The Design of Future Things

by Donald A. Norman

Comments

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Summary:

The Design of Future Things introduces design ideas that should be kept in mind when designing novel technologies that people are not currently familiar with. The two main illustrations used are automobiles, that either somewhat take over driving or fully take over driving, or smart homes. The smart homes described monitor your living habits around the house and either make suggestions on what you do (e.g. tell you what to eat) or predict what you want to do and take the necessary actions to make that possible (e.g. turn on lights and music when you walk into a room).

Norman has a summary of Design Rules at the end of the book that pretty much summarize the book into a few lines:

Design Rules for Human Designers of "Smart" Machines:

1. Provide rich, complex, and natural signals.

2. Be predictable.

3. Provide good conceptual models.

4. Make the output understandable.

5. Provide continual awareness without annoyance.

6. Exploit natural mappings.

Design Rules Developed by Machines to Improve Their Interactions with People:

1. Keep things simple.

2. Give people a conceptual model.

3. Give reasons.

4. Make people think they are in control.

5. Continually reassure.

6. Never label human behavior as "error."

Discussion:

Even though it was not the focus of the book, my favorite parts were when the author discussed current research projects and the technologies that were being produced. I was not very interested in their design as much as I was just interested in what they can do. I think that will be the way most people will approach these future technologies. They will not consciously care about the design, only how cool or useful the product is portrayed by ads. If the design is poor, the products will be frustrating to use, but if they are a novel product, they will still be purchased nonetheless. Most of the time, design will only become a factor when two similar products are released and their utilities are the same. Then, when a good design is what gives a product its advantage over its competition, is when design will be given priority.

UIST 2008 Backward Highlighting: Enhanced Faceted Search

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Wilson, et al.

Summary:

Faceted searches rely on columns of categories to filter search results. One example which was heavily used is the column view in iTunes. There are two current methods of faceted search: directional and non-directional. iTunes uses the directional browsing, in which every column to the right of the selected column is filtered according to the selection. So, for example, if a particular Artist (middle column) was chosen, the Albums (right column) would be filtered to only show the albums by the particular artist. The Genre column (left column) would not be touched though. Non-directional browsing filters results in both directions. If an Artist is selected, both the Genre and Album columns would be filtered out.

Backward Highlighting (BH) is a new middle ground for faceted searches. BH leans more to the side of directional browsing. If a column is selected in the middle, all results to the right are filtered out as in directional browsing, and all columns to the left retain all data, but the related data is highlighted. The idea is that the added highlights should show every possible combination of selected data that could be used to get to the current filter results.

There were three hypotheses going into user studies. 1) Users will be able to discover more facts. 2) Users will remember more facts. 3) Users wil use the remembered facts to improve search behavior. The tests that were done used three different settings: no BH, BH, and BH that grouped all highlighted items at the top. The results concluded that all three hypotheses were correct and that there was no significance difference between grouped and ungrouped BH.

Discussion:

BH seems very logical and it makes me wonder why this has not been done before. It adds metadata to the screen without taking away from the data like non-directional faceted search but, at the same time, it does not overburden the user with this metadata. I do question the usefulness of this metadata. The tests show that users remember the highlighted rows, but what good does that do if the user knows how to get there already? I am sure there is a good application for this, but I cannot think of one at the time of writing.

Taskpose: Exploring Fluid Boundaries in an Associative Window Visualization

Bernstein, et al.

Summary:

Taskpose is a combination of a window manager and a task manager. It determines which windows are stuck in a common task and group those windows together when Taskpose is called up (the presentation draws heavily from Mac OS X's Expose). It also tries to determine which windows are the most important and enlarges the important windows' size.

The window importance and window relations are based on window switching. The more a window is switched to, the more important it becomes. And the relationships between windows are developed by monitoring how many times Window A switches to Window B and vice versa. The windows then move around the screen to congregate with similar windows. The more important a window is, the larger the thumbnail becomes. The larger, more important windows have a static tendancy and the smaller, related windows are attracted to them.

After a week long user study, Taskpose was found to be useful but still had some weaknesses. Users tended to like Taskpose. It was very useful when the open windows were too numerous for the Windows Taskbar to appropriately handle. There were two prominent shortcomings of Taskpose. First, it did not recognize "parent-child" relationships, such as a buddy list and the chat windows. Second, when multiple projects were being worked on simultaneously, the two projects would merge in Taskpose.

Discussion:

Taskpose's presentation takes from Expose, which I really like. However, its usefulness falls short due to the two problems discovered during the user study, especially the second shortcoming. If these issues could be fixed, it could be useful and would make window switching quicker and require less mental work. Another problem, which is mentioned in the paper, is that importance and relationships are solely based on window switching. Importance should also include the time a window is active.

Bringing Physics to the Surface

Wilson, et al.

Summary:

This papers looks into how to effectively add real physics to tabletop touchscreen surfaces. The idea is to use physics that have already been developed for the game industry, e.g. Nvidia's PhsyX. Surfaces already mimic physics when users rotate or stretch out pictures with their hands. This is not real physics computation though, they are merely scripts that replicate real physics.

There are three different forces that must be considered when using the physics computations: static friction, kinetic friction, and collisions. There are already methods for computing these forces, but none that compute all three well. Direct force is one method that only detects collisions based on one contact point. Virtual joints and springs connect a contact point to a virtual object via a spring or a joint. This results in a drag-and-drop functionality and does not work well with collisions. Another method is to use proxy objects. This creates an object, such as a sphere or square, underneath the contact point that can interact with the virtual objects by means of friction and collisions. Although this uses all three forces, the results can be unexpected because the proxy object does not match the contacts points.

To compensate for the weaknesses of the previous methods, a new method is introduced: proxy particles. This creates a stream of particles underneath the contact point that accurately represent all contact points. These particles act in the same way that a proxy object works; if the contact point starts on an object, friction takes over. Otherwise, if the contact points starts off of an object and runs into an object, collisional force takes over.

User studies indicate that proxy particles may be the best way of applying physics to touch surfaces. Six participants were given three tests each. The joint method and the proxy particle method had the fastest completion times. The joint method was easy for the users to pick up because it keeps in line with the drag-and-drop mentality that mouse users are accustomed to. However, the participants commented that the joint method was "limiting" and "less satisfying." The joint method also poses problems when creating two separate contact points on an object and pulling in separate directions. When using the proxy particles, users interacted with objects with comparable times to the joint method, but enjoyed it more.

Discussion:

These surface computers are getting popular and the idea of introducing real physics into the technology looks very promising. There are still some kinks to be worked out though and I think the initial surfaces will only contain pseudo-physics. Real physics will have to be introduced later. While the proxy particles worked well for the tests given, it does not look like it is ready to be commercially introduced. Problems will occur once the surface becomes filled with 3D virtual objects and cluttered. There will have to be a logical way to apply 3D physics and move 3D objects around a 2D screen.

The Mole People

Summary:

The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City by Jennifer Toth is ethnography that studies the lives of the people that live underground in New York City. A lot is unknown about these people, it is not even know how many people live underneath the city. Jennifer Toth went underground to study these people and learn about them, including the culture underground and even why the people move underground to begin with.

Discussion:
While entertaining and educational, The Mole People does not seem to be have been done like a standard ethnography. Jennifer Toth seems to have an agenda and it appears as if her goal is to show the world that these mole people really are not that dangerous or different than the average person, at least not to the extent that most people assume.

The Battalion Ethnography

Summary:
Brad Twitty, Cole Jones, and I spent time watching The Battalion newsstands to see who was taking the paper. Brad spent his time watching Blocker in the morning, Cole watched Bright in the afternoon, and I watched Bright in the morning. I used tally marks to keep track of how many people took the paper, how many people did not take the paper, and whether or not these people were leaving or entering the building when they passed by the newsstand. According to my results, about 30% of the people entering or leaving the building took the paper.

Discussion:
The detailed data recorded can be found in the written report, but the data recorded in the morning at the Bright building leads to the idea that most students take The Battalion if they have arrived to class early and have extra time to kill. Students that enter the building within the last ten minutes before class are less likely to grab a paper. This is probably because they have less time to kill and may even be late for class and are in too much of a hurry to bother themselves with the paper.

The Media Equation

Commented on:

Kevin

Brad

Brian

Summary:

The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass is written based on studies done on how people treat computers and media. The tests they conduct conclude that people treat these new medias like they do other people or real life. Hence their media equation: media = real life. The results suggest that people who interact with computers and other media respond better when the computer interacts with them the same way that they prefer people to interact with them. After each study, the authors suggest an interface change that would benefit the user based on the results of the study. Examples of these suggestions are a friendly spell checker or ensuring that a computer's voice is male.

Discussion:

After reading the book, I initially thought that most of the suggestions were common sense. However, I really had not given any thought to making a computer polite or conform to a culture's norms of treating people. Before, if there was an error message, you just relay it. If a user need to be informed of anything, just print out what they need to know to the screen and get the job done. Now I think that there is a reward for turning the dry interactions of computers into something more appealing for most consumers.