Paper Reading #8: Ethnographies

The idea of ethnography can be extremely useful towards expanding upon and describing a foreign culture. The precise manner in which an ethnography occurs must abide by many formal and informal rules to ensure that as little biases are incorporated into the final product. First, it should be noted that ethnography can be described as a product and a process through write-up and participant observation. This implies that as one observes another culture, their goal is to remain a third party spectator as much as possible while gathering all relevant data in order to publish an adequate report.

For the most part, ethnographies consist of qualitative research in attempts to explore or describe a cultural phenomena. The goal is to jump into the point of view of the subject and provide casual explanations for any kind of behavior through mediums of interviews, questionnaires, observations, and technical reports. In specific, ethnography has an accompanying eight page code of ethics in which participants must abide by to ensure that no unintentional boundaries are crossed. In ethnography "the field" is a term used to describe the environment in which all research and documentation occurs. Some potential interactions from the ethnographers include participation rather than just observation by using field notes and conducting surveys and interviews.

Subsequently, Richardson notes the following methodologies to evaluate ethnography:

1. Substantive Contribution: "Does the piece contribute to our understanding of social-life?" 
2.  Aesthetic Merit: "Does this piece succeed aesthetically?" 
3. Reflexivity: "How did the author come to write this text…Is there adequate self-awareness and self-exposure for the reader to make judgments about the point of view?"[34]
4. Impact: "Does this affect me? Emotionally? Intellectually?" Does it move me?
5. Expresses a Reality: "Does it seem 'true'—a credible account of a cultural, social, individual, or communal sense of the 'real'? 

Any ethnography work must contribute to understanding by appealing to the senses of the reader. Thus, not only must it be accurate, but it also must be interesting, which can be an extremely difficult feat for talented writers, let alone ethnographers. This encompasses the accuracy of the report as well as the impact that it will consist of for people that want to learn more about a culture or a style of living. Lastly, evaluation of ethnography integrates a notice of the author of including bias writing behavior. No writing is bias-free, and includes self-deceptions as well as illusions. Ethnography reports tend to have relatively more bias description due to people's varying backgrounds and beliefs.

Ethnography is decomposed into classic virtues, technical skills, and the ethnographic self. Under classic virtues, there exists the kindly ethnographer (too much sympathy), the friendly ethnographer (show no dislike), and the honest ethnographer (conceal info to receive acceptance). Technical ethnography breaks down into the precise ethnographer (consider data too closely instead of approximation to reality), the observant ethnographer (falsely assume their report was all encompassing), and the unobtrusive ethnographer (incorrectly believe that they had no effect in the community). Lastly, the ethnographic self divides into the candid ethnographer (everything reported actually happened), the chaste ethnographer (fail to consider their relationship in the field), the fair ethnographer (unethical to report fairness), and the literary ethnographer (determining what to report and how to tell it). These explain the fallacies that one may fall under when writing a report on an ethnographic expedition.

Finally, the eight principles of ethnography should be noted to better understand the traits of a successful report. However, the source (Wikipedia) only listed seven principles in their documentation.

1. The groups should combine symbolic meanings with patterns of interaction. 
2. Observe the world from the point of view of the subject, while maintaining the distinction between everyday and scientific perceptions of reality. 
3. Link the group's symbols and their meanings with the social relationships. 
4. Record all behaviour. 
5. Methodology should highlight phases of process, change and stability. 
6. The act should be a type of symbolic interactionism. 
7. Use concepts that would avoid casual explanations. 

Next, Margaret Mead published a book titled "Coming of Age in Samoa" which was an original ethnographic work. The book is about the differences of puberty in adolescent girls in western culture compared to that of girls on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. She attempts to discuss and analyze the fine line of nature and nurturing and how they impact girls transitioning to women. By studying girls between the ages of nine and twenty, she was able to discuss many topics that were considered taboo in the late 1920s.

Mead published about certain controversial topics such as casual sex before marriage, among others. Thus, her work received massive amounts of criticism. However, Freeman published an attack on Mead after she had passed away. This report stirred up before debate with many modern prolific ethnographers choosing sides between Freeman and Mead. All in all, the point of this article was to not only provide an example of an ethnographic work, but also establish the idea that ethnography can be extremely controversial in a positive light. Thus, the implications for ethnographic reports are pervasive in the manner that they create debate to open the perspective of many different types of people and cultures.

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Book Reading #2: Emotional Design

Overall, the Emotional Design (ED) places the same underlying emphasis on importance of design usability. However, ED assess the subject from a completely different perspective than Design of Everyday Things (DOET), namely emotion. Norman seems to have literally stumbled on an unintuitive conclusion that aesthetics effects the ease with which people interact with new designs. This is a key difference from DOET due to the fact that DOET simply analyzes the function-ability of a design and downplays or even ignores aesthetics.

To begin in ED, Norman notes that happiness can facilitate creative thinking while negative emotions can cause the human to enter a flight or fight mental stage. This alone has huge implications on the design process. For instance, designs that simple to use in the initial stages create happiness of success and engage the user in a circular cycle of feeling more creative and tolerating minor nuances at later stages of the design usage. Whereas a frustrated user in the initial stage of using a new design will be rather automated in similar responses and refuse to engender a new approach to solving their problem. Thus, the designer should create a positive mood on it's users whether it be simple directions, interface, and even a comedy clip to ensure proper usage at a later component of the design object. The iPhone is a great example because the home screen is simple to use and creates a sense of curiosity that the user carries with them as they delve into new and intriguing applications. In contrast to DOET, Norman doesn't indicate any connection with user mood and the usage of the device. Thus, he uses ED to elaborate on some of his ideas in DOET in further depth through the inclusion of emotions.

In ED, Norman then delves into visceral, behavioral, and reflective types of thinking. In analyzing the way people think, Norman begins touching on very interesting psychological topics such as the fact that as the human becomes more stressed, they begin to become more focused and less creative. Thus, Norman divides his designs into categories of fun and serious. He notes that driving a BMW is fun, so the user tends to look over minor flaws whereas power plant emergency systems should induce a state of stress to create a more focused individual. At this point, ED begins to diverge from DOET in the methodology that ED is analyzing the current situation in which a device would be used. I think this is critical to keep in mind for specific designs, but the average everyday item will require personal usage in many environments that have ranging human emotion. I will briefly mention that Norman did discuss this in depth in ED for an introductory chapter, but his mention that sound is a simple and useful technique to induce the proper mood on people was extremely enlightening and interesting.

As Norman concludes his first chapter of ED, he finally unleashed his annoying side that was present in DOET. In discussing visceral traits of humans, he identifies that it is a pattern recognizing mechanism used to help decode many sensory images and even languages. He divulges on a relative escapade in bringing up abundant facts about how people learn languages, but fails to connect this to how a designer would incorporate it in the design process. This reminded me of his section about memory in DOET in which he provided some interesting points, but never mentioned how to apply how humans function. Lastly, Norman finishes up the first chapter of ED with the fact that the design process is immensely difficult. He notes that some people make like a design the first time, but not the second, or vice-versa, or based upon any kind of emotional infringement. In essence, he properly notes that designing a new device is extremely challenging as he did a plethora of times in DOET, but fails to provide any kind of guidance whatsoever.

In conclusion, I felt that the style of ED and DOET was extremely similar in regards to the fact that Norman brings up some fascinating topics, notes that they can be important in the design process, but does not provide any tangible examples. However, I felt that ED was intended to be an extension of DOET in the fact that it builds upon DOET by incorporating one more aspect that designers must consider, emotion. Although Norman did not mention emotion in DOET, it is probably the most influential matter in the utilization of a device. Norman most likely dissects the emotional impact in the design process which I would very much like to read in the near future.

Homework 2: Bad Designs

1. Vegetable Cutter

The vegetable cutter pictured above has several deficiencies that make it less than a sub par design. For instance, the safety measures, or lack thereof, can be a substantial problem to users. However, the cutter has more fundamental flaws at a deeper level such as ineffective chopping techniques.

In addition, the vegetable cutter is not more advantaged than a simple cutting knife. In fact, a knife may be safer and easier to use than this contraption.

The following sections will delve into the constraints, mapping and visibility, feedback, and conceptual model that make this vegetable cutter a non-elegant and hard to use design.

Constraints:
The physical constraints are that the cutter is possess are typically hard to reason with the designer. For example, it is unclear which of the three utilities that the cutter provides will leave the user with the most efficient way to cut a vegetable. In fact, the cutter drastically fails to perform on all blade designs except for the longer and more regulated cuts. Also, the cutter fails on some foods, such as onions. All of this is in due to the lack of physical constraints that the blades display to cut the appropriate type of food. Lastly, safety is a huge issue. The cutter should contain a constraint that physically disallows the user to cut him or her self, but this device lacks the safety measures.

Mapping and Visibility:
The mapping and visibility is some what obscure. It took a decent amount of time to understand how the mapping works in order to interchange the blades. For instance, the mapping may be one to one, but it is far from natural. Also, the visibility posses somewhat of a problem. For example, the device used to change blades is located on the side, under the tall metal latch. Also, it was not immediately clear that this would actually change the blades. Usage of different color codes may have helped in this instance.

Feedback:
The feedback is rather consistent and immediate on this device. I would even claim that the feedback is about as good as this device allows. However, the design issues posed in the other sections prevent any type of positive feedback. Thus, this section is irrelevant as a whole because it requires an overall coherent machine, but this vegetable cutter does not stand up to the standards of a safe and usable device in everyday kitchen cutting.

Conceptual Model:
The concept model is simple. Slide a piece of food through and have it cut one way. Switch the blades, and the device should slice it another way. However, the system image fails to accomplish this simple task. The system image has deficiencies in the blades that do not allow a clean cut for most types of food. Thus, the gulf of execution is not adequate for this type of design. Also, the concept of cutting vegetables that a simple kitchen knife can provide is not going to be substituted by this vegetable cutter any time soon.

2. Speaker and Sub System

The stereo system pictured above is a design failure for a plethora of reasons. It is incredibly intuitive on many levels. I have attempted to use this an abundant number of times, but each time I note that I am struggling to plug the correct wires in or have difficulty getting the system to achieve to task that I aim to complete.

This system fails the test of having new and unfamiliar users being able to intuitively figure out the system without much background work. I claim that even with a manual, this would be a complex system to figure out all of the nuances.


The following sections will delve into the constraints, mapping and visibility, feedback, and conceptual model that make this stereo system a non-elegant and hard to use design.

Constraints:
The constraints are mostly physical due to the fact that only certain wires can be plugged into certain sockets on the system. However, difficulty arises when two differentiating wires can be plugged into the same socket in the case for right or left surround sound. No standard is adopted, so there is the elegant design possible. Also, there is no identifiable constraint of what needs to be plugged in and what is support system. One can only figure this out with lots of tinkering, only to forget it next week.

Mapping and Visibility:
The mapping for this system is beyond poor. There are numerous wires, which makes it difficult to determine which wire solves which problems. For example, the sub controls component has three to four wires in use (I am still not even sure which is the correct number). It becomes even more confusing when the wires can be plugged into the sub, a socket, or directly to the TV. The visibility has countless issues as well. For example, we are using duct tape to label the wires. There should be a much simpler method to overcome the task of not knowing which wires attach to which speakers. The problem becomes exponential when a speaker is blown out -- which wires map to which speakers in this case? One more thing to note is that there are four potential speakers and only two places to input the wires into.

Feedback:
Feedback fails for a variety of reasons. First, there are no LEDs on the sub that indicate it is working. This is a simple problem that becomes a nuisance at its finest. Also, the feedback on which speakers are turned on is a problem. Some speakers are outside which involves constant walking back and forth just to evaluate the previous connectivity. After multiple tries, this becomes quite cumbersome. The gulf of evaluation is far from being solved in this system. A simple solution would be to have an LED for each speaker to indicate if it is turned on or not.

Conceptual Model:
Lastly, the conceptual model is significant different from the system model. I imagine the conceptual model to be four speaker inputs, one for each speaker. A sub control that has two rotational knobs, one for volume and one for the sub itself. The system model however, only has two inputs. In addition, it has many other ports that complicate matters even worse. Also, the system model has a sub control that is difficult to figure out it communicates with the sub. The system model can use a few minor tweaks to make this stereo a feasible piece of technology that I don't dread turning on to enjoy some lively music.

3. Visual C++

Programming should be a relatively fun and easy to pick up skill. However, there seems to be some unmistakable nuances that accommodate programming. For instance, the environment in which users program is far from simple.

Visual Studios should be a program that allows users to begin programming with less than sophisticated knowledge of library files and other debugging techniques. For instance, Visual C++ is not a program that is can be opened, the user type "Hello World!", and all is golden.

The following sections will delve into the constraints, mapping and visibility, feedback, and conceptual model that make this piece of software a non-elegant and hard to use design.


Constraints:
Visual C++ contains main software constraints that are inevitably negative as a whole. For instance, the user is unable to coherently navigate the menu. It takes hundreds of hours of practice until a user is able to understand the constraints that programming places upon an individual. Visual Studios offers an immense amount of programming help, but it is far from easy to learn for novices. I would recommend the menu be more intuitive for users to figure out independently, and constraints should be logically applied to help users navigate themselves.

Mapping and Visibility:
The mapping is probably one of the largest pitfalls that this program faces. For instance, the debugging menu is notorious for not being user friendly. I have spent the last four years of my life understanding programming, but I still have trouble figuring out the mapping of the menu with the intended actions. Even after I discover how to use the debugging software adequately, I forget it after a winter break from school. The debugging software as well as the program as a whole is immensely helpful, but the lack of visibility proves to be detrimental. Programming is a complex hobby, but Microsoft can do better at helping new programmers into a friendly environment.

Feedback:
The feedback of this program has mixed reviews. The compiler is somewhat adept at aiding users find their errors. It does require some practice, but users can uncover there mistakes rather easily at a beginner level. However, the feedback in terms of other functions is a complete failure. For instance, the debugging feedback shows small red circles by the indicated line, but this is not enough visual information to distinguish the correct execution and evaluation methods. I would suggest including text boxes that might help new users find their way through the program with appropriate feedback.

Conceptual Model:
The concept model should be rather straightforward. I type some code into the program, I attempt to compile, but I find an error. Then I use the debugger to figure out way the compiler disliked my input. However, the system model requires numerous library headers to be included and the compiler can be vague at times. The system module also possess many extra features that may intimidate new users. This becomes a point where technology has evolved quite far, but the best approach would be to potentially include less features in order to create a simple systematic model that one can easily follow.

4. Ping Pong Table

The ping pong table featured above may be slightly outdated from more expensive and newer versions, but it provides a great example of a poor design. Although the ping pong table probably looked beautiful sitting in the retailer's window pane, it quickly became an object that requires high maintenance due to the instability in the design itself.

The table has two aspects to it that make it a weak design. First, the legs which one can see are not fool proof and are bending at incorrect angles. Second, the net tension holder, which in this picture is completely removed. We have substituted the end of a miniature flag pole to currently uphold the net.

The following sections will delve into the constraints, mapping and visibility, feedback, and conceptual model that make this ping pong table a non-elegant and hard to use design.

Constraints:
A physical constraint of this system should be the feasibility of the table to fold up and roll away. This is way the designers used table legs that maneuvered in and out through the arm-like metal hinges. However, the designers failed to consider the fact that this design would not only show early wear and tear, but also would not remain perpendicular to the table. Taking into mind the constraint that the legs must fold up, the designers could have came up with a more appropriate design, such as straight edged telescope folding legs.

Also, the netting itself must be adjustable. However, this ping pong table uses metal screws to adjust the net based on game play. One can see that the users of this ping pong table probably had immense trouble with this archaic design, and even broke the entire mechanism in the process. A more appropriate tension design would be applicable to tighten and loosen the net.

Mapping and Visibility:
The mapping and visibility of the net itself is somewhat obscure. First, it is not clear which direction the metal contraption should be screwed to adhere to any net adjustments. The net must possess the abilities to either tighten or loosen and rise higher or fall lower. The becomes quite easy to mix up the two utilities and actually rise the net when one wants to loosen it. The visibility is also distorted. The location of the changing the net vertically is underneath the metal side attachment. This can complicate usage for some people.

Feedback:
The feedback fails in a few dimensions. First, one can never tell if the ping pong table is parallel to the ground. The functionality of the legs make this one hard to distinguish. A simple level would help solve this one aspect, but the overall design of the table legs is incompatible with simple design. Also, the feedback on the net adjustment device is obscure. Typically, nets need to be changed in small amounts. With this setup, one cannot tell which direction the net is moving until too much change has occurred in the wrong direction. Users must then continue to make two adjustments to overcome this issue. Potential pictures on the screws would allow for easier use.

Conceptual Model:
The concept model is actual quite similar to the system model. However, the system model does have a few minor defects. Again, the system model is far from robust in actual implementation. Also, the system model has an obscure net configuration. I will note that the concept of folding up the table for denser storage does fit the system model. However, the actual design of component parts is the downfall of the ping pong table.

5. Remote

Although the television remote has increased in usability over the past decade or so, the remote itself still posses some problems for human interaction. Some examples that jump out are the fact that watching TV should be a generally enjoyable task, but I find that understanding the remote and how it communicates with the television can be burdensome.

Some quick fixes can severely improved the usability of the remote, but at its current developmental stage, it remains far from ideal. It is definitely usable, but personally, I only use a fraction of what the TV is capable of.

The following sections will delve into the constraints, mapping and visibility, feedback, and conceptual model that make this TV remote a non-elegant and hard to use design.

Constraints:
The obvious physical constraints are the buttons one can press to attempt to communicate with the TV, where the entertainment exists. However, the software itself does limit incorrect usage fairly well, such as providing audio feedback when a button is pressed that has no effect on the current state. I would also consider the size of the remote a constraint. In my opinion, the remote has the potential to be a relatively small device, but the elongated design posses constraints on shifting the small human hand.

Mapping and Visibility:
The mapping is perhaps the greatest flaw of the television remote. I know for a fact that the TV can produce an almost insurmountable features, such as searching for specific channel description, tracking specific show times, or tracking recommender shows as a few examples. However, as a user, not only am I completely unaware of these aspects, but also, I don't want to take time to figure it out. The remote should be a small device with multi-functional ability to present these ides visually and through a natural mapping. However, the remote in the picture has red, green, yellow, and blue buttons with no labeling. I have no idea what these buttons are intended to do.

Feedback:
The feedback on the TV is rather straightforward. There is no gulf of evaluation per say, but do I notice that the gulf of execution does exist to an extent. I think to myself, "what do I want to accomplish?". And then I look down at the remote, and think "who the heck can I do that?". The problem with the remote is that there are a plethora of potential states one can be in such as menu, searching, or garnering info. However, the dilemma arises when I am at a lost of knowing what functions I am able to perform in each state and which functions that I am not. Feedback is a main culprit in this case. A potential suggestion would be to highlight buttons with LEDs to indicate what available actions are at my disposal.

Conceptual Model:
The conceptual model is rather easy to grasp. My main goal is to watch a television show at the current time or record one in the future. If I want to record a future show, I should simply be able to perform a search, find it, then set a recording. If I am watching television live, I either know the specific channel, or want to search channels based on my mood.

The system model has improved at searching television shows, but still fails to do so quickly. I would prefer a quick method than query based. Also, the searching of shows is dreading. I have a few favorite channels, such as ESPN, Discovery, Commedy Central, Science, and FX. If nothing is on those channels, I do not watch television because I don't have time to search through over one hundred channels and find nothing on. The system model should allow me to search for similar channels to those I mentioned or for similar shows to my favorites, such as Suits, Modern Family, or Pranked. My opinion is to form a JV between DirectTV and Google and see how the realm channel searching can be evolved.

Homework 2: Good Designs

1. Elevator

The generic elevator is a great example of an intuitive and easy to use design. The fact that no user manual is ever needed for the average person adds to its natural design. Furthermore, the utility that an elevator provides transports millions of people each day. Proof that the elevator is a good design is due to the fact that people can use it while multitasking on important tasks. It consumes almost no intelligent thought despite the vast dangers associated with vertical travel.

The only flaw that elevators possess is the occasional dysfunction. Considering the number of times that an elevator properly works, it is quite easy to see that this ratio is near 100% rate of effectiveness.

The following sections will delve into the constraints, mapping and visibility, feedback, and conceptual model that make an elevator an elegant and simple to use design.

Constraints:
When initially walking up to an elevator, the constraint of entry arises. The elevator is designed so that the user cannot gain entry until the elevator determines that the elevator is on the correct floor and it is safe. Also, the elevator button signals that a guest is awaiting entry to avoid indefinite waiting. Furthermore, modern elevators have sensors to detect when a person or object is blocking the closing of the doors. This only enhances safety and guarantees the constraint of improper elevator use with a door open .


Mapping and Visibility:
The mapping is perhaps the most intuitive feature of the elevator. On the outside, there are two buttons to indicate which direction the user wants to travel in. Not only that, but a light will flash above the elevator prior to arrival to visually alert the user that it is ready. Once inside the elevator, designers present the user with a natural mapping of which floor they want to go to. The visibility of buttons is in a clear position. Finally, the designers have the option to limit travel on certain elevators to certain floors -- an essential feature in security design.

Feedback:
The elevator continuously provides feedback to the user throughout the ride. First, the button on the outside remains lite up until the doors open to indicate that it is functioning. The elevator has arrows above the doors to ensure the user is traveling in the correct direction. Once inside, the users floor stays lite until arriving on the desired floor. Once at the floor, the elevator opens the doors and makes a ding sound to indicate to visibly distracted riders that it is time to get off. Never once does the user have to question if the elevator is working properly.

Conceptual Model:
The designer of the elevator correctly matches up the system design with the conceptual model. The utilitarian aspect of the elevator is one which to transport users vertically to a certain destination. The elevator provides one of two choices in terms of direction. And then allows the user to select their exact destination, exactly as one would expect. Since multiple people ride the elevator, the service is first floor, first serve to create equal priority to all riders. All components of the conceptual model are thus met.

2. iPhone

The iPhone is perhaps one of the most intelligent and easy to use technological devices based on its potential and complexity. The mere fact that the iPhone is a computer, a cell phone, and a way of life for some people is itself unbelievable. Discovering that the iPhone has only one main button to control most desired actions makes this device remarkable in almost every domain.

One of the critical aspects of the iPhone that make it outstanding is that it is constantly being updated. Apple continuously updates software on the iPhone to accommodate any changes that need to be made. This adds to the sheer beauty of this device.

The following sections will delve into the constraints, mapping and visibility, feedback, and conceptual model that make an iPhone an elegant and simple to use design.


Constraints:
The obvious constraint is the lack of too many hardware buttons. The iPhone prevents the user from unintentionally pressing a button on a screen and having to back track to get to a desired state previously entered in. The software constraint is the main component that prevents users from ill-intended uses. The software is almost completely intuitive in nature, but it is quickly adjustable to provide users with generic flexibility in almost any type of application. The iPhone constrains owners to use the device in the exact manner that they intended without any external support. The ports to the iPhone are physically constrained as well to avoid improper connections.


Mapping and Visibility:
The iPhone provides perfect visibility and mapping. All computation that is unnecessary to the end user is contained in the robust case, away and out of sight as needed. The mapping is as about as natural as one can imagine. I have not come across a user that requires explanation to use the iPhone -- in fact, many children can use this device. The software touch screen allows each application to interact with the user in its own natural mapping environment rather than adopt rigid hardware and force applications to adjust to certain phone buttons. The visibility of the phone presents the user with a main button upfront and side buttons that adjust volume. The power button, the charger application, and the auxiliary are in confirmation of mapping to appropriate functions.


Feedback:
The feedback from the iPhone is both complete and instantaneous. First, the user can visible see on the screen any changes that occur due to their interference. There is never a point in which the user has to question whether their input was received by the phone. Furthermore, the iPhone allows users to immediately see the feedback from their actions. Since the phone is primarily operated by software, it is easy for designers to allow the user to immediately see any effects from pressed buttons.

Conceptual Model:
The conceptual model of a phone and a computer bundled into one device might seem complex at first. However, Apple somehow managed to make the system implementation as intuitive as the concept model. I view my phone as a utility to call another person as well as having internet on the side. The iPhone's system image is more complete than my conceptual model ever could be. The reason for the iPhone success is the ability for its developers to consider and solve issues that users must face before they even know of the problem itself. The designers uncovered errors in the system model that the user would most likely never uncover themselves. This is the most elegant conceptual model for as complex device as the iPhone. The iPhone's intuitive features seem to know me as a user better than I know myself.

3. Key-less Car Entry

The key-less car keys are a simple but intelligent design that allow simplicity of use. The example picture above is a Lexus model. The keys themselves allow ease of operation without much thought on the part of the user. Everything feels natural to the user while the keys protect the user from not only unintended outside danger, but avoids danger that users can impose upon themselves (locking their own keys in the car).

This is a classic evolution of the original car key to increase usability. I consider this a good design for many of the larger and obvious improvements all the way down to the slight comfort variations that include button indention to fit my fingers perfectly.

The following sections will delve into the constraints, mapping and visibility, feedback, and conceptual model that make key-less car entry an elegant and simple to use design.

Constraints:
The physical constraints are pervasive with the aid of this new invention. The keys prevent users from locking the keys in the car by electronic signal. The car is unable to start without the keys being in the near vicinity, which is a crucial design feature. The keys have an error prone implementation by forcing them to hold the trunk or alarm signals. This allows the user to get away with slight presses of these buttons without incurring detrimental damages or annoying car alarms. The last constraint is probably the most unpredictable. The keys have a removable section that allow the user to possess a key to the glove compartment. Thus, valet will never have access to certain components of the car that the driver may want to keep hidden.

Mapping and Visibility:
The car keys contain four buttons which is about as simplistic as one can imagine. The buttons contain pictures to clearly indicate the functionality of the button. Each of the four buttons has a 1:1 mapping associated with it. Furthermore, the keys unlock a locked car when within a close proximity. This feature is hidden from the user, but is intentionally hidden because it requires no action on the users part. Also, once the car is locked, the keys won't be able to unlock the car for a period of time. This prevents users from accidently unlocking the car again which the user should not have to worry about. In essence, the simple mapping and lucid visibility allows for a great design.

Feedback:
The feedback is a critical component of the keys. First, when the trunk is popped, it makes a pop noise to indicate to the user that an action has occurred. Also, the keys make non-annoying beeping sounds signaling whether the doors are locked or unlocked. An enhanced feature is the confirmation that all doors are locked with a longer flat audio feedback. Furthermore, the keys make a long ringing sound when the car is unlocked and the driver is departing in distance from the car. This is a warning signal that the user is unable to miss, so if the user does intentionally want the car to remain unlocked, he/she can continue walking away. This provides the user with a manual override with human interpretation of audio feedback.

Conceptual Model:
The conceptual model for car keys should be lock/unlock the car. If the car is unlocked, then I should be able to access all internal features necessary. The system image is slightly more complex, but for benevolent and intelligent design. The keys allow the user to open the trunk without being in the car which simply adds a convenience feature without much complication. Also, the system image has tremendous amounts of internal work that prevent unintended harm to the vehicle such as locking one's own keys in the car or walking away from an unlocked vehicle. However, the system model is perfectly designed because all of these safety features are appropriately hidden from the user. Thus, the user only sees what is necessary for operation while the system model has complexities, but only alerts the user in detrimental cases. A great system design for something that should be easy, but is trickier than one might anticipate.

4. Tool Kit

The Ryobi tool kit pictured above is one that possess abundant utility to the use while still maintaining flexibility. Its intuitive design make it quite easy to use for almost any homeowner despite the complexity of the tasks that it can perform. Key aspects of this design are the re-usability function and natural physical constraints.

Although this tool can be dangerous, it is rare that an injury is encountered from users. In fact, the natural design makes it almost unfeasible for the user to use the tool kit in an inappropriate manner.

The following sections will delve into the constraints, mapping and visibility, feedback, and conceptual model that make this tool kit an elegant and simple to use design.

Constraints:
The Ryobi tool kit contains many constraints that help the user figure out proper use without a gargantuan instruction manual. First, the drill bits are quite easy to use. They possess a jagged end which is used for the drilling and a flat surface on the other end. It becomes apparent that the flat surface end is suppose to screw into the drill and tighten. Other physical constraints include the battery pack that powers the drill. It has a charger as well as the drill bit it must fit into. However, the battery has an elongated charger on one end which slips into the drill or charger. This end makes it impossible to stick in the incorrect way.

Mapping and Visibility:
The mapping for this system is a natural and one to one mapping. For instance, the versatility of each drill bit allows the user to chosen which functionality they desire. Never at one time should the user be confused or misinterpret the evaluation methodology. They can simply pick up the drill bit, and test it out before actually using it which is an advocate of the increased visibility that this tool kit provides. The drill itself has a clockwise and counterclockwise direction to tighten or loosen screws. This is the only thing that might be considered ambiguous of the design. I would recommend to the designs to put a better picture on this button rather than the current dark triangle. This change would make the Ryobi tool set complete.

Feedback:
The feedback is both direct and immediate to the user. First, the direction of rotation provides instantaneous feedback to indicate correct or incorrect usage which implies that the user can quickly figure out the mistake, if one was made. Also, if the user incorrectly selected a drill bit, or one that is of the incorrect size, they can simply remove it from the drill and interchange it with the appropriate bit in a matter of seconds. Furthermore, the battery pack has an LED to indicate to the user whether the device is powering the battery pack as one might expect.

Conceptual Model:
The conceptual model is about as identical to the system model as one can imagine. The conceptual model is a drill system that has interchangeable drill bits to accommodate any design. This gives the user enormous versatility. The system model is slightly different, but not too much. This model includes a battery pack and recharge station that one might not anticipate in the conceptual model. However, this is elegant because the drill draws significant portions of energy and batteries would deteriorate quickly otherwise. The system model also grants the user an enormous drill bit selection choice while the conceptual model may have only a few different bits. This makes the system model superior and very compact since the entire set can be carried with only two hands.

5. Microsoft Excel

Microsoft is one of few software programs that solves the problem of easy to use design. The concept of creating a virtual workbook is a complex task to consider. However, Excel proves to be extremely intuitive for simplistic use to new users. In addition, Excel has some incredibly high tech and custom features that enable to user to create personal workbooks.

Excel has the ability to expand while maintain its flexibility and core simplicity. Although there is some overhead with learning Excel functions, not much is needed to acquire adequate skills.

The following sections will delve into the constraints, mapping and visibility, feedback, and conceptual model that make Microsoft Excel an elegant and simple to use design.

Constraints:
Excel provides some obvious and clear cut constraints to assist the user. Excel only provides functions that the user should be able to do to accomplish simple tasks. In fact, Excel has an error checking function to prevent any erroneous input that does not make to the program. This key and robust design allows users many degrees of freedom while monitoring their compatibility with the software computation. One of the most crucial constraints that Excel imposes is the undo tool bar. This allows the user to basically travel in time as they may make errors along the way. This is a wonderful feature that we take for granted sometimes.

Mapping and Visibility:
The mapping Excel provides is extraordinary. The tool bar matches unanimously with that of the function that Excel has programmed in. Although Excel has more commands than any normal person would ever use, it is quite easy to Google Excel tasks and receive an answer to the specified query. The visibility also allows Excel to flourish. The tool bar is broken up into several tabs, such as Home and Design. Each one of these tabs has a subsection, such as Font or Alignment. It is analogous to searching files in a directory as the user goes one step deeper until realizing the utility that they were looking for. Thus, Excel provides relatively simple mapping and visibility considering all of the functions it allows.

Feedback:
The feedback Excel provides immediate feedback that bridges the gulf of evaluation. The feedback is so thorough that Excel is able to predict my intention before I even act. For example, the sum function immediately adds up the entire column or row based on input data. More often than not, this is the case of summing. However, I can easily override the function as I see fit. Excel also displays user effects without delay. Thus, as I build a worksheet, I can visually see my own progress and any errors that are made along the way.

Conceptual Model:
The system model that Excel implements is very complete and almost identical to the conceptual model. The system model incorporates some additional function complexities that I will rarely encounter as a user, but are essential to have such as a pivot table. But the concept of inputting data in a formalized manner, editing it as one sees fit, and applying calculations for visual ease is almost identical to the way in which Excel functions as a program. It passes the test because a person can easily look at an actual worksheet, input it into Excel, and then even design enhanced features, such as data graphs. Thus, the system model is all that the conceptual model provides and more.

Book Reading #1: Design of Everyday Things

Book Reaction:
All in all, The Design of Everyday Things was an eye opening book and presented some intriguing issues to consider for future design creation. Although I favored the book as a whole, there were numerous drawbacks that held it back due to it being outdated or a failure on the part of the author, Norman. One main idea of the book was to note that technology evolves at a much faster rate than humans can adapt. However, in the past two and a half decades, many of Normans example become irrelevant. On the other hand, Norman's concepts and ideas still persevere through the years. I will dissect each triumph and each inherent flaw of the book in the following subsections.

First, I will acknowledge some of the egregious nature of Norman's work and some potential improvements that would make his thesis much more profound. One thing I noticed throughout the book was that Norman seemed rather unorganized and would diverge on random tangents throughout his writing. His overarching theme was the idea that designs for any kind of technology needs to be easily used and understood by the layman. However, he would dedicate several sections and pages to seemingly irrelevant information, such as how the short and long term memory system works. Although it proved to be an interesting read, I recall thinking to myself, "how is this going to help me develop a more improved design?". If there had to be an underlying failure of this book, it was the lack of connection among his ideas. If somehow Norman was able to provide advice with how human memory works to apply to design creation, then his efforts would have been validated. Thus, if I were to give some helpful hints to Norman twenty four years, I would recommend drawing more inferences among his findings. Any implication linking with scattered ideas, such as POET, with design problems, would have an immense impact.

Second, I also had wished Norman went through the design process of a product to demonstrate a tangible example. He continually presents difficulties such as incorporating constraints, satisfying the manufacturer, accommodating large numbers of diverse people, etc. However, he never unveils how to link all of these aspects in moderation together under one roof. If somehow Norman connected how his memory techniques could be applied to a natural mapping, then his ideas would have much more profoundness. An insurmountable amount of the book could be truncated in lieu of providing this one design example. Although Norman does present a very brief example in the first chapter, it is far from complete. For instance, Norman could have chosen an already existing technology and delved into its design process, or could have created an arbitrary new piece of technology in which case he could have came up with varying types of scenarios. A single chapter over creating a design, receiving user feedback, improving visibility, bridging the gulf of evaluation, and manufacturer approval would have provided the reader with an easy to follow tangible example from start to finish. Norman could have taken this in any direction he wanted. Not only would it have been a gargantuan addition to the book, but also it would have increased interest to the reader on numerous levels. This single implementation would have assisted Norman in linking all of his ideas into a single output.

Overall, Norman did a fantastic job of persuading the reader to consistently evaluate the design of common appliances. He demonstrated the need to evaluate a device that is easy to use and consider how many iterations it went through it achieve its current state of perfection and simplicity. He noted that some ingenious designs fail not due to advance technology, but rather due to the lack of a natural mapping or inconsistent system and concept images. Throughout the book, Norman provides examples that illustrate and validate his point. Most of the technology he presented was archaic for the year of 2012, but the concepts that he was attempting to make stood out to the reader. One commendation that I would attribute to Norman would be his ability to predict the future. Several of his designs including the modern TV guide and the reading of digital books among other things were well documented. I was extremely impressed by Norman's ability to assess where the future was heading and not afraid to make extreme assumptions of future technology. I can count an abundant number of items in his book that turned out to be an everyday item for myself that did not exist twenty years ago.

Lastly, I would like to point out one major change in society that Norman, nor anyone else, could have predicted -- Google. Continuously through The Design of Everyday Things, Norman acknowledges the failure of manuals due to their vast size. However, I claim that this is completely irrelevant in modern society. If someone were to encounter a problem with a piece of technology in the late 1980's, they would have to search a user manual hours to find their query. With the aid of Google, one can simply access almost any kind of imaginable question about a piece of technology and receive an answer within a mere second. I would agree with the fact that the design of common appliances still needs to be simplistic for an average user, but it is less critical now than in Normans time. Google has transformed not only the way technology is used but also the way in which designers think about the design process itself.

In essence, Norman's book provided critical evaluation of the design process. The concepts that he presents are ubiquitous among virtually every object my body come in contact with today. Although I critiqued his paper from a modern day point of view, his writing has had a deep impact among designers and will continue far into the future beyond my years. I added several improvements that would support his underlying thesis throughout this blog. One had to read Norman's book with a grain of salt due to the fact that it was outdated in terms of the rate of evolving technology. However, I am still amazed at some of his predictions from that far in the past. In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed The Design of Everyday Things and I plan to keep some of his prime points in the back of my head as I enter a future in which simple design is mandatory for success.

Chapter 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things:
To open the book, Norman does a fantastic job of describing the necessity of intelligent design to accommodate unintelligent users. His example of how to design a door that users should know whether to push or pull without external acknowledgement illustrated his point perfectly. I had never considered the usage of door handles, but they are cleverly designed to nudge users in the right direction such as a push bar with half of it missing from the hinge side. A few of his examples, such as the phone were archaic, but still communicated his idea of the importance of intentional design in common items. Although many items have to traverse through around six iterations to become perfect, designers can use test subjects to hopefully cut this number down. 

Norman also touched upon several more important topics such as concept design, mapping, and feedback. Concept design is critical because if the system performs as I imagine it, usage becomes second nature, unlike the refrigeration example. Mapping tends to be more complex due to the increased function-ability of technology. However, if mapping approaches a 1:1 ratio (natural mapping) of buttons to features, then usage becomes much more natural, as in the example of car buttons. Lastly, feedback has an immense impact due to the user knowledge of knowing whether they are using a certain piece of technology correctly or not. The sooner the feedback is delivered to the use, the more effective the design will be. However, this becomes difficult in some scenarios due to the vast number of technological features which creates the 'U' parabola of complexity and technology.

Chapter 2: The Psychology of Everyday Actions:
Norman then transitions to analyzing how humans interpret the world by suggesting that they not blame themselves when it is the error of the design. I am in slight disagreement with this point due to the fact that design of common appliances should be made easy as possible, but humans need some common sense when using devices. With the plethora of technological advances, humans should become adept to intuitively understanding new pieces of equipment adeptly. This is in conjunction with the feedback systems of designing everyday things. If humans are given correct feedback early on, then blame is irrelevant, and the correct technological usage can be applied. 

Next, Norman delves into the topic of how people do things by forming the goal, forming the intention, specifying an action, executing the action, perceiving the state of the world, interpreting the sate of the world, and evaluating the outcome. This forms one for goals, three for execution, and three for evaluation. This model is immensely helpful, but Norman fails on describing how this can be applied to designing an object. If a more in depth connection was made, this would have been one of the most beneficial chapters. However, Norman does note that if these are applied in conjunction with visibility, a good conceptual model, natural mappings, and continuous feedback, then designs can be improved. Some examples, such as VCR usage, are noted, but they are less than perfect analogies and extremely archaic.

Chapter 3: Knowledge in the Head and in the World:
In the introduction of the chapter, Norman notes that information is in world, great precision is required, natural constraints are present, and cultural constraints are present. Each topic is then delved into further.The first, information is in the world, is quite obvious. Thus, much explanation is not needed, but he did present an example involving identifying the correct penny layout which was a valid example. Next, he notes that great precision is not required which is counter intuitive from the engineering perspective. I thought this section is an essential trait to keep in mind when designing products due to the fact that a high level view is necessary, rather than consuming oneself with the details. Lastly, he notes the power of constraints. While physical constraints are lucid to understand, cultural constraints, such as language barriers, are less obvious to a designer. Norman implies that identifying all constraints upfront is difficult, but a connoisseur designer always takes the constraints into effect and uses them in benevolent ways. 

Norman then proceeds to analyze the human memory system. He notes the structure of memory, such that people only can remember around seven numbers for a limited time, memory for arbitrary things, meaningful relationships, and memory through explanation. Although I enjoyed learning about the way memory functions, I found this completely irrelevant to the thesis of his book. Norman made no connection with how this knowledge can be applied, and thus, it seems rather irrelevant. I will note that Norman favors knowledge in the world rather than in the head, which is completely obvious, but an instructional reminder to keep in the back of one's head when designing a new object.

Chapter 4: Knowing What to Do:
The first portion of the chapter delves into constraints that are either physical (interlocking of Lego pieces), semantic (rider faces forward), cultural (police lights), or logical (all pieces used) in nature. The simple example of assembling a Lego police motorcycle was extremely intuitive to explain the potential constraints that will arise and how they can be useful. Norman did a fantastic job with this section of the chapter. Next, Norman discusses issues with switches. The problem is that switches are the same, but he presents a unique approach to solving this problem by re-designing the switch itself, the orientation of the switch, or the layout to correspond to their destination in the room. While this was an abnormal way of thinking, I found it very stimulating, and opened up new possibilities that challenge the status quo.

Although visibility is a crucial design component of everyday things, Norman hammers the point to the reader bu re-emphasizing its importance. One of the more insightful aspects of the chapter was his description of feedback through abstract mediums, such as sound. I recently read a book of how fa-breeze almost failed as a product because it failed to deliver a feedback of correct usage such as toothpaste or shampoo foaming. These utilities don't add any extra effect, but they do indicate to the user proper usage. Thus, Norman does a solid job of bringing up visibility and feedback  in design throughout not only the chapter, but the book as well.

Chapter 5: To Err is Human: 
To begin, the author discusses types of slips such as capture errors, description errors, data-driven errors, associative activation errors, loss of activation errors, and mode errors. The main concept behind delineating these types of unintentionally and accidental behavior is to provide the reader with a plethora of problems to consider when designing a new object. In essence, it shows that it is almost virtually impossible to assess all of the errors that can arise, but some precautions can assuage the improper use of technology. Next, the chapter progresses by discussing human thought patterns and memory. To me, this portion of the chapter was an interesting read, but rather uncorrelated to designing everyday things. Although knowing how human memory functions is critical, there are other important factors that Norman could have considered to help designers improve their works of technology. However, the tic-tac-toe example which was set up analogous to picking three numbers adding to fifteen was a genius example. This cleverly illustrated the way in which the mind views different patterns based on given input.

Next, the idea of the forcing function proved very interesting. Although this can be a powerful technique, users will almost inevitably find a way around to  counter the intended effect. A great example in the book was the locking the keys in the car (although my car  has a push start and makes it impossible to lock the keys in the car). Many of the examples were outdated, but had useful concepts attached to them. Lastly, the main take away from the chapter is to put knowledge in the world, not on an instructional manual and to use constraints at any given chance, such as physical, logical, semantic, or cultural ones.

Chapter 6: The Design Challenge:
First, Norman discusses key design concepts such detailing how the free market can worsen a design. Although this seems counter intuitive, his argument is structured well while noting how phones used to be designed so well with the monopoly of Bell labs. Also, Norman brings up the famous technological evolution of keyboards and typewriters. Although the Dvorak keyboard is faster than qwerty, there would be too much overhead to change. His final comment of knowing when to stop adding features hits home well and is important for designers to consider whether to evolve a product or not. Norman did predict the feasibility of changing keyboards electronically for certain people which happened to be exactly true.

Norman progress by noting three difficulties of designers which are putting aesthetics first, designers are not typical users, and lastly, they must please their clients. The highlight of these sections was the fact that Norman recognized that end users are typically not clients. Designers have no incentive to please the people that are actually using their product. Instead, they must appease the distributors who usually only care about looks and cost. However, Norman offers no advice on how to counter this issue. Norman then touches on flexibility. While no one object will suit everyone, the ideal approach is to design a product such as a computer chair that can be adjusted to accommodate people in their own unique ways. I found this the best methodology to consider for the design process throughout the entire book.

One association of this chapter that I considered an illuminating novelty was the notation that sleek and beautiful designs typically win prizes, but in reality, are not elegant in terms of usability. Norman also notes two fallacies are creeping featurism and worshiping false images. These two gargantuan issues pose more problems to the designer. In my opinion, the worshiping of false images is pervasive in modern society. People are fooled by appearances on numerous occasions and don't know if they actually like a product until they have been using it for at least thirty days. The only way around this obstacle is to provide customers with money back guarantees to make them feel comfortable before they purchase something. In most cases, customers should always be cautious before handing over money for an alien device.

Chapter 7: User-Centered Design:
In the initial part of the chapter, Norman spends the first several pages summarizing the book to chapter seven. He reminds the read of notions such as visibility, mapping, mental reminders, etc. Although it seemed redundant, it is probably a useful writing technique considering his description of long and short term memory in an earlier chapter. However, I did find the issue of any automation is usually better than no automation interesting. His example is the word processing spell checker which provides immediate spelling feedback and provides people with more time to focus on the important aspects of writing a paper, such as novel ideas, instead of the minor nuances. I did appreciate the fact that Norman noted there are negative effects of automation, such as over-automation. Although his examples were weak, it is vital that an author consider all sides of an argument.

Norman then presents the when all else fails case, standardize. I consider this one of the hidden treasures of the book. He does take into account the difficulty of standardization - too early and potential innovations are cut off, and too late can cause a standardization failure. A fantastic example is the notion of telling time on a base 10 system. Although there would be tremendous overhead in this scheme, it would assuage the time telling process as a whole. He disowns the idea, but I find it rather intriguing. Norman also discusses the effects of writing style. I never thought about how the speed at which we write has an inverse correlation with the perceived diction. I noticed that my speaking habits tend to be unstructured and rambling at times while my writing displays a more uniform and articulate method of communication.

Paper Reading #7: Chinese Room

The overall argument that John Searle is attempting to distinguish between strong AI and weak AI. His demonstration includes a computer that is able to pass the Turing test in Chinese. The issue arises when an English speaking person uses an English version of the computer, and is able to simulate Chinese output to an unknowingly bystander. Thus, the illusion is that the machine is able to think and understand, but he claims that this is not the case. Searle's paper attacks Schank and predispositions relating to AI by claiming that machines will never possess an intangible aspect of the human brain that allows it to understand certain subjects and think in intentional terms.

Throughout the paper, Searle provides several arguments to counter his theory and his responses to these arguments. Some of the counter arguments include the Systems Reply, the Robot Reply, the Brain Simulator Reply, the Combination Reply, the Other Minds Reply, and the Many Mansions Reply. However, as Searle presented his initial set-up and introduction, I fumbled through my previous biases and attempted to form logical points to provide reasons that Searle might be viewing this problem from the wrong lens.

First, my initial response to Searle arose from defining certain terms that he uses throughout the paper, such as 'understanding' and 'intentional'. He does provide his definition of the terms, but rather, they are similar to Webster definitions and they fail to adhere to the arguments presented. Without the true definition of understanding, one cannot make a case either in favor of Searle or against. Thus, my predisposition was eerily similar to the "Other Minds Reply" from Yale. My reasoning was that if Searle cannot explain how humans understand something, then he can never assert if machines are capable of understanding. What makes my ability to communicate in English truly mean I understand English? How am I any different from accepting input (reading) and dispensing output (blogging) as a machine that can accept input of Chinese characters and output a response to a story in Chinese characters.

Searle counters the Other Minds Reply with some garbage about cognitive states. In no way whatsoever did he address the main question. Instead, he asserts a few meaningless statements that do not assess the underlying question of what makes humans understand a language or anything else for that matter. If Searle is able to not only define understanding, but then delineate how and if people are to understand something, then I can take his view point into consideration. Until that point, his entire paper falls on deaf ears.

Second, Searle launches a continual attack on the lack of intentional actions in machines. He states they are simply instantiations that are able to mimic human behavior. Although this is true to a certain degree, he fails to also look at the other side of the spectrum.Searle does not analyze humans. There are countless ethic studies that question whether humans are merely the right combination of biological parts or if we are something more. And quite frankly, the answer to that question is still in debate among many prestigious institutions. This question is analogous to whether machines are capable of reaching strong AI status on every dimension. Thus, until mainstream philosophers answer the question to whether humans are more than chemical bonds, the argument of whether machines can 'understand' something is an impossible to answer question.

Lastly, I have a few defenses for the counter argument that Searle asserts that machines will never be able to truly have intentions. To begin, I claim that humans are merely pattern recognizing entities. We see something in the environment, note the inputs, take a course of action, and then store it in memory for latter reference. If the outcome was benevolent, we refer to it in similar situations with identical environmental stimuli. If the outcome was degrading, then when we see similar inputs, we choose a different course of action. I assert that machines use pattern recognition in their programs to perform the same utility. Although the field of pattern recognition has much room to grow, it is essentially the same concept that humans are performing in day to day activities. Second, I claim that animals are extremely similar to humans on many levels. There is not much differentiating a human from a monkey on a philosophical level. However, what does distinguish us from animals is that we write books on them, and they don't write books on us. This is classically acceptable in the realm of ethics to distinguish between 'us' and 'them'. However, machines are not void of this ability. They have the ability to write other programs to accomplish certain tasks. Especially in compilers, machines and programs are very capable of writing other programs, just as humans have written the programs themselves. In this regard, it is apparent that one cannot assert that computers or machines will never be able to achieve strong AI status.

In conclusion, my remarks to Searle include that the discussion of machine understanding is currently unattainable. By today's standards, machines definitely should possess the ability to be considered as understanding beings rather than ruled out from the beginning. In essence, some human philosophical answers, such as human composition, have to emerge before we are able to transpose the analogous equivalent questions to machines. Searle wrote a thought provoking paper, but jumped to conclusions prematurely. In the end, evolution of computers will unveil new doors to answering the question of whether they will truly possess the capacity to learn and make decisions intentionally.

Paper Reading #6: PocketNavigator: Studying Tactile Navigation Systems In-Situ

Intro:

• PocketNavigator: Studying Tactile Navigation Systems In-Situ
• Pielot, Martin, Benjamin Poppinga, Wilko Heuten, and Susanne Boll. (2012).  PocketNavigator: Studying Tactile Navigation Systems In-Situ. Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012), 3131-3139.
• Author Biographies:
• Martin Pielot is working as a potential PhD student with the Institute for Information Technology in Oldenburg, Germany. He currently works in the Intelligent User group. His research interests include  usage of mobile and ubiquitous devices on the move with a focus on situationally induced impairments.
• Benjamin Poppinga is a research associate in the Human Machine Interaction group. His reserach interests include health and intelligent user interfaces and exploring unknown environments. His PhD advisor is Susanne Boll.
• Wilko Heuten works in the Human Machine Interaction group at   the Institute for Information Technology. His research interests include intelligent user interface for digital life and well being, mobile interaction, and ambient displays. He has multiple publications in CHI and his position at the university is Gruppenleiter.
• Susanne Boll  is the professor for Media Informatics and Multimedia Systems in the computer science department at the University of Oldenburg. She is on the executive board of OFFIS-Institute for Information Technology. Her research interests include field of semantic retrieval of digital media, context-aware and location-based mobile systems, and intelligent user interfaces.

Summary:
The goal of this research was to create software that is able to aid users who are accessing maps on their smartphone. Typically, problems arise when users are looking down at their phone for directions, but not paying attention to the world around them. The aim of this research is to co-exist with current location-based applications in order to create an efficient and easy to use Google Map-like application.

The researchers published a free app on the Android market in order to encourage user usage. Since the research focuses on pedestrian use, the audio supplied with vehicle GPS is not synonymous with this research since pedestrians typically don't want audio or Google Maps has a hard time determining distances when less than 10 meters. The user interface appears very similar to Google Maps, but has a small compass like figure in the lower right hand corner of the smartphone screen. This image is displayed below.

The compass above dictates which direction the user should move in. Each bar represents a vibrate, and the length of the bar indicates the length of the vibrate. This methodology allows users to know where to walk without looking down at their phone. An additional feature is that when users are standing still, they can use the compass as a wind like apparatus which will successfully point the pedestrian in the right direction.

While recording the experiment, the researchers collected data over identifying information, status information, sensor information, route information, and usage information. The data collected last over a year and a half to effectively evaluate the results properly. Although the researchers examined a plethora of data, their overlying goal was to analyze the amount of time users saved looking at their phone to assessing the environment. The tactile feedback solution presented significantly reduced user distraction. In fact, users looked at their phone almost ten times less than without the software. The evaluation section below will delve into the data that was collected and analyzed even further.

Related work not referenced in the paper:
1) "The Use of Tactile Navigation Displays for the Reduction of Disorientation in Maritime Environments" by Dobbins and Samways
2) "Tactile Displays For Enhanced Performance And Safety" by Dobbins and Castle
3) "The Haptic Steering Wheel: Vibro-tactile basedNavigation for the Driving Environment" by Hwang and Ryu 
4) "Summary of Tactile User Interfaces Techniques and Systems" by Spirkovska
5) "Enhancing Navigation Information with Tactile Output Embedded into the Steering Wheel" by Kern, Marshall, Hornecker, Rogers, and Smith
6) "The Design of a Segway AR-Tactile Navigation System" by Li, Mahnkopf, and Kobbelt
7) "Tactile Guidance for Land Navigation" by Elliott, Redden, Pettitt, Carstens, Jan van Erp, and Duistermaat
8) "Development of Tactile and Haptic Systems for U.S. Infantry Navigation and Communication" by Elliott, Schmeisser and Redden
9) "Comparison between audio and tactile systems for delivering simple navigational information to visually impaired pedestrians" by Gustafson-Pearce, Billett, and Cecelja
10) "Tactile Representation of Landmark Types for Pedestrian Navigation: User Survey and Experimental Evaluation" by Srikulwong and O'Neill

Overall, the related works all pose novel new additions to the way in which humans utilize tactile communication. It becomes apparent that the use of tactile navigation opens up a new prolific field of study. However, the main differentiation of this research is use of tactile navigation for personal smartphone use. While other related work focuses on new innovative ways to commute more safely in industrial environments, this research specifically concentrates on everyday usage in the modern world to avoid unnecessary conflict. For example, the related work deal with tactile approaches apply texture and distinct shapes to help airplane pilots and the visually blind while the researchers focus on vibration techniques of the cell phone which involvement movement to communication non-verbally.

Evaluation:
 The researchers did a thorough job of analyzing the results and data that they received from the experiment. Overall, they used as much quantifiable data as possible through over 34 million snap shots of the phone in action. Some of which includes looking at acceptable walks by pedestrians, trip characteristics, tactile feedback usage, amount of touch screen interaction, amount of time looking at display, and finally, the same data when the display was turned off. In accordance, over three hundred routes were analyzed with an average walking time of 7.8 min after filtering. Thus, the researchers were able to effectively conclude that this application reduced the amount of time users spent looking at their screen when walking in a foreign environment.

On another aspect, the subjective nature of this application was assessed through user comments and feedback. The feedback was open ended with assessing how the user felt about the device, rather than relying on specific survey questions. Overall, the users felt that the application had potential to increase environmental awareness, but on a negative aspect, the application did drain the battery rather fast. This could possible indicate that a hybrid solution of battery life and tactile feedback would accumulate even more users to protect themselves from inherent dangers.

All in all, the researchers did a positive job of using unbiased quantified data in conjunction with biased and subjective data. From this, they were able to infer some results, while detailing to the reader the methodologies that they used. Furthermore, the researchers noted the limitations in their application. This implies that they did analyze it from all directions.

Discussion:
All in all, this work posed an interesting new approach to pedestrian traveling. Although the idea was novel, it appears that the implementation of this research needs some additional work. For instance, most pedestrians using this application did not use it in the way the researchers intended. Although the researchers wanted an experiment free of outside nudging, the application itself caused users to ignore the tactile addition, for the most part. However, continuation on top of this work could lead to a whole new perception of pedestrian navigation.

The evaluation was extremely solid. The most benevolent aspect of the evaluation was the fact that the researchers did note their downfalls and limitations, instead of trying to cover them up. Furthermore, I would suggest to the researchers that the idea of tactile navigation is grand. But, then manner in which the system was approached proved problematic. My advice would be to create an additional iPhone accessory with increased vibration power, and an external battery to prevent some of the user complaints at the end of the survey. Overall, it was an insightful and interesting piece of work.

Paper Reading #5: Observational and Experimental Investigation of Typing Behaviour using Virtual Keyboards on Mobile Devices

Intro:

• Observational and Experimental Investigation of Typing Behaviour using Virtual Keyboards on Mobile Devices
• Henze, Niels, Enrico Rukzio, and Susanne Boll. (2012).  Observational and Experimental Investigation of Typing Behaviour using Virtual Keyboards on Mobile Devices. Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012), 2659-2668.
• Author Biographies:
• Niels Henze is an associate researcher in the Human-Computer Interaction group. He worked and received his PhD in computer science at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. His research interests include interlinking physical objects and digital information and large scale user studies of mobile phones
• Enrico Rukzio is full-time assistant professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. His research focuses on mobile human-computer interaction and mobile computing. He began and currently runs the Mobile HCI reserach group. He received his PhD from the University of Munich in computer science.
• Susanne Boll is the professor for Media Informatics and Multimedia Systems in the computer science department at the University of Oldenburg. She is on the executive board of OFFIS-Institute for Information Technology. Her research interests include field of semantic retrieval of digital media, context-aware and location-based mobile systems, and intelligent user interfaces.

Summary:
The researchs documented keystrokes on the Android keyboard in order to determine trends that would help correlate with a virtual keyboard. The methodology included a typing game. The design of the game collects a large number of keystrokes from people with diverse backgrounds, and was titled "TypeIt". The game consists of three stages with each stage containing four levels, and each level contains multiple keywords. Each level contains white bubbles with the word that needs to be typed. A picture below describes the three stages, stars, water, and fire, more efficiently

The study also monitors the time it takes for participants to type, thus creating a sound environment in which data can be collected. The game included similar environment, such as keyboard, for all participants. Words of varying length were used to increase human engagement. A score was kept, so the students would correlate their game playing behavior with an actual assessment of their performance.

In addition, TypeIt was published on the Android market, and data was collected for three months. In total, over 47 million keystrokes were recorded. The researchers provided significant amounts of analysis such as the position of each stroke with a vertical and horizontal alignment. They also noticed that players are faster when typing at the bottom of the screen while strokes are all skewed to the center of the screen as the users glide over the virtual keyboard.

Next, the researchers proceeded to influence the users behavior. They used subtle techniques such as shifting  the touch events by a small density per pixel toward the upper part of the screen. This implementation was used to attempt to account for the skew discovered when users were typing. The results were then split into speed, performance, error rate, and learn-ability to the shifted dots.

Related work not referenced in the paper:
1) "Keyboards without Keyboards: A Survey of Virtual Keyboards" by Kölsch and Turk

2) "Performance Optimization of Virtual Keyboards" by Zhai, Hunter, and Smith
3) "Movement Model, Hits Distribution and Learning in Virtual  Keyboarding" by Zhai, Sue, and Accot
4) "Performance optimizations of virtual keyboards for stroke-based text entry on a touch-based tabletop" by Rick
5) "Reconfigurable Virtual Keyboard" by Kanade, Kharat, Raundale, Sangve, and Mane
6) "A Field Comparison of Techniques for Location Selection on a Mobile Device" by Luimula, Sääskilahti, Partala, and Saukko
7) "A mobile-based knowledge management system for “Ifa”: An African traditional oracle" by Folorunso, Akinwale, Vincent, and Olabenjo
8) "User-Interface-Technologies and -Techniques" by Steinhage, Rantzer, Niman, and Dainesi
9) "Technologies for Virtual Reality/Tele-Immersion Applications: Issues of Research in Image Display and Global Networking" by DeFanti, Sandin, and Brown
10) "Spy-resistant keyboard: more secure password entry on public touch screen displays" by Tan, Keyani, and Czerwinski

The related works described above offer some powerful potential emerging technologies that are currently considered for development. Nearly every single research report focused on a novel and intriguing idea that is related in someway to a virtual keyboard. However, one of the distraught associations with the work is that not entirely all selections were unanimously relevant to the research paper of study in this blog. In that manner, the research reports noted above were either parallel in every single methodology with this paper reading, or were a somewhat of a stretch to relate with. Nevertheless, there existed some correlation and an abundant amount of interest. In essence, the main difference that this research report concentrates on is the improvement of speedup and accuracy in typing whereas the other reports stray from this domain.

Evaluation:
To begin, the researchers measured the quantitative effects of their shift with accumulation of speed data. This was all quantitative as a finite time was assigned to each word and the duration it took to type. Next, performance was investigate based on keystroke per second, thus giving an accuracy to each word typed. Aso, error rate was quantified with number of mistypes and adaptability to the dots was measured by the difference with and without the dots. In effective, the researchers set up a completely unbiased methodology to evaluate their results in the most quantifiable terms possible

In essence, this report is the most solid terms of evidence. All data was analyzed without the use of biased behavior. However, once the results were all collected, the researcher did have to use subjectivity to evaluate their numbers. For example, the data returned results with change in speed, performance, and error rate compared to no shift change. Usually, a shift change resulted with each vector gaining or losing a certain percentage. Thus, the researchers used the most positive shift change with dots over the keyboard to advocate a potential shift change in development

Discussion:
The paper presents an intriguing and potentially useful idea. Although it is not exciting, the research presented here still pose a significant efficiency advantage in smartphone applications. Thus, it cannot be ignored. I would consider it novel, but in an atypical way. One must realize that saving a mere few hundredths of a second per word can correlate to uncountable man hours saved over the course of a smartphone's lifetime. The only addition I would have enjoyed seeing in the research would be more drastic keyboard changes. Rather than shifting the density of each keyword, I would have enjoyed see them test keyboard configurations or button interchanges.

Paper Reading #4: Characterizing Web Use on Smartphones

Intro:

• Characterizing Web Use on Smartphones
• Chad C. Tossell, Philip Kortum, Ahmad Rahmati, Clayton Shepard, and Lin Zhong. (2012).  Characterizing Web Use on Smartphones. Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012), 2769-2778.
• Author Biographies:
• Philip Kortum has spent over 15 years working with human-computer interaction in the telecommunications and defense industries. His Bachelors is in Industrial Engineering, his masters of science is in Industrial Engineering with a focus on Human Factors, and his PhD was in Biomedical Engineering at Univsersity of Texas. He is now a professor in the department of psycholoy at Rice.
• Ahmad Rahmati received his Bachelors and PhD in Computer Engineering from University of Technology in Tehran and Rice University, respectively. His research interest is in mobile, embedded, and wireless system design. His past work experience was at research labs at AT&T and Motorola. He also has three patents.
• Clayton Shepard is currently in his third year of his PhD at Rice. He received his Bachelors and Masters in Electrical Engineering from Rice. He is specifically interested in mobile systems and a member of The Rice Efficient Computing Group.
• Lin Zhong is from China and received his Bachelors and Masters in Electrical Engineering. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton in 2005. He went to teach at Rice shortly thereafter.
• Chad C. Tossell is a current graduate student in the Department of Psychology at Rice University.

Summary:
The purpose of this research is to monitor and track usage of internet access over smartphones, and in specific, iPhones. The researchers discovered interesting facts along the way, including there were infrequent webpage revisits, little bookmark usage, users differed systematically from non-smartphone users.

Throughout the paper, the researchers noted some startling differences among smartphone usage and PCs. Such examples include the fact that not only web pages were designed for smartphones, the smaller screen size of smartphones, the delay associated with smartphones, and accessibility of smart phones.

The researchers spend most of the paper analyzing the results. They did consider application usage in association with the web. For reference, they note that NIA's refer to native internet applications which access the web, such as Facebook, weather, and maps.

Inherently, the vase majority of the results including the following discoveries for smartphones:

• Queries involved Google and averaged less than four words
• Low total number of queries because of slow download time and low navigation time
• Page re-visitation was relatively low and resembled figures similar to the PC 15 years ago
• Less frequent browser access and browser times
• Users accessed Google, blogs, Rice homepage, and Wikipedia in order of frequencies
• Most site re-visits were associated with a log-in page
• The comparison of NIAs can best be visualized below

• Further, NIAs were visited more often than websites
• The number of new NIAs were severely lower than websites (probably due to Facebook access)
• Location re-visitation was at 90% compared to the web based re-visit of roughly 20% (due to Google Maps)

Related work not referenced in the paper:
1) "Realtime Privacy Monitoring on Smartphones" by Jung, Enck, and Gilbert
2) "Smart Phone, Smart Science: How the Use of Smartphones Can Revolutionize Research in Cognitive Science" by Dafau, Duñabeitia, Moret-Tatay, McGonigal, Peeters, Alario, Balota, Brysbaert, Carreiras, Ferrand, Ktori, Perea, Rastle, Sasburg, Yap, Ziegler, Grainger
3) "The User Experience of Smart Phones: A Consumption Values Approach" by Bødker, Gimpel, and Hedman
4) "Mobile Smartphone use in Higher Education" by Yu
5) "Educational Aspects of Undergraduate Research on Smartphone Application Development" by Gibson, Taylor, Seymour, Smith, and Fries
6) "Getting Real: A Naturalistic Methodology for Using Smartphones to Collect Mediated Communications" by Tossell, Kortum, Shepared, Rahmati and Zhong.
7) "E-health and Nursing: Using Smartphones to Enhance Nursing Practice" by Wyatt and Krauskopf
8) "Augmented Smartphone Applications Through Clone Cloud Execution" by Chun and Maniatis
9) "Soundcomber: A Stealthy and Context-Aware Sound Trojan for Smartphones" by Schlegel, Zhang, Zhou, Intwala, Kapadia, and Wang
10) "Denial of Convenience Attack to Smartphones Using a Fake WiFi Access Point" by Dondyk

The related work discussed in this section included several novel and interesting ideas, such as using a fake WiFi to attack smartphones. However, many of these related works were rather dissimilar to Characterizing Web Use on Smartphones. The actual research conducted in this report focuses on data evaluation, where as the vast majority of related work concentrate on a new and eccentric idea related to both smartphones and web access. Thus, the similarity of research return dwindled reports, but the learning of new research in this relatively large domain proved to be of interest.

Evaluation:
The researchers conducted an extremely thorough study on the subject of smartphone web access. They collected bountiful data across multiple domains. The first portion of the paper involved quantitative data as described in the summary. Although this data is disputable facts, the only potential downfall of this research was the lack of number of iPhone users tracked, which was twenty four.

On a tangent, the researchers also measured user's experience on a subjective manner. They surveyed the users and asked about the comparison of smartphones versus PCs. This provided insight into how the users actually felt about smartphone web access instead of analyze hoards of raw data numbers. Thus, the paper provided a well rounded evaluation of all results accumulated during the year of data collecting.

Discussion:
The paper published does not necessarily provide any novel new kind of technology. But, it does offer insight into future developmental aspects of smartphone integration. For instance, the researchers do consider different smartphones, other than the iPhone, despite the fact that only an iPhone was used in the experiment. Also, the most promising part of the paper involves the researchers opening up new possibilities to accommodate users web experience on their smartphone. Thus, the analysis provided here was sufficient.

On the other hand, I found the paper an interesting read. However, I did not discover any eye opening results through the research. Most of the conclusions drawn could have been predicted by intuition. In conclusion, I would prefer more of an experimental approach to this subject with small tweaks in how users access web pages on their smartphones rather than merely a collection of data.