CS247 Reflection

Has it only been 10 weeks? It seems like a lot longer -- in a good way :)

One thing that was stark was the dramatic increased in complexity when designing with more people. Our team went from two to five and it became nearly impossible to get everyone together -- making decisions slower and less definitive, lowering our efficiency, and making the project much more static and less experimental. On the other hand, it was great to be able to really drill down on a specific area and not worry that nothing else was getting down (I spent quite a bit of time learning about power-transistors and how to control higher-power devices with low-power control voltages)

From an engineering perspective, I became tangibly familiar with how difficult it is for programs to definitively get information about the "outside world". Using the desktop is like playing in the computer's sandbox -- it controls everything and you just get to play. Outside the desktop, the world is much more complex and subtle and even if the computer can get data -- its not clear what it means exactly.

Thanks for a great course!

Passively Powered Sensors

Owing to my obsession with cable tangles (here, for example, or here) and specifically my experience with the squeezers, I'd love to see if passively powered sensors could be developed (using electric induction, like RFID tags, or mechanical energy, like old wrist-watches).

Beyond cables, this could also break down some of the power hurdles of ubiquitous computing.

Photos from the Final Project

Click here -- don't miss Donald Norman at the Squeeze booth :)

Users as Generators

Our user-testing was excellent (not that they didn't have complaints -- but we got a ton of useful feedback) and, beyond this, they were eager to explore the re-purposing of the squeeze-interface for their own needs.

Obviously this didn't help us accomplish the goals of the IDM project, but it was highly useful, and inspiring, for us as designers/builders.

For example, one of our teachers thought the squeezer would be great for "English Language Learners" -- that is, kids who do not speak english well. Apparently, they often are shy about raising their hand because language is such a barrier to comfort (more than history, science etc) and a non-interruptive way to contact the teacher might be a promising addition.

I'm not sure if this can be expected in every set of user-subjects -- as teachers are often unusually creative, and our testers are all excellent teachers -- but it was an great experience in this case.

Sleeping Cars

Many cars make a mesmerizing sleepy sound (almost like soft snoring -- white-noise like, but with some rhythm) that is self-similar with the zombie-like state that their driver's often inhabit. Further, in discussions with others, I have found that successful commuters (ones that don't grow to hate it) do, in fact, enter a restful and relaxing state where their mind is slowed down and not particularly active.

I don't currently have an immediate design related to this observation, but will enter a restful zombie-like state until I do :)

Squeezable Cable Tangles!

Inspired by the evergrowing tangles of cables everywhere, I think it would be cool to make a squeezer out of a big squishy tangle of cables.

While this doesn't accomplish the needs of the IDM (Improved Decision Making) project, it might be very satisfying for potential first-world squeezers to exact some revenge on their evergrowing tangles of video/audio/computer/etc cables.. while, at the same time, directing a system according to their needs.

Emotional Mirrors?

Inspired by the magic-mirror project by Dan, Noah and Sim, and their difficulties building an interface that users can intentionally use without getting false positives (changing the display by combing your hair, etc) -- I wonder if a magic mirror could be a more subtle interaction.. it could combine elements such as the beat/volume/etc of your music, the color of your clothing, tone of voice, posture, etc to display an ambient colored light.. an "emotional mirror"?

The interaction would be really subtle, but potentially engaging.

This idea is also inspired by last quarter's HCI seminar in "Reality Mining"

Visualizing Aggregate Squeeze

For the IDM (Improved Decision Making) project, one of the problems of collecting squeeze data is displaying it with the following constraints:
1) The teacher may not want to be at the computer to know the current squeeze-interest
2) It may not be appropriate to display each individual users squeeze, but it would be good to get more than a one-dimensional value for the aggregate squeeze interest.

Above is an exhibit from the SF MOMA that uses a fan, fabric and weights to create a dynamic display. Using a similar system, but with multiple fans, we might be able to display more than one-dimensional squeeze information without losing any privacy.

On the other hand, it might be really confusing :)

P4 Ideation

Our P4 process included iterations in two main categories (with only minor software changes) ->

1. The Squeezers themselves. We experimented with a wide-range of squeezables: pieces of cardboard, raisin boxes, water bottles, staplers, sponges, pliers, tennis balls, bubble wrap, tangles of cable, etc. We selected our favorites among these items and more and tested them with Stanford students. The favorite was a specific pair of pliers (pictured above) and we used this as our final squeezable (we also instrumented a little-stapler squeezer and it was less-preferred, without question, to the pliers, by our test users)
2. The aggregate visualization. We discussed the visualization quite a bit, for example, this post describes one idea with fans and fabric and this . One problem that we encountered was the need for more-than-usb power-levels. While we did eventually get this resolved, it was only at the very end of the project, so we used a simple light-based visualizer for our user-testing. The 2nd image above shows both the light-based visualizer and the fan blown pinwheel visualizer.
   

LCD Polarization

Laptops with LCD screens are, for some reason, polarized vertically (only vertical light waves are emitted). Unfortunately, polarized sun glasses are polarized to block light in this direction because it cuts down on most glare from the sun (any light that reflects off a horizontal surface, I believe). Essentially, LCD screens compete in the same dimension as reflected sunlight.

If laptop LCD screens emitted light polarized in the other direction, a user could wear polarized sun-glasses and see a relative brightening of the screen compared to the ambient reflected sunlight (aka "glare")

Flickr Fumble

While I like the flickr interface on the whole, its response to multiple tags entered into the search-field is non-standard, un-useful and annoying.

For example, in the first screenshot, I search for "van roadtrip" looking for images that are tagged with both "van" and "roadtrip". But, in the second shot, you can see the flickr concatenates these terms and fails to find any photos with the tag "vanroadtrip"

Personally, I don't see how this is ever useful (it can be avoided by going to the "advanced search" screen and choosing "all of these tags" but I think that should be the default behavior (like web search engines)

Adding Search Terms to the Menubar of Web Browsers

Web browsers typically show the title of the web page the user is viewing in the menubar of the application.

However, often, the user reached the page using a specific search term and the search term is a better reminder of what the user was doing than the title of the page selected by the author.

For example, in the image above, I search for "'computer vision' emotion" but the title is "Vision and Modelling Group Research Projects" which is much less descriptive and less personal to me (because I didn't choose it)

This change/addition may be especially relevant when a user is switching back and forth between different web-browser windows because, typically, the menubar text is displayed by the window-manager/operating-system and the user is trying to quickly identify which browser window is which.

This idea was generated by my own personal experience using multiple web-browser windows to find information in an interleaved manner.

Followup on Social Buildings

These pictures from the Aperature Project are an excellent example of what I referred to in my Social Buildings idea.

For most buildings, I think the outside representation would have to be more abstract/ambiguous for privacy reasons -- but maybe also more interesting and intriguing?

Following Bill Gates

While discussing Computer Vision applications with a friend, I mentioned my simple idea for monitoring parking lots. Apparently, Bill Gates and Paul Allen got started with Traf-O-Data -- a system to count cars passing a point on the road.

Ridiculous!

Clustering Algorithms for Quick and Dirty Market Segment Analysis

Given how feature-driven many consumer products are (phones, cameras, cars, laptops, etc), it would be relatively easy to "select features" and do cluster-analysis for a quantitative look at offerings for a current market segment.

There is a lot of work on using clustering algos on customers ("conjoint analysis", etc), but a clustering of existing products by feature could yield a much quicker and cheaper analysis of existing market segments than extensive user analysis (somewhat analogously to the relationship between heuristic evaluation and actual user-testing)

When Human Computer Interaction is not about the GUI

Many of the biggest advancements achieved by web applications are not achieved by the graphical user interface (typically web-apps are more limited than native applications in this area), but rather the shift from a single-user interaction (like Word, Excel, etc) to multi-user interaction (ebay, paypal, friendster, flickr, etc) -- that is, the human-computer interaction is primarily human-human interaction, mediated by the computer.

Ebay, for example, still has a very limited graphical user interface -- essentially text with pictures -- but is arguably the most successful web application ever. Similarly, Craigslist is nearly a terminal-based application (text-only), but is immensely useful and popular because of its ability to mediate interaction between people.

Since these applications are special for their multi-user interactions not their graphical user interfaces, a good web-application prototyping tool would focus on demonstrating multi-user interactions more than building a good GUI.

Regarding specifics, I think this problem may be similar to the one schema building/analyzing tools face, where, the problem is primarily defining relationships between data elements. In this way, starting with a SQL schema, an additional set of rendering hints could be maintained from which a multi-user web-app prototype could be generated and tested very quickly.

This idea was an offshoot of my Flash improvement ideas.

Computer Vision in Parking Lots

Many parking lots have to hire people to track payment (or make sure that parkers are customers). These sorts of problems are a ripe area for computer vision algorithms because, while a computer may not be able to tell you what type of car is there, it can certainly tell you if there is a car in a given spot or not. And, further aiding adoption, in many parking lots there are already surveillance cameras installed.

For example, if a car is parked for 10 hours in a large store's parking lot -- the program could highlight it for a once-a-day check. Currently, there is no good way to get this information without continuous human monitoring of a parking lot.

Similarly, in other situations, the same information could be used to assign each new car a slot.. rather than having each car drive around looking for a spot (parking garages can get very jammed up)

Power of the Network.. err, Tangle

Pictured above is Scott Doorley trying to hold up a tangle of power-supply cords at the Computer Recycling Center -- you can see him leaning back to counter-balance the weight of the tangle. After tugging and untangling for five minutes, we eventually gave up on the power supply we were trying to reach.

While this is an extreme case, the proliferation of computer-connected devices/sensors/actuators/etc means that each person's individual cable-tangle grows over time.

Is there anything that can be done to address this growing problem?

Bee-Flower Structures at the Farmer's Market

Much like a flower that needs to both lure in a bee and keep it stuck long enough to brush pollen on and off, the farmer's market needs to lure in customers and keep them long enough to buy produce.

On the market-scale, this structure is evident in the layout of the individual stands in a looping structure with only a couple "exits". On the invidual stand-scale, this is evident from the U-style table structure (pictured above) where there are two ways into the stand, but once you're in, its not so easy to just walk out -- especially if there are more customers coming in behind you.

The Coffee Mug Tree

Following the need of garbage improvement, and inspired by the bee-flower structure of the farmer's market, our group came up with a coffee mug tree that customers could put their reusable coffee mugs on when they are done. This action returns their one-dollar deposit and may invoke the "tree falling" mechanism where all the mugs get dumped off the tree and into the mug-washer (further attracting the bee/customers to the flower/farmers-market)

For customers who don't return their mugs, they will be advertising the catchy farmer's market logo wherever they use it in the future :)

Garbage at the Farmer's Market

There is a lot of garbage at the farmer's market. The top picture shows some of the vendor-garbage and the one below it shows the large number of customer coffee cups. It was a cold day and nearly everyone had coffee, but the waste is not congruent with the "sustainable" spirit of the farmer's market (as explicitly mentioned by the sponsors and, otherwise, implicitly evident in the market itself)

Is there a way to improve the garbage situation using more reusable or, at least, recyclable items?

Farmer's Market Picture Diary

CS 247 went to the Farmer's market on January 21st, 2006. Our group went early and watched the market setup and get started -- my pictures!

Personal Marketing for a Personal Experience

The farmer's market has a highly personal aspect that would be difficult to maintain with traditional marketing mechanisms.

But, personal notes and recommendations from the farmer's market, floated to lucky recipients by helium balloons, might preserve and propagate the personal nature of the farmer's market experience while providing fun for both the creator and finder.

The littering aspect of helium balloons may prevent this specific idea from being popular, but apparently, latex balloons are both organic and biodegrable!