Paper Reading #13: SemFeel: a user interface with semantic tactile feedback for mobile touch-screen devices

Comments
 Joshua Penick - http://jip-tamuchi-spring2011.blogspot.com/2011/03/paper-reading-13-mouse-20.html
Shena Hoffmann - http://csce436-hoffmann.blogspot.com/2011/03/paper-reading-13-twinspace.html

Reference Information
Title: SemFeel: a user interface with semantic tactile feedback for mobile touch-screen devices
Authors: Koji Yatani, Khai Nhut Truong    
Presentation Venue: UIST 2010: 22nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology; October 4-7, 2009; Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Summary
In this paper, the researchers describe a tactile feedback system for touch-screen mobile phones called SemFeel that uses five vibration motors to help the user interact with the mobile device without having to look at it. The vibration motors are placed so that they can produce both single-point vibrations and vibrations that “sweep” across the mobile phone.

Taken from paper: the different vibration patterns

 In their prototype, the vibration motors are located on the back of the mobile device with the five motors forming a kind of cross shape (one at the top, middle, bottom, right and left) that allows for eleven different vibration feedback patterns. Since people tend to hold the mobile device such that their palm does not touch it, the researchers created a sleeve to fill the gap to allow the users to better feel the center motor.

The researchers did two studies with their prototype. In the first experiment, the researchers asked the users to hold the mobile device in their non-dominant hand and to identify the vibration pattern after the system generated a pattern. If the user chose the wrong pattern, they were informed which was the correct pattern. They found that users had the most difficulty identifying the counter-clockwise pattern. Other than the counter-clockwise pattern, the users were accurate on average 89.6% of the time.

In the second experiment, the users were asked to hold the mobile device with their dominant hand and use their thumb to input four numbers on the touch screen without looking. They studied three different conditions: one where no tactile feedback was given, one where only the center vibration motor was used and one where multiple tactile feedback was used. When a user tapped a number, it would appear on a computer screen. If they failed to type a number, an ‘X’ was shown. The researchers found that the users input numbers more accurately and more quickly with multiple tactile feedback than with single or no feedback.

Note: Prior to the actual experiments, the users were allowed to practice with the system.

The researchers conclude by giving different examples of where their SemFeel system may be useful such as to provide navigational aid to the visually impaired, to enhance current interfaces such as a maze game and to help a user interact with a calendar or calculator without looking.

Discussion
It seems I’m reading a lot of papers about mobile phones lately. I think this is one of the more interesting ones. They presented the material in a manner easy to understand and provided plenty of examples. Though I’m not sure how well this system will work in future applications, I do support anything that can help people keep their eyes off their cell phones. I’d rather people not do it, but since they’re going to anyway, at least this way, they stand a better chance of not running into someone or something.

One area of future study that the researchers mention would be to see how accurately the users can tell the difference between weak and strong vibration patterns in their prototype. Since one of the main reasons for this system is to allow people to interact with their phones without looking, they also mention doing studies where the users walk while interacting with the mobile device.

Book Reading #32: Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 9
Summary
This chapter focuses on Eric Kandel’s research with memory. The chapter begins with the story of Henry who had severe epilepsy. Thinking he knew how to fix the problem, a doctor, Dr. Scoville, removed Henry’s hippocampus. After the surgery Henry lost the ability to form memories.

Inspired by Henry’s tragic story, Kandel set out to learn about neurons through the study of sea slugs. He discovered that the neurons grew stronger when an electrochemical signal reinforced the relationship. He also discovered CREB and the CREB repressor. CREB is a molecule in the brain that “switches on” the genes that produce the proteins that make memories. Kandel has a company called Memory Pharmaceuticals where he is developing pills that will enhance CREB.

Discussion
This was yet another interesting chapter. I really enjoy reading this book. I’m not sure I like the idea of making pills to enhance CREB. I can see them easily being abused. I just get a bad feeling hearing about something that messes with the brain in this way, making our brain remember better (like steroids for the brain) or making us forget things all together.

Book Reading #31: Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 10
Summary
This chapter gives the reader some insight into the average girl. Mead begins by discussing how the children have seen life and death many times with the adults making little effort to keep them innocent in such matters.

Mead then writes about many of the girls individually. She discusses Pele and how the girl would delight in telling Mead about how her little sister was of “disputed parentage.” She writes of Tuna who was a calculating child and less giving than other children. She writes about several other girls as well and concludes by saying that the girls experienced an orderly development of “slowly maturing interests and activities.”

Discussion
I like how we got to learn a little more about the individual girls in this chapter. While it had already been mentioned that the children were present when women gave birth, I was surprised to think that the small children knew so much about death. I’m reminded of a show I watched recently in which a little girl’s bird died. Not wanting to explain death to her, the parents continuously told the girl that the bird was just sleeping.

Book Reading #30: Emotional Design

Chapter 3
Summary
This chapter discusses the three levels of design. Visceral design focuses on physical features such as look, feel and sound and is about initial reactions. Behavioral design focuses on function, understandability, usability and physical feel with function being the most important. Reflective design focuses on the meaning of the product, the message the product gives and the culture.

Norman also presents a case study on the national football league headset and concludes by comparing the process of design by committee and the process of design by the individual.

Discussion
I think by now Norman has made clear the differences between the three levels of design. He gives plenty of good examples from automobiles to watches to bottled water. I enjoyed the part about how stores will put the most often bought items at the back of the store. I have pondered over this before, but now I’ll probably always be thinking about it when I visit a new store.

Ethnography Results Week 4

Sweet Eugene’s House of Java

Saturday February 26, 2011
9:15-11:15am

Quantitative
Totals for the morning:
Order drink to go: 12
On Computer: 5
Reading book/ doing homework: 12 (defined as having book and/or spiral and pencil)
Working with computer and book: 1
Visiting: 26 (some of these appeared to have the intention of studying)
Main goal to eat: 23 (these people read a book or used their computer until food arrived. Then they ate and left)
Eating and visiting: 2 (they were eating but that did not appear to be the main goal based on how long they stuck around afterwards)

Collected times for people who left (x means I don’t know when they arrived):
9:24 – 9:44 (2 eating)
9:25 – 9:53 (3 eating)
X – 9:51 (3 eating)
X – 9:52 (3 visiting and eating)
X – 10:04 (2 visiting)
9:54 – 10:07 (4 eating)
X – 10:15 (2 eating)
9:56 – 10:24 (3 eating and visiting)
10:00 – 10:28 (2 eating and visiting)
10:33 – 11:00 (2 eating)
9:23 – 11:10 (1 on computer)
X – X (the regular on her computer)

(Several other people came in during the time I was there and never left. Actually, most came in near the end of my stay and I left before them. Most I assume were there for lunch.)

Qualitative
My location
Near the center of the large room, allowing for a view of everyone in the large room that was in front of me and limited view (don’t want to look too obvious) of the area behind me. I also had partial view of the smaller room where some couches were.

The Employees
This time there were two employees, one of which I recognized as a guy I saw my first couple of weeks at Sweet Eugene’s. A girl came up after us and he asked her if she wanted her usual vanilla java shake. She replied that she wanted to try something different today.

The customers
To clean or not to clean
I noticed a different pattern this week. Some young and some old put their dishes away. Some young and some old left their dishes on the table. I also noticed that the older ones who did put their dishes away (3 couples) tended to put their plates on the bar rather than in the designated area. But they were close.

Popular tables
Same as the other weeks, the same tables tended to be the popular spots. Two interesting things to note: The table I’ve designated as the window table had two girls visiting. They left their dishes, and as they were getting up, a lady and girl who have just gotten their drinks and ordered their food headed for the table and cleaned it off themselves so they could sit there.

I also noticed that as the place got more crowded, people would head to the back where I cannot see, glance down into a different room and then loop back with disappointed expressions on their faces. I haven’t sat in this area since it doesn’t allow me to view much of what is going on, but it seems to be a popular area.

Sticking around for a long time
Only the regular (a girl on her laptop) stayed the entire time.

A place to bring the family
I noted seven different families that had young children. Six of the families had children under the age of about 7 while one family had a child who was likely middle school or early high school age. I would often note parents of the young children toting them around in their arms just to entertain them. They would walk one way, then the other and go back to their table/couch.

Trusting Customers
As usual people left their stuff unattended, but one person I would like to note was a girl who left her backpack (with her computer in it) unattended from 10:16-10:43. I believe she was outside on her cell phone for most of this time and then in the bathroom.

Objective Unknown
I watched one guy enter Sweet Eugene’s through the back door, walk around through most of the rooms, then leave without ever ordering anything or talking to anyone. He had a backpack so I’m assuming he had been intending to meet someone there to work, but I’m not sure.

The Atmosphere
The regular sat to the right of three people visiting. A man at the table was talking quite passionately about politics. As time progressed I noticed the regular leaning further and further away from that table as if the volume bothered her. After they left the regular settled back into her seat.

The girl and lady who cleaned off the window table just so they could sit there were one of the loudest groups I’ve heard. The girl talked openly about relationships. I also noted her saying, “In College Station you can’t throw a rock and not hit a girl who…” [she got quieter for the last part. I’m not sure if she ended that sentence rudely or not.] I later heard her talking about a friend who has a problem with micromanaging her kids. I sat fairly far away from this table, so I was surprised I could pick up on so much of her conversation. I even overheard her conversation on her cell phone with her new employer. She starts training at a new workplace March 21.

At one point someone behind me was watching a video on their ipod. There was a lot of screaming in the video. After a minute or so of this (lots and lots of screaming), I glanced back to see who it was. Then the girl diagonally across from me who was studying looked. Then the guy to my right on his computer looked one after the other. I guess the ipod owner noticed us because the screaming finally stopped.

Differences from week 3
I visited the coffee shop in the morning this time, so there were several differences. I noticed a lot more families and a lot more older people (non college student, high school type crowds). Plus, I stayed from 9:15 to 11:15, so I noted a lot more people coming to Sweet Eugene’s to eat a late breakfast or an early lunch.

Map of Sweet Eugene's my fiance drew while I took notes. Click it for bigger view

Paper Reading #12: Disappearing mobile devices

Comments
 Shena Hoffman - http://csce436-hoffmann.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-12-d-macs-building-multi.html
Joshua Penick - http://jip-tamuchi-spring2011.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-12-detecting-and.html

Reference Information
Title: Disappearing mobile devices
Authors: Tao Ni, Patrick Baudisch    
Presentation Venue: UIST 2010: 22nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology; October 4-7, 2009; Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Summary
In this paper the researchers explore the evolution of the mobile phone, focusing on how it has gotten smaller and smaller over the years. They then discuss how the mobile phone will one day be small enough to integrate into surfaces or on our skin once hardware linked to human constraints (finger size, eye sight, etc.) has been removed from the equation.

Focusing on motion and touch, the researchers explore technologies that would make it possible to reduce the size of the mobile phone down to its smallest. The devices they discuss are a motion scanner, touch scanner and a direction scanner (a scanner that reacts to gestures). They explain how the devices would use Morse code, gestures and the path of gestures as the language they would interpret. 

They explore the technique of marking, a language of eight directional gestures, in a user study. The users could gesture to the left, up, down, up and to the left, etc. In their study they found that the error rates were below 5%. They also found that making the ‘left’ gesture was one of the more difficult gestures because the sensor would pick up their gesture even after they finished it. To compensate for this the users had to pull their hand out of the sensor’s range or twist their hand around to get it out of the way.

They also explored text entry on motion scanners using two different interfaces, the Graffiti condition and the EdgeWrite condition. Depending on which condition the users used, they had to gesture the letters (like writing in the air) differently in front of the sensor. The users operated the device with their whole hand and wore a glove to improve tracking. EdgeWrite proved to be a good option for a small mobile device, but Graffiti had error rates as high as 66% due to its relying on the relative position of the hand at the start.

Note: In both studies, the users went through a training session first.

Image taken from the paper

Discussion
When reading the abstract and seeing the art of a little device on someone’s wrist, I laughed. While I’m not sure I would ever want my mobile phone to be that small (I just know I would lose it), the ideas they explored in this paper were interesting and unique. I especially enjoyed the part about motion scanners and how the users wrote letters through gestures. I think I would prefer that to texting if one day it’s an option in mobile phones.

As mentioned in the paper, the biggest area of future work will be to study how to incorporate visual output from something as small as what they envision here. Their main focus in this paper was inputting information into the device.

Book Reading #29: Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 8
Summary
This chapter explores the false memory experiments done by Elizabeth Loftus. With her different studies she was able to implant false memories in her subjects and observe how memories could be changed over time or with some convincing. In Loftus’s Lost in the Mall experiment she had subjects read through accounts of their childhood (three being real and the fourth a false description of them being lost in the mall) written by their family. The subjects then elaborated on the stories. Loftus found that twenty-five percent of the subjects suddenly remembered this event as if it had happened and seemed to narrate them in greater detail as time passed.

Other psychologists who disagree with Loftus claim that traumatic events can be repressed and how traumatic memory is stored differently in the brain, meaning that her studies do not prove anything in the case of a daughter suddenly remembering twenty years later that her dad raped her as a child.

Discussion
I really enjoyed this chapter. When we discussed this in my psychology class, the professor also mentioned how we often make the memories of our loved ones our own, so that we remember something that happened to our spouse as happening to us instead. I do believe we have false memories. Sometimes I’ll even say as I’m explaining something, “…but that could be a false memory.” There are also times when I’ve discussed an event with one of my siblings and they’ve remembered it totally differently than I did. I have no idea of deciding who’s right, so I usually don’t bring up the discrepancy (I learned very quickly that that leads to an argument where it is difficult if not impossible to prove one’s side).

Maybe I should start keeping a diary. :)

Book Reading #28: Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 9
Summary
This chapter explores the personality of Samoans and their attitude towards it. The word, musu, means that one is unwilling and obstinate and what Mead finds is that it is treated with “almost superstitious respect.” Once a person demonstrates musu, the Samoan doesn’t question why the person feels that way. They just accept it and move on.

Mead also found that when describing a person, a Samoan generally lists their traits in a pattern (sex, age, rank, relationship, defects and activities). Attitudes tend to be described as being either good or bad, easy or difficult. Mead also notes that judgments tended to be made in terms of age groups and that when asked personal questions, they tended to reply, “I don’t know.”

Discussion
I found it funny that Mead resorted to putting a taboo on the use of “I don’t know” when asking the children questions. I also found it interesting how they do not try to figure out why someone acts obstinate or is unwilling. Mead points out how this gives them privacy since they have little privacy in other areas of their lives. I guess I understand that, but I wonder if misunderstandings occur between people more often because they don’t try to understand why the person feels the way they do and upset more than once because of the same thing.

Book Reading #27: Emotional Design

Chapter 2
Summary
The second chapter discusses how the different levels of processing work within a design and how they work with and against each other. As stated in the chapter, visceral design is about the initial impact of the product, behavioral about the use and experience, and reflective about understanding, reasoning and interpreting.

Norman also discusses the importance of memories, how objects evoke memories and how these memories reflect us. He concludes the chapter by discussing the design of products when taking the three levels of processing into account. He discusses the goals of a product, its fashion and how brands are informative.

Discussion
This chapter builds on the last chapter, focusing on the memories a product can evoke in a person and how one must take the appearance, use and evoked memories of a product into account while designing it. I thought the Xbox advertisement was funny, and I enjoyed the way Norman analyzed it.

Paper Reading #11: Activity analysis enabling real-time video communication on mobile phones for deaf users

Comments
Shena Hoffmann - http://csce436-hoffmann.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-11-chronicle-capture.html
Evin Schuchardt - http://csce436spring2011.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-11-activity-analysis.html

Reference Information
Title: Activity analysis enabling real-time video communication on mobile phones for deaf users
Authors: Neva Cherniavsky, Jaehong Chon, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Richard E. Ladner, Eve A. Riskin
Presentation Venue: UIST 2010: 22nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology; October 4-7, 2009; Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Summary
This paper describes a system called MobileASL that is designed to help deaf people communicate by mobile phone though real-time video. The researchers have developed algorithms that address the issues of low bandwidth, low processing speed and limited battery life in mobile phones.

In their algorithms they use a dynamic skin-based region-of-interest (ROI) that focuses on a person’s skin to display their hands in higher quality than the rest of the video. They’ve also developed their algorithm to recognize when a user is signing and when they are not so that they can lower the frame rate to save resources. They call this technique Variable Frame Rate (VFR).

Taken from paper: their system, MobileASL

The researchers also evaluated how fifteen users fluent in ASL (American Sign Language) liked their system. They recorded nine different conversations. Five were between strangers and four between people who knew each other well (one pair being a husband and wife). The users talked for five minutes and then the settings on the phone were changed to adjust the ROI and VFR. After each change the users were asked to rate how easy or difficult it was to understand the conversation.

They found that the users had to guess less frequently about what was being said at higher ROI. As for the VFR, the users had to guess more frequently and repeat things when VFR was on. However, their overall study showed that the users did not experience very many conversational breakdowns (they reported breakdowns occurring on average once every third conversation).

They did notice that it was during finger spelling (spelling out a word in Sign Language) that conversational breakdown occurred the most.

Discussion
Overall, this was a really good paper. They explained the different challenges they have overcome and gave an in depth report on their user study. I think this could make mobile phones more useful for deaf users. And as the researchers state in the paper, this form of communication would be faster than texting.

As for future work, they plan to improve the algorithm so that it works better with finger spelling. They also would like to compare this technique to other techniques in video communication. They are also considering making it so that the ROI can track the face through face recognition algorithms.

Book Reading #26: Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 7
Summary
This chapter explores the work of Bruce Alexander and his studies on rats when researching the effect of one’s social, physical and psychological life on one’s addiction to drugs. After putting sixteen rats in a caged environment and sixteen rats in a “rat park,” Alexander exposed them both to morphine. What Alexander found was that the rats in the rat park chose drinking normal water over the morphine-laced water while the cramped, caged rats preferred the morphine-laced water.

Slater goes on to discuss the other side of the argument about how some argue that addictions are caused by a decrease in the production of certain chemicals in the brain.

She also discusses how her husband takes pain killers and is not addicted and the case of Emma Lowry, who was prescribed opium after surgery and is now addicted.

Discussion
This chapter presented something we did not discuss in my psychology class. We discussed the decrease in production of certain chemicals but never did we learn of Bruce Alexander and his studies with the rat park. I have known of certain people who do drugs who do seem to not be addicted (though I was not with them all the time to know for certain). They didn’t seem to make a habit of doing drugs. But I’ve also known people who were addicted. Considering their different life styles and family backgrounds, I can’t really say which theory seems to hold more truth. I’ve only been taught one side of it, which of course makes me want to lean that way, but then again, I’ve always been one for mind over matter.

Book Reading #25: Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 8
Summary
This chapter discusses the important role dance plays in the Samoan culture. Being the single activity that all age groups participate in, dancing emphasizes individuality and can lead to inferiority if one is not a good dancer.

In dancing there are three main styles: the dance of the taupo (characterized as grave, aloof and beautiful), the dance of the boys (characterized as being “jollier” than the girls’ dance) and the dance of the jesters (described as honoring the taupo or the manaia by mocking them).

Discussion
I think the amount of creativity that goes into each dancer’s dance is very interesting. However, I find it is sad that if someone isn’t a good dancer, they will be made fun of. Never being much of a dancer myself, I feel kind of bad for the girl named Masina that Mead describes as being deplored by her contemporaries and made fun of by the younger children for her inability to dance.

Book Reading #24: Emotional Design

Chapter 1
Summary
This first chapter discusses why attractive things work better. Norman explains how emotions help a person make decisions and how happiness increases thought processes and encourages creative thinking. Tying this into to design, attractive design allows for a more enjoyable experience and helps people figure things out.

Norman also discusses the three levels of processing: visceral (the automatic layer), behavioral (everyday behavior layer) and reflective (contemplative layer). He then discusses how the three levels interact with each other and how they relate to focus and creativity. 

Discussion
I thought this chapter was a great first chapter, introducing us to what I believe will be the theme throughout the rest of the book: the challenges a designer faces when considering the design from a kind of emotional point of view.

Full Book Blog: Design of Everyday Things

Summary
The book offers many examples of poor and good design. Norman explores the benefits of mapping and the importance of a good conceptual model and making things visible. He also discusses how people blame their inability to make something work on themselves, the environment or some unrelated cause when the real problem is in the design of the object.

Norman also devotes a chapter to discussing how people remember things through their memory and through information presented in the world. He writes about the structure of memory and outlines three main categories to describe how we remember things: memory for arbitrary things, memory for meaningful relationships and memory through explanation.

In the fourth chapter Norman writes about how a user can know how to use different devices and discusses the different kinds of constraints – physical, semantic, logical and cultural – and how they limit the possible operations for a device.

The fifth chapter breaks down human errors into two main categories (slips and mistakes) and how to detect slips. Norman then relates slips to the design process to improve design. In chapter six he discusses the different challenges a designer faces when designing a new product. He discusses how certain negative forces like the demands of time and pressure can work against evolutionary design.

The final chapter discusses seven principles for transforming difficult tasks into simple tasks and the importance of standardizing design when something cannot be designed without difficulties. Norman also writes about how certain things actually need to be designed to be difficult.

In each chapter Norman backs up his claims and explanations with real-world examples and outlines the history of certain designs (like the typewriter and the writing process) in several chapters.

Discussion
Norman did a good job of making abstract ideas about design concrete. While I agreed with what he said, I hadn’t thought as deeply about the subjects as Norman wrote about them. He also gave great examples throughout the book to better prove his points.

Some of the parts I thought were most interesting were:
1) Section about how doors at a school for handicapped children have the latches at the very top of the door to prevent children from going outside alone – from chapter 7.
2) The discussion of the history of the typewriter and the discussion on the faucet designs – chapter 6.
3) Lego motorcycle and how he applies its simple design to the topics discussed in the chapter – chapter 4

I think it might be interesting for Norman to update his book now. Some of the examples he uses are a little out of date, and I’m sure there are a lot more designs he could examine and explain now.

Paper Reading #10: A screen-space formulation for 2D and 3D direct manipulation

Comments
Pape Youm - http://436chi-lounge.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-10-screen-space.html
Evin Schuchardt - http://csce436spring2011.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-10-screen-space.html

Reference Information
Title: A screen-space formulation for 2D and 3D direct manipulation
Authors: Jason L. Reisman, Philip L. Davidson, Jefferson Y. Han
Presentation Venue: UIST 2010: 22nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology; October 4-7, 2009; Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Summary
This paper discusses how the authors have extended Rotate-Scale-Translate interactions on touch screens used in a 2D context to three dimensions. The researchers explain some of their techniques with equations they used to map object-space points to screen-space points and explore the different difficulties that arose during their research and how they attempted to fix them.

In their initial experiences with their new system, users had difficulty controlling the two new DOF (degrees-of-freedom), but after several trials they learned the best way to rotate objects was to use both hands. However, this technique was not found to work when the three places at which the user touched the screen were all close to the same depth. Other difficulties they encountered early on was that large rotations sometimes took multiple gestures and a smooth motion of the fingertips did not always generate a smooth move of the object.

The researchers also discussed two rotational problems. Ambiguous rotations occur when the object rotates in the opposite direction from what is expected. To resolve this issue they adjusted the algorithm and experiment with different pressures applied by the user. The other rotational problem was rotational exhaustion which occurs when the distance between two contact points change as the object is moved by the user. To remedy this problem they tried to “correct” the error by limiting the DOF.

The paper also explains how the researchers dealt with error distribution and how they adjusted the different constraints they use in their algorithm to adjust the motion of the object. They tended to call these constraints penalties. One example of a penalty is how the researchers constrained the center of a globe to always remain in the same location, allowing for a user to rotate the globe.

The researchers conclude by providing the readers with several examples of their system when doing one-point, two point and three or more-point interactions.

Discussion
While this paper was interesting, it did get a little too technical for me. There were a lot of in depth explanations that kind of bored me, but to someone who knows more about this area of research, I’m sure it was a very interesting and thorough paper. Most of the papers I have read have not gone into such detail about their entire process, so the extra information will likely be very beneficial to other researchers in this area.

In the paper they mention that in future works they would like to do further general testing to better understand unexpected events and add more penalties to allow for improved manipulation. They would also like to optimize their algorithm.

Taken from paper: two-point and one-point interactions

Ethnography Results Week 3

Sweet Eugene’s House of Java
Friday February 18, 2011
4:52-6:52pm

Quantitative
5 people appearing over the age of 30 were there at some point. The rest were younger looking.

Totals for the evening:
Order drink to go: 4
On Computer: 8
Reading book/ doing homework: 6 (defined as having book and/or spiral and pencil)
Working with computer and book: 2
Visiting: 16 (some of these appeared to have the intention of studying)
Main goal to eat: 2 (these people read a book or used their computer until food arrived. Then they ate and left)
Eating and visiting: 4 (they were eating but that did not appear to be the main goal based on how long they stuck around afterwards)

Collected times for people who left (x means I don’t know when they arrived):
X-5:04 (1 visiting with group of 4)
X – 5:08
X – 5:09 (guy visiting with another on the couch)
X – 5:12 (computer)
X – 5:12 (three older people visiting)
X – 5:27 (2 girls visiting – laughing really loud)
X – 5:29 (guy and girl visiting)
X – 5:49 ( 2 visiting with group of 4)
X – 6:00 (2 visiting)
X – 6:07 (2 guys studying together)
X – 6:12 (computer)
5:34 – 6:16 (studying)
5:37 – 6:34 (visiting outside)
X – 6:51 (homework/computer)
5:46 – X (Guy on computer, then meeting up with other guy later in the evening)
X – X (Girl first visited with a group of 4, then they all left and she remained to work on computer)

 (Several other people came in during the time I was there and never left.)

Qualitative

Image taken from Sweet Eugene's Facebook page

My location
Near the center of the large room, allowing for a view of everyone in the large room that was in front of me and limited view (don’t want to look too obvious) of the area behind me. I also had partial view of the smaller room where some couches were.

The Employees
This time there were three employees, one of which I recognized as the blond guy from last week. The other two were girls and one seemed to be training the other. There was a short line when we got there, so we didn’t get to interact with them as much this time. My fiancé did go get a second drink and asked if the $.50 discount (on refills) could be used on a different coffee and they said yes.

Getting the word out through messages on the tables
Under the glass of our table I noticed a paper asking people to vote Sweet Eugene’s as Best BCS Coffee Shop. Last week I noticed the paper invited people to like Sweet Eugene’s Facebook page. I’m curious to see how often this changes.

The customers
To clean or not to clean
There were two groups of people over the age of thirty. Both these groups left their tables dirty. This matches what I observed last week.

I also noticed that a louder group of people under the age of 30 left their stuff on their table. However, one stayed behind and moved to a different table. Then when she ordered food (more food? – I’m not sure whether she ate with the group or not), she cleaned off the group’s table. This occurred about 30 minutes after the rest of the group had left.

Popular tables
4 tables that had appeared popular last week were popular once again this week. 2 couches in the area back behind me also seemed to be popular, each having 2 different sets of guests use them during the evening.

One purchase or multiple?
I noticed 3 different girls go back for second drinks (one of which might have gone for a second meal).

Trusting customers
I noted nine customers put their bags and computers down and leave them unattended for 5+ minutes to go order or take a phone call or use the bathroom

Sticking around for a long time
This week did not have as many people as last week, but I still did note one girl who stayed the whole time (first she sat with a group visiting and then she moved to a smaller table by a window and ate and worked on her computer).

Another girl who was there when I got there stayed until about the time I left. She was always working on a computer, first with another girl and then by herself.

Coming to meet/work with a group
I noticed a lot more group interaction this week and people meeting up at Sweet Eugene’s to work. Five different groups of people met up during the two hours I was there and 2 -3 other groups were already there when I arrived. I distinguish these groups from the groups visiting because they had moments when they were quietly working and they all had either books or computers out.

The Atmosphere
There were less people here this week which gave me more time to appreciate the atmosphere. Windows line one side of the building, allowing for an open feel. However, the smaller rooms allow for a cozy atmosphere and several walls act as dividers in the larger room to allow for a sense of seclusion while still giving the customers a view of the outside.

The smaller crowds allowed for the crowds that were there to be a little more open. Two groups seemed to be talking louder than I recall from last week and I noted two people singing along with the background music during the night.

Differences from week 2
There seemed to be a lot less people this week, and the ones who came in did not seem to stay as long as those that came in the week before. I did not recognize any faces aside from one of the employees.

I’m guessing there were less people around because of the Baseball and Softball games Friday night. If I’m right, then next week might also be less busy but the following week (March 4) may be busier since I don’t think there are any games that Friday.

I also noticed – now that the weather is better – that people went outside more. I noticed three girls with Bibles possibly having a Bible Study outside and a guy who sat smoking on a bench outside for a while.

Book Reading #23: Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 6
Summary
This chapter is about Harry Harlow and the research he did with rhesus macaque monkeys to explore the psychology of attachment. Slater begins by telling of Harlow’s younger years and his lack of love growing up. Then Slater discusses the different studies he did.

In his early studies he took infant monkeys from their mothers and observed what they did with terry cloth towels, wire-framed monkey moms with milk and wire-framed monkey moms covered with soft cloth. What he observed was that the monkeys would interact with the soft surrogate mother and favor it over the wire-framed one that fed them. In later studies Harlow even had the surrogate mothers hit them with cold water or stab them. The babies still came back.

This research made Harlow believe that motherhood was “obsolete.” However, he then noticed that the monkeys with surrogate mothers could not interact properly with other monkeys. They would hurt themselves and others. Later in life Harlow did other research with the monkeys, creating a “rape rack” and isolation chambers.

The chapter concludes with Slater discussing animal treatment and how she feels about where the line should be drawn.

Discussion
This was one of my least favorite chapters. While some of Harlow’s findings were interesting (mainly the earlier ones before the stabbing started), I did not enjoy reading about all the terrible things he did to the monkeys and how it got worse over the years. I learned about his early studies in my psychology class, but nothing was ever said about Harlow’s later research. Slater does present an interesting point, though. I’m not exactly sure where the line should be drawn in regards to animals and their treatment. But I do feel that Harlow’s discoveries do not fully justify how he treated the monkeys, especially in his later studies after he saw what was happening to them.

Book Reading #22: Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 7
Summary
In chapter 7, Mead explains how relationships work between the sexes. Mead explains that there are two types of sex relations besides marriage that are recognized by the community. The first is love affairs between unmarried people and the second is adultery, something that does not always imply a broken marriage in the Samoan culture.

In young lover affairs the boy calls upon the help of a soa, a friend who acts as ambassador between the boy and girl. Mead discusses the difficulty the boy has in choosing a soa and how getting a woman ambassador, a soafafine, is thought to be even better than a soa but a woman ambassador is more difficult to come by. Mead also discusses the moetotolo, the sleep crawler.

Mead explains how virginity is thought to add to a girl’s attractiveness and compares a normal girl’s sexual relationships to a taupo’s sexual relationships. Mead concludes by discussing divorce and mentioning how a woman’s rank can never exceed her husband’s rank.

Discussion
Some of the things mentioned in this chapter were very surprising to me: like how adultery is not entirely frowned upon and how simple it is to divorce. It is interesting how very different there culture is from ours.

I also found the idea of elopement in the culture to be strange. I can’t see why a girl would risk elopement when “nine times out of ten” the guy’s only motive is vanity and display, but for the girl it can lead to her getting beating by her family.

Book Reading #21: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 7
Summary
This final chapter in some ways summarizes the book as a whole. It discusses seven principles for transforming difficult tasks into simple tasks, reminds the readers of models and mapping and discusses constraints. Norman also writes about standardizing design when something cannot be designed without difficulties and how certain things actually need to be designed to be difficult. Norman also discusses automation and writes about the gradual automation of both the different styles and tools used over the years in writing.

Discussion
Something that confused me in this chapter was the mention of POET in the first sentence and throughout this final chapter. Perhaps I just never noticed it anywhere else or maybe it actually wasn’t mentioned before this chapter, but it threw me off for the first few pages of chapter 7 until I realized he was referring to the old title of this book.

I think the part I found most interesting about this chapter was the section about how doors at a school for handicapped children have the latches at the very top of the door to prevent children from going outside alone. While I think it could be dangerous in certain circumstances (and I’m not sure I’d be tall enough to reach the latch), it is interesting that this design was proposed and accepted.

Paper Reading #9: EverybodyLovesSketch: 3D sketching for a broader audience

Comments
Pape Youm - http://436chi-lounge.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-9-everybodylovessketch-3d.html
Alyssa Nabors - http://csce436-nabors.blogspot.com/2011/02/reading-9-improved-window-switching.html

Reference Information
Title: EverybodyLovesSketch: 3D sketching for a broader audience
Authors: Seok-Hyung Bae, Ravin Balakrishnan, Karan Singh
Presentation Venue: UIST 2010: 22nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology; October 4-7, 2009; Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Summary
This paper is about several researchers’ effort to develop a tool that helps untrained people practice and perfect their drawing skills through a 3D curve sketching system called EverybodyLovesSketch.

The paper gives a system overview in which the researchers explain the different curves and sketch surfaces in detail. They then present a user study in which 49 high school students used EverybodyLovesSketch in a 75 minute design class for 11 days. They broke the students into three groups with one group doing freeform architectural design, another car design and the last doing whatever they like including drawing cartoon characters.

Their results proved that the system is highly learnable. They found that 78% of the students doing architectural design and 90% of the students drawing the car had completed meaningful 3D models within the first two days. The third group, drawing cartoons, were found to be slightly slower because they started out by drawing 2D characters.

By the last day of the study 47 out of 49 students had successfully created 3D objects. The study also suggested that the program improved the students’ spatial and perspective drawing skills, but they believe more studies are needed to further evaluate this potential benefit.

Student drawings taken from the paper

Discussion
Though I felt a little bogged down in the middle of the paper when they were describing the more technical aspects of the system, this paper was very interesting and I was glad to see a rather in-depth user study performed. I was once really into drawing, but as the authors describe in the paper, I felt I had reached my highest potential and that it just wasn’t very good so I gave it up. Maybe having a system like this would have kept me motivated.

They mention more studies need to be done to better evaluate certain things like the potential for this system to improve one’s drawing skills on paper. They also discuss how a certain feature was rated low because the students didn’t use it and it would occasionally turn on when they meant to do something else. After fixing bugs such as these, I think they could do several more user studies to improve their system and explore the benefits to the system.

Book Reading #20: Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 5
Summary
This chapter discusses Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance. Slater describes some of Festinger’s experiments including his observation of those who believed a flood would come on December 21, 1954 and an experiment involving having people lie for either $1 or $20. A large portion of the chapter focuses on mother named Linda Santo whose daughter she claims to be a saint that God has chosen to be a victim soul that takes on the pain of others. Her observations and interviews with Linda Santo bring up more questions about cognitive dissonance.

Discussion
The lines defined in this chapter are a little fuzzier than the lines drawn in other chapters. Slater presents a really interesting topic and manages to raise more questions about it by the end of the chapter. Near the end she raises the question, “Did Festinger ever consider how our justifications are to save not only ourselves, but others too?” This is a good question, and I think there are a lot more experiments that could be done that might help us to better understand the theory of cognitive dissonance.

Book Reading #19: Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 6
Summary
This chapter focuses on the role girls play in the community. The organization of young men is called the Aumaga, and the organization of young girls, wives of untitled men and the widows is called the Aualuma. The Aumaga is a lot like the organization of older men. They do the heavy work of the village and play a great part in the social intercourse between villages. The Aualuma is less formalized, and they do “hardly any work.” Their main function is to be village hostesses  and ceremonial helpers at certain meetings for the wives of matais.

The chapter also discusses the women’s fonos of which there are two kinds: the ones that follow or precede communal work and the ceremonial fonos. Mead also mentions several taboos and explains how relationship group matters are different from the group matters already described.

Discussion
I’m not sure if it’s just because I’m use to our culture or not, but the formation of their groups sounds very complex and the different roles they play and rules they follow also sound complex.

I think it’s interesting how talking chiefs and chiefs must be spoken to with a different set of verbs and nouns suitable to his rank. It reminds me of the Japanese with the formal and informal speech – one thing that makes the language more difficult to learn. I wonder if Mead had to follow these rules too (as I’m sure she did), and if she ever messed up. When I took Japanese and had to carry on a conversation with my professor's Japanese wife, I was really nervous about insulting her by conjugating a verb in the informal rather than formal form.

Book Reading #18: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 6
Summary
Chapter 6 focused on the different challenges a designer faces when designing a new product. He discussed how certain negative forces like the demands of time and the pressure to be distinctive work against evolutionary design. Norman also outlined the history of the typewriter and the design difficulties of the faucet. He outlined the different reasons why designers go astray: they put aesthetics first, they are not typical users and they’re clients may not be users. He also discussed creeping featurism and the worshiping of complexity, two temptations designers face. Norman concluded by relating the design issues discussed to computers.

Discussion
My favorite part of the chapter was the discussion of the history of the typewriter and the discussion on the faucet designs. I think we’ve all encountered a few faucets in our day that were designed poorly and left us with soapy hands or burned our fingers.

Ethnography Results - Week 2

Ethnography Results Week 2
Sweet Eugene’s House of Java

Friday February 11, 2011
5:00-7:00pm

Quantitative
7 people appearing over the age of 30 were there at some point. The rest were younger looking.
Totals for the evening:
Order drink to go: 4
On Computer: 12
Reading book/ doing homework: 20 (defined as having book and/or spiral and pencil)
Working with computer and book: 4
Visiting: 14
Main goal to eat: 3 (these people read a book or used their computer until food arrived. Then they at and left)

Collected times for people who left (x means I don’t know when they arrived):
X – 5:25 (3 girls talking)
X – 5:34 (older group talking)
5:14 – 5:34 (couple talking)
5:44 – 6:28 (2 guys eating)
X – 6:01 (girl on computer)
X – 6:10 (guy on computer at the counter)
X – 6:42 (on computer)
5:52 – 6:49 (book)
X – 6:55 (computer)
X – X (couple talking)
X – X (computer and book)
(A lot of other people came in during the time I was there and never left.)

Qualitative 
My location
Near the center of the large room, allowing for a view of everyone in the large room that was in front of me and limited view (don’t want to look too obvious) of the area behind me. I also had partial view of the smaller room where the couches were.

The Employees
Upon arriving, my fiancé, Jesse, and I went straight to the counter to order. When I asked what was in the Iced Chai, the employee made a point about the secretiveness of the business. He also admitted that he did not like tea so he couldn’t really tell us whether it was good or not. I ordered the iced mocha.
A blond employee came over while the other made my drink. Jesse asked them to whip him up whatever was good. The blond asked, “Do you like oreos?” The other, already done making my drink, said, “You do today.”

A different employee came to clean some of the tables that were left dirty. She didn’t bother anyone who appears to have empty mugs on their table.

The customers
To clean or not to clean
Of all the people I saw, three groups were made of people over the age of thirty. All those groups left their tables dirty while everyone else put their cups where on a tray at the counter to be cleaned. Whether this is due to negligence or just not knowing what to do, only time will tell.

Popular tables
4 tables that were occupied by one person or group were occupied by a different person or group by the time we left, leading me to believe that these tables are popular though I’m uncertain why. 3 of the tables were up against walls while the last was out in the open.

One purchase or multiple?
Of everyone I saw, only one girl appeared to have gone back multiple times. She had 2 coffee cups and a plate with a half-eaten muffin on it.

Enjoy the environment or shut it out?
I noticed one person using headphones for much of his time at Sweet Eugene’s.

Trusting customers
I noted at least eight customers put their bags and computers down and leave them unattended for 5+ minutes to go order or take a phone call or use the bathroom

Searching for seclusion
Focusing only on the people in front of me (about 10-15 depending on when), about ½ of the groups took to tables or seats that did not have someone right beside them. One girl walking with two other people asked as she passed, “Where do you want to sit?” A guy in the group replied, “Preferably away from people.”

Sticking around for a long time
One guy who had been at Eugene’s since I arrived moved his computer from one table to another that was beside a wall to plug in his computer. This happened an hour into my visit and tells me he had been there for a long time. He left a few minutes before I did.

Three other people stuck around the entire time we were there. One appeared to be doing homework and had only one mug on her table. She had a computer and books. The other two sat at a table next to a window and talked the whole time. Jesse and I left before they did.

From Sweet Eugene's Facebook Page

Paper Reading #8: Shadows no. 4: belly dance and interactive electroacoustic musical performance

Comments
Evin Schuchardt - http://csce436spring2011.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-8-shadows-no-4-belly.html
Vince Kocks - http://vincehci.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-8-exploring-mobile.html

Reference Information
Title: Shadows no. 4: belly dance and interactive electroacoustic musical performance
Authors: Aurie Y. Hsu, Steven T. Kemper
Presentation Venue: CHI 2010: 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems; April 10-15, 2010; Atlanta, GA, USA

Summary
This paper discusses how the two authors developed an interactive system that incorporates both movement and music. For their research they have a belly dancer perform while wearing sensors that capture the dancer’s motions and produce music.

Image taken from the video of the performance at the conference

Their system is made up of a 2-inch diameter disc called LilyPad Arduino sewn to the fabric with insulated wire. As the dancer performs, the LilyPad takes in the motion data through different sensors and wirelessly sends it to a computer as serial data. The computer processes the data through a visual programming environment called Max, which maps the data to audio processing control parameters such as harmonization and playback speed. 

Discussion
First, a video performance from the conference can be found here: http://www.chi2010.org/attending/video/file184-3.mov

After watching the video, I have to say this is actually pretty neat, like orchestrating your own music through dancing. I also like the fact that they found a way to hide the sensor without degrading its performance. The authors also included some information about their earlier tests with a conductive thread that broke or shorted out when used to sew the disc to the clothing.

All in all the paper was an interesting one, but a little short. As for future work, they mention their plans to improve the sensor network further and incorporate other sensors like motion capture and biosensors to add further interaction. I’m kind of curious to see if they can make several systems that would work in harmony so that several dancers could perform together and make more complex-sounding music.

Book Reading #17: HCI Remixed

Chapter 6
Summary
Henry Lieberman writes about the paper “Pygmalion: A Creative Programming Environment” and the impact it had on him and computer science. Pygmalion, a graphical programming language, was one of the first systems to use icons and drag-and-drop. Lieberman also points out that it introduced the idea of programming by example. He also discusses how, thanks to D. C. Smith – the author of the paper – programming by example is one of Lieberman’s major areas of research. Lieberman also highlights some lessons provided by the paper: Don’t let the big questions scare you; think globally, act locally; hunt for the good stuff, even in out-of-the-way places; teach by example.

Discussion
Lieberman sounds very enthusiastic and appreciative of Smith’s work. I find it really interesting that Smith included so much information about creativity in his thesis, and as Lieberman pointed out, I don’t think it would be well accepted at HCI conferences now.

Chapter 7
Summary
Sara Bly writes about the Xerox Red Book and why it is important to her. She explains how the book had two main categories –  document creation and document management – and outlines three reasons why it is important to her:
1)    the interface was a primary concern
2)    they considered consistency and used it advantageously
3)    it offered a conceptual model
For her it acted as a guide for developing user interfaces and helped her better understand user interface design.

Discussion
I like the way Bly set up the chapter by first listing why it is important to her and then going into greater detail in three different labeled sections. I liked how she pointed out how consistency did not hinder them in their design process and how they managed to use it to their advantage. That’s not always easy to do.

Chapter 9
Summary
Norbert A. Streitz talks about the paper, “The Computer for the 21st Century.” The paper describes how the computer will be so integrated into our society in the 21st century that it will disappear. When Streitz read this paper, it resonated with him, and after seeing and using one of the first ubiquitous computers, he decided to continue the research in that area. He discusses the different steps he took in his research and two forms of disappearance: physical and mental.

Discussion
I’ve got to say that M. Weiser, the author of the paper, was pretty spot-on. I’d say the computer is pretty integrated into our lives. We don’t exactly have computers built into our walls and tables yet, but we definitely don’t look at all computers like computers anymore.
 
Chapter 10
Summary
Anind K. Dey writes about the paper, “The Active Badge Location System” and the first location-based system. In the Active Badge location system people could wear badges that allowed other people to locate them. It also allowed for the receptionists at the office to route phone calls to the phone nearest to the badge-wearer when a call came in for them. Dey praises the work, writing that it “arguably spawned the field of context-aware computing.”

Discussion
This paper describes more ways in which computers can be ubiquitous. The badge system was actually pretty neat. I’m not sure I’d like people being able to follow me everywhere I go at work, but then again I have usually stayed in my office/cubicle most of the time. This would probably be very beneficial in an environment where one moves around a lot.

Chapter 46
Summary
Kate Ehrlich discusses the book, The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction, how influential the book was to her and the model people make in their minds of the computer system. Ehrlich explains how mental models helped developers design their systems and provided a theory of the user’s representation of the computer system. Ehrlich also discusses a particular model called GOMS (standing for goals, operators, methods and selectional rules).

Discussion
I found the last page where Ehrlich brings up some the controversy between psychologists, computer scientists, engineers and designers to be really interesting. I hadn’t considered how the blending that takes place within HCI could cause tension between the different fields. I also like the idea of the mental model. It helps us keep in mind the users that are not as knowledgeable about computers as we are.

Chapter 47
Summary
Gary M. Olson writes about the paper, “The Information Capacity of the Human Motor System in Controlling the Amplitude of Movement,” and how Paul M. Fitts, the author of the paper, had the goal of keeping the characteristics of human behavior in mind when designing equipment. Olson describes Fitts’s law, MT = a + b lg (2A/W) where MT = movement time, a and b are constants, A is the distance of the movement and W is the width of the target. As described in the paper, the law states that “the time it takes to move to a target is a function of the length of the movement and the size of the target. He notes this law because it has led to many interface innovations and because it is a quantitative law rather than qualitative, as many things in HCI are. Olson then outlines several design ideas that come from Fitts’s law.

Discussion
I found the point Olson raised near the beginning of the chapter about how HCI is greatly based on qualitative methods to be an interesting one. I hear and read a lot more about qualitative data than I do quantitative data in regards to HCI.

Ethnography Proposal - Final

You can find our final proposal on Paola's blog.

Paper Reading #7: Ben Neill and Bill Jones: Posthorn

Comments
 Evin Schuchardt- http://csce436spring2011.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-7-ben-neill-and-bill.html
Felipe Othick - http://introductionblogassignment.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-7-robotany-breeze.html

Reference Information
Title: Ben Neill and Bill Jones: Posthorn
Authors: Ben Neill, Bill Jones
Presentation Venue: CHI 2010: 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems; April 10-15, 2010; Atlanta, GA, USA

Summary
This paper discusses an interactive computer system implemented on an instrument Ben Neill (one of the researchers) made called a mutantrumpet. The mutantrumpet is a combination of three trumpets and one trombone and some electronics that allow for MIDI control and conversion. The paper also describes three programs that respond to someone playing the instrument in real time.

The first program, called LiSa, is a sampling program that allows Neill to extract samples and modify them through several digital signal processing functions. The second program, Ableton Live, allows for Neill to process the output from LiSa as well as modify MIDI sequences from the mutantrumpet. The third program, Modul8, runs on a separate computer and translates the MIDI data into real time video.

The authors emphasize that with this system a person can vary a composition, allowing for more sounds and more images on the real time video.

mutantrumpet

Discussion
For me this paper was a little harder to follow. At times they just seemed to be going on and on without really saying anything. I believe I followed the general idea but the paper kept saying how the different parts of the mutantrumpet “enable Neill to” do this or do that. It didn’t really explain how any of it would be done by someone who didn’t know how to work it and it didn’t really say how the different parts did anything aside from saying that it used a function or used some other program.

As far as future works go, I’d say they might need to make this more user friendly though it might already be. I’m not really sure. I thought the different videos it created were kind of interesting so they could improve upon that or they could make a similar prototype that works on a normal instrument rather than some hybrid one that only one person knows how to work.

Book Reading #16: Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 4
Summary
This chapter discusses the bystander effect and the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility. It tells the story of Kitty Genovese and then explains the studies that followed by Darley and Latane. One particular study they did was interview college students. One student (the subject) sat in a room while all the others were prerecorded. Each student could only speak when it was their turn. One of the prerecorded students had a seizure, and Darley and Latane waited to see what the actual student will do. Thirty-one percent reacted when they thought there were other students hearing the same thing. However, eighty-five of students who thought they were alone with the one having the seizure sought help within the first three minutes.

Discussion
Like most of these chapters so far, we discussed this in my psychology class last semester. Another example of the bystander effect occurred at a bar in which a girl was sexually assaulted in front of everyone at the bar and no one did anything to stop it from happening. The girl called the police and a taxi on her own after everything was over with.

The author mentions that we need to be educated on this when we learn things like CPR and first aid. My mom is a Red Cross instructor and while she doesn’t mention the “bystander effect,” she does go into it in much fewer words and helps to train people to take charge and give orders like “you call 911” or “you help me turn him over.” People don’t often know what to do in these circumstances and they look to others to see what they’re doing. If everyone is doing nothing, then they will do nothing too unless given an order.

Book Reading #15: Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 5
Summary
In chapter 5 Mead discusses the different groups of friends a girl has as she ages. When the girls get to the age of about seven, the girls make friends outside of their family. The friends come from both relationship and neighborhood groups. No intense friendships are made at this age.

Mead gives several examples of girls who interacted differently with these groups. One girl, Luna, tended to stay closer to her aunt and grandmother. A different girl, Vina, was always the “little girl” of the group, because she followed a group of older girls around.

When the girls reach the age of sixteen or seventeen their group of friends still relies on relatives but is limited to smaller groups of two or three. Proximity does not play a role in the selection of friends at this point. Instead, relationships and similar sex interests plays a role.

Mead also spends a little time discussing the groups of friends the boys have. Young boys follow the same social pattern as the young girls. However, the sixteen and seventeen year old boys gang together just as they do in the younger age group. The boys also have two special relationships that form between two boys both called the soa.

The author also notes that grouping is influenced in many cases by rank and prospective rank as well.

Discussion
This chapter was a bit denser than the others. There was a lot to take in about the social workings of their groups and the times at which the groups change. In ways it sounds very different from groups of friends here. At the ages described here I had several different groups of friends all at once: the school group, neighborhood group, the common interests group, and the family group.

Book Reading #14: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 5
Summary
This chapter breaks down human errors into two main categories, slips and mistakes, and then breaks the category of slip down further into the following categories: capture errors, description errors, data-driven errors, associative activation errors, loss-of-activation errors and mode errors.

Norman also discusses how to detect slips and then relates slips to the design process to improve design. He then presents the idea of wide, deep, shallow and narrow structures in relation to tasks and provides some examples.

In several sections of the chapter Norman discusses the human mind, focusing on human thought and the different behaviors of the conscious and subconscious.

At the end of the chapter he relates his different explanations on errors and the thought process to the design process and the use of forcing functions, a kind of constraint that makes it so that a failure at one stage prevents the user from moving on to the next stage. With several examples he highlights the importance of minimizing the nuisance value while retaining the safety value.

Discussion
As with the other chapters, I found myself nodding as I read through the different types of slips and the different examples presented throughout the chapter. I especially liked the section that linked mistakes to social pressure. It is something I would not have thought of initially that can actually play a big role in making mistakes out in the field.

Ethnography Results – Week 1 - Trial - Mall Kiosks

Blue box: less crowds Red Box: more crowds

I spent 2 hours switching back and forth between observing two different vendors.

Quantitative Results
Female vendor at kiosk selling skin care products:
2 attempts to engage shopper in which she got their attention but they declined
2 attempts to engage shopper in which shopper ignored her
Total vendor sales: 0

 
Male vendor manning three kiosks:
Sunglasses kiosk:
0 attempts to engage shoppers but 7 successful sales
1 sale lost since he was busy with other customers
7 successful sales
Hair styling product kiosk:
10-12 attempts to engage shopper in which he got their attention but they declined
5 attempts to engage shopper in which shopper ignored him
2 successful sales
Shirt kiosk:
0 attempts
1 possible sale failed since he was busy with other kiosk so shopper left
1 successful sale
Total vendor sales: 10

Qualitative Results
Since I wasn’t sure if there was a specific format for this, I decided to give this a little narrative flair.

After my time at the mall on Saturday watching vendors man their kiosks and make a few sales – or none at all – the first conclusion I came to was that these vendors are not as lively as the ones in Houston, which left me a little disappointed.

While many of the vendors sat in their chairs with their eyes glued to the screen of their computers or their ears glued to their cell phones, I spotted one vendor walking back and forth behind her kiosk showcasing salts and skin care products. It was situated down the way from Macy’s. This part of the mall did not contain the swarms of people that seemed to congregate only closer to the food court or down by Auntie Anne’s pretzel shop. The vendor had her work cut out for her.

As groups of people pass by, likely drawn to the area by a car on display back behind the kiosk, the vendor looks to each shopper’s eyes in search of anyone willing to make eye contact. Meanwhile the shoppers keep their eyes straight ahead, likely glued to that shiny new car. Suddenly the vendor catches a customer’s eye, and the vendor attempts to initiate. She holds up her hands as if reciting a prayer and utters several words I cannot hear. The shopper turns away as if suddenly enthralled by the blank wall to her right.

The vendor’s jaw snaps shut and she begins to search again. She walks back and forth behind her kiosk never quite making it to the front side. Whether she does this to give potential buyers a better view of the kiosk or does this as a way to hide behind the tall cart, I am not sure. All I do know is that she is trying much harder than the majority of the vendors who never make eye contact and never make any attempt to initiate. (I did not spend any time on this trial run observing the vendors doing nothing.)

The vendor appears to get frustrated. She calls someone on her cell phone, but the conversation is short. Twice while I watch her from a bench feigning interest in a videogame my fiancé is playing while I observe the vendor and take notes, the vendor leaves her kiosk unattended only to come back several minutes later. While she’s gone I notice that shoppers pass more closely by the kiosk and pass even in the small space between it and the shiny new car.

Curious when the vendor leaves a third time, I follow her and discover she’s friends with the only other lively vendor I’ve seen in the mall today. He wears a scarf, wields a brown comb and appears to be manning three kiosks at once. The girl does not stay with him long. They exchange a few words – possibly words of encouragement because the girl appears pretty ran down by this point – and then she heads back.

I stand by to observe the guy with the scarf. He mans one kiosk laden with hair straighteners and curlers, another with sunglasses and another with shirts all side by side. I learn quite quickly that the sunglasses kiosk is the happening place.

“Curly tired to initiate,” my fiancé reports, alluding to a guy with brown curly hair, as I scribble down some notes. “Blondy stands waiting with him.” Blondy and Curly remain for a moment, then leave, losing interest since the vendor is talking to two other shoppers.

This vendor seems to have an easier time at least with the sunglasses kiosk. For several minutes shopper after shopper approaches him about the sunglasses and picks out a pair. When the crowd thins, he returns to the kiosk with hair styling products. He’s quicker to greet people, and here the halls seem narrower and more crowded, making it harder for a shopper to ignore him. It’s also much closer to the food court. The vendor also seems to be screening his shoppers, targeting the women and girls with glossy straight hair or carefully styled curly hair.

He waves the comb at a few shoppers. Some merely shake their head and move on while others stop to listen to him. Very few, about five out of the twelve or so shoppers I saw him initiate with, flat out ignore him. One girl seems to take a great interest in a hair straightener after he waves her down. However, once he pats a black hair resembling the ones found in salons, the shopper shakes her head and continues on.

During this particular event a couple of people gather at the third kiosk with shirts. He quickly makes a sale and returns to the first kiosk. A couple of times the vendor gets on a white phone attached to the kiosk. A few minutes and several sunglasses sales later, a new vendor appears and takes over at the sunglasses kiosk, giving the vendor with the scarf and brown comb more time to focus on the hair styling products kiosk which he does. (I rarely ever saw him at the shirt kiosk nor did I see shoppers there.)

Meanwhile, the female vendor who hasn’t had much luck with her kiosk continues to search for eye contact. The short phone calls on her cell phone or the phone attached to the kiosk increase – one call per every five minutes to a call every one or two minutes. The calls are short and in between those times, the vendor walks behind her kiosk. Once she approaches a shopper with her hands palm down in front of herself to ask the shopper to show her her nails. The shopper complies and for an instant the vendor’s shoulders lift with this possible sale. Then the shopper glances towards the kiosk and shakes her head.

The crowds are thinning around both vendors I’m watching, so I decide to make one last pass by them. I’m surprised to find them both on the phone, the white one attached to their kiosks, and after what I’ve seen I believe they might have been on the phone with each other, but I am not certain.

Conclusion
Based on everything I watched, I am uncertain how so many of the kiosks stay in business. The vendor with the scarf made plenty of sales, but the female vendor made none that I saw even with the effort she was making. The other couple of vendors I watched less closely made no efforts and as a result made no sales.

After this trial observation, I am not sure whether it would be worthwhile to continue or not. On the one side, I did pick up on a couple of different techniques that the vendors used and an interesting relationship between some of the vendors I would not have noticed otherwise. However, many of the vendors did nothing but sit. Only two appeared actively working while a select other few stood staring at their computers rather than sat. Coming at a few other parts of the day or on a few different days may yield better results but it all depends on the vendors.

Paper Reading #6: Shimon: an interactive improvisational robotic marimba player

Comments
Adam Friedli - http://jaiachi.blogspot.com/2011/02/paper-reading-6-adaptive-mouse.html
Evin Schuchardt - http://csce436spring2011.blogspot.com/2011/01/paper-reading-6-shimon-interactive.html

Reference Information
Title: Shimon: an interactive improvisational robotic marimba player
Authors: Guy Hoffman, Gil Weinberg    
Presentation Venue: CHI 2010: 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems; April 10-15, 2010; Atlanta, GA, USA

Summary
This paper describes Shimon, a robot that can play the marimba while perceiving and interacting with someone else playing an instrument and improvise according to what is heard. To allow for a wide range of motion, the robot has four arms and to better interact with people, the robot has a socially expressive head with a built in camera. The robot can match the human player’s style, tempo and harmony as the music is played.

The complete performance is made up of three different modules. In the first module, called Call-and-Response, the robot responds to a musical phrase using a sequence spotter and beat estimator. In the second module, Opportunistic Overlay Improvisation, the robot tries to play notes included in the perceived chord while also making rhythmic gestures with his head. In the third module, Rhythmic Phrase-Matching Improvisation, Shimon tries to match the style of the human while generating improvisational phrases inspired by the player.

The researchers also focused on the interactions between the robot and player by having Shimon turn away from the player when it is in the third module as if it is focusing. They also made him appear to blink and have a “slow breathing-like behavior.”

Discussion
After reading this paper, the first thing I did was look for it on Youtube. There are a lot of videos of Shimon there. To me this is a great example of Human Computer Interaction. The researchers could have stopped when the robot was able to listen to the human and play music with him, but the researchers went even further. They tried to make him seem more human by having him bob his head to the beat and turn his head either towards the player or the instrument. As a future work they even plan to enhance Shimon’s eye contact. In an interview on Youtube they discuss how they never plan to have a robot band. Their focus is the interaction between robot and human.

Taken from the paper: Shimon playing the marimba

Book Reading #13: Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 3
Summary
This chapter discusses David Rosenhan’s test in which he and eight friends when to various mental institutions, got admitted by saying they heard a voice that said “thud” and then acted normal once in the ward. He discusses how the staff attributed all of his normal behaviors to his paranoid schizophrenic diagnosis. Slater then tells of how people reacted to Rosenhan’s article about the matter. She also discusses the still prominent questions in regards to psychiatry and how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders evolved as a result of Rosenhan’s study. She also describes how she went and redid the study, and while she was not admitted to the institution, she was prescribed twenty-five antipsychotics and sixty antidepressants.

Discussion
This is one of my favorite chapters so far. I really feel that people are diagnosed with mental disorders and prescribed drugs way too soon. I remember in school having several classmates that had ADD, and in all honestly they acted less hyper on the days they forgot to take their pills or the days when they ran out of pills. I also think Lauren Slater was totally awesome for redoing the study, but I didn’t like reading about how she tried the Risperdal “in the spirit of experimentation.” What? Why are you taking this drug for symptoms you don’t have that is prescribed for someone that isn’t really you? One more thing to note: I thought it was very interesting that Rosenhan described the patients as seeming to know he was normal when the doctors did not.

Book Reading #12: Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 4
Summary
This chapter explains the inner workings of the Samoan household and how the household is actually be made up of several households throughout the village. Mead describes the way the different members of the household interact, the role and selection process of the taupo and provides more information on the matai and what they do within the household.

Discussion
One of the more interesting aspects of the household that I read about was how the girls can move from household to household. She can rate the different households open to her and then choose which one she would most like to be a part of. This can be very advantageous to her since some will give her more freedoms or have the best food. I also enjoyed the stories about the selection of the taupo and matai near the end of the chapter. It is one of first looks into the lives of specific Samoans.

Book Reading #11: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 4
Summary
The fourth chapter focuses on how the user will know what to do with a device. Norman discusses the different kinds of constraints – physical, semantic, logical and cultural – and how they limit the possible operations for a device. He then discusses the problem with switches and the affect their arrangement has on the functionality of a device. Near the end of the chapter Norman discusses visibility when it comes to the display and immediate feedback through sounds.

Discussion
I really like the example he uses near the beginning of the chapter about the Lego motorcycle and how he applies its simple design to the four constraints he discusses. He also revisits the design of the door, which is always a good example to use because everyone has encountered a few poorly designed doors in their lifetime. I also found the last story at the end of the chapter about an institute in the Netherlands that had a lack of sounds and the negative impact that had on the users. I know I would doubt the ventilation system too if I couldn’t hear it working.

Ethnography Proposal – The Trial Run – Mall Kiosks

I plan to work with Alyssa Nabors and Paola Garza, but for the first week we plan to each try our own ideas individually to see what kind of data we can gather. We will then post a final, complete proposal Thursday February 10 outlining what we decide to do as a group.

For this trial week, I’m going to sit on benches at the mall and watch the interactions between the kiosk vendors and the shoppers. I plan to see how the vendor tries to get the customers’ attention and what works and what doesn’t. I’m also interested to see how the shoppers react. I want to see if they flat out ignore the vendor, say ‘no’ nicely, say ‘no’ rudely or just flat out avoid them. Do the crowds of shoppers part like the sea?

To study them I intend to sit on benches near the mall kiosks or stand near them.

Quantitatively, I plan to see just how many shoppers react in certain ways (ignore, feign interest, buy the products, etc) and how many vendors use different techniques (spray the people with perfume, drive a little remote control car around to catch attention, stand around, etc.).

Qualitatively, I’ll be watching to see what works for the shoppers and vendors (how well does saying “no” to the vendor vs. ignoring them work, how well does having the vendor just stand around vs. interact with the customers work). Perhaps even patterns regarding time will play a part. Maybe the vendors will try harder at the beginning of their shift rather than at the end or vice versa.

As far as how I will interact with the shoppers and vendors, I will likely just be an observer. Or if I see a vendor trying especially hard but making no sales, perhaps I’ll go right up to them and buy their product. Maybe.

I’m not sure what mall kiosks currently exist at the mall, but I plan to observe 2-3 kiosks, preferably with vendors that use different techniques to promote their product. To better assure I see the same vendors, I plan to go during the same time each week and one of the days on which I observe will definitely have to be Saturday since the mall is busier then.