Reading response 10- Chapter 6 and chapter 7

The evidence suggests that extended contact with technology—long hours spent practicing musical instruments or typing with the thumbs on cell phones or other hand-held devices—constitutes the kind of practice that can affect the brain (p167)… Experience does change the brain, especially prolonged, early experience of children (p167).  

Brain changes brought about by learning and practice are not inherited, just as increased muscle mass is not passed from one generation to the next. Still, as technology enters the life of children at an earlier and earlier age, it will impact how they respond, think, and behave (p167).

Coincidently, these Norman’s statements regarding the impact of technology on brain and thoughts are relevant with a debate I experienced in my instructional design class last week. I agree with Norman. I actually registered as For side which supported that today’s net generations think and process the information differently than the previous generations. Our support was originally from Marc Prensky in his article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants of 2001 in which he stated “It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous information environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it (technology), today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.” Our side proved it basically from these four arguments: access to digital information has biologically rewired brains; the net generations form a different personal and work values; digital technologies are used as a natural and useful way for net generations’ learning and the net generations have particular learning preferences that differ from the previous generations. While, the against side addressed that the evidence is not enough to convince us that our brain changed so that there is no difference from the old generation; we digital immigrant nowadays also interact with the technology and think and process the information in the same way as what the digital natives do. During the debate, another intriguing but controversial topic emerged from it that goes to the disadvantages of technology. As we concerned, the advanced technology are causing today’s students never sit, read and think of the classic literature, like Shakespeare, as the previous generation did. Statistics did show us, by age 21, the average net Generations will have spent:10,000 hours on cell phones; 10,000 hours playing video games; over 20,000 hours watching TV; over 250,000 sending/receiving emails and IMs; watched over 500,000 TV commercials, But, less than 5,000 hours reading. Here, probably, my focus is not on the advantages or disadvantages of the technology but the differences between digital natives and digital immigrants that the technology is bringing to us. Whatever, I still believe that the children’s brains will be modified early in their lives to accommodate new skills that technology requires. To them, technology is not technology but a natural way to interact with everyday things. It’s not surprising why my friend’s 6-year old son can play Wii very well without any tutorials in the first time, for me, however, it took me about more than 10 minutes to figure out the function of each button and how to correspondingly handle the controller well.

Smart technologies have the capacity to enhance pleasure, simplify lives, and add to our safety (p156).

Design, today, is taught and practiced as an art form or craft, not as a science with known principles that have been verified through experimentation and that can be used to derive new design approaches (p172). ..We need a new approach, one that combines the precision and rigor of business and engineering, the understanding of social interactions, and the aesthetics of the arts (p173).

It is so true that today’s design is not merely a science issue or an art issue. As Norman suggests, the new trend for design everyday things is to apply a comprehensive approach to try to make our lives ideal.

I think this trend is currently realized and advocated by our societies. It reminds me of 2010 Seoul international design competition. It envisioned the realization of an egalitarian society and human values through design proposals that are easy, convenient, and pleasant to use. It also emphasized the importance of digital technology-based communication that was rapidly increasing in the environment of a contemporary city, in which design could bring convenience, safety, equality and pleasure to citizens. The motto—‘design for all’ objective is made to increase the efforts and the pursuit of design production that can be shared by all, removing emotional and physical barriers by becoming an universal communicative social solution.

Among those winners, I was so impressed by Yoga traffic lights (see the fun design from the below video). The designer tried to make the time spent waiting at traffic lights more productive with the Yoga Traffic Light. It was designed exactly like a regular traffic light except that it shows yoga poses during red lights. The Yoga Traffic Light turns what would be wasted time into a fun mini yoga session, which helps you kill time and avoid getting bored at that moment. Plus, such slight design change on the traffic lights could go a long way in preventing accidents and promoting a more leisurely and safe lifestyle.

We are fortunate generations, as we are experiencing a society with hi-tech development and witnessing tons of possibilities turn into tons of realities. We human beings are so imaginative and are optimistic on how the future things will be. Yes, “This is a future that is emotionally appealing and engaging as well as educational and entertaining (p174).”

Reading Response 9---Norman’s Chapter 5 The role of automation

The future of design clearly lies in the development of smart devices that drive cars for us, make our meals, monitor our health, clean our floors, and tell us what to eat and when to exercise (p134).

I have to admit that my imaginary ideal future life is like what Norman mentioned in the above phrase. We currently live in an automatic world. Unconsciously, automation has changed the world a lot and it seems we could not go back any more.

According to wikipedia, automation is the use of control systems to control processes, reducing the need for human intervention. Putting this into context, automation is having technology do things for us so that we don’t have to. Automation is all around us, just briefly review them, we realized that there are tons of automation that we might not pay much attention in our daily lives but they indeed exist, bringing us convenience and maintaining a smooth society: traffic lights on crossroads, automatic doors in malls, treadmill in the fitness center, water tap and hand dryer available in washrooms, security doors in the airport and the automatic check-out system in the library, so on and so forth.

It is an automatic world now, not automatic enough though. We are struggling for more advanced technologies to achieve automation in more fields which satisfy the infinite needs of ourselves.

I assent that a good starting point is to automate the things that we don’t want to spend time doing. I cannot count how many times I have been wasting on the house cleaning, grocery shopping (not for fun) and sorting out materials on laptop, etc. Specially, my occasional bad experience in the library makes me cry for automation when it took me more than 20 minutes to find a wanted book, sometimes without any result at all. Although they are sorted in a certain order by library staffs, we cannot avoid if someone before us just picks it and has a look, but later puts it back in a wrong place even on the same shelf. In this case, if the future technology, no matter in which form, could make it automatic, we absolutely save time on finding books. Instead, we could be able to put more effort on research which is more worth doing.

Augmentative tools are comforting, for they leave the decisions about activities to people. .. Autonomous devices can be useful when jobs are dull, dangerous, or dirty (p131).

In this chapter, Norman takes Mozer’s home as a fully automatic example and he personally would not want to live Mozer’s home, neither do I.  I don’t feel comfortable if the systems always attempt to infer my intentions, sometimes make wrong decisions and conversely annoy me. I prefer augmentative tools at home, as I can take them or leave them, choosing those that I feel aid my lives, ignoring those that do not. By doing that, I could feel my ownership in my own house. Below is an example for smart home I found in a houseautomator-like website, but I would rather categorize it into an augmentative technology at smart home in the future. Although this cool canopy bed--home theater is seemingly designed by automatic philosophy, it gives us options to interact with it, not just simply infers our intentions nor determines by itself.

Automated Canopy Bed by Hi-Can - home theater, game room and an office---A specific control allows you to activate lighting blinds that close up, giving you the privacy that you deserve. If you’re not comfortable in bed, adjust the bedding controls, which move your bed into the-just-right position. The Hi-Can comes with a state-of-the-art sound system and a theatre screen that slides down to the foot of the bed. No need to leave home, you can have dinner and a movie in bed, or simply play the music that suits your mood. Plus, a built-in PC allows you to surf the web or do work while you relax. The Hi-Can canopy bed also boasts a full multimedia system with a game and entertainment console that connects to a projector and shows up on the theatre screen. This is truly a multifunctional bedroom.

 Retrieved from http://www.houseautomator.com/arch/home-theater/

Reading Response 8—Evaluation issue (cont'd)

We wanted to know what users thought of a site after using it. And that's best assessed by asking them (Nielsen, 2010).

The DECIDE framework suggests identifying goals and questions first before selecting techniques for the study, because the goals and questions help determine which data is collected and how it will be analyzed (Preece, p 379).

It really makes sense that the DECIDE framework gives us a useful guideline for evaluation phase. If you still remember, I quoted DECIDE framework in my last blog which caused me to conjunct it with my group project Feed Me Well (FMW). Here, I once again review my group’s initial ideas and considerations on evaluation phase, which would help examine my understanding on this framework and furthermore reinforces my skills of using it in the real world. Certainly, these considerations were included in the end of our production paper:

Based on tutorials-focus tasks we have done, in the next evaluation phase, our goals would be to evaluate the effectiveness, ease of learning and functionality of the tutorial, to examine how the tutorials help users understand and operate the watch if they need this kind of assistance. In addition, in terms of the questions from which our groups want to get the answers, before my group reach agreement, I just personally came up with several questions that probably fit our FMW evaluation phase regarding the tutorials. It is not a final nor complete one though, I just want to keep them here when they are still fresh in my mind. (My apologize to my groupJ for showing them here) If applicable, questions might be like these:

1. In general, how do users like the tutorials?
2. What is(are) users’ favourite feature(s) or part(s) regarding the tutorials?
3. Is (are) there one (some) part(s) users don’t like on the tutorials?
4. To what extent do users think the tutorials help them operate the watch?
5. Are there any improvements for the tutorials? If so, what are they?
   

Thus, the questions showed above need to be figured out in the evaluation phase. Based on Nielsen’s suggestion, we can definitely get the answers by asking the tested users, knowing how they think of the tutorials from both macro and micro perspectives. We probably could carry out an interview and change the questions above into a questionnaire format. Therefore, the main evaluation techniques we plan to use is observing users, testing users’ performance and asking their opinions (interviewing users). For the detailed procedure and implementation, I think I’d better leave them to our final evaluation paper.J

I just came across an online book relating to this EDER course when I googled for evaluation materials. The name of the book is User-centered design stories: real-world UCD case files, written by Carol Righi and Janice James in 2007. It is the first user-centered design casebook, follows the Harvard Case study method. I attacked it here for providing myself with more materials and reference that might be available in my future practice. Please click here for direct link of this book.

Reading Response 7----Norman’s Chapter 3 Natural Interaction

A better way to design the future things of everyday life is to use richer, more informative, less intrusive signals: natural signals (p59).

Implicit communication is an important component of the design of intelligent things because it informs without interruption, annoyance, or even the need for conscious attention (p62).

Because sound can be both informative and annoying, this raises the difficult design problem of understanding how to enhance its value while minimizing its annoyance (p64)... .Implicit communication can be a powerful tool for informing without annoying (p66).

                                                                         ---------Norman, 2007, chapter 3

I indeed have several experience towards Norman’s argument. I agree that sound is a good thing and an annoying thing in our lives. To isolate the application of sound for design from its detailed context is meaningless per se. It all depends on which product the sound is designed or used for.

Here is my first example: I bought a new humidifier recently and put it in my bedroom. It is so noisy when the fan embedded the humidifier is working. The sound let me know it works well but I could not bear it and fall asleep if I keep it working all night long. For the sake of health, I choose an expediential way—turning it on about 2 hours before I go to bed, which makes my bedroom moist enough and turning it off when I go to bed, which ensures me to have a sound sleep in the moist temperature. I keep suspecting if it is the reason for the store to have it on sale. I am also wondering if a more expensive humidifier would avoid this problem. In this case, “comfort noise” is not applicable. I felt that not only I but others prefer quiet to noise as the sound here is more like an intrusion annoying us in our lives.

On the contrary, there is another opposite example from my kitchen, which well applied sound to interact with me—a normal daily user. That is my microwave---one of typical good designs in my kitchen. My experience on it is pleasurable, satisfactory and enjoyable. Believe it or not, I was sometimes interrupted by other kitchen issues which usually made me forget what I had put into the microwave. I just keep doing other things and neglect I should take out the food from it. In this case, my microwave makes a sound “da da, da da” every 30 seconds until I take the food from it. In this way, it seems to remind me that I had something in the microwave, giving me a warning like” “Attention! It’s time to take it out! ” That’s so useful and convenient, isn’t it? However, one of my friends has no this interesting experience like me. She usually uses her microwave to heat a cup of milk or tea. As her microwave is not an updated product, it does not have a remind-like functionality to remind her of this thing. Thus, she sometimes forgot to pick up food from microwave until the next time she had to reuse microwave to heat other food, then you can imagine what happened—Yes, when she open the microwave, she suddenly found her old stuff was still in it. As such, she complains a lot, and the same complaint goes to her laundry machine. Although the laundry machine gives her a sound reminder that it finishes washing, but if she was interrupted and did other things first instead, she would definitely forgot her clothes and they would stay in the machine several hours until she realized it. I agree with her that the washing machines should be also invited a sound to remind users of things that are still inside it.

For these needs, sound is so helpful for those Mr. and Mrs. Forgettable. As sound is very necessary in these cases, another question emerges: what sound should be used for specific product? Back to my microwave case, I think the sound of “Dada, dada” is appropriate, it is not like music but at least it is not annoying and acceptable for me. Whereas, different users have different tastes. Even the natural signals are to be used, it might also annoy others if the users are not in a mood. So, it is really hard to satisfy all the users at the same time. For instance, like the sound for emergency or ambulance car, I frankly don’t like this type of sound, making me nervous and anxious, but I am well aware that it is in need for our society. No matter how, for designers, the fundamental principle it to minimize its annoyance as much as possible.

                                                   There, they sound a lot better now.

Reading Response 6---Thoughts on evaluation issue

"From this selection of examples (a word processor, a cell phone, a website that sells clothes an online patient support community), you can see that success of some interactive products depends on much more than just usability. Aesthetic, emotional, engaging, and motivating qualities are important too (p 322).

Evaluations done during design to check that the product continues to meet users' needs are know as formative evaluations. Evaluations that are done to assess the success of a finished product, such as those to satisfy a sponsoring agency or to check that a standard is being upheld, are know as summative evaluation. (p323)

The HutchWorld case study--The evaluator also asked the participants to fill out a short questionnaire after completing the tasks, with the aim of collecting their opinions about their experiences with HutchWorld. The questionnaire asked (p330):                                                                       

What did you like about HutchWorld?

What did you not like about HutchWorld?

What did you find confusing or difficult to use in HutchWorld?

How would you suggest improving HutchWorld?

Some practical issues that evaluators routinely have to address include (p336):

• what to do when there are not many users
• how to observe users in their natural location (i.e., field studies) without disturbing them
• having appropriate equipment available
• dealing with short schedules and low budgets
• not disturbing users or causing them duress or doing anything unethical
• collecting "useful" data and being able to analyze it
• selecting techniques that match the evaluators' expertise"

Frankly, I have never systematically or carefully thought about the evaluation issue until I read this chapter. I love the HutchWorld case study. It shows us a vivid example with very detailed process how the team carried out evaluation from the earlier stage to the last stage. I once again realized that how important the evaluation is and there are indeed too many things to be considered regarding evaluation. No joking that I once took it for granted that evaluation or assessment usually need to be done at the end of a project or study (at least until last year). However, my idea was gradually corrected since I took the user-based design class last semester, which is so useful that widens my horizon. Yes, both formative and summative evaluation are indispensible for design. That is so heuristic that makes me review my group design product—Feed Me Well. I still remember we applied an User testing questionnaire as below for the user testing last December:

1. How do you like the watch? Like it, dislike it, or neutral?

2. Any confusions when you interact with it?

3. Any suggestions or any comments?

Compare it to HutchWorld’s questionnaire, I joyfully found they are so similar (I swear I did not read it and copy it thenJ). But it should not be a coincidence why they are similar as we trust and followed Preece’s ideas which had already been mentioned in the earlier chapter that the goals of interaction design include both usability goals and user experience goals. No wonder the evaluation should integrate these goals to make a project as a complete and coherent picture. Feed Me Well now goes to a new phase—production phase, in which we mainly focuses on its tutorials. We’ve almost done it and will go to the next evaluation phase. We agree that the success of interactive products highly depends on both usability and user experience—such as aesthetic, emotional, engaging, and motivating qualities. In view of these factors, back to Feed Me Well, in the evaluation phase, we should pay more attention to these questions: how do the tutorials work? Whether and how users like the means of multimedia that we apply to reinforce the effect of tutorials? How does the application of multimedia help the tutorials?, etc. 

An evaluation paradigm is an approach in which the methods used are influenced by particular theories and philosophies. Four evaluation paradigms were identified:

1. "quick and dirty"

2. usability testing

3. field studies

4. predictive evaluation

Methods are combinations of techniques used to answer a question but in this book we often use the terms "methods" and "techniques" interchangeably. Five categories were identified:

I. observing users

2. asking users

3. asking experts

4. user testing

5. modeling users' task performance

The DECIDE framework has six parts:

1. Determine the overall goals of the evaluation.

2. Explore the questions that need to be answered to satisfy the goals.

3. choose the evaluation paradigm and techniques to answer the questions.

4. Identify the practical issues that need to be considered.

5. Decide on the ethical issues and how to ensure high ethical standards.

6. Evaluate, interpret, and present the data.

Drawing up a schedule for your evaluation study and doing one or several pilot studies will help to ensure that the study is well designed and likely to be successful.

                                                                              ---Key points of chapter 11 (p357)

I boldly attached the whole summary contents of chapter11 here as it is so hard for me to choose ones and abandon others and I cannot tell myself how useful the whole chapter is. I think it is just like a timely rain for our evaluation phase. I assume my FMW group members would reach agreement to use the above key points as a guideline for the evaluation phase. Especially, the DECIDE framework with six parts reminds us how to logically organize the tasks of evaluation and avoid the possibility of neglect. I was also impressed by the elaboration of pilot studies. As Preece argued that “it is always worth testing plans for an evaluation by doing a pilot study before launching into the main study”, a peer review is exact a good pilot study to ensure the project on the right track in time. Thanks to peer reviews, we FMW group got many valuable feedbacks and comments from them since last semester. It is such a quick and inexpensive way that saves a lot of trouble later, bringing new and good ideas to the design group. In a word, all these elements regarding the evaluation undoubtedly ensure the success of the evaluation, and to a large extent, ensure the complete success of the product. 

Here is another link about “Basic Guide to Program Evaluation (Including Outcomes Evaluation) which might be applicable for general fields in case it would be useful in our workplace settings: http://managementhelp.org/evaluatn/fnl_eval.htm

Reading response 5—Form follows failure

"But whereas the shortcomings of an existing thing may be expressed in terms of a need for improvement, it is really want rather than need that drives the process of technological evolution…Thus we may find food indispensable, but it is not necessary to eat it with a fork(p22). "

"Luxury, rather than necessity, is the mother of invention (p22). "

When I recalled everyday things around me, I couldn’t help pondering how many of them are the need and how many of them are the want. I really like these chunks as I will show my own interesting example of want vs. need.

I have various pans, bowls and plates in my kitchen. To deal with different food, I usually use the corresponding utensils which is so convenient for me when cooking, mixing and serving. Also, I define a very clear function on each pan, bowl and plate (in the name of both health and usability). My husband and some of my friends could not understand why I have such preference in the kitchen. I cannot specifically tell them how many differences there are when want versus need in my kitchen, as I not only prepare for meals everyday but enjoy the cooking process from the feeling of such convenience. By doing that, I don’t have to concern whether the utensil is too big or too small, rather, I have many options to handle different amount of food and furthermore distinguish raw or ready-to-eat food. The funniest thing is I am still not satisfied with the amount of I have had so far. What I did not tell them and what will surprise them is that I still keep an eye, during shopping, on such new usable, elegant but unnecessary things that seemingly complicate the cooking process. If applicable, I will purchase more.  

I could also assume that in some other’s kitchens, they probably don’t have so many utensils as those in my kitchen or some might have more than I do. However, it doesn’t matter since it is neither the matter of good or bad, nor won’t it impact any diet in everyone’s daily life. It all depends on individual preference. It is really my want but not my need as I actually can merely use one or two pans to fry eggs, vegetables, even to cook rice etc. It is absolutely unnecessary to have various pans or bowls in my kitchen, but I am so pleasant to possess them. I think it compatible with the users experience goals of interaction design demonstrated by Preece, that is enjoyable and satisfying. I believe I am not unique in this case. It is reasonable that industrial designer invented so many different pans and bowls for girls or housewives, like me, to choose. Likewise, it is understandable why designers tried to design these luxurious cars, such as BMW, Benz, for men to consume, other than just limit to design a plain car with four automatic wheels---no one doubts we can still drive it to replace our two legs.

"In short, the table, like all designed objects, leaves room for improvement (p27). "

"But when aesthetic considerations dominate the design of a new silverware pattern, the individual implements, no matter how striking and well balanced they may look on the table, can often leave much to be desire in their feel and use in the hand (p32).  "

Nothing is perfect in the world. We are more likely to be picky when the everyday things doesn’t work or look like the way we expected. We human beings complained a lot about the imperfect no matter whether the current technology allows them to act perfectly. Anyways, it seems that it is much better in the dreams than that in the reality.  However, we should appreciate the shortcomings of an object and our dissatisfaction as the driving force to bring tons of inventions and innovations and to improve our lives to be better and better. I attached below a brief evolution of forks along with the figure that I have never ever thought about until I researched it today. The whole process from being ugly to be good, and then to be usable and delicate gave us infinite inspirations when developing our own class project. 

“It is suggested that the evolution from pointed knife to two-pronged fork occurred because of the problems of holding food in place with a single pointed device where the food in question was largely free to rotate about the point and thus impeded the cutting action. Introduction of the second prong eliminated this rotation problem. The problem then, however, was that, although good for holding, the fork was of little use in carrying food from the plate to the mouth. And thus emerged three-tined forks, and, even better, by the early eighteenth Century, the four-tined fork we know today.”

Retrieved from http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/1999/09/b/index.htm

Reading Response 4—Chapter 2 The psychology of people & machines

Someday cars will no longer need drivers. Instead, people will all be passengers, able to gossip, read, or even sleep while the car chauffeurs them to their destination (p47).

Just imagine how convenient and how cool our daily lives would be with the functions of such intelligent machines. That is why I was so struck by this idea in a minute. I like Norman’s imagination, this car not only navigates and drives by itself, but also knows how to take care of the comfort and well-being of the passengers, providing the right lighting, temperature, food and drink, and entertainment. How well we enjoy this fascinating situation!

In terms of the driverless car, Norman’s idea is actually not new, as the initial idea was raised and developed by others long time ago and the history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_car) could be first traced back to 1933. However, the unique one is that Norman argues machines will be intelligent enough to interact with humans and take care of humans as maids in the future. For humans, the cool and intelligent machines are not just for fun, but more for meeting the needs of humans. For example, women are comparatively not good at driving or have a bad sense of directions. Just recall that how many times you still got lost and were late to important appointments, even with the guidance and assistance of GPS; how annoying your snow tires did not guarantee your safety in winter. Thus, we need these intelligent machines to have a better and safer life. I wish I could have a car like the one described by Norman within the next 10 years. Furthermore, these intelligent machines could be around us to help us deal with the laundry, cooking, studying and more tricky things. Hopefully, it is not a dream.

U.S. Creates Vehicles That Operate Without a Driver (2007)

The lack of common ground is the major cause of our inability to communicate with machines (p50). ..but systems that avoid this danger, that suggest rather than demand, that allow people to understand and choose rather than confronting them with unintelligible actions, are perfectly sensible (p55).

Norman mentioned that the future intelligent machines could successfully interact and communicate with humans, but the fundamental limitation in human-machine interaction is the lack of common ground. I am curious about that and wonder through which ways human-machine interaction could be made. I also doubt it. In my opinion, can we really communicate with other species or objects, like pets, computers? Nope! If the human-pets interaction is regarded as a kind of communication, they are not really like the communication between peoples---that is, one people can share common ground with another people. Given that a conversation was occurred between two friends, if there was no common ground in the very beginning of the talk, it is hard for them to understand each other and continue the talk as well, let alone the interaction between two different species. But, it seems that Norman will convince me that future design will successfully turn such incredible interactions into reality. With this curiosity, I am really looking forward to the next chapter.