Ethnography Considered Harmful

Last in a series of "Considered Harmful" papers is Ethnography Considered Harmful by Andy Crabtree, Tom Rodden, Peter Tolmie from the University of Nottingham and Graham Button from Sheffield Hallam University. This paper argues that Computer Scientists have taken the ethnography to new and dangerous direction that skew the results of their analysis. I think that any analysis technique can be skewed, but as computers become more and more a part of everyday life, they become the same as any tools that any ethnographer has ever written about, and can then be used in many new ways of analysis. I do however agree with the paper in stating that design ethnographies should not jump to conclusions on rhetoric or deep analysis of actions to create a new design. Ethnographies should serve more of a purpose to find flaws in how people use computers today and how to fix them.

Human Centered Design Considered Harmful

Another paper in the "Considered Harmful" series is Human Centered Design Considered Harmful by Don Norman. In this paper Norman argues against Human Centered design and instead favors Activity Centered Design. Human centered design states that all computer activities should mold their form around the human, and designers should try to understand the human behind the interface. This, however, doesn't take the action into context and this is exactly what Norman points out. Norman points out that too much focus on the user can lead to a complicated software design and makes the software more difficult to update and create.
I agree with most of what Norman says in this paper, but believe that perhaps a balance between Human and Activity centered design is the ideal. The focus should be based on what part of the software is being designed and what is necessary at the time. This of course is a very path to walk down and is not easy to find.

Usability Design Considered Harmful

This paper is titled Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful (Some of the Time) and is written by Saul Greenburg of the University of Calgary and Bill Buxton from Microsoft Research. Their paper reflects on the recent upsurge of usability evaluations in CHI papers at every level of development. They repeatedly state that they do appreciate the benefits of usability evaluations at the end of a research project, but early in the creation process they adamantly oppose them. The CHI field is full of new, strange, and novel ways to interact with computers, and this paper suggests that evaluating these young technologies against long-developed, traditional methods of interaction may prove that the new technique is inferior to the traditional one, even though the new technique is just not fully developed.
I agree with the statements of the paper and have read several research papers were usability evaluations seemed to be tagged on as an afternote to appeal to the conference committees. Usability evaluations should be considered as a possibility depending on the nature of the research project and not a necessity.

Fitts's Law

This blog post is about a paper written in 1954 by Paul M. Fitts. This paper, titled The Information Capacity of the Human Motor System in Controlling the Amplitude of Movement, contains the description of what is now called Fitts's law. In the general case it shows that how much time it takes to perform a task is based on the distance something must travel to perform an action, and how accurate the action must be. This law has proven to be near infallible over the years and is an excellent way to analyze efficiency of a task.
While the paper was math-dense and the descriptions were very general, I think it is these things that keep Fitts's findings alive even now. One thing I am very curious about is an analysis of various keyboard configurations using Fitts's law to see how they compare.

Emotional Design

Comments
Devin McKaskle

Description
Yet another book by Don Norman is Emotional Design. In this book Norman almost renounces everything he has said about design and tries to explain to us that emotions are a crucial part of the design of things. How objects make us feel reflects on how we feel about them. This is somewhat a reflection on The Media Equation. Norman describes certain rules of design and gives great examples showing his beliefs. Later in the book, Norman discusses robots with emotion and how they will be necessary in the future. Finally in Norman style he jumps into a wild creative spree at the end discusses rules presented by Isaac Asimov to prevent robots from rising up and destroying humanity.

I enjoyed this book just as much as every other Norman book, perhaps a little more than The Design of Everyday Things because the examples is presents are more timeless. I enjoyed his discussion human emotions and the division of emotional design into visceral, behavioral, and reflexive design. The part about the emotional robots was very fun to read.

The Man Who Shocked the World

Commments
Ben Carsten
Brian Salato
Devin McKaskle


Description
This book is a biography of Stanley Milgram written by Thomas Blass. Stanley Milgram is the popular social psychologist who performed several experiments on human obedience and created the "six degrees of separation" theory. The book follows his entire life and describes his schooling, experiments, movie work, and interactions with colleagues in detail.

I had heard of the "Milgram Experiments" and the six degrees of separation theory before but never learned about them in detail. I enjoyed learning about the way these experiments came to be and liked the description of his interactions with his teachers and, later, students. I think Milgram would have been an interesting person to talk to, although slightly intimidating because he would be surely thinking about every little action you make.

Game Over Learning by Dying

This post is about an article called "Game Over: Learning by Dying" by Dimitris Grammenos from the Foundation for Research and Technology. In this paper Grammenos presents a game that breaks all fundamentals of video game design in order to teach (entertainingly) designers what to do in order to make their games available to all players. Each level of Grammenos's game breaks only a single rule of video game design, leading to horrible gameplay. This single rule-breaking scheme allows the player to fully understand what is wrong with the system. Grammenos uses a derivation of Space Invaders as his game model. He chose this game for its simplicity and easily defined goal.

While I found the exaggeration of the design mistakes entertaining and the premise behind the creation of the game useful, I feel that the research behind the presentation is shallow. It presents the game as a somewhat viable learning tool but not extraordinarily great and there is no significant result.

The Design of Future Things

Summary:
This post is about The Design of Future Things by Don Norman. This book shares some ideas with Norman's earlier book The Design of Everyday Things but focuses on how things should be created in the future when machines have intelligence. An example that Norman highlights in his book is the realm of autonomous automobiles. This has long been a topic of science fiction societies and is beginning to show itself in today's technology. Norman discusses the issues concerning the half-autonomous vehicles that we have today and the issues of deploying imperfect intelligence into machines. Norman sets out a list of rules that machines should follow to interact with humans without confusion. These rules are:
1. Provide rich, complex, and natural signals.
2. Be predictable.
3. Provide a good conceptual model.
4. Make the output understandable.
5. Provide continual awareness, without annoyance.
6. Exploit natural mappings to make interaction understandable and effective.

Discussion:
The future that Norman sees amazing at times, scary at others. With greater automation brings less human control around their surroundings, and I, for one, surely like to be in control of my belongings. I would enjoy my refrigerator informing me of what I have, but not ordering me what to eat. The more automation in the world, the more time this frees up in humans for other activities. This could be leisure, or work related, but either way less brain power is used on tasks that impede on a person's goals. When this automation goes too far, I can only imagine a society similar to Wall-E, where people no longer do anything for themselves. I think that this future is inherently flawed however because, even today, people respect the aesthetic nature of something made by human hands. A machine may stitch a quilt perfectly, or produce a chicken breast cooked to the correct temperature to the tenth of a degree, but people enjoy the imperfections and natural skill of a task performed well by human hands.

Re-Framing the Desktop Around the Activites of Knowledge Work

Summary:

As computers become more integrated with society and with each other, their importance in everyday life has grown substantially. The standard computer desktop model tries to emulate a physical desk and as such can get just as cluttered. A research project by Steven Voida of the University of Calgary and Elizabeth Mynatt and Keith Edwards of the Georgia Institute of Technology attempts to change the desktop model around specific activities.

Their model allows users to have as many virtual desktops as they currently have "activities". and they can easily switch between them. When they switch activities their desktop clears and is replaced with icons representing files associated with that project, their contact list changes to only show the contacts whom are working with the user on a project and the shared files section of the desktop shows files that are shared among all contacts.

Traditional models of multitasking look something like this:

In Windows, the taskbar gets cluttered with windows from obviously disparate tasks, while in Linux (Ubuntu shown) most distrubtions have virtual desktops that a user can switch between to organize windows. The model propsed by these researchers however brings this level of abstraction to new heights.

Discussion:

This focused desktop environment is highly effective at organizing the ever increasing number of tasks that people are working with every day. The seamless integration of their models of organization with the operating system is also very important in producing and well formed desktop experience. I think that this technology will continue to evolve and will be eventually absorbed as an option in mainstream operating systems very soon. While casual, home users may benefit from the standard desktop model, the workplace environment is where this interface will shine.

Conclusion:

I want it.

Starbucks Ethography

Commented:
Sarah


I chose to perform an ethnography on people who go to Starbucks. More specifically, why people go, and stay, at Starbucks. During my reseach time I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to be looking for. I noted how many people entered, how old they were, if they stayed or not, how long they stayed, and what they did while they stayed. I also noted what kind of atmosphere the location had. The environment, I concluded was a main factor in why people stayed at Starbucks. The comfort of the chairs, usefulness of the tables, color of the walls, and the smell of coffee created an ambiance that these people enjoyed.
My observation notes were very different than the notes that must have been collected from the ethnography I chose to read (Never In Anger). I did not interact with the people in my study, but I would have liked to interview people to ask them why they enjoy staying at Starbucks to enjoy their coffee. I also wanted to interview the manager to learn how they interpret the environment they offer and what they do to foster an environment people want to stay in.

Never In Anger

This post is about a book called Never In Anger by Jean L. Briggs. It is an ethnography about Jean's 17 month stay with a group of Eskimos called the Utkuhikhalingmiut (Utku). She spent time with several of the families in the group but focused on a single family that she became an adopted daughter of. She began her quest to discover more abou the Utku's pagan past, but her study revealed something altogether different. She learned a lot about family life, skills in the Artic, and how the Utku act socially and treat family members.


This ethnography was very different than other similar cultural studies that I've read. In a study of the Yanomamo of Brazil by Napoleon Chagnon, Chagnon does participate in trade with the Yanomamo for modern goods, but lives for the most part outside of Yanomamo society. Briggs's unique status as a member of the family strongly changes the atmosphere of Utku family life. She repeatedly states how, because she is an inept Eskimo, she burdens her family. Although her position in society removes some of the ability to collect a pure idea of Utku life, I believe is does offer a vastly different, important insight into Utku psychology and is an enjoyable look at the human experience from a new perspective.

Media == Real

Comments:
Ben Carsten
JD


The Media Equation by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass attempts to prove that people respond to "media" just as they do with real people. Reeves and Nass present their case through many experiments that involve people interacting with computers and television. These various experiments explore gender, personality, politeness, actions, and language.

The Bad
The problem with these experiments is that they are sometimes lacking in important detail and graphical demonstrations. More background on the participants in their studies would help the reader take a more analytical approach to their results instead of merely reading about their experiment and taking in their conclusions.
The concept of dominance and submissive behavior and "media"'s use of it to adapt to the user's personality is a topic that is discussed that I find very dangerous. The more personality that is given to a computer, the better chance it has to persuade, rather than inform, its users.
When placing a user and a computer on a "team" (apparently only by color coordination) the user's opinions were drastically changed in one of their studies. I find this very odd, especially for users who we are continually told are well versed in computers and could even write the test programs themselves. I think of my computer as a tool to accomplish my tasks and do not expect it to butt in and give it's "opinion" of my blog post as I type. On the other hand, if the computer also merely stated that we would be a team to give my psyche an boost and not reciprocate any information, I would feel cheated by my teammate. How would you feel if your computer posted a message about teamwork next time you started a project?

If it's a good idea to add "please" to "Wait for this file to be copied", then why shouldn't the computer also say, "This task can be best accomplished if we work as a team(160).

I would especially not want the book's version of an "Ideal Spell-checker". Not only would this spell-checker inform me of words that I have spelled incorrectly, it would also praise me for my correct spelling of other words. These pointless interruptions in my thought process would hinder by ability to work and only frustrate me.

The Good
The books discussions on Motion, Voices, Fidelity, and Synchrony are very interesting and broadly useful. The book discusses the ability of motion and voice to keep attention focused, and smoothly transition the user to new areas or options. These concepts are more widely accepted today than the bestowal of a computer program with a certain personality.

The Questionable
When discussing source orientation, Reeves and Nass easily dismiss the relationship of the creator of media and the media's perception by the user. This is the argument I find most difficult to accept. It seems obvious that when a person creates a media object, if the object shows any personality at all, it is through the creator and his/her influences that they drew from to create the object. While users may not perceive this relationship while interacting with media does not mean that this relationship does not exist.

I took many interesting ideas and practices from this book that I will incorporate in my future endeavors of media creations, but many other concepts presented shall stay in the pages of this book for now. Although this book was written several years ago, I feel it may become more applicable as computers become more powerful, AI more intelligent, and computer interaction become more immersive on an everyday scale. Even now I feel that if these experiments were performed today, the outcomes would be vastly different due to the amount of technological presence in today's society.

Design of Everyday Things

This post is about a book titled, "The Design of Everyday Things", or DOET, written by Donald A. Norman.

Summary:
After reading just two chapters of this book you will begin to see examples of flawed designs at every turn. Doors, computers, televisions, radios, and many other examples show a proper natural mapping to their actions.
This is one of the key concepts I took from reading this book. Not only is it simple and should be easily followed, but often it is ignored. A "natural mapping" means things that move up, down, left, and right in the real world should have controls that move up, down, left, and right rather than flip, rotate, twist, and punch 42 on a keypad.
A description of some basic human psychology is also included in this book. When people look at a device, they attempt to explain to themselves how the device works based on the evidence they can see. Most of the time these are the controls of the interface for a particular device. This can sometimes lead to poor mental models of the operation of the device and result in errors in operation.
Other areas that were particularly interesting in this book were a detailed description of memory, the psychology of errors, and eventually how to bring everything together to create an interface designed to assist the users, not inhibit.

Example:This pen has a button on top of the pen that it nicely mapped to its function. Pushing the button down moves the ball point out of the case to allow you to write. This second button however is not as easy to understand. With most pens you push the top button again to bring the point back into the case, but with this pen you push a second button on the side of the pen. Not only is it strange to have an additional button to do this function, but the indention on the pen case seems to imply that you slide the button up to bring the point upwards. This would be a nice physical connection to the action and the control, but instead the button must be labeled "push" to avoid confusion. This pen was immediately a strange sight and even more mystifying is why it was created this way in the first place.

Provocative Question:
-Background: Norman describes two main locations for knowledge, in the head and in the world, as well as the tradeoffs for both.
-Question: While the virtues of the knowledge of thousands of encyclopedias at your fingertips are obvious, with the increasing ubiquity of "knowledge in the world" through the internet, How do you think this affects the general knowledge of society and our ability to function?

Final Thoughts:
This book was a short, but great, read and I recommend it for anyone who wants to know a little about memory, how humans accomplish tasks, and how humans, despite the many examples in everyday life, continue to confound others with the designs of faucets, doors and telephones.