was that articles of religious importance had a much longer life than those of a secular nature. An example was grocery lists on the fridge versus Bible versus placed on the the fridge. Another example was a twenty year old digital Bible that was kept because of its sentimental value. The authors also saw a distinguishing of spiritual spaces from common spaces and noted that private locations such as the bedroom were often designated as places of importance in religious routines.

The study also discussed the usage of email and how emails of religious topics were treated differently than secular emails. One important observation of the study was when and how people used ICTs for the practice of their faith and when they separated it from their faith.

The article suggested digital photo frames would likely be adopted for religious purposes and that a system similar to Facebook's "poke" would work for prayer requests.

Discussion:
This article was a little long winded and dry, but it does have some interesting points to consider. More interesting, however, is that the article makes observations about the participants as if they are studying an alien culture. An example is when discussing yearly routines the article states that "... participants described bringing an evergreen tree into the home and decorating it...". I would think most people would have just said "they talked about decorating a Christmas tree," but apparently that is too ambiguous.

But, like I said, some things were interesting. In particular the separation of spaces for Bible study and prayer as well as the more permanent importance of religious artifacts really highlights barriers to adoption of technology for religious purposes. Many people might use Bible programs but many may not for these two reason. Bible's often become heirlooms and computers are seen as temporary. People often separate their spaces for expression of their faith and computers may not be accepted into this set apart environment.

Overall, the study wasn't earth shattering, but it does offer an interesting perspective for designers to consider. As in the other article (see previous post) this one highlights that there are special considerations required for technology to be used in religious settings. This article justifies its importance by suggesting that this is one of many paradigms through which technology use must be considered in order to fully understand users' interactions with technology and I would agree. If we don't observe how people use technology in different situations we won't be able to adapt technology to the uses of those users.

Sacred and Kitsch Do Not Mix [CHI '09]

2010-02-07T11:45:00.009-06:00

Sacred imagery in techno-spiritual design by Susan P. Wyche et al.

Comment on Jacob Faires's blog.

Summary:
This study was focused on incorporating sacred imagery into a phone application that would assist Muslims in identifying the times for 5 daily prayers. The Ṣalāt, these prayers are called, are one of the 5 Pillars of Islam. For the study the group created a phone application that displayed an image of a moving sun over a mosque setting. They used green circles to indicate the appropriate prayer times.

The purpose in mind was to use sacred imagery in a meaningful and appropriate way to help the user better connect with their beliefs. In other phone applications made to remind users of prayer times the interfaces were text based and seemed to have poorly thought out incorporation of images. In addition, the authors found in their preparations that a specific time for prayers was not necessarily appropriate since the prayers were a process and meant to be done in a "window of opportunity." With these thoughts they designed an application that they felt appropriately incorporated imagery with the functionality of reminding users of prayer times.

They concluded, based on the feedback of 10 Muslim users, that the application was useful and that the imagery was not only appropriate but also helped the users to better connect with their beliefs.

Discussion:
This study should be taken as a heads up to designers to think about the significance of imagery to their audience. You would never use a red octagon as the button for starting a process and you wouldn't smash a group of corporate logos together, but designers may make mistakes just as bad with images they do not understand. The religious images studied are just an example of an image with cultural significance that designers often do not understand leading them to cross the boundary from useful and significant to kitschy and possibly offensive.

Whether spiritual or secular, if the designer doesn't understand the imagery they cannot incorporate it in a useful way.

More dots, more dots ... Okay, stop the dots. [✯CHI '09]

2010-02-04T12:53:00.014-06:00

What do you see when you're surfing?: using eye tracking to predict salient regions of web pages by Georg Buscher, DFKI Germany; Edward Cutrell and Meredith Morris, Microsoft Research.

Summary:
This article examined how people browse a webpage by tracking the eye movements of the visitor. The article draws conclusions about where people look for information and where they look when trying to identify a page. The practical applications of this knowledge range from web design benefits to being able to create small representations of web pages that are easier to identify than normal thumbnails. The study had 20 participants view web pages for two different tasks on 5 topics. (4 topics were set and the last was left to the users choice.)

They measured the results on three scales: Median fixation impact, viewing frequency, and median time to first fixation. More simply these are described as how long people looked at a given point, how many people looked at a given point, and how long it took people to look at a given point. For analysis they separated the page into 10 sections: 9 "above the fold" and 1 for everything not seen when the page was initially loaded.

The results of the study showed that people focus primarily on the top left when trying to identify a page and primarily on the center and center-left when looking for information. The right side of the page is almost completely ignored for both tasks. The findings do include some significant (although minor) differences in how different age and different gender users examine web pages. (Women spend longer and younger people prefer center over center-left.)

Discussion:
This was a really interesting paper. Website design is a rather important topic and is done by many people, most of whom know nothing about good design. I was not surprised that people look to the top-left to identify a web page but was not expecting that everyone would ignore the right hand side. (The article suggests that this is possibly due to the presence of ads on the right of many pages.) I really wish they would have looked at sites such as Facebook that have important elements on the right to see if results differed. From what the article says I would suspect they will continue to research this. If you look at the figures they really say the most: in figure 3 the smaller circles mean the user looked there faster and in figure 5 the larger circles mean more people looked there. This paper was useful and thorough; Microsoft Research does not disappoint.

Facebook Fear-mongers [CHI '09]

2010-02-03T20:57:00.011-06:00

Social Computing Privacy Concerns: Antecedents & Effects by Oded Nov and Sunil Wattal

Comment on Randy Ransom's blog.

Summary:
This article briefly discussed privacy concerns on online community sites. The article gives the results for a study on how privacy concerns, tenure of the user and "centrality" of the user affected what that user shared on Flickr. (Centrality essentially means how well known the user is in the community.) The authors discussed the importance of privacy on social sites especially given the concern over Facebook privacy settings.

The authors concluded that (not surprisingly) when people are worried about their privacy on a social networking site they share less. They found that the level of trust of the other community members effects peoples privacy concerns. (eg: If you don't trust the people on your friends list then you will be more concerned about privacy.) The one interesting and non-obvious conclusion drawn is that users' Internet privacy concerns do not effect their Internet social community privacy concerns. (At least no statistically significant correlations were seen.) In other words, how much people are concerned about information security on the Internet is independent of their concern over how their photos are made available.

Discussion:
I thought I'd read this because I think many people get overly concerned about such trivial things as the Facebook terms of service and want to further understand why. (Yes, Facebook wants to make money off your images... by advertising, not selling them for stock photos: you aren't that interesting.) It was a simple overview of relatively obvious ideas but I suppose it is a necessary study to propose that privacy in online communities be studied independent of online privacy in general.

The Coffee Pot of Idiocy [The Design of Everyday Things]

2010-02-01T18:11:00.007-06:00

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman

Comment on Kerry Barone's Blog

Summary:

The author lays out principles of good design with examples of both good and bad design. The seven principles he concludes with are:

• Use both head knowledge and world knowledge.
• Simplify the structure of tasks.
• Make things visible.
• Get the mappings right.
• Make use of constraints. (eg: forcing functions)
• Design for error.
• When all else fails, standardize.

The author discusses many topics but spends a good deal of time on three devices which most people would say "everyone can use" and yet themselves struggle with at times. These are: doors, telephones, and sinks.

Doors are used to point out how visual queues are necessary for understanding of use. They note how most push/pull doors have indicators such as a panel for push and a vertical bar for pull that, without instruction, indicate how it should be used.

Sinks are given as another example where simple tasks have been approached numerous ways. Standardization of hot/cold knobs is pointed out as an effective approach.

Telephones, especially from the 80's, may appear simple, but the author discusses attempts to use the advanced features and how visibility as well as button to feature ratio are important.

Commentary:

This was a really interesting book. Many of the ideas presented I would have followed without thinking about but some of them I hadn't thought of. (I've never seen such an impressive treatise on doors.) Some of the principles are good starting points and really help me think about not just what designs I like but why.

Remote Controls
In the middle of reading the book I got to thinking about the remote control for my media center. This is particularly interesting when thinking about the button to function ratio because I have also used other remotes and other media centers. Comparing the MCE Remote with XBMC to the Apple Remote with Front Row shows us a many features/buttons vs few features/buttons. My overall conclusion is that the MCE remote with XBMC is fairly complicated for casual users, but even while reading the book I installed an update that made the remote more usable.

Future Technology Realized
I found some of the authors comments about "future technology" interesting. At one point the author discusses a digital calendar in the pocket and the device that can hold all contact information. When the book was published cell phones were rare and I find it interesting that the device described is essentially a smartphone minus the phone. (With all the flash of the iPhone my favorite feature is that i can sync my calendar with GCal and iCal in real time and edit on the go.)

Humor
I found many parts of this book humorous. The discussion at the end on hypertext was both funny and interesting. I am actually aware of the purpose of hypertext, as is approximately 1% of the Internet population, but it's use is so different from it's original vision that we don't even call it hypertext anymore. Everyone knows what a link is but many non-"computer people" would have no clue what you meant if you started talking about hypertext. The main difference (for those unaware) is that hypertext was mean to be used as a means of linking words to further information on a topic. Today, however, most people give links titles (I do sometimes) and treat them as references when not being used for website navigation.

The book says that computer scientists should have to think about design. But that was 22 years ago; now computer scientists, software engineers, and IT professionals should all concern themselves with the design of everyday things (specifically computers).

Ethnographically Exposing Enchiladas

2010-02-01T15:59:00.003-06:00

Here are some of the possibilities I liked for an ethnography.

• Laptop Abandonment
• Unsliding Doors
• Recycling Propaganda

Laptop Abandomnent
Someone mentioned leaving a laptop to see if somebody would take it. Here are my ideas on this.

We would need at least 4 people to make sure we could recover the laptop in the event it was lifted. Both on the laptop in a file and on a sticker on the bottom we could place contact info should someone want to return it. We could leave it in a variety of places to see how that effected responses. In the event it is completely ignored we could even have one of us, not the one who placed it, fake a theft and see if anyone around reacted. (This would work really well in an area where people frequently study and leave laptops for short periods: such as coffee houses and the library.)

I have an old laptop that might be suitable (a netbook would be better since smaller) and a variety of other items which would be useful for this experiment.

If I can get 3 more people I think this would be really interesting. We would need radios (CB or FRS).

Other Options
If there isn't enough interest in that I can join either Patrick or Travis in their endeavors.

We know worst. [UIST '09]

2010-01-26T11:45:00.001-06:00

Changing How People View Changes on the Web by Jaime Teevan et al., Microsoft Research.

Comment on Jill Greczek's blog.

Summary:
In this article a system is presented for highlighting changes made to webpages since the user's last visit. The plugin, called DiffIE, stores caches of the page from previous visits to compare to the current versions. Changes are highlighted to allow the user to identify new content. A toolbar was included that told the user status information and allowed the user to turn the highlighting on and off.

The article notes that such a system could be valuable since much of the content of webpages changes routinely and many people routinely visit webpages looking for new content.

The article discusses the interactions of numerous users. They described what situation users found it useful in and what situation it was not useful in. The discussed updates to information such as search results, forum posts, sports news, and information changes. They concluded with a number of additional changes which they believed would make the system more beneficial and usable.

Discussion:
First, on the positive side, this article addresses a key problem. People do frequent websites looking for new content and most end users do not make use of the available systems for tracking changes. Some systems, such as RSS readers, are separated form the page and thus less used by causal site visitors. That being said, I think this idea is flawed from the start. Below I will summarize my main problems with the system, as concisely as possible.

1. The system takes control away from site owners and site visitors.
Many sites makes use of systems to update users on new content. RSS, new flags, and other methods of display are used to constantly provide visitors with the newest and most relevant information. These systems are designed by people that have examined the specific content and are utilized in customizable ways by the visitors. Thus the system is designed by the people who know the most about the content (the creator) and configured by those who know how they want to view the information (the visitor). This system allows neither the same level of control. The plugin is unaware of the content and thus can act in unhelpful ways. (eg. Highlighting new ads, as the plugin did.) In fact, I think the most useful application for this plugin is finding changes that the site creator wants to hide or censor.

2. The system interferes with good web design.
Any system capable of sufficiently highlighting and pointing out new information of a page must, by definition, be capable of noticeably interfering with the design and presentation of the site. The article points out that not only does the highlighting method conflict with the design of some sites but it also can be distracting. This is effectively punishing those who work to create a simple and usable site that clearly presents the reader with relevant and new information.

3. The system encourages poor web design.
On the opposite side of the previous issue is that this brings change information to those who create poorly designed websites that are ignorant of user's needs. So this adds, using what I would argue is an inferior method, the benefits of a well designed site to a poorly designed site. This allows users to navigate an unusable barrage of links and information. This may sound like a good thing but if left alone such sites would otherwise be forced to either change or die. In other words, this plugin would interfere with natural selection of technology by aiding poorly designed interfaces.

Users may need clearer or more universal systems of tracking changes to websites but the method presented here is unintuitive and a cheap hack. It won't simplify interactions or solve the problem it only provides a workaround that is needlessly complex.

Taptacular! [UIST '09]

2010-01-25T00:21:00.001-06:00

TapSongs: tapping rhythm-based passwords on a single binary sensor by Jacob Otto Wobbrock, University of Washington.

Comment on Aaron Loveall's blog.

Summary:
This paper looked at using a single button sensor for authentication. The author had users tap simple rhythms, which he called TapSongs. He used an algorithm that first learned a user's TapSong over the course of a dozen inputs and then allowed the user to authenticate with that TapSong. Upon each successful login the login would be added to the definition so that as the user's input changed over time so would the definition of a correct password.

They found that users could enter their own TapSong reliably (~83%). They then allowed users to watch another person enter a TapSong several times and had the user attempt to impersonate them. Users could successfully impersonate less than 11% of the time this way. If they actually played the tone, with the correct notes, the users were still only able to impersonate another ~19% of the time.

Discussion:
This is a pretty good idea. It may not be perfect but it is well worth it for simple devices and could even have applications to more complex systems. Authentication that uses muscle memory and an difficult-to-describe series of actions has definite value. Music, much like language, is very closely tied to the structure of the brain, and thus is unique to each person. It just makes sense to use something closely tied to the unique characteristics of a persons brain to authenticate people. This has an advantage over systems such as voice recognition (which exists mostly in the realm of bad tv scripts) in that it is not easily forged even if known.

Shave and a Haircut

Microsoft Magic Mice [UIST '09]

2010-01-20T17:16:00.002-06:00

Mouse 2.0: Multi-touch Meets the Mouse by Nicolas Villar et al, Microsoft Corporation.

Comment on Brett Hlavinka's Blog

Summary:
Microsoft examined five possibilites for multitouch mice and observed users' interactions with the mice. They combined several types of multitouch sensors with mice in an attempt to provide improved usability and abilities to the user.

Three of the mice, the FTIR, the side and the Orb mouse, used optical sensors. The Cap mouse used capacitive sensors and the Arty mouse used three standard optical mice sensors. In addition the Arty mouse had a sensor to detect when the two "arms" were touching and all mice had a standard optical mouse sensor and click abilities.

The study concluded that the best received by users were the Orb mouse and the Arty mouse. The Orb mouse was favored for its comfort and unique interaction abilities due to its spherical shape. The downside of the orb mouse was that it had a steep learning curve. The Arty mouse was preferred because its use was obvious and limited as well as being a comfortable mouse to use. The Cap mouse was also well received due to familiar appearance but had some problems. The FTIR mouse was somewhat uncomfortable and difficult to use due to the touch surface and the side mouse had issues with just about every function. The study concluded that ergonomics and clarity of use are of chief importance over familiar design and even, interestingly enough, the possible new interaction paradigms.

Discussion:
The Apple Magic Mouse, a multi-touch mouse being most like the Cap mouse here, was released the same month this paper was published. By comparison to the other prototypes the Magic Mouse doesn't seem so magical.

I find it interesting that the article says that users were receptive to the Arty mouse because it was obvious how to use it, despite looking nothing like a normal mouse. They also preferred the mouse because it had fewer abilities. It is important not to overwhelm the user with to many feature and abilities so that they can be sure of how their interactions will be interpreted. I have witnessed people frustrated by motion sensors (accelerometers) because the complexity of the interaction makes them appear to be inconstant and unreliable.

User interaction on a physical level can and should be improved a great deal. The question is not should changes be made or is there a better way but rather how do we take the technology of science fiction movies and create a real, practical and beneficial interaction paradigm.

Magic Wand for Audio [✯UIST '09]

2010-01-19T22:08:00.002-06:00

User Guided Audio Selection from Complex Sound Mixtures by Paris Smaragdis, Adobe Systems Inc.

Comment on Ross Peterson's Blog.

Summary:
This paper presents a system that allows a user to select a portion of a sound clip, such as a voice in a song, by auditory approximation (eg: whistling, humming or singing the part to be selected). Starting with an understanding of audio as a waveform with only one value at any time, selecting a single component of the audio is necessarily difficult.

The author used Probabilistic Latent Component Analysis (PLCA) from a previous work as a basis for the model used to select different components of the audio clip. The basic difference here is that rather than having the program learn from a large number of audio clips as in the PLCA he used a single clip of the user as a basis for selecting the audio component. The user provided sound doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to allow the algorithms to distinguish between the desired selection and the background noise.

The process was tested by having the user attempt to select a portion of an audio track to be removed. Overall they found that in the best case scenario (using the separated clip to remove itself) the results were perfect and in real world test the process was useful. They concluded that removing sections was not perfect but for selecting it was acceptable.

Discussion:
This is an interesting attempt to bring some of the simplicity, flexibility and power of photo editing to audio editing. A staple of CSI is "isolate that voice", which is something not currently possible, but which the author clearly hopes will be possible. I find the approach particularly appropriate because this method uses sound to select sound. (This seems like an obvious approach but it is one that is rarely used.) This seems like a highly useful approach if, like the author suggests, you are trying to remove a sneeze from a concert recording; it is less useful, however, if trying to remove something that you don't really know what it sounds like. (eg: that person whispering that you can barely here.) The author doesn't to have a perfect system, but it does seem to be a useful and workable one.