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 Although I favored the book as a whole, there were numerous drawbacks that held it back due to it being outdated or a failure on the part of the author, Norman.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.

Paper Reading #3: MUSTARD: A Multi User See Through AR Display

Intro:

• MUSTARD: A Multi User See Through AR Display
• Karnik, Abhijit,Walterio Mayol-Cuevas, and Sriram Subramanian. (2012).  MUSTARD: A Multi User See Through AR Display. Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012), 2541-2550.
• Author Biographies:
• Abhijit  Karnik is a PhD student in the Interaction and Graphics group at Bristol. He studies and researchers multi-user and multi-view displays. His research is funded by Microsoft and he began interests in CHI in 2009. 
• Walterio Mayol-Cuevas  is a deputy at the Robotics Lab at Bristol. His research interests include personal robotics and real time vision groups. 
• Sriram Subramanian is a professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Bristol. He worked as a senior scientist at Philips Research in the Netherlands. Previously, he was assistant researcher at University of Saskatchewan

Summary:
The essence of this research is to deliver viewer information behind a cabinet. The information is constructed through multiple user input. Two challenges arise within the idea of an augmented reality such as delivering realistic visibility of the physical object behind semi-transparent layer and simultaneously relying view dependent information to the user.

MUSTARD allows viewers to inspect objects behind a glass panel while displaying the physical object through a projection. The system consists of two liquid crystal elements, a dynamic hole-mask and a data-panel. The dynamic hole-mask was chosen over a static mask for a plethora of reasons, but the figure below demonstrates the advantages of the dynamic mask through the polarization of physical objects laying next to the data layer. An implementation issue arises when the LC generates a twisting action which effects the polarized light passing through the front polarizing end. A picture summarizing the technique in which MUSTARD functions is given below.

The key concept of MUSTARD is to assess different views to different users, but using the same data panel. This creates an immensely usable display purpose as output. The algorithm works by applying mask-rendering, which uses the hole-mask, an image composed of black and white dots. However, the white dot locations must change position so that the white dots cover the entire display area in 10 frames. The next step involves generating composite view image, which essentially constructs a single image from multiple sources by calculating their point of view and the actual associated data. The last step involves conflict management which is the part of MUSTARD that involves determining overlap from the multiple view points and sorting through the mix. A symbolic picture of the implementation is viewed below.

In conclusion, the MUSTARD offers some intriguing possibilities for the future of physical interaction through a barrier, such as at a museum. The evaluation of the research conducted in this report can be read below in a subsequent section.

Related work not referenced in the paper:
1) "Towards Massively Multi-User Augmented Reality on Handheld Devices" by Wagner, Pintaric, Ledermann, and Schmalsteig
2) "Augmented reality meeting table: a novel multi-user interface for architectural design" by Penn, Mottram,  Schieck, Wittkämper, Störring, Romell, Strothmann, and Aish
3) "MARE : Multiuser Augmented Reality Environment on table setup" by Grasset and Gascuel

4) "Multiple Head Mounted Displays in Virtual and Augmented Reality Applications" by Kaufmann and Csisinko
5) "Collaborative Augmented Reality: Multi-user Interaction in Urban Simulation" by Ismail and Sunar
6) "Augmented reality interactive exhibits in Cartographic Heritage:  An implemented case-study open to the general public" by Grammenos, Zabulis, Michel, and Argyros
7) "Replicating augmented reality objects for multi-user interaction" by Lenting
8) "Visuo-Haptic Collaborative Augmented Reality Ping-Pong" by Knoerlein, Szekely, and Harders
9) "Distributed Augmented Reality for Collaborative Design Applications" by Ahlers, Kramer, Breen, Chevalier, Crampton, Rose, Tuceryan, Whitaker, and Greer
10) "Interaction Management for Ubiquitous Augmented Reality User Interfaces" by Hilliges

The research posed in these papers definitely exceeded the novel requirements. The vast majority of these works relied heavily on developing an augmented reality. This is an interesting concept that will pose some intriguing questions as organizations, such as the military, attempt to turn this research into industrialization. Furthermore, the related works was relevant to each other, and in fact, posed some of the same questions and problems, but in separate domains. Thus, this is a new a growing field which was major implications for the advancement of technology. The main difference that this paper focuses on is the augmented reality with multiple users in association. Furthermore, the MUSTARD research's reality adheres to almost a tangible nature potential of the outputted image.

Evaluation:
The researchers evaluated the difference in output of the image by comparing the test-source with the expected output in the absence of the reference-source. The high conflict scenario occurs when all users are viewing similar data, but at very different angles of examination. This problem results in distorted output that have significant overlap between multiple images, although it was recognizable in simplistic cases.

For other cases, the researchers use peak signal to noise ratios. This methodology analyzes the extraneous signals in the output, which may distort the actual images that a user of this technology would see. The PSNR ranged from 125 to 138 dB, in the high conflict case. The researchers graph the PSNR for each case in differentiating scenarios, for a total of  120 tests.

Overall, the researchers did an effective job evaluating results. The bottom line to compare images was very subjective and biased from the researchers point of view. However, to break it down into quantifiable terms, the researchers realized that PSNR was the most efficient method in determining the error. Thus, they were able to quantify this measure, and then successfully compare and contrast a multitude of trials against one another.

Discussion:
The concept behind this research was extremely novel and relevant to advancing technology. This evolution of this research idea could lead to an entirely new technology with an abundant number of potential uses. The user experience, from trial runs, tended to be positive. In my opinion, the research was very insightful. The researchers could definitely expand upon this. However, to improve their research paper, more images would have coerced with the definitions in order to fully explain the background of MUSTARD. All in all, the research was interesting enough that I will be checking back on the authors for follow-up work.

Paper Reading #2: Protecting Artificial Team-Mates: More Seems Like Less

Intro:

• Protecting Artificial Team-Mates: More Seems Like Less
• Merritt, Tim, and Kevin McGee. (2012).  Protecting Artificial Team-Mates: More Seems Like Less. Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012), 2793-2802.
• Author Biographies:
• Tim Merritt is a current PhD student at the NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences & Engineering in Singapore. He began his PhD in 2008 and is studying under Kevin McGee.
• Kevin McGee is an associate professor at the National University of Singapore. He teaches in the Department of Communications and New Media. His research revolves around partner technology design/implementation and studies for entertainment purposes.

Summary:
The goal of the research is to determine the cohesive nature that human gamers adopt for artificial intelligence beings in gaming situations. In fact, the belief that a gamer has about the identity of a teammate has tremendous impacts on behavior, despite the true identity of the teammate. Thus, a middle ground must be established between behavior and interpretations of game events.

The study focused on gamers behaviors that have the option of "drawing gunfire" away from teammates onto themselves. The experiment was repeated twice with A.I. teammates each time. However, during the second game, researchers told the participants that they were playing with a human teammate. For shorthand, the latter will be referred to as PH, for presumed human. The game interface looks similar to the figure below:

The measurements of the game involved the actual number of times the player decided to "draw gunfire" and the number of times the player reported that he/she drew gunfire after the gaming session was over. After the experiment was over, a series of eleven questions were asked to each participant to gauge self evaluation, predisposed stereotypes, personal pressures, and explanation of observed behaviors. The conclusion of the research was that humans were more cooperative with AI figures that PH figures. However, this contrasts the self-reporting at the end of the game in which gamers declared themselves more cooperative with the PH teammates.

Related work not referenced in the paper:
1) "Developing & Validating a Synthetic Teammate" by Dr. Christopher W. Myers
2) "Real-time team-mate AI in Games"  by McGee and Abraham
3) "Teammates and Trainers: The Fusion of  SAF’s and ITS’s" by Schaafstal, Lyons, and Reynolds
4) "TeamMATTE: Computer Game Environment for Collaborative and Social Interaction" by Thomas and Vlacic
5) "Behavior Modeling in Commercial Games"  by Diller
6) "Evolution of Human-Competitive Agents in Modern Computer Games" by Priesterjahn, Krammer, Weimer, and Goebels
7) "Applying Collaborative Intelligence to RoboCup" by Carrera
8) "Approaches to measuring Difficulties in Computer Games" by Costello
9) "The Evolution of Abstract Resource Sharing Dilemmas Computer Games" by Cunningham
10) "Team Based Behaviour in Artificial Intelligence for Real Time Strategy Games" by Burke

The work in most of these papers is novel. Although most are related to the gaming industry, this can be instructional for real life human-computer interaction. However, the one inconsistency I would abide in change for is the lack of the combination of sophistication and relevance. Most of the papers, including this one, contained either high technology techniques or conclusive findings that were relevant and useful, but never both. In these papers, the related work section was complete and helped direct me to other similar sources on the topic of artificial intelligent teammates in game type environments. In essence, the difference of this paper derives from the evaluation of humans and presumed humans playing on the same team and how the humans evaluate their experience.

Evaluation:
In order to evaluate the results, paired samples T-tests were used to compare the logged data during both sessions. The researchers quantitatively and recorded unbiased measured the number of times the human player distracted the gunman away from there teammate, which was more for the AI player. However, the questionnaire at the end of the game will help dissect the subjective aspects of the research conducted. The first question, was quantitative and subjective which measured the amount that the gamers thought they helped the PH more than the AI, which was 71%. A reason behind this was a sense of empathy.

The remaining questions involved the subjective nature of participants. They were instructed to evaluate what they thought the teammate was "thinking" at the time or what the objectives were. The researchers analyzed all responses on a subjective nature since the students provided open ended results or rated a given question on a scale from one to five. In essence, the researchers did an effective job of utilizing both quantitative and subjective results.

Discussion:
All in all, the paper brought about some startling discoveries related to humans and how they interact with computers and presumed humans. Although players wanted to appear more loyal to their fellow species, they actually aided the AI teammates more than the presumed human. The authors attribute this altruistic behavior to that of the humans thinking that AI was inferior to their own, and thus required more help. There are a variety of other explains offered, but this is the most logical.

My considerations of the research include that the authors touched upon a hidden gem in the collaboration between human and machine. However, their experiment was trivial and extremely primitive. I would not base any conclusions on the simplistic nature of their work. Although, I would definitiely want the researchers to conduct their experiment on a deeper level with more realistic terms. Their evaluation was mostly subjective, but they did a proper job of analyzing the feedback and noting the limitations. In essence, this topic provides some interesting insights, and should be examined further.