10 things I learnt in the past 4 months

• Design based on what users (oops, human is a better word) want.
• Design and evaluate and then redesign and again evaluate and redesign and……. -> that is how you take each step further towards a better design.
• The needs of humans are not just what he says. He may at times not know what he really wants, may not be able to communicate it properly. Also his needs are always influenced by the environment around him (physical objects and socially through other people). That is why ethnographic studies are so important.
• Design is not primarily graphical design or the layout or the aesthetics, this is just a small section of the bigger picture of interaction design/experience design.
• A good design should be able to create a rich user-experience (interaction, social, emotion, aesthetics)
• User study methods : disposable camera study, questionnaires, surveys, interviews,focus groups, ethnography studies - fly on the wall, contextual inquiry, observer participant
• Evaluation techniques : usability testing, heuristic evaluation, task analysis, prototyping
• We as designers have to take responsibility for our designs because our designs affect the behavior and thinking of those who use it and has an influence on the society as a whole. We need to take in account the ethical, social, environmental and sustainability issues as well. The designers should have a far-sight of the impact their design could make.
• Designing needs deep thinking. Design is basically an argument (a convincing one).

My latest Mantra as a designer: Minimalistic and simple yet effectively powerful.

From the Desk of an Undergrad: The Whole Experience

I know I’ve posted on this before, but man what an experience working with grad students. I can honestly say that I cannot think of a more community based group of students in a class. It really was amazing to watch and be apart of this class and its unity as a whole. When Marty talks about the barriers that we experience through the semester, I believe one of the most important things I’ve taken out was number four. The idea that a project isn’t about me, its all about we. And I don’t see that as just per group idea. I see groups in this class helping each other, giving feedback from group to group, sharing information, and giving those boosts of confidence that are needed. The mentors were amazing at this as well.

As informatics undergrads we are given the opportunity to work with other departments on campus. I’ve had group projects in other classes from the computer science department and telecom department, but non of them as connected as the last few projects in this class. I truly think that this class has made me reconsider the School of Informatics as a grad school option. I think a lot of thought is put into the idea of what the academics of a grad school are, but I believe something that may be more important may be the experience gained from your peers. As and undergrad it seemed intense and surreal at first. By the third project I was comfortable working with grad students and walking up to them to ask for advice. I felt apart of their group which was nice not only for the learning process but for the experience that I gained from this class. I like that when I see people from class they recognize me and I recognize them. I like that during question sessions during presentations, people know each other’s names. That doesn’t seem to happen anymore in college.

I’ve rambled long enough. Great job everyone on the presentations. There were several ideas out there that I just loved. Good luck with CHI!

..jaMEs

Big rocks and CHI

I think I’m starting to see the big rocks, or big picture ideas, that are going to make a winning project at CHI.  The easiest concept is the impact made on the homeless.  Anyone else see some big picture ideas that are likely to be in the winning CHI project?

Designing expressive computer

The visit to St. Thomas Lutheran church also reminded me a paper that I wrote a while ago before I came to the program. It might be interesting to share. You may find it interesting that it was written by the me who was not in the HCI program and not knowing anything about the design methodology yet ^^

Designing expressive computer

How could we develop expressive computer products that are able to deliver intended expressions to the users? An expressive product ensures users perceive the exact experience the product is designed to create. In contrary, users may have varied experience or unpleasant experiences on a product that has been designed without the consideration of expressiveness. Inspired by how musicians study music rhetoric in order to master composing and performing expressive music, this paper discusses computer rhetoric as a design approach for developing expressive computer. Computer rhetoric, in this paper, denotes the art of using visual, audio and functional elements effectively to achieve expressive effects of computers.

Advance classical musicians spend significant amount of time studying each musical figure appears in musical piece they play and rehearsing them in mind everyday to make sure they know how they shall sound. Indisputably, a performer needs to possess performance techniques to be physically capable to express the musical figures. However, unless the musician knows how to perform the musical figures effectively and convincingly, he/she would not be able to give a persuasive and expressive performance.

The same is applied to developing computer products. Programming skills and other technical knowledge are needed to create a workable product. However, in order to develop an expressive computer product, we need a systematic plan to find and incorporate appropriate elements into the product to create the specific expression(s).  

Even though expression, like emotion, may seem very abstract, it is made up of concrete elements. For example, we can tell that a little girl is happy when she smiles and jumps excitedly. With our experience, we are able to perceive the abstract expression from the concrete, observable behaviors, which in this case refer to the girl’s body language. In Dr. B. J. Fogg’s study of persuasive technology, Dr. Fogg proposed that by identifying the three basic roles of computer, which are tool, medium and social actor, we could then classify and understand how computers use different techniques to influence people’s attitudes and behaviors. Dr. Fogg’s study is an example of using concrete techniques, such as tunneling, reduction technology, modeling and others, to achieve persuasion, which is an abstract attribute.

Dr. Fogg took the functional approach. There are definitely more ways to break down the elements. There were also studies in visual rhetoric that investigated how visual images communicate with people. This knowledge could also be well applied to developing expressive computer. The more elements we identified, the more tools we have to build our expressive computer. Thus, understand the computer rhetorical elements will be a great help to making computer expressive.

The following illustrates three steps that developers could employ to create expressive computer

Example: Digital Health Diary for People with Mild Depression

1) Identify the expression(s): Supportive

(What is the goal of this product? How do you want users to feel about your product? Do different features or different parts of the product need to have different expressions? )

2) Finding the elements

Functional: Rewards (positive reinforcement), reminders, ubiquitous

Visual: Warm Color, Anthromorphic Interface, Catchy/ encouraging text

(What elements do you want to use? What elements best express your need? Is it technically feasible?)

3) Looking at the big picture – balancing and finding connections

Integrate the visual elements and positive reinforcement:Designing characters with friendly look – Character that smiles and speak in a friendly, supportive manner.

(What are the relationships between the different elements? How do you connect and integrate them?)

The conclusion is that the expressiveness of a product do not just manifest by itself. A step-by-step plan is needed to create the expressiveness. Future research should focus on identifying expressive elements and assessing the effectiveness of this methodology.

Reference:

 Fogg, B. J. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do, San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 2002.

Do we have the attitude to fail a million times?

Yesterday, I asked in the class, “Can the organ do different dynamics (Loud vs Soft sounds)? Or the dynamics were achieved by the different textures (single note/ chords/ broken chords/ polyphony etc) planned/chosen/created by the composer?”

When on piano, I played different dynamics through striking the keyboard with forces with different velocities and amplitudes. I thought organist could not use the same technique to produce different dynamics.  Thus, I am very curious if the organ has a range of dynamics or the dynamics differences I heard were purely perceptual and were the results of the different textures created by the composer.

Andy’s answer surprised me, VERY MUCH! I was amazed at how sophiscated the mechanism is to get different dynamics! To achieve the different dynamics, Andy had to pull some of the 20-30 different knobs in different patterns on top of playing the right notes on the keyboard and tapping the correct pedals! It is much more complicated than playing the piano in a way.

I was about to point out how the composers are using different textural patterns of music to create different moods, dynamics and expressions. It is parallel to how designers use different materials, colors, shapes, and principals to create a good usable product or certain kind of experience. But, hearing the mechanism of the organ, I paused and was fascinated.

How many thousands times do you guess Andy have practiced and failed to get the right knobs pulled at right times to produce sounds that are ~just nice~ to produce the music he has in his mind? Being able to play one chord, with perfect dynamics and length is sophiscated enough. He has to figure the locations of the notes he want to play at the keyboard, the location of the pedal he is going to use, the knobs that he is going to pull, and what angle he wants the pedal be in. How did he combined all the notes, all the chords, so that in between the notes, there were just enough pause or no pause to make the phrase of music sound nice? How did he balance the sound of each notes from a chord? How many times he had to try since the very first time he started playing organ to tame the monster so that it would sound just like how he wants?

Good musicians (and Thomas Edison too!) had the attitudes to fail thousands times until they get the sound they want. Another example was given by Professor Isaacson: the scribbles of Beethoven’s works. Do we, as designers, have the attitudes too? Can we not be frustrated or discouraged by the thousands or millions of failures throughout our career and keep polishing our works to make it look right?

What are your big rocks?

Talking about big rocks in the comment I left for vincent’s post..

I wonder what is everyone’s big rocks? should be a very interesting topic to share?

My big rocks I guess are:

“Improvement in long run”

“Living happily with appreciation to people and experience around me”

“Being able to help people in the career I do”

What about yours?

Crunch Time

With finals looming the crunch is on.  I put in 8 hours for class today and theres plenty left to do.  Not too mention I have two other final projects nearing completion.  How is the crunch treating everyone else?

I AM BEOWULF

and just pretend I repeat that phrase 5-10 more time in case you missed it the first go round. (and while repetitive, I’m pretty sure he does that in the original text so it wasn’t redundant for stupid reasons.)

So, some of us caravaned up to Indy to see Beowulf in IMAX 3d this weekend and I have to say that while the movie itself was kind of “eh,” the IMAX experience was pretty neat. It used to be (and this is my extreme age talking) that 3d films were all about “shocking” the audience. I still remember going to see the Terminator 3d experience at Universal studios in Florida when I was in 8th grade. There was stuff flying out of that screen at your face throughout the whole freaking thing. Beowulf took a slightly different, more exciting approach. The 3d used here was all about depth, not shock. The movie literally looked like it was right in front of you. Granted, they did overuse a “pull back through stuff” method (mainly through trees) but it really added a new level to the movie going experience.

It also got me thinking about what kind of new “movie” imaginative technology we would be seeing over the next decade. IMAX theaters used to be a thing of Museums. The fact that some big name releases are finally starting to filter into an IMAX release is encouraging. As a movie buff, not to mention a technology geek, I’m pretty excited that technology like this is becoming more and more available even in Indiana.

Everything is so Dynamic

I have always been amazed by the beauty of nature and how thoughtfully God created everything around us. And the way all that is reflected in our life and day-to-day activities.

Time flies by quickly. This is one thing that I think all of us would agree. Many of us have actually been talking about this. It feels like it was just yesterday, when we hesitantly entered into this program and now in another 2 weeks we would actually be done with one-fourth of our course. WOW! Another semester and we would hopefully be in a position our mentors today are. WOWWWW! They know so much. Our life is so DYNAMIC.

And so has been the weather - Dynamic! Last night, as each hour passed by, I was observing the temperature drop futher by 3 to 4 degree Celsius. It was pleasant at 9 pm last night, by morning it was chilling cold and there was sleet in the afternoon.

Oh you animated GIFS…

So I found this animated GIF today on Digg and I thought I would share it. Its a really good metaphor for what we’re trying to do with this project I think… Starting with something that looks like nothing like the final project and then filling in the details a we go.

On a related note, I really wish I could draw like that =(