Emotional Design

Reference
Emotional Design
- Donald A. Norman

Summary
One of the first main points of the book was that attractive things work better.  This is not by some magic, but because of how attractive design makes people feel.  When someone sees an aesthetically pleasing device (be it a car, blender, or ATM machine), this makes them feel happy and puts them in a better mood.  Due to how chemistry works in the brain, being happy makes it easier for people to think and to think more creatively.  This then opens up their mind more to figure out a new device.  Consequently, the attractive device will appear to work better because more people are able to figure it out from their improved mood they are in.

Similarly to all of this, emotion plays a large part in a company forming a successful self-image.  If users are satisfied with a product, they will remember this and form memories of their activities with it.  Excellent customer service also attributes to this concept.  It is these images the users have formed in their mind that makes them remember a brand name and want to use it again in the future.

Norman also explained the three levels of design.  The first is visceral, which deals with the physical aspect of a product.  This tied into the discussion about attractive design and making products and interfaces look pleasing to the eye and not visually offensive.  The next is behavioral, which deals with how the product actually functions.  The look is important, but this means nothing if the product doesn’t have great functionality.  The last aspect he mentions is reflective, which is how the user remembers their experience with the product.  This experience can make or break repeat customers.  Norman also added how letting someone with a clear vision take the reins of the design process is the best way to be successful in all aspects of the design.  This might come with financial risk, but could also be the difference between a good product and a fantastic product.

Discussion
We only read a small portion of this book, so I might not have a lot to day about it.  I did enjoy how this reading seemed to go more in depth into the meaning behind the design of a product or interface than The Design of Everyday Things did.  Easily the most valuable piece of knowledge I took away from this book is what Norman said about attractive things working better.  I had never previously thought about the impact of attractive design on a user.  Obviously, people want to own nice looking things more than ugly looking things.  But it never occurred to me just how important the visceral aspect of a product can be.  This is something I will certainly keep in mind way after reading this book and completing this book.

Book Reading 42 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Appendix III – Samoan Civilization as It Is Today
Summary
Samoan civilization has changed a bit over time and gained some European influence.  However, this has not killed off or destroyed their ways of the past.  Instead, they have absorbed and included aspects of European society that makes their lives easier and more comfortable, but have not taken in any of the negative that goes along with it.

Discussion
This again seems to show that our society is the source of the behavior of our adolescents.  The Samoan culture was able to absorb some of our features and even give their children some more choice.  However, they still have their classic way of doing things intact, so this has a lot to do with why they still don’t see the problems Mead was investigating for our society.

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Book Reading 41 – Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 2 – We All Search for Meaning
Summary
This chapter explained how things can be hard to remember if they don’t have a clear meaning behind them.  When we remember, we are trying to recall meaning of information instead of factual information.  This comes into play when recalling a person’s face by associating an emotional trait with the face.

Discussion
I, like many people, have a lot of trouble remembering someone’s name, but remembering a face is quite easy.  I usually have to associate some feeling with the person or some event to remember the name past the initial meeting.  This chapter did a great job of explaining this kind of thing.

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Chapter 3 – We Connect the Dots
Summary
This chapter explained how humans make inferences and snap judgments on many thing in our lives.  One example was judging a politician within seconds solely based on the look of their face.  Another example was the increased level of pleasure people got from drinking wine out of a nicer looking bottle than a cheaper looking one.

Discussion
It would seem we largely operate off of our snap judgments that are almost always incorrect from the start.  Some of this is instinct, but getting less pleasure out of cheaper wine is way more psychological than anything.  Both nicer and cheaper wine would yield the same feeling from the alcohol.  It’s just the preconceptions that are getting in the way here of the reality of the situation.

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Paper Reading 18 – Activity Awareness in Family-Based Healthy Living Online Social Networks

Comments
Patrick Frith
Paola Garza

Reference Information
Activity Awareness in Family-Based Healthy Living Online Social Networks
 - Stephen Kimani, Shlomo Berkovsky, Greg Smith, Jill Freyne, Nilufar Baghaei, and Dipak Bhandari
 - IUI 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary
This paper explained how to use a social network coupled with an activity awareness interface in order to help improve overall health of individuals.  The test they conducted set out to see if the activity awareness interface did in fact make user more aware of their health and the activities they can do to improve it.

An example of part of the Activity Awareness interface.

The activity awareness interface gave visual feedback through graphs of the user’s performance.  During the test, families of 4 (two parents, two children) with social network experience were chosen.  Some of the groups had access to the activity awareness interface, while others did not.  In the end, the overall experience of each group was collected.  It was found that the activity awareness interface was quite helpful to those who had it.  It also ended up motivating the users to be more active and be more aware of their overall health.

In the future, the designers would like to find ways to collect real-world user activity data.  This could then be compiled back into the activity awareness interface and improve the overall user experience.

Discussion
At first, I didn’t exactly see the point of this.  But after finishing the paper, this seems like an interesting idea.  With people being on computers so much now, finding ways to tap into that and help motivate people to be more active could help a lot.  To me, it seemed like this social network they were using was designed for this testing purpose.  I imagine it can later be adapted to major social networking sites, because having a separate network devoted this might not gain a large enough audience to make an impact on overall health.  Even still, this is an interesting idea in using technology to help promote physical health and awareness.

Ethnography Results – Week 7

There was just one interesting story again this week.  But it’s about accusations of witchcraft in the TSA.  This is good enough for just one story.

Commenting and Posting
Nothing to note here.

The Atheism Category
This woman working for the TSA was fired for being a Wiccan.  Well, not exactly.  What really happened was a fellow coworker accused her of casting a spell on her car and she was afraid she was in danger from it.  This other woman filed a complaint about it and eventually got her fired.  The woman who was fired had also complained about lax security measures in the airport, and this was listed as another reason for being fired.  She explained that after the spell-casting accusation, the other people she worked with wouldn’t help her with anything and essentially ignored.  Her upper management requested that she formally explain her beliefs.  This request was made before she got fired.  She refused on the grounds that a Christian or Jewish employee would never have to do the same thing.

This entire situation is completely ridiculous to me.  And I am not talking about the woman who practices Wicca.  So what if she does.  That is her personal preference.  This was clearly religious discrimination, and she did actually file a formal complaint about it.  She lost the first time probably because she was representing herself.  But she has filed an appeal and has a lawyer this time.  I honestly hope she wins.  I don’t care if there were other reasons for her being fired.  She was noted as being a great employee, and none of this started until some person accused her of witchcraft.  To me, this seems similar to firing or treating someone differently due to the color of their skin.  Someone’s outlandish accusation got this woman fired, and she deserves some kind of retribution.

Wrap-up and Plans for Next Week
I’ll admit I never knew much about Wicca before checking out this article.  I thought some of it had to do with witchcraft, but even if it did I never believed any of that stuff could be real.  The woman explained that for her, it is about appreciating nature and is similar to Native Americans and their religious beliefs.  This might not be the same for all Wiccans, but that still doesn’t give someone the right to discriminate.  Well, technically they can do whatever they want, but there should be consequences for such intolerant behavior.

For next week, I am hoping for more good stories like this one.  I would also like to have more than one that seems interesting.  This is still great information though.  And as for the commenting patterns of users, I think we are all planning to compile that data after the study is done.  We have not forgotten about it, but we just haven’t done as much with it as we had hoped to.

Book Reading 40 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 14 – Education for Choice
Summary
It is argued that society is not necessarily the source of the problem.  Instead, Mead points out how children need to be properly taught how to operate in it.  With the numerous choices presented to young adolescents, making it seems as though there is one correct choice adds unneeded pressure if choosing their own path.  She argues that teaching children how to choose and not what to choose is extremely important.

Discussion
This argument I think really nails the core problem going on here.  When children are brought up to think only a certain way, it can be very difficult when faced with other methods of living to decide how to handle it.  It might take a lot of effort to realize they can think for themselves and that there is not one correct answer to how to run their life.  Or at least someone else, including parents, cannot be the best judge for them.  These are decisions they should and can make for themselves based on what they have learned.  This can be taken to an extreme, but I think the point is that children should be taught to not fear choices for choosing the wrong answer, but to embrace them as opportunities to learn about themselves.

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Book Reading 39 – Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 0 – Introduction
Summary
Hallinan gave a brief outline for what he wants to accomplish with his book.  He went over various kinds of mistakes and the reasoning behind them.  Many mistakes are made simply because of how humans are and how the mind operates, but he says there are certain way people can act in order to decrease mistake tendency and help to overcome it.

Discussion
While this almost seems to have a similar vibe to Norman’s books, I am pretty excited to see what Hallinan has to say.  The perspective is interesting in looking at the reasons behind mistakes.  I enjoyed learning the reasons behind a design is terrible, so it should be just as intriguing to learn about why mistakes happen.

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Chapter 1 – We Look but Don’t Always See
Summary
The reasons behind why people miss certain key details was discussed.  Sometimes this can be from inexperience with the subject of the details like with skills in golf.  Another instance is the frequency of something occurring.  If an object appears more often, then people have a higher chance of realizing when it is and isn’t there.

Discussion
This chapter gave a lot of insight into why visual mistakes are made.  The frequency of an object affecting how often it is noticed was particularly interesting to me.  Most of the things he spoke about I had not thought about before, so hearing about them was beneficial.

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Paper Reading 17 – Using Language Complexity to Measure Cognitive Load for Adaptive Interaction Design

Comments
Paola Garza
Patrick Frith

Reference Information
Using Language Complexity to Measure Cognitive Load for Adaptive Interaction Design
 - M. Asif Khawaja, Fang Chen, and Nadine Marcus
 - IUI 2010, Hong Kong, China

Not exactly what this paper is talking about, but it's pretty American.

Summary
This particular study was designed to measure the cognitive load of a person during more strenuous and less strenuous tasks.  As the cognitive load increases, stress can increase with it and make it more difficult for a person to perform a crucial task.  The writers of this paper hope to expand in this field with their study so better design can be implemented.

They noted that they used data from a previous study with people of bushfire management teams.  The tasks the teams had to carry out had varying degrees of difficulty and time constraints, so this worked out well for collecting data.  Essentially, they made transcripts the speech used by the team members, and analyzed it for word usage and complexity and sentence format.  Their hypothesis was that as difficulty and stress increased, vocabulary complexity decreased while sentence structure would become longer, more complicated, and also incomplete.

They were correct about sentence structure, but vocabulary complexity increased with difficulty and stress.  This was opposite to what they predicted, but they think this kind of data can help shed some light on the proper measuring of cognitive load in the future.  They would like to improve their further studies by adding more grammatical and language parameters so they can include more parts of speech in the study.

Discussion
I had never really thought about this cognitive load idea before, and honestly I would have thought vocabulary would go down with stress level.  I’ve never paid attention to how I behave under stress, but I might pay more attention.  Also, the cognitive load seemed similar to how a person’s mood directly affects how well they can be open to figuring something out.  This kind of work seems pretty abstract, but I can definitely see how it can be extremely helpful in increasing productivity overall.

Obedience to Authority

Reference
Obedience to Authority
- Stanley Milgrim

Summary
In short, this book is about Milgrim famous shock experiments where people were tested to see how much they would shock someone before quitting.  The catch was that the shocks to the victim were never real, and the experiment was testing the subject’s obedience to authority.  Whether or not they finished the entire range of shocks was the actual experiment, and not the actual shocking itself.  By carrying out all the shock, this was considered complete obedience.  If any of the subjects refused to continue at any point, this counted as disobedience.  The initial set of experiments simply had the subject pushing a button to shock the victim, and they were fairly far away from the victim while this was going on.  It was found that roughly 60% or more subjects were fully obedient, depending on the experimental parameters.

But Milgrim didn’t stop here.  He wanted to further investigate the true meanings and motivations behind normal people doing the things that they did.  He switched up many different aspects of the experiments in order to gain further knowledge into how the obedience rate could be affected.  What he found was that the closer the subject was to the victim, the lower the obedience rate.  He also found that a less credible experimenter decreased the rate, as well as any other type of aspect conflicting with absolute authority.  An instance of this was a second experimenter saying the experiment should stop.

Milgrim came to the conclusion that many of the subjects were stuck in a social situation that was difficult to escape.  Society teaches to respect authority, and so the subjects were in conflict between their want to stop the experiment, and simply listening to the authoritative figure and continuing.  It was this conundrum that brought him to the main point of his experiment.  He wanted people to know and be aware of the danger of destruction possible by normal people simply following orders from authoritative figures.  This was his main defense in justifying his experiments to people who criticized him.

Discussion
When this experiment was discussed in Opening Skinner’s Box, I did not fully understand the implications and specifics of it.  I knew roughly what it was about, but having all of these extra details makes the findings far clearer to me now.  Some people feel this experiment was quite inhumane, which I can understand honestly.  But, I think the information it found on how human being work and interact is extremely valuable.  I am not saying we should conduct this experiment on a regular basis, but it is useful to know how easily normal people can be manipulated.  The social implication he found out and discussed alone are enough for me to believe in his work.  Even though any of the subjects could have technically chosen to stop shocking the victim at any time, the results clearly state otherwise.  They did have the capability to stop, but making this choice was clearly very difficult for most of them.  And even the ones who did stop did not do so right away.  Breaking social norms in order to think for ourselves and break out of the shell is not always easy, and I think this is one of the biggest take home messages of Milgrim’s experiments.

Ethnography Results – Week 6

There was only one story of interest this week.  And no commenting or posting either.

Commenting and Posting
Nothing to note here.

The Atheism Category
While there was only one story that seemed interesting enough to write about this week, it seemed like a pretty good one.  The story deals with someone who works in a store of some sort.  He said one of his customers found out he was an atheist.  She was definitely not an atheist, so she decided it was her duty to show him the error of his ways.  She came back later with some donuts and books so they could discuss why he should change his view on all of this.  He explained that he had read most of those books before and they actually helped him realize he was an atheist.

Ultimately, he continued to refute her arguments that really only used the Bible as proof.  Once she got upset and gave up, she told him, “I grieve for your wife, children and you. I'll be praying for you!”  To which he replied, “I grieve for you and all those who allow a book to control your thoughts. I hope one day you, and others like you, will think for yourselves.”  He closed his story by saying that where he lived in Northern MS, he needs to defend himself quite often like this.  Anytime someone finds out he is an atheist, he gets assaulted like he did with this woman.  He would like to move before his kids start school, but he doesn’t have the funds due to not being able to get a good enough paying job.

To me, this is yet another innocent atheist having their space invaded by another religious person.  I know the religious people in these stories mean well, but it is no different to atheists than someone coming to your door or calling you to sell something.  You never asked for it and most likely are extremely annoyed by someone doing this.  Another problem that is demonstrated here is how religious people tend to have the wrong mindset when these situations end as they did.  Instead of conceding and leaving the atheist alone, they insult them by saying the atheist way of life is wrong and that they will pray for them.  What religious people need to realize is that is they won’t change their mind and become an atheist by someone talking to them, how on earth does it make sense for the atheist to change their mind so easily?  It should be assumed that someone won’t easily change their belief system on a whim.  Again, I understand the position of the religious person in this, but invading someone’s privacy without permission is pretty far from the proper way of going about doing what they did.

Wrap-up and Plans for Next Week
I am continuing to get a better feel for the specific reasons that atheists and religious people clash.  I firmly believe this doesn’t have to be the way at all though.  But hearing some of these stories, the religious people seem to be more and more in the wrong in making relations caustic.  They aren’t always to blame.  I am sure atheists have done their fair share of discrimination.  However, the key is to not stick your nose in other people’s business.  And this goes both ways too.  Before acting and criticizing one side or the other, they should think about how it would feel to have the same thing done to them.  This is easier said than done, but it seems like a major key in better relations to me.  I look forward to more mind-opening stories for next week.

Book Reading 38 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 13 – Our Educational Problems in the Light of Samoan Contrasts
Summary
The chapter started by explaining many of the differences between Samoan culture and Western culture.  Some of these range from the upbringing of children to the gain of knowledge about birth and death.  Mead then carried into the educational differences and how differently Western cultures handle the education process from how Samoans do.

Discussion
To me, it would seem the cultural differences explain pretty well why adolescents here behave differently from Samoan adolescents.  The main difference seems to be choice.  In Samoan culture, everyone roughly has the same upbringing and life experience.  Knowledge of life and death are learned in roughly the same way, and no one is really treated differently based on talent.  In this country, most people are not on the same board with the knowledge of things.  Kids have many choices about all kinds of things, and the urge to succeed is quite different from the Samoan way of life.  Society here is extremely different from Samoan society, and this explains a lot of the differences to me.

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Book Reading 37 – Obedience to Authority

Chapter 9 – Group Effects
Summary
Two more experiments were presented.  One where two peers in addition to the subject rebel (exp. 17) and one where another peer administers the shock while the subject simply instructs him to do it (exp. 18).  Experiment 17 saw only a 10% obedience rate, while 18 saw a 92.5% obedience rate.

Discussion
As I have said before, this definitely seems like direct responsibility affects how far subjects carry out the experiment.  When faced with disobedience by peers, the subject more easily complies with them and stops.  But when they appear to have no direct responsibility with causing pain, it is easier to feel disconnected from what is going on.

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Chapter 10 – Why Obedience? – An Analysis
Summary
Milgrim discussed what exactly caused the subjects to become obedient.  The individuals all had some capacity for becoming obedient figures, but he wanted to find out what caused this to happen.  He talked about the agentic shift where a person begins to view themselves in a state of agency is open to being controlled by a person of higher status.  In this state, the person begins to view themselves as a tool for others and takes no responsibility for their actions.

Discussion
This is interesting and definitely begins to explain why the subjects behaved as they did.  People are not necessarily inherently obedient.  They are capable of being obedient, however, once the right conditions are set in place.  This can explain why normal people behaved far differently than they normally would in everyday life.

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Chapter 11 – The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment
Summary
As the title suggests, Milgrim explains the different aspects of the obedience process and how the experiment demonstrated them.  A major part of this is the social fabric built into each of the subjects.  Everyone has instilled in them the notion of respecting authority.  It gave them a great deal of anxiety to stop the experiment, because this was a direct violation of the social rules they know and understand.

Discussion
While Milgrim talked about many things in this chapter, the anxiety part and typing this in with social norms was very interesting.  Many times I have noticed or experienced through my actions holding back from doing something I wanted to do for the foolish fear of the defiance of social norms.  This usually stems from the fear of what other people will think of an action.  In all reality, this never matters because the people we are most concerned about in this situation we will never see again.

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Chapter 12 – Strain and Disobedience
Summary
Milgrim explains the role of strain in the disobedience process.  He also talks about the difficulty of becoming disobedient.  It is not as easy as making a decision.  For many, being disobedient means letting the experimenter down and going back on promises of finishing the experiment.  While this was the real goal, there is a lot of baggage that goes with making the morally correct choice in the experiment.

Discussion
The subject matter of this chapter ties into my discussion from the last section.  None of the subjects know the experimenter at all.  But they view their agreement to conduct the experiment as a binding promise.  No one likes to break promises and feel as though they are not trustworthy, so there is a lot of resistance to rebel and stop causing the pain.  However, Milgrim also pointed out that the strain present in the system can snap people out of their agentic state and allow them to think for themselves again.

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Chapter 13 – An Alternative Theory: Is Aggressions the Key?
Summary
Milgrim explains that aggression did not play a major factor in the behavior of the subjects in the experiment.  While it might seem so, he presented a good example of why it is not.  If the experimenter told subject to drink water, this does not mean they are thirsty.  They are just obeying orders.  In this same way, the subjects were obeying orders and did not cause the pain out of sheer enjoyment.

Discussion
This consensus makes a lot of sense to me.  He did say a couple subjects seemed to enjoy causing the pain, but I definitely believe that this wasn’t the case for most of them.  They were simply placed into a situation where they were immersed in an authoritative system and did what they were told because that is how this system is supposed to operate to them.

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Chapter 14 – Problems of Method
Summary
This chapter discussed the frequent problems people have with Milgrim’s experiment and its results.  In it, he addressed each one and explained why those reasons were not entirely valid.  It also seemed that he thought most people were missing the main point of the experiment, which was to show the destruction possible by normal people simply following orders from authoritative figures.

Discussion
I agree with Milgrim on this one.  His experiment is not only interesting but also extremely valid in what it sets out to accomplish.  Delving deeper into the reasoning behind why people were obedient is very insightful.  People found themselves in a situation they didn’t feel they could escape, even though the reality of the situation is that they could at any time.  The fact that the potential for psychological turmoil in being disobedient for the subjects stopped them from making their own choices seems like very useful information to me.

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Paper Reading 16 – The Satellite Cursor: Achieving MAGIC Pointing without Gaze Tracking using Multiple Cursors

Comments
Paola Garza
Zach Henkel

Reference Information
The Satellite Cursor: Achieving MAGIC Pointing without Gaze Tracking using Multiple Cursors
 - Chun Yu, Yuanchun Shi, Ravin Balakrishnan, Xiangliang Meng, Yue Suo, Mingming Fan, and Yongqiang Qin
 - UIST 2010, New York, New York

Satellite Cursor targeting.

Summary
The Satellite Cursor is a new way to implement multiple cursor navigation.  In this implementation, only one actual cursor is needed for interaction.  The other cursors automatically appear and hover around the surrounding potential targets.  The system automatically calculates where to place each screen object’s satellite cursor by determining the relative position of each object in terms of the actual cursor’s location.  Then when the user moves the cursor, the satellite cursors move similarly so small movements by the user can touch many different objects with little effort.

To reduce screen clutter, the cursors are not all displayed at the same time.  There are various visual cues present in the system to denote where the hidden satellite cursors are located in reference to their objects.  One such method is a small dot that rotates around the object showing roughly where the satellite is located.

The satellite ear tracking method.

There were two user studies conducted to determine how much mouse movement and pointing time were decreased while using the Satellite Cursor system instead of conventional pointing.  The results were that pointing time was decreased a decent amount, while movement time was drastically decreased in all situations.  Because of this success, the designers would like to improve upon the design by improving target prediction algorithms to reduce cursor uncertainty, improving recognition of more complex UI elements such as menus, and some other tweaks and enhancements.

Discussion
While I do think this is a cool idea, I can’t help but feel it would take awhile to get used to the way the system works.  I would be willing to mess around with it, but I feel quite comfortable just using the regular pointer method.  I do have a larger monitor and I have never had too much trouble moving my mouse to whatever object I needed to interact with.  To me, it just seems like normal pointing is something you get used to so the guesswork is gradually eliminated.  It’s like playing a new first person shooter with slightly different mechanics.  It feels foreign at first, but you get used to the feel of the game until moving the crosshair feels extremely precise.  Either way, I would like them to continue work on Satellite Cursor.  It has the potential to be invaluable if they can tweak it to interact with all the different UI elements a user might run into.  If they can get it to feel extremely natural as well, they I could see this system catching on in niche markets.

Book Reading 36 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 12 – Maturity and Old Age
Summary
During the old age, the more relaxed way of living begins to fade away for Samoans.  There are many taboos the women need to be aware of.  One such example is during her pregnancy.  For virtually every activity she must perform, she is not allowed to be alone for any of them.  Also, the women who do most of the work are between 45 and 55.  Then when they get older they become skilled at indoor activities into their much later age.

Discussion
The book mentioned the feeling for generation being maintained until death.  This seems a bit different from the way it is here.  Not that old people lack authority, but it would appear the eldest Samoans maintain their prestige as authoritative figured.  They don’t need to worry about the same things the other younger generations need to worry about.  The younger generations definitely don’t fully serve the eldest people in this country.  At least not in the same way the Samoans do.

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Book Reading 35 – Obedience to Authority

Chapter 1 – The Dilemma of Obedience
Summary
Milgrim explains what obedience is exactly and how it is more complicated than most seem to think.  There are numerous factors that go into how and why a person acts obediently.  He also explains the shock experiment and how it compared to the Nazi’s following orders in Jewish concentration camps.

Discussion
I really don’t have much to say here.  It was interesting hearing Milgrim’s exact words about his experiment.  We already heard a big discussion on it in Opening Skinner’s Box, so this almost seemed like review.

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Chapter 2 – Method of Inquiry
Summary
Milgrim explained the details of setting up his experiment.  He explained his reasoning behind grabbing subjects from the surrounding area instead of undergraduates.  He also said how he used actors for some roles and how the various machines and parts were used in the experiment.

Discussion
This again feels a bit like a review from the previous reading.  It is nice to see his exact thoughts and reasoning behind why he structured certain parts like he did.  The extra detail helps to paint a better picture of what is going on.

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Chapter 3 – Expected Behavior
Summary
As the title suggests, this chapter discusses the expected behavior of the subjects.  This also applies to how the subjects predicted most of the other subjects would react.  Milgrim also presented charts and graphs representing this data.

Discussion
It was nice getting actual details about the reactions of the subjects and real testimonials of their reactions.  It was interesting to see how many people also assumed others would be good natured and how this ended up being a reflection on how they viewed themselves.

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Chapter 4 – Closeness of the Victim
Summary
During the actual experiment, well over half of the subjects finished the experiment and applied the maximum voltage to the victim.  However, these people did show strong signs of stress during the process.  Additional experiments were done to make the victim more personable.  When the subjects were within touching distance of the victim, only 30-40% of them finished the experiment.

Discussion
I don’t recall if the latter experiments were discussed very much in Opening Skinner’s Box, but I find the results really intriguing.  When the subjects were far away from the victim, it was easier to dehumanize them and continue the shocks.

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Chapter 5 – Individuals Confront Authority
Summary
Milgrim outlined some of the responses of the subjects.  Realizing that more goes into a person than just whether or not they obeyed or disobeyed, he had a profile for a handful of the subjects as well as how they reacted during the experiment and what they said during and after the experiment was finished.

Discussion
This was really fascinating to see exactly how people reacted during the experiment.  I also really appreciated getting specific background on the subjects and specifically how they behaved while the experiment was being carried out.

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Chapter 6 – Further Variations and Controls
Summary
Other variations of the experiment were discussed and their respective results.  Most of the variations did not affect the results that much.  However, when the experimenter was removed from the room and when the subject had to choose to voltage levels themselves, this caused a sharp decrease in obedience.

Discussion
This was a very interesting chapter.  The graphs and charts really make it clear how different some of the experiments are.  The obedience is highly influenced by authority presence, as well as not feeling personally responsible for the actions being executed.

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Chapter 7 – Individuals Confront Authority II
Summary
This is another round of subject backgrounds with their reactions to the experiment.  Only one is of the increased reactions of the victim, while the rest are of the female version of the experiment.  It basically demonstrated how the women behaved just like the men.  Everyone can be just as susceptible to the obedience conundrum.

Discussion
This was yet again interesting just like the previous chapter explaining reactions.  What is most impressive is how much everyone regardless of sex is vulnerable to authority.  But it was also intriguing to see how one of the guys talked and objected to what was going but still ended up finishing the experiment fully.

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Chapter 8 – Role Permutations
Summary
This chapter explained some different combinations of the previous experiments.  The general theme seems to be that most subjects are looking for anyone to justify their natural want to not do harm.  The moment anything or anyone agrees with this, the subjects stop and disobey.  This also happens when the experimenter does not seem credible.  This can clearly be seen when the learner is demanding to be shocked, an ordinary man gives orders, the authority is the victim, and when there are two contradictory authority figures.

Discussion
What this all seemed to prove to me is that authority can be extremely fragile.  Even when the subjects were obeying, they still had their own thoughts.  All most of them needed were the slightest hint of justification of their view and they stopped.  And if the authority figure was not credible, the subjects lost faith in them and did not listen to what they said.  This was especially true when the experimenter was the victim.  These were very interesting findings.

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Paper Reading 15 – Enhanced Area Cursors: Reducing Fine Pointing Demands for People with Motor Impairments

Comments
Patrick Frith
Paola Garza

Click-and-Cross cursor.

Reference Information
Enhanced Area Cursors: Reducing Fine Pointing Demands for People with Motor Impairments
 - Leah Findlater, Alex Jansen, Kristen Shinohara, Morgan Dixon, Peter Kamb, Joshua Rakita, and Jacob O. Wobbrock
 - UIST 2010, New York, New York

Summary
This group of researchers set out to find a better means for motor-impaired individuals to use cursors for selection on computers and devices.  They stated that the current solutions for this problem are insufficient.  In order to try and remedy this problem, they came up with four different cursor interaction and selection types.  Two were crossing cursors (a Click-and-Cross cursor and a Cross-and-Cross cursor) and the other two were magnification cursors (a Motor-Magnifier and a Visual-Motor-Magnifier).

Cross-and-Cross cursor.

The two crossing cursors selected items by crossing over or near the desired target.  The Click-and-Cross cursor required the user to first click and move the cursor outward until the resulting arc circumference crossed over the target.  Then the user moved the cursor near the desired area on the arc where the target was.  The other cursor of this type achieves similar results without the need for any clicking.

The two magnifying cursors use different means of magnification in order to aid the user in selecting targets.  The Motor-Magnifier uses a wide selection cursor to isolate an area, while an inset Bubble cursor then makes the selection within the magnifier.  No actual magnification is done with this method, but the mouse gain is decreased to simulate increased magnified behavior.  The other option is the Visual-Motor-Magnifier, which does actually magnify and does not alter mouse gain.  The larger viewing space helps the user choose the target.

Motor-Magnifier cursor.

For testing, 12 participants with motor impairments and 12 without impairments were asked to perform some task sessions ranging from 90-120 minutes long.  The participants were also given an introduction to the tools as well as being allowed to ask questions before proceeding with the tests.  The results showed that the overall error rate for impaired individuals was reduced by 82%.  They set out to find a better solution for aiding impaired individuals in selecting items, so they were very pleased with this result.

Visual-Motor-Magnifier cursor.

Discussion
I was actually not aware that this kind of need was such a big issue.  You don’t exactly hear a lot about it at least.  But now that they have discussed it, I think it is great that they have given so much attention to solving this problem for impaired individuals.  I was really impressed with their solutions as well.  The way they seem to allow a broad selection at first, and then refine the selection process to a more precise broad selection appears to be the perfect solution.  Now that they have proved that better solutions for this problem do exist, hopefully they will be further developed and available for OS’s in their accessibility options in the near future.

Opening Skinner’s Box

Reference
Opening Skinner’s Box
- Lauren Slater

Summary
Opening Skinner’s Box does begin with B. F. Skinner’s famous rat experiments that expanded on Pavlov’s K9 conditioning experiments, but this is merely where the book begins.  Throughout the book, Slater touches on 10 different and very important psychological advancements in science and the understanding of human beings in general.  The chapters are usually a combination of explaining the experiments of the main people behind and some background on the people themselves to give a better perspective of where they came from and what might have led to their train of thought in their discoveries.  Slater also offers her own insight into the research and sometimes even partakes in her own experiments to see if the results have stood the test of time.

Each one of the chapters seemed to build upon the last and continue the progression throughout innovations in psychological sciences.  In some cases, a later chapter could even point out holes in a previous set of research presented in a previous chapter.  A good example of this was presented during the discussion of Leon Festinger’s experiments regarding cognitive dissonance.  Earlier on, Skinner proposed that surroundings influenced the behavior of animals and humans.  However, Festinger’s research showed that this is not necessarily the case.  A person’s beliefs can greatly affect their behavior far more than their surroundings.  This is powerful enough to even lead to completely illogical decisions and actions.

There are many other experiments within the book, ranging from reliability of memory to factors that lead to varying vulnerabilities with addiction to the progression and usefulness of lobotomy as a valid medical procedure.  Overall, Slater successfully combined thorough explanations of key experiments in scientific history along with helpful explanations and discussions of her own.

Discussion
The insights that Slater offers are both interesting and very through-provoking.  I had never really heard of any of the experiments discussed in her book, but it was fantastic learning about them and hearing what she had to say about them.  Quite often her extra information provided a fresh look at the research and results of the work of the key people discussed.  She set out to find the most accurate meanings and validity of each experiment.  Sometimes this meant there was no clear answer.  This was the case with the study on addiction.  On one side, environment and availability of key necessities of life should keep people from addiction.  On the other side, she met a woman who was an absolute contradiction to this rule.  In the end she determined that there is no clear answer for what makes a person more prone to addiction than another.  It’s simply too complicated of a situation to have a clear answer.  It was discussions and conclusions like this one that led me to thoroughly enjoy reading this book and gain a better insight into how the human mind and people operate.

Ethnography Results – Week 5

There were about three different testimonials worth noting for this week.  I didn’t leave any comments or posts.  I’ll just get straight to what I found.

Commenting and Posting
Nothing to note here.

The Atheism Category
The first story that caught my eye was about a former Mormon who became an atheist.  His story starts by explaining his gradual falling away from what the church was teaching him.  It was that he saw it as bad.  He just didn’t see any good reason to believe what they were telling him anymore.  He eventually got into philosophy and became enthralled with everything it opened his mind up to.  It felt restrictive to him to only enjoy things considered “holy” before, and his passion for philosophy fueled his desire to learn about the world and be in awe of everything it had to offer.  He also explained the exact moment when he realized he was definitely an atheist.  One of his college classes started by having everyone put a tally on the board in front of the classroom under various columns for race, age, religion, etc.  When it was his turn, he paused at the religion portion.  It was right then that he realized he needed to put a tally under the Atheism section.

The next one is about a roughly 20-year-old who had been Catholic his entire life.  However, he had over time lost interest in going to church and all the normal things he did as part of his religion.  He claims he lost his faith because he decided to stop being ignorant.  He read a lot of material written by atheists that opened his eyes and made him realize he no longer fit as a Catholic.  The main dilemma here is that he has not told his parents about his being an atheist.  They are not super religious, but it pains him when they reference him finding a church at school and he just does his best to shrug it off with a “maybe” or some other ambiguous response.  He would like to tell them, but he was not exactly sure how to go about doing this.  He is fairly certain they would not disown him or anything, but he doesn’t want to hurt them either.

The last one is a subject I have touched on before I believe.  This person was walking around campus with his female friend who happens to be a lesbian.  As they walked by a Christian male, he blurted out that God hates homosexuals and they will all go to hell.  His friend got extremely red in the face and started to walk away very quickly.  The poster essentially responded to the Christian by explaining that it makes no sense for God to love everyone, except for homosexuals.  Obviously, the wording was much stronger than this, but that is the general gist of what he said.  I probably would have done something exactly the same as he did honestly.  It really angers me when someone who claims to be a Christian who is supposed to be kind can harbor so much insidious hate for another human being simply because of who they are.  Then they have the nerve to use God as their justification for such despicable behavior.  It’s completely contradictory and wrong and I have absolutely zero respect for anyone who acts like this.

Wrap-up and Plans for Next Week
The study seems to honestly be going quite well.  We are all finding some good information and gaining a good feel for how Reddit operates and how members interact with each other.  We are still working on comparing the posting trends of members within our respective categories.  Once we have enough information for this, this will gain extra insight into the workings of the community.

While some of the testimonial-type postings might have the same general trend of a newly formed atheist or someone needing to confess their atheism to someone they know, the postings are still helpful nonetheless.  There are usually differences between them anyway that give a slightly different perspective.  Plus, the postings like the last one where they show the ugly side of religious nuts (no offense to religious people of course, since most aren’t nuts) perhaps help me out the most.  I went into this study wanting to learn about the atheist perspective more, and hearing stories about illogical Christians and the like are the exact thing that can help with this.  It is one thing for an atheist to just post something making fun of religion, but it’s quite another to give a concrete example of how religion has the capacity to prevent people from having common sense.  I look forward to what next week brings in the atheism category.

Book Reading 34 – Opening Skinner’s Box

Chapter 10 – Chipped
Summary
The history of lobotomy was discussed and how this kind of work on the brain has developed over the years.  Two examples were also given.  One was in the early days of psychosurgery, and the other was quite recent and Slater witnessed the results herself.  Even if psychosurgery is still viewed skeptically by many people, it would seem that it has been perfected enough so as to fix the person’s mental issues while also not damaging their personality.

Discussion
Regardless of how proven these psychosurgery procedures are, I don’t know if I would ever be comfortable with anyone tampering with my brain.  It’s seems like far too complex of an organ to have a good enough guarantee of no damage being done.  I would have to be way far gone as a human in order to give it a try.  Otherwise, I would be terrified of losing some core part of myself and having my personality ruined forever.

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Book Reading 33 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 11 – The Girl in Conflict
Summary
This chapter discussed the instances where girls deviated from the normal way of life everyone else was accustomed to and conformed to.  What they all had in common were either outstanding circumstances in their everyday lives, or exposure to a different culture than the Samoan culture.  The result was that they rebelled and strived for higher goals than the Samoan culture allowed.  They were also more passionate in their emotional responses.

Discussion
I may be wrong, but I can almost see where Mead is going with all of this.  The fact that the exposure to the white missionaries caused some of the girls to rebel and act differently points to the type of society being the cause for the behavior.  This type of rebelling I don’t think is a bad thing though.  But, this adolescent rebellion would appear to stem from the Western culture, and not be something that is universally true of all adolescents.

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Paper Reading 14 – Chronicle: Capture, Exploration, and Playback of Document Workflow Histories

Comments
Patrick Frith
Paola Garza

Reference Information
Chronicle: Capture, Exploration, and Playback of Document Workflow Histories
 - Tovi Grossman, Justin Matejka, and George Fitzmaurice
 - UIST 2010, New York, New York

The main view of the Chronicle interface.

Summary
The Chronicle is a means to track the progress of a document with many features to review and analyze the progress.  In this case, it utilized photo editing software to track the progress of the photo’s changes.  Throughout the process of editing a photo with software, many changes can occur such as layer editing and other special effects, and Chronicle keeps track of these changes in a few different ways.

One is with video playback of the changes being made.  The program records the entire editing process so users can see exactly how a certain effect was done by the original creator.  Another view is the timeline view, in which all of the changes and what kind of effect the change utilized is laid out in a graphical timeline.  And the other view is a calendar view where a screenshot of each photo design is displayed on the day it was created so the user can easily view the progress of the photo.

The developers conducted a study involving 8 participants with at least 3 years of image editing software experience.  The participants’ job was to carry out a series of tasks that utilized Chronicle’s capabilities without having much experience with the software.  They were explained the main features and functionality of the program, but that was all.  In the end, the participants were able to complete 92% of these tasks.  Then they were all asked to evaluate their experience with a series of questions.  Overall, they enjoyed the program and rated it highly and it made sense to them.

Chronicle's timeline view.

One of the main downfalls of the program is that it is application dependent on Paint.NET, the program they adapted to use their system.  In the future, they would like to change it so it can be used with any type of photo editing software.  They would also like to find a more convenient way to store the history video recordings, possibly on a network server instead of the local machine.  They hope do more tests to truly figure out if Chronicle is an effective learning tool, seeing as that was one of their main objectives in creating the software in the first place.

Chronicle's calendar view.

Discussion
I have gotten into some photo editing over the past year or so, and I really like this idea of saving all of the history of the creation process.  And like they said, this could be a very useful way for people to learn from other’s work exactly how to do complex editing tasks.  Written tutorials are nice, but unless they are accompanied by a video, they can be difficult to follow and figure out.  But even the history tracking they have in Chronicle is nice enough to warrant a program for that purpose.  I don’t necessarily need to see exactly how all of my creations were made, but it would be useful to see how I did an effect without having to rediscover the entire process all over again.  Chronicle is a great idea, and I really hope they continue work on it and make it more application independent.

Book Reading 32 – Opening Skinner’s Box

Chapter 9 – Memory Inc.
Summary
This chapter focused on Eric Kandel’s experiment with sea slugs and finding out where memory is actually located and how it behaves in the mind.  He discovered a molecule now known as CREB that acts as the bind in the brain for memory connections.  His research eventually led to pharmaceutical companies looking for ways to stave off memory loss from old age.  Slater pointed out, however, that the brain has a natural need to forget and that such a drug could do a lot of unpredicted damage.

Discussion
The way the brain works has been a pretty fascinating topic for me for a long time.  I read once that memories in the brain are not stored in anything, but instead reside in the synapses between brain cells.  This makes a little more sense now after reading this chapter.  But, I think I might have read wrong.  It seems more that the connections of certain cells lead to these memories.  Either way, the actual act of memory is triggered by electrical pulses through the brain, and this is really amazing to me.  And as a side note, I am not so sure I would want to take a drug that induced lost memories.  I agree with Slater that there is no telling what something like this could do to a person.

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Book Reading 31 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 10 – The Experience and Individuality of the Average Girl
Summary
Mead started going more in depth into the adolescent experience with the girls of Samoa.  She explained how their experiences through puberty differed, as well as how age affected this experience.  One thing she noted as common in all of the girls was to have many lovers for as long as possible, and then to marry within their village and have many children.

Discussion
She noted that none of the girls faced any major conflict or philosophical quandaries or even had specific and individualistic ambitions.  This is obviously not the case with adolescents in this country.  In fact, this yet again points out how almost polar opposite the Samoan culture is to ours.  The competitiveness against authority that is so common here is not the case at all in Samoan culture.

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Book Reading 30 – Emotional Design

Chapter 3 – Three Levels of Design: Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective
Summary
The three levels of design are discussed with a little bit of an overlap into The Design of Everyday Things in the behavioral discussion.  The visceral side can be interpreted as product aesthetics and how they make people feel when they look and use them.  The reflective side is how the usage and the product itself linger in the person’s mind.  This lasting experience has a major impact on how the person views the product and company that designed it.  He also explains how the true path to greatness is met by letting someone with a clear vision take the reins of design.  The financial risk can be worth it in the end.

Discussion
I really enjoyed his discussion on movies.  It was a great example of how to go about design.  Putting profit first can be more helpful immediately, but a truly inspirational design can make a massive impact on the way people view a company over time.  This is how people who are unknowns become a household name.  Some of the best movies ever made are also some of the most unique ones.  Studios that care more about profit than artistic integrity have a large potential to ruin great design by being afraid of taking chances.  Then of course once the design is a proven success, they have no problem jumping on board to make copycat products.

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Paper Reading 13 – D-Macs: Building Multi-Device User Interfaces by Demonstrating, Sharing and Replaying Design Actions

Comments
Paola Garza
Zachary Henkel

Reference Information
D-Macs: Building Multi-Device User Interfaces by Demonstrating, Sharing and Replaying Design Actions
 - Jan Meskens, Kris Luyten, and Karin Coninx
 - UIST 2010, New York, New York

Summary
D-Macs is a system that allows for the recording and sharing of design action sequences.  As in, if someone on a design team made a specific GUI design choice, the actions leading to this choice could be recorded and shared with the rest of the team.  There are many benefits and features to this system that the designers point out.

How the D-Macs system shares and handles its various functions.

One is the automation or repetitive design actions.  This can save a lot of time when creating multiple iterations of a design that have similar portions to them.  And similarly, the system gives feedback during automation so the designer can see how these actions are being replicated.  If some of the repeated designs can be generalized by D-Macs, then they can also be used in other projects requiring similar actions.  The system can also provide contextual cues to help show when repeated actions can and can’t be used to the desired situation.  And the system also allows designers to view and share design choices so everyone can benefit from other work and help guide other designers.

In future work, the designers plan on finding more ways D-Macs can be used in general-purpose GUI design projects.  They would also like to automate the connected community of designers better.  The current iteration requires designers to search for sequences and decide which ones apply to what they are trying to accomplish.  The creators of D-Macs would like to employ some sort of automation that can recognize similar sequences and make recommendations.  They also plan on conducting a full study and releasing D-Macs as free open source software for everyone to experiment with and help design.

Discussion
This seems like a brilliant idea.  But I think it can also be applied to non-GUI related work as well.  Take video editing or photo editing for example.  Sometimes there are sequences of actions that need to be done over and over again.  D-Macs might be able to recognize and record these sequences of actions as well.  I am sure there might be scripting systems built into much of this software for this purpose, but D-Macs seems like a great tool for it also.  Or it could be applied to everyday work as well.  Some sort of repetitive sequence of actions could be converted into an automated script simple by monitoring the actions.  This seems way beyond the scope of D-Macs perhaps, but with the software becoming open source who knows what might happen with it.

Ethnography Results – Week 4

This week also revealed similar results, but there are always interesting testimonials and discussions that reveal quite a bit about the people in the atheism category.  Yet again, the commenting has sort of gone to the way side for now.  I will still use it as a means to interact with the members of Reddit, but I am still unsure as to when this will happen.  If it seems appropriate, I will add something to the community.

Commenting and Posting
As stated above in the introduction, comments and posting will be discussed as they are used.  Until that time, I might just remove this category or just note that there have been no updates.

The Atheism Category
So, the big discussion that I found was a husband who had told his wife he was an atheist, again, and it didn’t work out very well.  Apparently he has had this conversation with her about three months prior and it had gone just as poorly.  But he didn’t bring it up this time.  He had been using her iPad to read an atheist blog, and she ended up finding the site when she picked it up and asked what he was reading.  He explained that it was part of his enlightenment that was very important to him.  She was really upset though.  He made the post for Reddit so he could get some guidance on what to do since he was afraid he might lose his wife over this.

He actually ended up getting some great advice (and not so great advice too) that sort of helped him through his time of need.  However, she threatened divorce multiple times.  He has not explained the ultimate outcome, but hopefully he lets everyone know how it all worked out.  I imagine they are trying to work things out unless he explains otherwise.  There have been no updates from him in about 4 days.

Wrap-up and Plans for Next Week
As I said last week, I would like to use these kinds of stories to get a better understanding of the atheist’s view on religion and religious people.  While it is unfair for religious people to assume atheists are terrible individuals, it is just as unfair for atheists to assume the same for religious people.  I hope to gain a better understanding of what goes into people resulting to these stereotypes and how people might be able to act differently to curb these views.

Also, in an effort to bring the studies of all group members together into one cohesive study, we have decided to begin comparing the general activity of the most prominent posters in each of our categories.  We want to find out if members of a certain category are more prone to posting in that category, or if they post in others as well.  And if they do post in others, to what frequency do they post.

Book Reading 29 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 8 – Lost in the Mall
Summary
Slater discussed the work of Elizabeth Loftus and her work on memory recognition.  Her main experiment involved implanting false memories of being lost in a mall into subject’s minds.  They would take the false memory and in thinking it was theirs recollect many details about an event that never happened to them.  Her further research led her to help wrongly convicted felons on death row.  But in the end, she realized everything she didn’t have when she could no longer view memory as a reliable source of comfort.

Discussion
Honestly, this seems like a very dangerous way to go about life in not believing memory to be reliable.  It would shake your very existence just like it did for Loftus.  While I believe memory can be very reliable, there is technically no way to prove it either way.  Since we do have the uncanny ability to make up memories and fill in holes with things that never actually happened, how do we really know what is real and what is filler?  I just choose to trust my instinct and stick with that.  If I believe it to be reliable, then it is.  That’s way better than the depressing alternative.

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Book Reading 28 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 9 – The Attitude of the Personality
Summary
Mead examined how the Samoans viewed personality among their peer and others.  First of all, she found that they were far more descriptive with negative traits of others than when using positive traits like intelligence and talents.  What is desirable in a good person also changed with the age group.  And those who were quiet and did not stand out the most were thought of as the best individuals, or those with the least amount of standout traits.

Discussion
This is an interesting contrast to how things work in this country.  It seems to me that it is very beneficial in your life to standout as much as possible.  There is a massive drive to succeed and present yourself as being above all the others.  I would definitely say that reversing the Samoan’s philosophy would yield the one that most of us use here.

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