Saturday, February 16, 2008
Reflecting about Interaction-Updated
I became interested in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) initially because of my frustration with user-unfriendly desktop applications during the course of my work in the schools as a school psychologist. Over the years, I hoped that there would be some significant improvement in the types of technology and applications available to support me in my daily work.
I was too much of a dreamer to believe that years later, I'd still be interacting with "productivity" applications, unusable -or inaccessible- database systems, and "lame" educational applications for students. Although there is a need to improve the usability of traditional applications, I've come to realize that this is not for me.
Why is this so?
In addition to my training and work experience related to school psychology, social science, counseling and education, I also have a background in art, music, and dance, so I appreciate good design and the importance of multiple modes of interaction and communication. I look forward to the future.
I'm fascinated by interactive multimedia, large interactive displays, and hand-held gadgets of all kinds. I'm the proud co-owner of a Wii, and I'm not ashamed to say that I am a fan of the work of Johnny Chung Lee. I'm enthused about the work of Harry "Gravano" van der Veen and the NUI group, and also Jeff Han, from Perceptive Pixel. I'm excited about the work of people such as Bill Buxton (Multitouch Systems that I have Known and Loved; Sketching User Experiences), Dan Shafer (Designing for Interaction), Adam Greenfield (Everyware: The Dawning of the Age of Ubiquitous Computing), Rich White (EduSim) , Julian Lomberdi (Croquet), and the people behind "Putting People First", among others.
Part of the reason I maintain my blogs is to support the hard work of people who are doing great things out of the limelight - and to share the good news with people who might not otherwise have an opportunity to learn about these user-centered innovations. Sort of like cheer-leading...
When I'm out and about, I sometimes take quick pictures and video-clips of things related to interaction. Although my goal is to find examples for the "Usability Hall of Fame", most of what I've collected would be appropriate for the "Usability Hall of Shame".
Examples of user-unfriendly applications, interfaces, and devices can be found in some of my blog posts:
Usability and interaction difficulties with large touch-screen displays at an upscale shopping center...
Accessing Road Runner web-mail when you've forgotten your password...
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame: What were they thinking?!
On the Positive
I'm always on the lookout for interesting research that is consistent with the off-the desktop theme of this blog. Here are a few things that have recently crossed my path:
Stanford University's HCI Group
How Bodies Matter: Five Themes for Interaction Design
(Scott R. Klemmer and colleagues)
"ABSTRACT: Our physical bodies play a central role in shaping human experience in the world, understanding of the world, and interactions in the world. This paper draws on theories of embodiment — from psychology, sociology, and philosophy — synthesizing five themes we believe are particularly salient for interaction design: thinking through doing, performance, visibility, risk, and thick practice. We introduce aspects of human embodied engagement in the world with the goal of inspiring new interaction design approaches and evaluations that better integrate the physical and computational worlds."
Scott Klemmer's Website
"My research goal is to create the tools and representations that will enable everyone, not just technology experts, to design interactive systems for pervasive computing..."
Here are two examples of how people use their bodies to interact with music. The quality of the first video is poor, but the interactions are fun to watch and hear:
Musical Soundscape Museum Exhibit
Multi-Touch Music Wall
(note: loud volume)
First IxDA Interaction 08 Conference
The first IxDA conference was held from February 8-10 at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I was unable to attend, but from the information presented on the conference website and the videos that were made available to the public after the conference, I know that it was a conference that should not have been missed!
Links to the conference videos, via Putting People First
Interactive Design Association (IxDA)
"Interaction Design (IxD) is the branch of user experience design that defines the structure and behavior of interactive products and services."
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Usability Hall of Shame Update: Accessing Road Runner web-mail when you are away from home and have forgotten your password.
This is a short video of slides I created for an assignment for "Privacy and Security: A Human-Computer Interaction Perspective" last semester. The video shows it all!
Other posts with examples for the Usability Hall of Shame:
Touch screen interaction and usability in public spaces
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame
A list of links to books about usability and interface design can be found on the Isys Information Architect's website, on the "Interface Hall of Shame" section.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Airport Technology for the Usability Hall of Fame, if only it worked!
Albrecht Schmidt is the director of the Pervasive Computing and User Interface Engineering Group at the Universitat Duisburg Essen. When he was traveling in Seoul, he took some pictures of embedded information, which he uploaded to his blog post, Embedded Information: Airport
I was excited to see the pictures that Dr. Schmidt posted of an active computer display with a list of names of people who should contact an information desk, right in the middle of the baggage on the luggage belt.
This ALMOST made it to my Usability Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, the display was broken!
High-tech example
Low-tech example
I will give this an "A" for the concept, "E" for usefulness, since it the display wasn't working at the time it the picture was taken.
I think that Dr. Schmidt's key criteria for embedded information are important components to consider for information systems encountered in public spaces:
- Embedding information where and when it is useful
- Embedding information in a most unobtrusive way
- Providing information in a way that there is no interaction required*
Related:
[1] Albrecht Schmidt, Matthias Kranz, Paul Holleis. Embedded Information. UbiComp 2004, Workshop 'Ubiquitous Display Environments', September 2004
I especially like the following quote from the Ubicomp 2004 article:
"We investigate how information can be provided to users – exactly when it is needed. Our approach is based on a variety of information displays unobtrusively embedded into the user’s environment. We place the information displays in context."
Pictures and a discussion of airport technology I've recommended for the Usability Hall of Shame can be found on my previous post:
Off-the-desktop musings about future interactions: User experience, user-driven design, Universal Usability, Airports, and the "Internet of Things"
(I came across Albrecht Schmidt's blog, "User Interface Engineering: A blog on novel user interfaces, mobile applications, pervasive and ubiquitous computing- I use the blog as a note-pad" . It is interesting to note that I blog about similar topics, and use my blog as an on-line filing cabinet.)Tuesday, April 8, 2008
thirteen23's Touch Screen Information Kiosk: A GOOD Example of Touch-screen Interaction and Content
Here is a breath of fresh air. If you are familiar with this blog, you know how much I love positive user experiences and usable interactive design and content. Most of what I find, unfortunately, I've relegated to the Interaction Usability Hall of Shame.
thirteen23's entry for Microsoft's PhizzPop design challenge won first place in their division and will go on to Austin, Texas. The team had just three days to put together their design, an interactive kiosk that provides dynamic mapping and proximity-based services. (The map was developed using Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation.)
To view the video, visit thirteen23.According to Josh Holmes, 36 design teams were rated on the following criteria:
Satisfaction of Constituent Needs:
- How well does the needs of the constituencies as defined by the profile?
- Is the experience appropriate for the audience?
- How elegant is the experience?
Satisfaction of the Market:
- How well does the solution address the market needs?
- Will the solution work across all of the identified constituencies?
Uniqueness of the solution:
- Is the solution unique, differentiated and defensible?
- Was the team able to build a working solution (however limited), or is it purely a scripted prototype?
- How visually appealing is the solution?
Here are some video clips from thirteen23 that show good large touch-screen usability in action:
Touch screen movie kiosk:
To view the video, visit thirteen23.thirteen23's discussion of integrated retail. The company also provides desktop and mobile solutions.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame (In a Hospital)
What were they thinking?
Here is an example of a user-unfriendly interactive touch-screen map on an information kiosk at a large hospital:
An information kiosk that looks like it was torn up by a frustrated hospital visitor:
Here is a picture of a hospital bed/TV remote control in my dad's hospital room. The TV channels could only scroll up, so if you were on Channel 6 and you wanted Channel 5, you had to go up through the remainder of the stations! If you hit a button, different hospital room lights would turn off and on without warning.
For more information about good (and bad) usability design, take a look at the World Usability Day 2007 website.
The following excerpt is from the "making life easy" website from World Usability Day 2006:
"Confusing cash machines, unclear signs, frustrating websites - poor usability is everywhere and it gets in the way of life. Sometimes it is just annoying. At other times it stops us doing what we need to do.
It can even be dangerous.
World Usability Day is an international event promoting the message that people have had enough of things that are hard to use."
Friday, December 19, 2008
More for the Interactive Usability Hall of Shame: BMW Features (Via Roland Smart, Adaptive Path); Solution: MX 2009
Roland Smart, of Adaptive Path, recently posted an article about his experience attending at the BMW performance driving school, where he had a chance to see how BMW uses the Microsoft Surface in the showroom. (See my previous post, BMW and Surface Computing: Video of Tabletop Interaction, on the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog).
Later in his post, Smart discusses the problems he encountered with the BMW iDrive, a computer system that combines an LCD panel on the dashboard and a controller knob on the center console.
Smart cited information from James G. Cobb's article “Menus Behaving Badly“ (NY Times, '02), regarding his user-experience with a couple of features of the BMW 744i:
Unanticipated Headrest Action
"...A block away, I adjust the seat forward. The electric head restraint rises, inexplicably, to its highest position. I readjust the headrest and move the seat again. Again, the headrest zips up, as if programmed with the wisdom that tall people have short legs.
My beagle, whose job description is ''scan roadsides for squirrels,'' is in the back, moving from one side window to the other. Each time he shifts, sensors in the seat take note, and the right rear headrest whirrs up as the left one whirrs down. For the next two hours, the headrests dance in tandem, as if trying to provide comfort for restless spirits."
Dangerous Radio Station Control While Driving: The iDrive Controller Menu
"Pull the iDrive knob back to select the ''entertainment'' menu.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click ''memory.''
Scroll to the top of the next menu and highlight ''M FM.''
Scroll to the right and click ''manual.''
Twist the knob to tune in a station.
Click ''memory'' -- twice -- to store it.
In a lesser car, you might simply twist a knob. In the 745i, tuning the radio is an interactive experience at 75 m.p.h. After a bit of this, you may wonder what's the fuss over handheld cellphones."
Smart also pointed to Jasper van Kuijk 's (12/24/07) post on the Uselog.com product usability weblog, “More iDrive Reviews; the Evolution of a Bad Idea“. Here are some excerpts:
The Truth About Cars: BMW iDrive Editorial (Robert Fargo)
"...If BMW believed that iDrive was the intuitive future of driver control, why did they equip the new Seven with two CD players? Maybe it's because the dash-mounted single CD can be operated manually, while the six-stack system requires iDrive."
Technoride: Mid-Course Correction for BMW's iDrive (Bill Howard)
"...This third variant adds the function buttons, much like programmable PC function keys (they can be programmed, you know, just that no one does anymore) or radio buttons on your car audio system, to the four-way iDrive controller."
Mobile Experience: BMW iDrive Really Sucks
"The iDrive is so freaking useless..." (My quote from the van Kuijik's source, Andy, author of the The Mobile Experience blog)
Related
Driving It: Car Interfaces and Usability (Wayne Cunningham, CNET)
Discusses Jacob Neilson's basic principles of usability and how they can be applied to car interfaces. Touches on BMW's iDrive, Audi's Multimedia Interface (MMI), the Mercedes-Benz Cockpit Management and Navigation Device (COMAND), and touchscreen LCD's.
Although Cunningham reports that he most usable interfaces he's seen in cars are touch screen LCD's, I beg to differ, given my experience with my Honda's navigation system! (I'm saving that one for another post.)
(Picture of the iDrive, from Cunningham's post)
MX 2009
For those of you interested in the managment of user experience, Adaptive Path is putting together a conference that addresses the business side of the UX equation:
MX San Francisco: Managing Experience through Creative Leadership March 1-3, 2009
Speakers:
Sara Beckman, Co-Director of the Management of Technology Program, Haas School of Business
Margaret Gould Stewart, Manager, User Experience, Google
Margret Schmidt, VP, User Experience Design & Research, TiVo
Bruce Temkin, Forrester Research
Marty Neumeier, President of Neutron
Khoi Vinh, Design Director for NYTimes.com
Dan Roam, founder of Digital Roam
David Butler, VP, Design, The Coca-Cola Company
Saturday, August 30, 2008
User-Experience and Emerging Technology: Designer-Developers at Stimulant creates engaging multi-touch apps, and more...
Those of you who follow this blog know that I've found numerous examples of touch-screen applications in public spaces that fall in the Interactive Usability Hall of Shame category. This time, I've come across something that is headed directly to the Interactive Usability Hall of Fame!
Stimulant, the company that created the HP multi-touch wall of digital instruments, has created an application for GM that was on display at the NAIAS 2008 conference in Detroit.
According to Nathan Moody's post on the Stimulant news blog, a capacitance-sensing film was affixed to glass windows, and the images were displayed through rear projection, to create five interactive stations. The Stimulant team collaborated directly with the exhibit designer, Machinehead-Creative.
The photo below is another multi-touch application that Stimulant provided for GM. This time, it was for the Greenbuild conference, and later was displayed at the Electric Vehicle Show.
There is more. The next photo demonstrates Stimulant's work with Microsoft's Silverlight to create an interactive data visualization application along with StepChange. You can find a version of this application online on the Silverlight website. 
I am sure we will see more of Stimulant's work in the future -perhaps in airports, cultural centers, libraries, aquariums, zoos, and school media centers?
Update: Stimulant's collaborative partners at Obscura Digital were involved with the experience design and hardware execution for NAIAS and Greenbuild projects. Interesting website!
Friday, November 9, 2007
Musings about pervasive computing and health care, usability, rationale for "technology-supported human-world interaction"
"Imagine a world," said cardiologist Leslie Saxon, "where you turn on your computer and, along with surfing the Web and turning on YouTube, you can check your or your family members' health stats." Technology and health care are topics that interest me, since they directly affect my life and the lives of those who are close to me, if you've read previous posts on my blog(s): Usability Interaction Hall of Shame (user-unfriendly technology in a hospital setting)
This is the quote that grabbed my heart this morning from an article in a recent Technology Review announcing the "First Annual Body Computing Conference".
This is the stuff that gets me really excited.
World Usability Day 2007: Healthcare Focus
Skype in the Hospital: Grandpa, webcams, and grandkids over the miles
What is technology-supported human-world interaction?
First of all, it is a concept that I can wrap my head around, since I come from a background in psychology and education, and didn't take a computer programming class until I was in my 40's.
It is a concept that my non-techie circle of friends, school colleagues, and extended family members can also understand.
Technology-supported human-world interaction incorporates HCI concepts, but it takes into consideration the broad range of human interactions. It is an attempt to identify what specific systems, applications, networks, interaction designs, interfaces, and input/output modalities are best suited for the task, action, or interaction, and also looks closely at the panorama in which this is likely to occur.
Since human interactions are dynamic and change over time, the concept of panorama includes a temporal component. Of course, this necessitates that programmers, systems developers, designers, and everyone else involved in the process becomes cognizant of the the big picture, the wider view, before the first line of code is ever discussed.
Why do I think this is so important?
When I was a little girl, my family visited a communications technology exhibit, and I participated in a demonstration of a TV phone. I was so excited when I heard the scientist say,
"In the very near future, imagine a world where everyone will be able to call their friends and family, and see them talking on TV, right from their kitchens!"
That was nearly 40 years ago.
I've never lost hold of that feeling of excitement, even though as an adult, I've experienced much that could wear my excitement away....
A large percentage of my interactions with computers and technology over the years has been with poorly designed cell phones and cable TV remotes, crashing laptops, user-unfriendly database systems, problematic productivity applications, and lost Internet connections.
The people who worked for months, even years, creating these problem applications and devices aren't stupid. General users aren't stupid. So why do we still encounter so many frustrating problems?
Until recently, in the technology world, both in academia and in the workplace, the focus has been too narrow. My hunch is that things are changing, and somehow, I'd like to be a part of it.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Participatory Design Conference 2010 + Reflections about participatory design and usability...
Cross posted from Interactive Multimedia Technology:
I really want to go to Australia next year and attend this conference! Below are links to the conference, along with an excerpt from the conference description:
11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference: Participation :: The Challenge (pdf)
PDC2010 Conference Website
PDC2008 Conference Website
"Participation is the complex, contested, changing, creative and celebratory core of participatory design. We invite you to explore what participation can and needs to mean in the design contexts where we are working now and those we are likely to encounter soon. While current ‘best practice’ in many areas of interactive technology design now at least pays lip service to people’s participation, how is this participation being negotiated and defined, and by whom? And if Participatory Design methods developed some 20 years ago are claimed to have become standard design practice, how do we go about developing the methods that will define standard design practice 20 years from now?"
REFLECTION
Judging from what I've experienced as a consumer/user, there are many things that are floating around in the form of electronics, software, and related gadgets that are examples of the absence of participatory design.
My daily pet peeve is the remote control for my entertainment set-up, which includes DVR and a small but growing number of interactive TV channels. Another pet peeve is the usability of productivity software, including the software I must use for work.
At any rate, below are links to some of my thoughts related to usability topics that might be of interest to people who are thinking about or practicing participatory design or user-centered design.
2007 Letter to the Editor, Pervasive Computing
Useful Usability Studies (pdf)
2007 Blog Post
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame (In a Hospital)
2008 Blog Posts
Interactive Touch-Screen Technology, Participatory Design, and "Getting It"
An Example of Convergence: Interactive TV: uxTV 2008
2009 Blog Posts
Microsoft: Are You Listening? Cool Cat Teacher (Vicki Davis) Tries out Microsoft's Multi-touch Surface Table
Haptic/Tactile Interface: Dynamically Changeable Physical Buttons
The Convergence of TV, the Internet, and Interactivity: Update
UX of ITV: The User Experience and Interactive TV (or Let's Stamp Out Bad Remote Controls)
ElderGadget Blog: Useful Tech and Tools
Friday, September 24, 2010
Large Scale Networked Pervasive Public Displays- PD-NET (cross-post)
- To create enabling technologies for large-scale pervasive display networks through the design, development, and evaluation of a robust, scalable, distributed and open platform for interconnecting displays and their sensors.
- To establish Europe as the international centre for work on pervasive display networks.
- To address key scientific challenges that may inhibit the widespread adoption of pervasive display network technology: Tensions between privacy and personalization, situated displays, business and legislative requirements, User Interaction.
Participants from Duisburg-Essen:
Participants from Lugano:
Participants from Minho:
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Why not adopt the Google User Experience Team's design principles for off-the-desktop digital interactions?
If you haven't noticed yet, interactive urban (and suburban) screens of all shapes and sizes are found outside the home and workplace, in places we've come to expect, and in unexpected places. Our cell phones have morphed into web browsers, with larger, higher resolution screens.
The web and the real world have become intertwined.
But often, it is not pretty.*
It is as if all of the blocked pop-ups, banner ads, and fast-forwarded commercials escaped, and found new homes on the screens we find staring at us in airports, malls, arenas, and big-box store aisles!
Is it possible for user experience principles to enhance our digital lives beyond our laptops and desktops?
A recent post on the Putting People First blog outlines some great advice from the Google User Experience Team that holds true for off-the-desktop applications, including multi-touch displays, digital signage, kiosks, mobile devices, and anything under the umbrella of DOO- digital out-of-home:
"The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is “Googley” – and will satisfy and delight people all over the world."
The ten principles that contribute to a “Google User Experience” are:
1. Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams
2. Every millisecond counts
3. Simplicity is powerful
4. Engage beginners and attract experts
5. Dare to innovate
6. Design for the world
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind
9. Be worthy of people’s trust
10. Add a human touch
*Previous posts highlighting usability problems - and other things not pretty - related to off-the-desktop user experience:
Off-the-desktop musings about future interactions: User experience, user-driven design, Universal Usability, Airports, and the "Internet of Things"
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame
Not-so-useful Information Displays in a University Building
Technology-Supported Shopping and Entertainment: User Experience at Ballantyne Village - "A" for Concept, "D" for Touch-screen Usability
Sunday, December 28, 2008
How to Find the HP TouchSmart Website: Another Example for the Usability Hall of Shame
I came across the following post about HP's marketing snafu regarding the SmartTouch on the LandorCom blog:
"I saw a commercial for HP’s new multi-touch computer. It looked cool, so I tried to look it up on HP.com. Instead I was treated to a marketing disaster of biblical proportions."
I don't know the author of LandorCom, but I'll have to agree with the comments! If you go to HP's home page, as pictured above, there is no hint that the TouchSmart PC exists.
If you do a search for "HP TouchSmart", you will find a link to the following page:
A quick glance at this page certainly doesn't give the user a feeling of what the HP TouchSmart is all about, which is a sharp contrast to the HP TouchSmart interactive webpage, which takes more time to find.
Link to TouchSmart TV ad videoclip. If you look carefully, you will find a link below the videoclip to the HP TouchSmart interactive website. From there, you can link to the TouchSmart Community site.
If you dig even deeper, you'll find some videoclips about the TouchSmart. It would be great if these videos could be easily accessed from the first pages a user might come across after doing a search for the PC!
Note: Although the videoclips have an embed feature, the clips would not embed into this blog post!
Monday, December 1, 2008
Usability & User Experience, A work in Progress: "Ubicomp is like a 5-year-old wishing for a pink pony"; "Ubiquitous Computing and UX Design"
I came across a post from the Near Future Laboratory's blog:
Ubicomp is like a 5-year-old wishing for a pink pony -Julian Bleeker
"Complete Ubicomp fail. I mean..they can't even get this most simple of scenarios straightened out and they want to put my refrigerator and toaster oven on the network?"
The author of the post was a guest at an upscale hotel room that featured sensors that turned on the lights. Unfortunately, the lights turned on at random times, resulting in a sleepless night, and a grumpy, resentful blogger. A great example for the Usability Hall of Shame.
Via Thomas Purves: "Apparently no one really wants to reboot their socks."
To learn more about about UX and ubiquitous computing, see Mike Kuniavsky's post, "Ubicomp UX Design at Dansk-IT" and the link to his keynote presentation, "Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design".
