Monday, May 4, 2009

Fitts's Law

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Straight out of 1954 comes Paul Fitts and his undisputed law. The basic idea is that several factors are taken into account when judging the success rate of movement from a current position to some other desired position. Three main factors that are needed are the distance between start and end, the size of the target zone, and the time it takes to travel there. 

Fitts conducted his original experiments using an oscilloscope to have subjects write letters at various sizes and speeds. Using this gained knowledge, he expanded his series of tests to utilized a reciprocal tapping method. Subjects would use a stylus to tap alternately between two metal plates that would vary in size and distance. 

He then moved to using metal disk transfer. This was identical to the previous experiment, but did not allow for any errors to be made. His final experiment removed the disks and had subjects only transfer pins between a set of boards.

His results were the same across all experiments. To make things easier, you had to change one of three factors. Make the distance smaller, the target larger, or allow more time for the user.

I find that it is very interesting that Fitts's Law still holds after 55 years. The law itself has come to be the proving point for many tests, especially on modern user interfaces. One problem that many UIs suffer from is lots of small buttons being far away. If every designer would take a moment before they start to sit down and really understand Fitts's Law, then we would have fewer, slightly larger buttons closer to us, and hopefully a better UI. As long as no one goes overboard on the law by placing one single giant button in the middle of the screen. Sure it would maximize Fitts's Law, but what would it actually be good for?

Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful

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Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful (Some of the Time)
Saul Greenburg, Bill Buxton

Usability evaluation is a very important step in the design process, but it should be taken moderately. As more emphasis is being placed on usability design, though, it starts to over step its bounds. Applying usability evaluation to places where it should not be utilized can result in "meaningless or trivial results and can misdirect or even quash future design directions."

As usability evaluation is becoming more popular with conferences, people are trying harder and harder to incorporate it into their paper, even when another method would present more compelling information. People would rather take the time to do an extensive proof than take the time to conduct risky hypothesis testing that might result in a failure of their research. Most researchers would rather take the easy way out and create an environment that is favorable to their study than attempt to see where it fails and where it can be improved upon. This ultimately results a lack of replication of the study meaning the researchers results are the only ones that are presented.

More researchers want to conduct their usability evaluation as early and often as possibly as well. The problem is that this results in an evaluation on early primitive sketches of designs rather than a working prototype. This can be useful if taken into consideration but not taken as the final evaluation of the design. Ultimately, the goal is to conduct several small usability evaluations throughout the design process that will lead to a final working design.

Several steps can be taken to solve the usability evaluation problem. Researchers need to understand that usability evaluation is just one of many steps in the design process. They need to judge when a usability evaluation would actually produce meaningful results. They need to stop using usability evaluation as the only evaluation on everything, even when it should not be applied. When usability evaluations are useful, they should be conducted in such a way that they produce strong results. Finally, we can look at other disciplines as examples on how to judge the worthiness of our own designs.

I found this paper to be very informative into the design process. Though I have not attended any conferences, from the papers that I have read and were presented, I do not feel the situation is as grim as they present. I will admit there have been some evaluations that I feel would justify this paper, but not enough to warrant any kind of complete overhaul of the design process. There are some people doing it wrong, but there are enough people doing it, at least somewhat, correctly that all hope is not lost. I will say, though, that CHI and UIST will accept almost any paper based solely on their writing, not their actual research. They seem to have a bit of a bias in that area.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Human-Centered Design Considered Harmfun

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Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful
Don Norman

Another lovely writing from the mind of Don Norman. This time he talks of the horrors of human-centered design (HCD.) He compares HCD with ACD (activity-centered design.) The basic principle is to not design for people, but design for activities. The more you focus on the needs of a person, the more to alienate all the people you're not designing for. The one person will benefit at the expense of many others. 

Many companies focus on their users though. Listening to users is good in moderation, but will be your downfall if it is driving the product design. By trying to appeal to everyone that has a request, the product becomes bloated and hard to use. Ignoring your users totally is not always the best case either. There are few examples where the total ignorance of the users was actually a benefit. Most companies need to learn how to listen in moderation and design their products around activities, not specific users.

Another classic Don Norman writing. At this point, a short paper is about all I can handle at this point. He actually makes sense this time though. By focusing on the users, you please no one. By not listing to your users, you mostly please no one, unless your product seems to have a cult-like following that will blindly agree with you anyway. Companies should spend more time designing around what their product actually does and only take the users into consideration when it comes to testing to see if they can easily accomplish a task or if it helps them with an activity. I actually agree with Mr. Norman on this point.

Harmful Ethnogrophies

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Ethnography
Considered Harmful
Any Crabtree, Tom Rodden, Peter Tolmie, Graham Button

This paper, Ethnography Considered Harmful, is essentially about how the current ways of conducting ethnographies is no longer completely applicable to the current situation. The problem is that the design process has slowly shifted outside the workplace. Computers are no longer seen as a staple of the workplace and have become mainstream and widely available. As with this shift, the study there-of should shift as well, and researchers are coming up with new ways of conducting ethnographies.

In this light, many ethnographers has shifted away from statistical analysis of the everyday things, to becoming more of a wordsmith. It's not necessarily what you write about, but how you write it. They must 'defamiliarize' themselves from that which they are attempting to study to see how it is really interacts with society. They are trying to find stuff that is more exotic than what has been typically reported on. Many have turned to critical reflection in their ethnographical practices. Studying only the critical parts of the study, looking at what makes things fail.

With these many new approaches come many new problems. Ethnographers are over compensating for the shift in computing trends. Instead of looking into the extremes of new methods, take a middle ground between the traditional and more modern approaches. Look back on how ethnographies were conducted in the work place and utilize those same methods in new ethnographical practices. Overall, the ethnographer should keep in mind the design when conducting their ethnography.

I felt this paper was very compelling and interesting. It sheds some light on the pros and cons of modern ethnographical practices and states what should be done to remedy the situation. Personally, I have read some literature that has claimed to be an ethnography but felt more like an attempt to sell a book rather than provide compelling research. Some people would greatly benefit from reading this paper, but overall, I feel that many ethnographies are doing the right thing. There was a change in society and a shift in computer usage, so the study of such things had to change with it.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Inmates Are Running the Asylum

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The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
Alan Cooper

This book is essentially about the meaning of programmers and managers and their role in the design phase. Alan Cooper starts of by stating that anything combined with a computer is, in essence, a computer. Thus, the people who make the programs that run on those computers have the very important task of ensuring that the computers will be completely functional, but on the side, they also have to design the user interface. Unfortunately, the programmers are not the people that should be the ones designing the user interface. Programmers are really good at one thing, and one thing only. 

The problem is that the design process is delegated to those who do not know how to design. The solution is to have a team of people dedicated to only the design process. By outsourcing the design process, programmers and management are free to do what they do best and the finished product is then more consumer friendly.

I feel this idea is SOMEWHAT true. Programmers and managers certainly are not good interface designers, but they know what is possible and what can be done. There should be a separate team that does the designing, but it has to at least consist of a programmer and manager. It would be more beneficial to have programmers and managers that are no associated with the actual product. If they are working on the product as well, they we are back to square one and that's what we are trying to get away from. 

Overall, I felt this is a very good book about the truth in the design process. This is a MUST read for all programmers and managers or anyone working in a similarly related field. 

Sunday, April 26, 2009

SLAP Widgets

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Malte Weiss, Julie Wagner, Yvonne Jansen, Roger Jennings,
Ramsin Khoshabeh, James D. Hollan, Jan Borchers

SLAP (Silicone iLuminated Active Peripherals) are the solution to the need for tactile feedback peripherals on large multi-touch tables. Currently, many multi-touch tables do offer some kind of on screen input, but do not offer any tactile feedback. There are some implementations of physical widgets, but they do not have the same degree of freedom to manipulate as SLAP. By using silicon to make the peripherals, the display for each peripheral can be dynamically changed in different situations. The multi-touch table uses a combination of infred technologies as well as a camera with infrared filter and computer vision to detect reflected light. This combination allows for the sensing of the position and surface pressure of each peripheral.
Top view
Bottom view

The exact position of each widget is calculated by looking at the position of reflective tape on the underside of each widget. Touches and changes to the widgets, such as turning a knob are tracked to update the state of each widget. 

After being placed on the table, widgets must then be associated to a virtual object. This is accomplished through a double tap action. If successful, a green halo appears around the widget, otherwise a red halo flashes to indicate a problem.  If a widget is removed from the table witout removing the association, when it is returned to the table, it will hold the same previous association.

Applications interact with the widgets through the multi-touch framework and SLAP User Interface Toolkit. The multi-touch framework provides the position for each widget and the SLAP UITK provides the functionality. Developers only have to create a virtual SLAP object to work with the widgets. They can also develop their own widgets with the toolkit if they wish.

Dynamic keyboard widget

By making the widgets of transparent silicon, developers are not limited to what can be displayed for each widget. The keys on a keyboard can be changed to something that would be more useful to the user in different situations. The other widgets can be just as easily changed as well. 

Typical layout of widgets for video editing.

An excellent example of usage would be for video editing. The different widgets can be used as above to give the user more control over the location of their tools. Using this scenario, a set of tests was devised to determine the usefulness of SLAP. 9/10 users said that SLAP widgets were very intuitive to use. Some said that the lack of auditory feedback was a minor problem, especially for the keyboard. Overall, participants prefered using SLAP widgets to their virtual counterparts.

Personally, if I had a large multi-touch table to use, I would probably prefere to use the SLAP widgets as well. I have a cell phone that has a traditional slide-out keyboard and a virtual one on the screen, and I would rather use the real keyboard because it provides a tactile feedback and feel for the keys. It is more intuitive to use than the virtual one where I have to actually look where I am pressing.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Two-Finger Input with a Standard Touch Screen

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Jorn Loviscach
Fachbereich Elektrotechnik und Informatik

Currently there are many standard touch screens in use, but only very few multi-touch screens. Multi-touch offers many advantages to a single input, but comes at an increased cost. Standard touch screens are cheaper to manufacture and can be converted to a crude multi-touch screen.

The idea is that a touch screen consists of two layers of input, one for x and one for y. A current is passed through each layer, and the x, y position is determined by the resistance. Adding another input becomes a little more tricky. A voltage gradient must be applied to each layer to differentiate between different positions. Each layer is then combined to give the relative positions of each input. Due to the nature of the screen being in the x, y direction only, there can be no more than two separate inputs at a time. 

By using resistance, a measure of pressure can also be determined. A pressure of 0.5 N must be applied to register for a single input. In testing, by using a pen tip, the sensed position is off by at most 5 pixels but when two points are used, the sensed position is off by at most 20 pixels with a fluctuation of 10 pixels.

Although the system does have limitations when compared to a conventional multi-touch screen, it still supports many different applications:
  • Finger painting
  • Selection
  • Pan, zoom, rotation
  • Rotary knobs

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

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Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things is yet another book churned out by Don Norman in his ongoing effort to understand the world. This book was published between his Design of Everyday Things and Design of Future things. To sum the book up very briefly, Norman essentially says, "hey, remember my other book? Well, I guess I was wrong, buy this book to and I will tell you why." His Design of Future Things book ties everything together and basically states, "Alright, I have learned from my mistakes, but really buy this book because the future is closer than you think."

OK, enough banter, lets talk emotions. According to this book, people will buy something they like to look at even if it doesn't function well. This is true for most things. "You bought a juicer that doesn't make juice?" "Yeah, but it looks awesome in my breezeway." Norman states that people are attracted to these kind of objects because of an unconscious desire and emotional connection to them. To those who do not understand this phenomenon, just look around you. It is not very easy to design something that is both attractive and functional. Generally, there is a trade-off between the two. For the most part though, attractiveness wins. 

Need proof? Walk into a Mac store. I am not anti-Mac or pro-Microsoft (I use Linux) but its the image that Mac has created that people are attracted to. Macs and PCs both have shortcomings and I understand that, but even if its a terrible product, people will still buy it just because its a Mac. Example: the first iPhone. It didn't quite do anything really well, except it looked cool. Just because of that, people flocked to it and bought it up. There are lots of other phones out there that function just as well or better, but why buy something only because it looks cool? I think this can be related to the scene of a little kid looking into a shop window and going "OOO, shiny!" He doesn't know what it does but only that he wants it because it's shiny.

Overall, I thought this was one of Don Norman's better books. The ideas and concepts presented made a lot more sense and was broken down better. After reading a few of his books though, at this point I believe he is simply just writing for the sake of making books and is trying really hard to come up with good ideas.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Stanley Milgram: The Man Who Shocked the World

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The Man Who Shocked the World, by Thomas Blass was a very interesting book to read. Although I have heard of Stanley Milgram before and his most famous shock experiments, I never knew anything about him and his other experiments. For being a biography, the book has a lot of depth about Stanley's life. Blass goes into detail about his early years and everything that he does up through the day he dies, and beyond. Since this book is a biography, of course Blass would have to talk about his life in detail, but I found the discussion on the experiments to be more interesting. 

In particular, I though that the lost letter experiment was very clever. By dropping letters all throughout town addressed to different opposing parties, Stanley was able to find out people's opinion of the different parties without actually asking them. By counting the number of letters actually mailed to each party, he was able to predict the popularity of each one. 

Another experiment I enjoyed was his six degrees of separation experiment. I have heard of it before, as well as most people, but I did not know that Stanley was the person that came up with the idea. Basically, the idea was to give someone a letter, then tell them about another person that was far away. The goal was to get the letter to the other person only by giving it to someone they think is closest to that person. After mailing lots of letters, he concluded that the average separation between two people was six. The actual values varied though. There was at minimum of 3 or 4 degrees or at most 10 or 12 degrees between two people. I think that by having the Internet and social networking sites, the average separation today would be significantly smaller.

Overall, I thought that it was a very good good and definitely worth reading. The experiments that he conducted were very interesting and really makes you think about the morals of experimentation on people. This is especially so on his shock experiments. How far can someone go in the name of science? How much is too much? If you have any interest in psychology or experimentation on social phenomenon, then this book is a must read.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

"It's Mine, Don't Touch!": Interactions at a Large Multi-Touch Display in a City Centre

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Peter Peltonen, Esko Kurvinen, Antti Salovaara, Giulio Jacucci, Tommi Ilmonen,
John Evans, Antti Oulasvirta, Petri Saarikko

The CHI 2008 paper that I read was on the topic of large multi-touch displays in public areas. The display was mounted in a window between a major train station and bus station in Helsinki, Finland. The area receives a very high amount of traffic, so the location was ideal. The study was conducted over both the usage of the display and the interaction of the people around the display with each other. They recorded data for several weeks and decided to look at the last eight days in July in detail. They used several cameras placed around the display to record details of everyone and their interactions.

The display itself was 2.5 meters wide and could be interacted with by as many different hands that could fit on the screen. The interactions were with pictures downloaded in real time from flickr of only those tagged "Helsinki." There was a time line that allowed the users to see pictures based on when they were taken. The main display area allows users to work with the photos. They can move them around, resize, rotate, throw, or any combination therein that they can come up with.
In the video and other data they recorded they noticed many different types of interactions and usage. Many people would not approach the display unless there was someone already present. When there was people using the display, onlookers would first stop and pause to see what was going on, then slowly take a step-wise approach to the display, waiting for an opening.

There were some individuals that used the display by themselves, but it was used mostly by small groups of people, either two or three in size. Only 18% were individuals. There was rarely a group larger than three that went up to the display. The largest concurrent usage they noted was ten people using both their hands, all working individually. This did not accomplish much because the display actually lended itself to be more easily used with a teamwork rather than individual usage.

Once people started working together, they started enjoying the display more. People would work together to play with the pictures, resizing them and manipulating them. Some groups started to have more fun by throwing pictures at each other. At one point, a group set up a sort of goal with two pictures on one end, while another person attempted to throw a picture through the goal.

When the display started to become crowded, the transitions between usage groups was interesting to note. One group may hand-off to another group by inviting them to take over where they were. Many groups though, just simply left after they noticed that other people were watching and waiting to use the display. Some people would leave their "fingerprints" on the display before they left. One person set up the display to be a sort of photo gallery by arranging the pictures in a neat and orderly fashion before leaving. Another took a photo and enlarged it enough to take up the entire display.

This lead to other problems between users. At one point, a lady was carefully manipulating pictures on one side of the display while a group of people was playing around on the other side. The group had then accidentally enlarged a picture so that it was overlapping the side on which the lady was working on her pictures. The group then noticed this and immediately left. The lady then left as well, more frustrated though. This in turn lead to their theory of conflict management. When one user invaded the space of another unintentionally, these conflicts would arise and have to be resolved. Already noted, one way of resolve was to avoid the conflict. Other was noticed were to apologize and help return things to how they were before.

In using the display, some people would make it out to be a stage to perform. One person set up a comedy act, while another would act as a teacher showing others how to use it. As more people started acting in different areas on the display, they noticed that, although many people tried to keep their interactions separate, more often, they started to talk to the other users and coordinate their activities with strangers.

All in all, I think that the citywall project was a good idea. Even though it was only used to gather research on the usage of large multi-touch displays in a crowded city center, I hope that this leads to more wide spread installations of these kind of displays.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Lineogrammer: Creating Diagrams by Drawing

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Robert Zeleznik, Andrew Bragdon, Chu-Chi Liu, Andrew Forsberg


Lineogrammer is a program that uses a touch screen and pen input to create diagrams and drawings. There are a few programs out there that are similar, but lineogrammer is trying to be more innovative. The concept behind the program is to find a way to be able to use the program the same way you would be writing with a pen and paper. There are no different modes for example. There is no need to explicitly switch between a drawing mode and editing mode. 
The idea is to use special pen strokes to differentiate between a stroke for drawing and a stroke for editing. The picture above demonstrates how easy it is to flow between drawing and editing. The user is able to draw simple shapes, then remove lines by squiggling over them. They can format text by underlining it, and zoom in on a region by circling it twice. The developers had to find a set of pen strokes that would not be used for drawing. This took lots of time and many focus group sessions.

Although they only have a simple set of editing tools, it allows the user to create complex pictures and diagrams. This complexity mainly comes from their line snapping concept. When a user draws a line, it is snapped to a grid or another line, usually at 90 degree increments. The user is also given one alternative that best fits the line that they actually drew. Many other programs offer sever alternatives, but they found that users did not like having more than one alternative.

They attempted to make selection and fine editing natural as well. Selecting a line or vertex is very straight forward. All the user has to do is simply tap a line or point and it is selected. When a user wants to select a polygon, all they must to is tap inside the polygon and the whole shape is selected.
When there are multiple polygons in the same region that user taps, all the polygons will be selected. The user may then refine their selection, by taping inside the polygons that they wish to unselect.

Another feature they added was a floating toolbar. This toolbar allows for more complex editing that cannot be achieved with simple pen strokes. The users are able to copy and paste and edit different properties of the shape. They can change the color or thickness of the line stroke. They can do advanced things like copy-dragging where a user selects a shape, or set of shapes, then can make multiple copies directly in a row.

One feature that users enjoyed using was the ruler. Instead of having a traditional ruler along the edges of the screen, they decided to make the ruler floating, like a person would if they had one placed over a sheet of paper. The ruler allows users even more editing options. They can take a shape and mirror it over an axis.

 They are able to stretch a shape in any direction linearly using the distribute feature. The best feature users like was the ability to snap multiple shapes to the rule. When users select multiple shapes and the ruler, they can align the shapes along the same edge along the ruler.

All in all, the lineogrammer programs looks very promising and is certainly a step in the direction pen based programs should be going. By attempting to make the program as easy to use as drawing on paper, they allow the users to just start using it very intuitively. If I had a touchscreen computer, and the program was widely available, I would certainly get it to give it a try.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Design of Future Things

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The Design of Future Things

This book by Don Norman was certainly easier to read and relate to than the previous book I read (The Design of Everyday Things). Since the book was published within the last decade, it was easier to understand some of the points that he was making in the book. Overall though, the book was essentially only about two things: cars and houses. 

He started by talking about how automation is cars is both good and bad depending on how it is implimented and used. This is OK by itself, but with nearly half the book being about automation in cars, it began to feel like he was just running out of ideas and only trying to find something to write about what he already knew. The book is supposed to be about future THINGS, not future cars and houses.

The other half of the book was about future houses. I would have to say that it is about a 50/50 split between the two, but intertwined. He talks about how the fridge will know what you're supposed to be eating by talking to your doctor, looking at your medical records, and even talking to the scale. I found that a lot of the things he states would be possible, but not practical. I cannot see a company spending thousands or millions of dollars to build a fridge that would tell you what you can and cannot eat. If they do, I certainly can't see it actually being marketable.

People do not like being told what they can or cannot do. Even if I am told that something is unhealthy or bad, I still might do it anyway, just because I am human and I have the choice to do so. I can see how cars being automated would be likely, but I do not like the idea of a car going somewhere of its own choosing because it thinks it would be better for me, or because some advertising company talked to my car from a bilboard and said it would be better.

Overall, the book is a nice read, as long as you stick to the first few chapters. After that, it is essentially the same ideas but only with varying concepts.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Friday, February 20, 2009

The Mole People

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The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City by Jennifer Toth is an ethnographic look at the homeless inhabitants that dwell in the tunnels that snake underneath New York City. Jennifer writes the book in from an outsiders perspective looking in on the people. She visits several camps and gathering places and interviews lots of different people from each location. She also writes sometimes from her point of view and her understanding of what is going on. Mostly though, she is only retelling the stories that she is told and essentially a play-by-play of different situations that she found herself in. Overall, the book is a nice read and is not technical at all. The problem I thought though is that she seems very removed from everything. I understand that is what an ethnography is about, but even her descriptions of her encounters with various people are told as if she is not even part of the conversation that they are having with her.

I did learn a lot from the book as well. I knew of people living in tunnels beneath the city, but I was not aware as to the extent. I thought it was very interesting of the size of the groups of people in the tunnels. Even to go as far as having a mayor, police, and a school all for people with no houses or jobs. The way that these groups of people can band together and accomplish this stuff is certainly something to think about. If all these people can organize like this, what is really stopping them from leading a successful life on the surface? She does state that lots of people are in the tunnels because they choose to be. From her descriptions and tales of others, the tunnel life does not seem as bad as surface dwellers would make it out to be, but it is not for everyone. Even with having such a tight knit community, there are still lots of dangers in the tunnels. Many people are there on their own trying to get by and searching for ways to get drugs. If you seem weaker than they are, or even only slightly stronger, they will not hesitate to kill you.

The tunnels are excellent places for crime. People can go on killing sprees without anyone finding out. Police are always hesitant to go into the tunnels when called and track workers who have to frequently enter the tunnels know the rules. If you don't try to mess with them, then will mostly leave you alone. The city has tried and failed countless times to clean up the underworld but no method has made any kind of major improvement on the situation. At this point, as long as they are not upsetting the status-quo, then it should be fine to leave things as is.

Redbox

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The ethnography that I decided to conduct was on Redbox users. I wanted to see how people used the box and how easy it was for them to use it. As a side study, I also looked at the people that were queuing to use the Redbox. I watched how the line grew longer and got shorter as well as its affect on the usage of the Redbox.

The Redbox in question that I was studying is located at the McDonald's on Texas Ave. Over a period of one and a half hours, I recorded data on fifty transactions as well as the nature of the people in line. This was also on a Friday night, typically thought of as movie night for most college students.

The majority of users rented DVDs. there were 35 groups that only rented. Their average transaction time was 2:25. 14 groups returned DVDs with an average transaction time of 46 seconds. One person only browsed, not renting or returning, for 1:22.

The Redbox has been designed to be very efficient at what it does. Returning a DVD is a very quick transaction, only requiring to tell the box that the user is returning a DVD and place it in the slot. Problems start to arise when the user places the DVD in the box incorrectly. Redbox has attempted to solve this problem by placing a label on the DVD case that states which side must be facing the user, but it does not account for the possibility of having the DVD in the case incorrectly.

Another hindrance to the transaction time is the credit card reader. Although the screen and accompanying sticker next to the reader explain the usage, it does not provide adequate feedback when used incorrectly. If the card is swiped in the wrong direction, it is not explained to the user. The only feedback the user will receive is a flashing red light for a few seconds after their card is swiped incorrectly. This is not immediate either, causing people who did use the card reader correctly to pause briefly, waiting to see if they did it correctly themselves.

One interesting thing to note about the people queuing in line is their inherent laziness. Throughout the evening, both the direction, and formation of the the line changed almost as quickly as people entered and left the line. When the line was short, people queued up very nicely behind each other. As the line grew and a bit more time passed, the line began to shift into the parking lot. At first the people were taking up a parking spot, but still remained in a relatively straight line. As even more people filed in, they has to spread out as to not stand in the way of traffic passing through. There are only six parking spots relatively close to the Redbox as well as one handicapped spot. When the six regular spots were full, some people bravely took the handicapped spot to save them the walking distance across the lot.

In conclusion, the Redbox has been designed very efficiently and allows for quick transactions but some improvements can be made. Having a separate slot for returns would allow a person to return a DVD at the same time another person is renting one. There would have to be some kind of timing system so the DVDs will not interfere with the other transaction, but should be possible. The card reader feedback could be better designed. Possible to allow the card to be read in either direction that it is swiped. The location of the Redbox could be better places, or possibly some signs can be placed to state which direction to form a line as to keep people on the sidewalk and out of the parking lot.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Media Turing Test

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The Media Equation by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass was an interesting read about people's perception of media as real people and places. Essentially the authors describe different social rules and norms, replace people with the word computer, do some experiments to prove their predictions and report their findings. To sum things up completely, the authors essentially state that, in any given situation between two people or a person and a place, when the other person or place is replaced with some form of media (TV, computer, picture) the person will have the same reaction regardless. 

Though I agree with many of their findings, I felt that their approach to explaining how they went about their experiments was a bit dry and repetative. There were a few experiments that I was amazed at the results by. The one in particular about specialization is the one that I thought was most interesting. The rule is that people will accept certain infomation from a specialist person more readily than the same information from a generalized person. The hypothesis is that information presented by a specialist TV will be accepted and remembered more than the same information from a generalized TV. What they did to prove this was choose a clip of a news program and a clip from a movie to use as the control. For half the participants, both clips were shown on a single TV labled general, and the other half watched the news program on a news TV and the movie clip on the entertainment TV. Shocking enough, the people watching the programs on the specialized TVs though that they were more informative and entertaining.

Overall, though, the book was a different view on how emerging trends in media were starting to embed themselves into the cultural and societal rules.

Friday, February 6, 2009

I'm Sorry, It's My Fault

So I was listening to Pandora (www.pandora.com) tonight and came across this:

I thought this was an excellent example of positive feedback and design. For those who have never used Pandora, it is an Internet radio, but customizable so that it will tailor itself to your specific listening style. This post is not about Pandora as a service, but specifically about the displayed error message. Normally, the area in question would display information about the current artist and song that is playing, but unfortunately and error has occurred. Instead of coming straight out and saying "An error has occurred" or saying nothing at all, like most sited would do, Pandora takes a very nice and polite approach. The massage makes you feel nice, like there is another person on the other side controlling everything, or some other form of sentience, and they are taking full responsibility of the problem. Personally, this made me actually feel a little better about it, as if i could just say, "Hey, don't worry about it, these things happen. Go ahead and try again." Even though, I know for a fact, there is not another person on the other side the way the message is presented, makes it feel as if there is.

This is just another excellent example of a program taking on a human personality and certainly providing excellent feedback to the user.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Bad Design

On the same note as my previous post, I thought it would be nice to have a comparison of something I feel is a bad design. Although the actual "interface" is designed fairly well, the implementation goes against the standard of what it should be. On that note, I present the following:



The first I present is the control. This faucet is located in my bathroom. It follows all the standards that apply to faucet technology as best is can:
  • The hot is on the left, the cold is on the right.
  • You can control temperature independent of amount/pressure.
  • The handles pull towards you for on, away for off.
Of the three faucets in my apartment, this is the most conventional.



This faucet is located in my kitchen. It appears to follow the same standard as the previous faucet until you go to actually use it. Although it you can't tell in the picture (or even standing over it) the hot water is on the right and cold is on the left. After constantly scolding or freezing myself with dishes, I acquired some additional help for me to remember the switch.




This nifty gadget turns the water red when it is hot and blue when it is cold. The need for the addition clearly is evidence of a design flaw (most likely in the plumbing while the faucet just followed along).



As with the previous two examples, this design flaw is not immediately noticeable either. Unfortunately, the flaw affects me the most being that it is the shower where I spend more time than the other two faucets.

The problem here is not that the hot and cold are switched but that the knobs must be turned clockwise to get the water flowing. A minor inconvenience when turning on the shower, but a major pain when attempting to adjust the water with soap in your eyes. Reaching for the cold water knob and turning it counterclockwise expecting a nice transition to warmer waters only to get a big chill is great for that much needed wake-up shock but not very pleasant.

And there it is. Right in my own apartment. Not one, but two failures to conform to the standard of faucet design. Whether by choice or mistake, it is unbelievable to have three separate faucets with three different ways of controlling them, all under the same roof. Even if it is against the standard, it would have been a lot easier to just pick one and be consistent. At least then I wouldn't have to learn how to use three different faucets.

Good Design

At er reading through the book, The Design of Everyday Things, I have noticed many things that have both a good and bad design. Although the design that I have picked to be my favorite design I've known about for awhile, I still believe it is good.

Back in Akron, Ohio, in the mall, there is an interactive advertising system that I thought had a very good interface. It is made by a company called Reactrix, which I recently found out went bankrupt.



Their advertising was essentially a projector on the ceiling that displayed the images on the floor. You could interact with the projected images by moving over them. By using infrared cameras to track movement, there can be many people interacting at the same time. They made them fun to play with too. There were things such as popping balloons, racing games, shooting games, and anything else they could think of. It was a fun way to kill long periods of time, and I'm sure some businesses were trying to sell stuff too.

By making the advertisements interactive, more people would pay attention to them instead of just walking past without even looking. I believe it was a very novel idea, and they are certainly not the only company that has been using the technology, just not very good with their book keeping.

I can only imagine using this kind of technology to interact with a regular home computer. Being able to do things with just the wave of your hand. Of course it still needs a lot of improvement to compare to a keyboard and mouse but its a step in the right direction.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The (Mis)Design of Everyday Things

//Comments

I have recently finished reading an excellent book entitled The Design of Everyday Things (DOET). It was very interesting to read and can be very enlightening to the everyday use of the objects in the world around us or there misuse/poor design. The book uses several running examples, such as doors and telephone systems, to constantly convey the point that when we humans fail to use an object properly, it is, more often than not, a problem with the design of the object. He uses lots of straight forward real world examples to help explain this point. Although the book is becoming a bit dated, the principles can still be applied today. 

Why do designers fail to account for the end user in the design process? This can easily be explained in a simple phrase: "It probably won an award." The things needed most to help the end user actually use the product are not typically thought of during the design process. The designers only want to appeal to their immediate market audience, which is typically not the people actually using the product. Large corporations buy products based on price, not ease of use and the result is not very welcomed by the people that have to actually use what they are purchasing. They reduce the price by making the products smaller, with less controls but many features. This translates to an overly complex product with an even more complex way to use it. 

An excellent example of this poor design stated in the book is the British Telecom Telephone (pg 20). The phone seems simple enough to use. It has a standard telephone key pad as well as a single extra button conveniently labeled "R" which is used to access all of the advanced features of the phone. The first time user of this phone might have enough knowledge of the telephone system in general to make a phone call but to be able to do anything else requires much learning and extensive reading of the manual. 

After finishing this book, I started to see the world through different eyes. I started to realize, "It's not my fault that I can't open the door, the designer didn't do his job properly." It's very interesting to look around at everything that I use and understand why it is easy or hard to use.

I would recommend this book to any product designer or any person that is in the business of creating products that are directly used by many people.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Welcome to the Chaos

Welcome to my first blog. Here I will be discussing my thoughts on various topics discussed during my Computer Human Interaction class as well as additional thoughts about the chaotic world around us.