Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful

Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful

In this paper the authors critics the usability evaluations prevalence and necessity in the academic arena and in the industry. They talk about how many CHI papers won't even be considered without a quantitative usability evaluation. They claim that the current usability evaluations in practice are often times missused or simply not necessary. They sum everything up by stating that usability evaluations are good but to be open for non-empirical methods as well. This was an interesting paper but seems was dragged out 5 pages too long.

Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful

Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful

I'm fairly confident that I would be able to identify the author after reading it having not been told who wrote it. It has Norman written all over it. I found it very interesting when he discussed the idea that we try to make technology adapt to people too much and that people should adapt to technology more. He argued thats how many of the most popular tools of our civilized world came about through the adaptation of man. I also liked his proposal of not listening to users, that was very entertaining. He makes good points about all of his critics of human-centered design and it is something to think about when designing. I enjoy reading things Norma writes even if they get a little crazy. It is always an interesting read.

Ethnography Considered Harmful

Ethnography Considered Harmful

This is a critical essay on the current practices of ethnographies. The authors talk about new practices for ethnography's while criticizing the old. They do offer critics of the new ideas but I think this essay was more of a literary exercise for them than anything worth reading. They made use of well constructed sentences and obscure quotes that often times were barely relevant. I don't think I gained anything from reading this paper and wish they could give me my time back.

CHI 2009: Musink

Musink: composing music through augmented drawing
by Theophanis Tsandilas, Catherine Letondal & Wendy E. Mackay
Univ. Paris-Du, Orsay Cedex, France

Musink pdf
Musink Video

Summary:
This paper attempts to provide a transition between paper and computer for composers. It allows for composers to freely use their creativity on paper and translate it to the computer. Using OpenMusic software they recorded gestures from a pen on paper and put the gestures on the computer for the OpenMusic software to then use the gestures and put meaning to them.

Thoughts:
According to their surveys and studies with composers the technique was supposedly liked. However, I am not sure how effective it would be in the real creative process when errors and scratch notes are prevalent.

UIST 2007 - Hybrid Infrared and Visible Light Projection for Location Tracking

UIST 2007 - Hybrid Infrared and Visible Light Projection for Location Tracking

by Johnny Chung Lee, Scott Hudson, Paul Dietz {Carnegie Mellon University & Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs}

Summary:

This paper discusses their prototype for a hybrid infrared and visible light projector for location tracking. The idea of the prototype is to solve the application issues of many other interactive projection systems. An example of previous interactive projection systems can be seen in Figure 1. The problem with these projects for practical use is the difficulty of image alignment and location tracking, which the hybrid infrared and visible light projector attempts to solve.

In previous work the use of projecting a series of patterns which uniquely identifies each pixel in the projector's screen. See Figure 2. Using this technique but with invisible infrared light a projector can overlay the location discovery infrared lights on top of the viewing visible light to have an intractable projector.

The prototype created uses LED's as apposed to the expensive high wattage Xenon gas bulb used in DLP. The LED's consist of 24 high output visible-light LED's and 24 high output near infrared LED's shown in Figure 3. The prototype did not add RGB color arrays since it would be a trivial task for it to be added for commercial use. The infrared LED's then are received using Vishay 56KHZ IR receivers (hand held style pen).

For rear projected displays a style pen using the IR receiver is used to interact with the projected display. See Figure 5. For front projected display a style pen is not possible due to hand and body blocking the projected image. However, a hand-held focus lens can be held a short distance away to receive the IR reflected off of not only flat but spatial images as well. See Figure 6.

The authors also make note of the ease of replacing current rear projected display systems with their prototype and thus creating an interactable display device with only a few alterations.

Thoughts:

The authors of the paper mention that the Nintendo Wii Controller uses IR LED emitters and a handheld IR camera for tracking but don't really go into any speculations on some potential applications. To me it seems very plausable for this technology to be used with console systems to allow for more procise controls using a handle held controller similar to that of the Wii Conroller. Also, remote controlers for the TV could become interactable controlers, pointing and clicking instead of scrolling.

Figure 1. Tracking the location of a hand-held surface and then projecting content to simulate an active display.

Figure 2. Two views of our projector output: a test pattern seen in infrared (left) and a visible light image (right)

Figure 3. Light source of 24 red (clear) and 24 infrared (dark) high-output light emitting diodes.

Figure 4. Inside our projector: A) LED light source B) culminating lens C) DMD device and D) projection lens.

Figure 5. A stylus with a light sensor (insert) used to interact with a rear-projected display.

Figure 6. A stylus utilizing a focusing lens (insert) for distant pointing on non-planar and discontinuous surfaces.

Emotional Design by Donald Norman

Summary:

Don takes a look at emotion and design in this book. He argues the idea that in order for media to communicat better with people it needs to be able to understand our emotion and in order to do that it needs to have emotions as well. He makes references to the Reeves & Nass book The Media equation when talking about this. He stresses three levels of design: Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective and that the best products attempt to use all three of these in its design.

Thoughts:

This book is a lot less repetative than Future Designs and really addresses some good fundamentals. I would say it is comparable to his first book The Design of Everyday Things. I am hesitant to compare the two though because I read his first book when it was dated and it's really unfair to compare the two because when the first one was published it was very ground breaking. 

The only problem I had with this book was Norman's logic when trying to make the argument that media needs emotion. He claimed that without emotion something like the Roomba would have no "incentive" to do a better job of cleaning because it wouldn't have "pride". I thought this was a circular argument. First of all media doesn't have incentive that implies that it has free-will and a choice of whether it wants to actually do what it was designed to do. Media only does what it is programmed to do and I would hope that it is programmed to clean as best as it can. The media would have to have emotions already to make the "incentive" argument so to say media needs emotions or else they might emotionally decide to not do as good is retarded.

Also, I don't really like the idea of media having emotions to begin with. My media devices should be tools not friends. I don't want to have to deal with any kind of retarded ethical dilemma later down the line with the slavery of media devices that some nut-case (probably from PETA) proposes. Plus I already have to deal with emotional women much less adding my iPod to the list of things I don't want to see cry.

The Design of Future Things by Donald Norman

Posted:

Tyler

Steven

Sarah

Summary:

Norman attempts to extend and modernize his widely acclaimed book The Design of Everyday things and takes a look at the future. He looks at cars and future automation of our motor vehicles as well as talking about the psychology of people and machines. In addition he takes a look at automation in general and talks about its role in future designs.

Thoughts:

This book can be skipped. The only interesting thing to me was when he talked about the different ways of automating cars with swarm and platoon techniques. Unless you want to count the afterword when he goes crazy, that was...interesting.