Book Reading 4 – HCI Remixed

Chapter 24 - A Simulated Listening Typewriter: John Gould Plays Wizard of Oz
Summary
The writer discussed early speech recognition software and the challenges that went along with it.  He also talked about the eve of the “Wizard of Oz” method of research testing.

Discussion
I remember awhile ago when talking and typing seemed like a big thing, but it seems to have virtually disappeared by now.  I think a lot of it has to do with how it’s more natural to write thoughts down through our hands than it is to speak them.  The way we piece together thoughts for writing and for speech seem different enough that this makes sense to me.

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Chapter 25 - Seeing the Hole in Space
Summary
Hole in Space refers to an art project through telecommunications two people did.  It involved two communication spots very far away from each other in which people on both sides could see each other.  People reacted to strangers through this device more openly than they did with those strangers right next to them.

Discussion
This was a really impressive experiment.  It’s very interesting to hear about novel ideas from years ago that are now commonplace.  The Hole in Space from years ago is now today’s Skype or company videoconferencing meeting.

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Chapter 26 - Edward Tufte’s 1 + 1 = 3
Summary
“1+1=3” is Tufte’s way of describing design clutter.  The writer of this chapter uses an example of the open and close buttons in an elevator.  By having the two buttons nearly identical in size and appearance, this caused unnecessary confusion when deciphering their functions in a split second.

Discussion
I’ve never quite looked at elevator buttons like this, but I have dealt with clutter before.  When I have had to count many similarly-sized objects in the past, my eyes can go crazy and lose my place.  I imagine this problem is similar to what the writer was trying to point out.

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Chapter 27 - Typographic Space: A Fusion of Design and Technology
Summary
The writer started talking about the older state of printing text and graphics.  This then transitioned to kinetic typography and the experiments and uses of this technology.

Discussion
This seems like yet another valuable technology that is taken for granted today.  After she mentioned it, I realized how much this kinetic typography is used for atmosphere in TV shows and movies.  And to an extent, this is used in comic books and graphic novels for certain text, even though it is not in motion obviously.

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Chapter 28 - Making Sense of Sense Making
Summary
Two issues were explained in this chapter.  One was the meaningful sorting of new information, and the other was making sense of this information.  Then the writer related these issues to today’s information age.

Discussion
I don’t think I have ever deleted an email from my Gmail account, but with good reason.  I never know when I might need something.  And if I do, I can search for it and it pops up.  I’ll admit that keeping old and useless files on a computer is wasteful, even if you have the space to spare.  But I hate wondering if I still have an email or file that I suddenly need.  I’d rather have the virtual clutter than run into this problem.

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Chapter 34 - Revisiting an Ethnocritical Approach to HCI: Verbal Privilege and Translation
Summary
The writer started by explaining a bit of the history of Native Nations achieving sovereign state status after WWII.  He then explained how using HCI and thinking in ethnographical terms can help with ethics, politics, and epistemology.

Discussion
This reading was not as interesting as the others, at least to me.  I can see where he was going with it though.  Possibly some of the things I learn in this class can help me deal with ethical issues in the workforce.

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Paper Reading 3 - Experience in Social Affective Applications: Methodologies and Case Study

Comments
Jessica Gonzales
Paola Garza

Reference Information
Experience in Social Affective Applications: Methodologies and Case Study
 - Paul André, Alan Dix, m.c. schraefel, and Ryen W. White
 - CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia

Summary
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are large parts of society, and have allowed people to share their thoughts and feelings to the entire world.  The researcher of this paper saw this and decided to investigate how to expand this idea and allow people more specificity in conveying their emotions to others.  Doing this, they felt, might improve mental health and quality of living.

What you get when you search for "emotional words" on Google.

The program they designed is called Healthii, and it allows people to gauge their mood by rating their levels of busyness, enjoyment, stress, and health using a numbering system from 1 to 3.  They gave this program to a group of friends and colleagues to use on Facebook and Twitter so they could see the participants impressions of it over 5 weeks.  Then they revealed their findings, and even discussed their methods along with pros and cons of each.  Due to how many different methods they required for this study, they hope their findings prompt a discussion on whether new methodologies are needed for the future of HCI research.

Discussion
Using social networking sites to help people open up and improve mental health is an interesting concept.  Some might not want to be as specific as Healthii is, but there are definitely a lot of people who would like to have such a tool.  Writing words can only express so much before the specifics of the emotion are lost.  I personally loved the idea of eMoto that helped express emotions through text messages.  It’s so easy to be misunderstood by something that is written in a text without the benefits of voice inflections.  The paper was an easy read and interesting, but I’m pulling for this eMoto program.

Ethnography Ideas

1.       Who tends to use the self-checkout at grocery stores, or how many people notice the shorter lines at non self-checkout and flock to them versus remaining where they are?

2.       How do people behave when lounging around campus (outside studying, throwing the Frisbee, etc)?  It’s on the cooler side outside now, so this might not work as well right now.

3.       What are the various methods in how people solicit their causes outside and inside The Commons?  And also, how do people react when either spoken to or given random handouts that they will most likely throw away within the next 20 seconds?

4.       What kind of conversations are people having around mealtimes in The Commons?  This falls more into eavesdropping I guess.  But seriously, The Commons is a VERY entertaining place to eat a meal and just listen to other people or people watch.

Book Reading 3 - HCI Remixed

Chapter 1 - My Vision Isn’t My Vision: Making a Career Out of Getting Back to Where I Started
Summary
One of the first major computing marvels was described and was capable of creating music and animation.  This machine’s main purpose was revealed to be for HCI research.  The title of this selection refers to the writer wanting to eventually give back to the HCI community as much as his experience with this machine and its creators did.

Discussion
Being a massive fan of electronic music or anything containing electronic elements, this was a really interesting story about one of the first machines to make this type of music.  Also, the idea of making a machine for someone like a musician as a means of study was a really clever idea.

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Chapter 4 - Drawing on SketchPad: Reflections on Computer Science and HCI
Summary
When creating a program with a user interface, do not only design for novice users.  The needs of the advanced users should also be kept in mind.  It was also noted to design software for users, and not merely for the sake of having such a device.  The end purpose of the device can lose sight in this case.

Discussion
It’s cool that such an old paper can have such influential ideas way ahead of its time.  And the point of designing for advanced users as well is a good point.  I have definitely seen a few programs out there that are perfect for someone with little knowledge in video encoding, for instance.  But these definitely lack the extra control a more advanced user would want, and are therefore not suitable enough for that purpose.  Keeping the target audience in mind is very important.

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Chapter 5 - The Mouse, the Demo, and the Big Idea
Summary
The invention of the mouse was discussed, and the writer explained how its demo video prompted her to understand the true notion of the Big Idea.  We are also reminded that great ideas don’t have to be right.  They are successful even if they just compel others to strive for amazing things.

Discussion
HCI was really a foreign field to me before taking this class.  But the more I learn about it, the more I am realizing that I have been surrounded by it my entire life.  And even great ideas can be simple and still revolutionize society by being groundbreaking in regards to HCI.

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Chapter 18 - Observing Collaboration: Group-Centered Design
Summary
The development of groupware was discussed.  A major part in the development of this was the study of John Tang who paid close attention to how a group of people collaborated in sketching out ideas.  This is study is still playing a large role in groupware developments today.

Discussion
As in what our ethnography studies will most likely teach us, the most elegant solutions to HCI appear to reside in meticulously watching how people naturally act.  The key to a great design or idea is one that capitalizes on natural human tendencies, and simplifies the technical implementation of them to the point where they still feel natural in a new environment.

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Chapter 20 - Taking Articulation Work Seriously
Summary
This chapter discussed more about Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).  It explained that the groupware concept can and should be applied to more areas than just in software applications.

Discussion
This sounded to me like the writer was pointing at CSCW as aiding in helping many people work together in various environments.  Towards the end of the chapter she mentioned bathrooms where the sinks and toilets are automated.  Honestly, I was a little confused at what most of the writer was talking about here.

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Chapter 23 - Video, Toys, and Beyond Being There
Summary
Beyond being there refers to enhancing the face-to-face (F2F) interactions as with conferencing and the like.  While original philosophies on this idea attempted to replace F2F interactions with technology, the writer pointed out that technology should enhance F2F instead.

Discussion
The writer brought up Facebook, and this has become a tool for good and bad in enhancing F2F interactions.  The good is obviously learning more about people while being hundreds of miles apart.  When you finally see these people again, you can feel like you have known each other for far longer than is actually the case.  The bad to me is being judged solely by what you do on Facebook.  Here, Facebook is wrongly being used to completely replace F2F interactions.  I realize you need to be mindful of what you do on the internet, but assuming that one facet of a person’s life is enough to describe the person as a whole is unjust and short-minded.  An employer looking up candidates on Facebook is an excellent example of this.  Changing your name is an easy workaround, but I don’t feel this should be an issue in the first place.  I also don’t feel this will ever change.

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Paper Reading 2: Interaction Design in the University: Designing Disciplinary Interactions

Comments
Patrick Frith
Jessica Gonzales

Reference Information
Interaction Design in the University: Designing Disciplinary Interactions
 - Gale Moore and Danielle Lottridge
 - CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia

Summary
Interaction design deals with the layout of products as geared towards enhancing the user experience.  Making technology more accessible to the masses is a major goal of HCI, so it is very important to discover new ways of making this more possible.

Transdisciplinarily working towards a common goal.

The paper points out three different ways to go about solving a problem: multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary.  And by discipline, the paper also means a field, such as computer science or psychology.  Multidisciplinarity deals with two separate fields making separate contributions, whereas interdisciplinarity is where two disciplines become one, as in biochemistry forming from biology and chemistry.  The third type, transdisciplinarity, is where the most advantage is gained.  This method brings multiple fields of study together and combines each field’s findings to gain a more encompassing solution to the problem.  They argue that if departments in universities recognized and encouraged this kind of cross-disciplinary research more as valid tenure research, it would benefit interaction design more, as well as other fields of study.

Discussion
In many other aspects of life, you see multiple people brought in for a task for the same reason.  Teams of people work on major projects not only for diving up work, but also to bring in multiple viewpoints.  One person is only able to think so far before his/her thought processes are exhausted.  By having even just one other person to think about an issue or problem, the new ideas could be better than the old ones, or even open up new ways of thought for the original person.  This can continue to perpetuate until a much better and thorough result is reached.

I think this is a great idea they have suggested, and I hope it begins to catch on at many universities, if it hasn’t already.  I can understand the want for upper-level studies to remain within the department, but this can go both ways.  Outside departments could help in computer science problems, and vice versa.  All it takes is a couple people willing to try out a new idea.

On Computers

Comments
Jacob Lillard
Michael Atkinson

Reference Information
The Complete Works of Aristotle – On Plants
 - Aristotle
 - Edited by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton University Press

Summary
Aristotle begins by posing the question of whether or not plants have a soul.  Instead of comparing plants to humans, he compares them to other animals.  He points out many similarities between animals and plants, such as the need for food and nourishment.  A key factor that is missing in plants is the motivation of desire for things.  He states “that plants have neither sensation nor desire.”  His conclusion then becomes that plants only possess a partial soul, and not a soul like animals.  The bulk of the rest of his writing delves into plants themselves and all of the immense variety of plants.  He goes into a thorough discussion of the different climates plants live in, types of plants, manners in bearing fruit, the nature of the fruit, and so on.  And from time to time, he relates plant characteristics back to similar ones in animals.

Discussion
The amount of research or observations Aristotle did to write the bulk of his writing is really impressive.  I certainly did not expect a philosophy selection to have so many diverse details about plant life like this.  But anyway, plants having souls is definitely a different way of looking at them.  While they don’t have the mobility or personalities of animals, which we can agree do have souls, they might have somewhat of a soul depending on how you view what a soul is.

A person’s personality to me is the visual depiction of a person’s soul.  The soul contains the person’s views, motivations, and attitudes, as well as everything else that makes them up as a person.  Each person has a certain distinctiveness to his/her actions, which is why you can agree or disagree with a rumor involving this person.  Based on how this person has behaved, you can roughly judge how this hypothetical situation would pan out.  In the same way a person’s behavior makes impressions of his/her soul on others, this can also be true of the person’s computer.

Some semblance of order does exist.  I assure you.

Your computer is your own, and you have icons, programs, and settings configured just the way you like them.  Everything is arranged in a specific way to tailor to how your mind works and organizes things.  Some prefer to have little to no icons cluttering the desktop, while others make it look like the internet vomited all over it.  Neither is better than the other, because what one person views as madness can be completely sensible to another mind.  But either way, it is organized to reflect you, and therefore your personality and soul I feel.  I don’t feel an inanimate computer has a soul, but such a personable device could be an extension or even reflection of your soul.

Book Reading 2 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 1 - Introduction
Summary
Mead explains how studying the adolescent requires the studies of anthropology.  Also, it is pointed out that the adolescent experience cannot necessarily be generalized by that of the adolescent in America.  She decides that studying the Samoan adolescent girl will provide a simpler societal example to study and hopefully solve some questions about the adolescent experience in general.

Discussion
She presented a good point of American adolescents not being able to totally explain the adolescent condition for the rest of the world.  However, while Samoa might not appear to be as complex as American society, there are always tiny nuances in any situation that can add additional complexity.  I think she will run into more difficulties than she anticipates.

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Book Reading 1 - The Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 1 – The Psychopathology of Everyday Things
Summary
Norman introduced the main topics of discussion for his book.  He presented the challenges of creating an intuitive design for a device, as well as numerous examples of failures and successes in design.  He pointed out that visual cues to the user can be the most elegant and easiest to understand.

Discussion
This was quite interesting to have the flaws of everyday things pointed out that we are all familiar with.  Like everyone else, I have seen my share of confusing design layouts and wished they had been made differently.  This should definitely be an interesting and fun read.

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Paper Reading 1: Thereʼs Methodology in the Madness: Toward Critical HCI Ethnography

Comments
Patrick Frith
Steven Hennessy

Reference Information
There’s Methodology in the Madness: Toward Critical HCI Ethnography
 - Amanda Williams and Lilly Irani
 - CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia

Summary
This paper discusses the classical methods of HCI research, and how new emerging fields might cause a revamping of these methods.  These kinds of changes are compared to how anthropological studies and methods also had to change when the old ways no longer matched up with the current times.  A large part of this was realizing the various minute details of a study that can affect the outcome.  One point that was made was how the observer’s mood and disposition could potentially change the way he/she interprets what he/she is studying.  They also discussed viewing the user differently in order to recognize new possibilities in testing and design.

Discussion
Let me first say that I am not a big fan of reading technical papers.  It’s not that I think they are useless, but they are usually geared towards a very specific audience, and I am rarely in this audience.  This usually makes it difficult for me to connect to or even understand the message of the paper.  HCI seems to be an interesting topic for sure, but I just had a difficult time in making much sense of this paper.  However, one idea did manage to grab me, so I have more to say than commenting on my lack of relating to verbose technical papers.  And yes, I realize I can be too verbose myself.

What...is going on...

They discussed briefly about making the familiar strange versus making the strange familiar, and this immediately made me think of interface design.  The first idea of making the familiar strange seems like taking the human race and viewing them as a foreign group of users.  This views the users as vastly different from the designer.  While this is true in many ways, this method would most likely result in undesirable design decisions for the user.

But this is not what the writers were supporting it seemed to me.  They pointed out that making the strange familiar could help recognize new possibilities.  I interpreted this as thinking more like the user and trying as best as we can to dismiss assumptions we might have as designers.  This might appear obvious, but still, this is a good point.  I am sure everyone can recall at least one time where you were using a program and thought, “What were they thinking?!”  Or in some cases, you wondered if they had even tested the software at all for user compatibility.

While the user can be quite different from the designer in knowledge, it should not be forgotten to relate to them when making a design.  And it also makes sense to create a design with built-in familiarity.  Using next-generation technology can be wonderful, but not if the user needs to learn the ins and outs of it just to enjoy it.  It’s the designer’s job to conveniently bring this technology to the users so they continue to want us around, and not to lose touch with the purpose of HCI in the first place.  And thanks for bearing with me in case I completely lost the point of this paper.

The Chinese Room

Comments
Aaron Kirkes
Miguel Alex Cardenas

Reference Information
Minds, Brains, and Programs
 - John R. Searle
 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1980)
Chinese Room on Wikipedia

Summary
The Chinese Room is an idea Searle thought up dealing with him responding to cards with Chinese characters being slid under a door to him.  He does not understand Chinese and instead uses a specific method for responding to someone else who does understand Chinese.  Searle presented various axioms which then aided in reinforcing the conclusions he wanted to reach.

A program is bound by syntax and cannot use semantics to truly understand why the syntax needs to fit together the way that it does.  A mind, on the other hand, does understand the reasoning behind actions instead of merely doing or not doing things.  No amount of complex syntactical simulation can be a substitute for reason and a true understanding of actions.  And so, actions can be done to simulate what a real person could be doing, but copying actions should not imply an understanding of said actions.  From this, Searle concludes that programs cannot be a replacement for a mind.

Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone,
panting and sweating as you run through my corridors.
How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?
- SHODAN -

Searle states that brains are able to cause minds using what he calls “causal powers.”  So if anything else was capable of causing a mind, it would require some “equivalent causal powers.”  An artificial brain would then need to possess these “equivalent causal powers.”  But since programs are not capable of producing a mind and therefore lack any variant of the required “causal powers” of a brain, a brain doesn’t use some sort of program to produce the mind.

Discussion
What I essentially got from Searle is that programs are incapable of actually being a brain and can only simulate a brain.  Regardless of whether or not people agree with what he said, he prompted a great deal of discussion and for that alone he was successful in my eyes.

One of the first ideas that popped into my head while reading about the Chinese Room was rogue AI.  For anyone who played the System Shock games, especially System Shock 2, you know this situation can present interesting dilemmas when stranded on a ship in space.  An equivalent scenario is the Terminator movies where Skynet becomes self-aware and decides the humans are a major threat.  As technology has advanced, the thought of Skynet or SHODAN becoming a reality has been in the back of many of our minds, even if not in a completely serious manner.  But from what Searle has presented here, I drew the conclusion that at least by today’s standards, this is not possible.  If becoming self-aware requires a mind to have real thoughts that could lead to hostile intent, then no program designed by man is capable of dooming man.  At least not in the rogue AI sense of things.

While this is comforting on many levels, I still do not doubt the capability of humans to further develop technology.  If we ever truly figure out what makes a mind a mind and find a way to synthesize it, we might require the help of Arnold in the future.  But would this synthesized material ever be considered a program?  What if programs are almost biological beings performing operations at this point?  Who said you could eat my cookies?  I suppose Searle’s argument would still be valid, but these technologies could certainly raise some questions to supplant it.

Introduction

Email
iscabis@gmail.com

Class Standing
6^th year Senior

Reason for Taking Class
Computer-Human Interaction sounded like an interesting topic, and it was one of the more pertinent classes to me in its track.  Not that the other classes are all bad.  But if I’m finally picking my own classes, I don’t want to attempt a class that I am half-heartedly excited about or worse.  After messing with making GUI’s in CSCE 315 last semester, I became fascinated with thinking of intuitive designs.  I want to learn more about how to reach other people with interesting ideas and designs.  This class sounded like it fit this bill, so I signed up.

What Do I Bring
I’d like to think I can interact with others pretty well, and I love having in depth, philosophical conversations about various aspects of life with my friends.  I am definitely excited to delve into this class.  It was a huge surprise when I saw how many books were required of this class though.  I never thought a computer science class could or would do something like this.  That being said, I am ready to have interesting discussions and look at things in a different light during this class’s duration.

In 10 Years
I don’t have any job prospects right now, but hopefully by then I have a job.  Honestly, I hope I am not writing code for a living in 10 years.  I can deal with it for classes since it seems more like a logic puzzle than anything else most of the time.  But I can’t see myself coding for a living.  I’m more interested in the IT field and working for an IT department in a business somewhere, but not in a consulting firm or anything similar.  So in 10 years, I’ll have a cool IT job that I enjoy thoroughly, a place to live, a sweet computer with an HD projector that acts as an entertainment center, and I hope to be near some of my longtime friends.  Life’s worth is greatly decreased without the company of close friends to enjoy it with.  I have no lofty goals of owning a large business.  Just a job I enjoy and great friends will be more than enough.

Big Computer Science Advancement
Clearly programming is becoming more and more abstract and getting farther away from machine code.  I really like this trend, so I hope a new revolutionary programming paradigm comes to the forefront.  Or a massive insurgence of smarter multithreaded coding designs.  There are decent options out there already, but the less that coders need to change their principles of programming the better.  This would make it easier for more multithreaded programs to be available.  I still feel the potential of multicore CPU’s on the consumer level is barely tapped, so more multithreaded programs would be great.

Past Acquaintance
I have always wanted to meet Martin Luther King Jr.  And I guess Malcolm X while I am at it.  I took a black history course a couple semesters back and learned about Malcolm X reforming his way of thinking, and it started to converge with how MLK was thinking at the time.  They were rivals in thought for a long time, but I would want to have a discussion with them about whether or not they would have eventually worked together.  And if so, what would they have accomplished?  Then I would ask them what they thought about Chappelle’s Show.  I love what that show did for breaking boundaries and helping everyone to just laugh at themselves and the ridiculous preconceptions that exist.  His impression of a white person is fantastic.

Mustache Style
The 80’s easily had the best styles of mustaches.  And actually, the mustache of Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood also comes to mind.  With one of those, it just seems like you must know what you are doing and are not to be questioned.  It’s very authoritative.  But it also says you can have a good time if you feel like it.  No milkshakes will stand in your way of power or fun.

Foreign Language
I would love to know German backwards and forwards.  My mom is fluent in German, and I actually lived in Germany for 4 years from 1988-1992 (age 2-6).  I learned very little German there, except when I accidentally threw a rock at some guy’s car.  My mom taught me how to say sorry in German so I could apologize to him.  For some reason I was in a rock fight with some neighborhood kids and of course I was the one who hit the car.  They started it.

Interesting Facts
This blog seemed way too long in Word.  Do you know the song Lovefool by The Cardigans?  It was a popular 90’s song.  The singer is female, and it’s a really catchy song.  One night I got the opportunity to sing it at karaoke, in falsetto.  And yes, it was just as amazing as it sounds.  I even knew some background vocals that didn’t show up on the screen.  I don’t know if that is something to brag about, but that’s exactly what I am doing.  If you’ve never heard the song, I suggest you look it up here.