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

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Nicholas H: Emotional Design by Donald Norman

Brad Twitty: Norman's Emotional Desgin

Tony G: Emotional Design - Donald Norman

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.

Stanley Milgram: The Man Who Shocked the World

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Brad Twitty: The Man Who Shocked Some People
George L: Shocking
Tony G: The Man who Shocked the World

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.

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

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Tony G: Assessing Attractiveness in Online Dating Profiles

Ben C: CHI 2008

Patrick S: Audio/Visual Creations on Mobile Devices

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

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.

Lineogrammer: Creating Diagrams by Drawing

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Jared Wright: UIST papers: "Annotating Gigapixel Images" and "Foldable Interactive Displays"

Tony G: An Exploration of Pen Rolling for Pen-based Interaction

Kevin: Browsing Large HTML Tables on Small Screens

Lineogrammer: Creating Diagrams by Drawing

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.

The Design of Future Things

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Jared Wright: Don Norman's The Design of Future Things

Patrick Suber: The Design of Future Things

Kevin: I'm sorry dave, I'm afraid I cannot let you have eggs today

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.

The Mole People

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Nicholas H

Tony G

Patrick S

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.