Fitts's Law

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Cole J: Fitt's Law

Jared: Fitts' Law (correct spelling = +bonus points)

Brad Twitty: Fitt's Law

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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Brad Twitty: ... Considered Harmful

Brian S: Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful

J Chris: Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful

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.

Human-Centered Design Considered Harmfun

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Devin M: Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful

Kevin: Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful

Nick H: Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful

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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Brad Twitty: ... Considered Harmful

John Z: Do we need new ethnographic methods?

Devin M: Ethnography Considered Harmful

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.

Inmates Are Running the Asylum

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Devin M: The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

Brian: Inmates are Running The Asylum

Tony G: The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

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. 

SLAP Widgets

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Patrick S: Sacred Imagery in Techno-Spiritual Design

Tony G: The VoiceBot

Tyler: Simulated Augmented Reality Windshield Display as a Cognitive Mapping Aid for Elder Driver Navigation

SLAP Widgets: Bridging the Gap Between Virtual and

Physical Controls on Tabletops

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.

Two-Finger Input with a Standard Touch Screen

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Tony G: GUI Phooey!: The Case for Text Input

Sarah: Methods of Collecting Internet Content

Patrick S: Shadow Reaching

Two-Finger Input with a Standard Touch Screen

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