Book reading #1: Design of Everyday Things(Book) with examples

Reaction to the book:

This book opens a new world of design to me in many ways. I think maybe the ideas are outdated when I first saw this book. Instead, I do think I can apply what I read in this book into my project and work. I do enjoy reading books that are not outdated even after 30 or more years. This really mean something to me, because I think the author does have a really good view of how future will look and how current is. 

This books starts about how we should design some very simple thing in daily life. It give an example about how door can be separate into good and bad design. That's when I really gets into this book, because I was thinking doors are doors that it can't be better. However, I am absolutely wrong about this. He mentioned that a bad door can trap people inside it. I was surprised about this example, and I do think some doors are complicated than what it should be. This is just a starting of this book, it has many different parts to it. 

One concept mentioned in this book that I really agree on is mapping. It basically means the number of controls should match the number of functions of the product. I have always get confuse by some product that one control unit has multiple functions to it. It will alternate the function depends on how we interact with it. I think this kind of product is hard to use, because of the limited memory in our brain. And there is one more concept that I love which is constraints. I think Apple's magic mouse is a bad designed product in my own opinion. This is because the is not much constraints to it. It actually did amazed me at first, but after a while, I think there is not enough constraints to each option. 

Overall, this book in my opinion is very good to read and to think about while you read. I like the ideas that it presents and how it presents it. 

Bad Examples:

Watch

This watch I found a problem with actually is occur in all watches. This problem maybe bother to everyone else, but in my view that it is a problem. When we try to tie the watch to the smallest hole, there is always a gap between the watch bands. 
I think this is lack of constraints, since it will not have the gap between the watch bands when we choose other holes. As you can see, there is a huge gap when it's plug into the smallest hole. This maybe not be any function problem, but to me it's a vision problem. It's really to fix this problem, the designers can make the other side of watch band to be longer. 

Lotion bottle

This bottle is lack of constraints since the opening is no other assisment to it. The lotion in this bottle is liquid, not like normal lotion. The problem with that is when people try to pour the lotion out, the water will flow out of control. There is one way to fix this problem, designer can put a soft cap allow users to push for more lotion. It has actually good mapping because when I try to close the cap, it will squeeze all the way down. It has high quality feedback, since the cap will indicate if the bottle is closed or not. However, the problem I mentioned is a huge problem;therefore, this is not a good design.

Commercial Poster

It's lack of constraints that it doesn't have any instruction for how to close it. As in the picture show above, the poster actually can form a square. However, the crease of the paper indicate close the paper inward. This would cost some problem that if people try to continue to close one by one. This is the problem of incorrect conceptual model. This folding would cost time to refold it. The designer can design it into a Z shape folding, in that way, its visibility is increase. Overall, the design is not good enough. 

Hole Puncher

It's lack of constraints that it doesn't indicate number of fingers or hand to operate it. The problem is when you apply different pressure at different force point that you will have different outcome. And normally the outcome is not good. As I mentioned, the visibility is not good enough for people to know which part is easiest to operate with. The feedback is actually good in this case, the machine will click a sound after it has done its job. However, I still believe it should have some more instructions or visibility to it.

Dell mouse

It's lack of constraint because of the clickable area is too big. People does accidently press on wrong side of the mouse and delete things. The visibility is not really good as I mentioned above. Their design doesn't indicate which part user should click on. It has a incorrect conceptual model which let me think the clickable area should be only at the top of mouse. However, the clickable area is too big that we never expect that. Overall, the design is not good enough in my opinion.

Good Examples:
iPad Smart Cover 

I brought this one long time ago, and it still works fine. It has only two functions and two positions which is a perfect ratio. So the mapping is really good. It sleeps the iPad when it's flat and wakes up the iPad when it lifted up. It can form a triangle to support the iPad to stand up or tilt. Its constraints is really good that people will get use to it really fast. The magnets on the side will allow it to stick to iPad and pull off when we dont need it. Overall, I think this design is perfectly designed, simple to use.

Microsoft mouse

It has four buttons and 4 functions which is perfect ratio. It's design to be easily used. It will automatically install the software when we plug in the usb, in that way we can use it right away. Many constraints to this product, such as only right handed, finger rest area, and thumb area. It's all really clear and visible to the users. Overall, this product is well designed. 

Stapler

It only one function and two area to operate with. It's reasonable ratio. It has a thumb press down area that's designed for users. Its constraints is when you push all the way down, that it will have a little click sound. The conceptual mode is correct as what I think as it is, which its only operation is push down to staple papers. Overall, it's a great design and I enjoyed using it.

iPhone 3GS

It has five buttons and 6 or 7 functions to it. It's a good ratio. It has not much constraints to it, but few good ones. Its size is reasonable for one hand to hold. But the buttons are designed for people to easily to press when they hold it in hand. This doesn't matter if you hold it in right hand or left hand. The visibility is very good that we know how we should holding the device. Overall, this device is a good design.

Power gear

The most useful tool for cutting branches of a tree. There are constraints that help people to hold and operate with. The hand grip at the end of handle visibly indicates the hand position. Also the visibility is good for the scissor on top. The curved shape and short length indicates the functionality of the device, which is for strong and small branches of a tree. The conceptual model is really good since the device show a correct conceptual to me when I first look at this device. Overall, the design of this device is really good.

Article reading #1:Chinese Room

In the field of computer science. There are four concepts that developed by computer sciencetists that consider to be important to understand Chinese Room.
Strong AI is the first concept that they mentioned. Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig observe that most AI researchers "don't care about the strong AI hypothesis—as long as the program works, they don't care whether you call it a simulation of intelligence or real intelligence."In my own opinion, this is what I was thinking. However, Searle's idea is to sets no limit on this is a simulation.

One part is symbol processing. The computer manipulates the symbol without really understand the meaning to what they process of. This is like what the computer does in Searle's mind.

They assume Chinese Room as Turing machine too. This is mainly because the author thinks Chinese room has all the ability that Turing machine also has. A Turing machine simply consist with a program, memory,CPU, and tools to write the memory. Based on this context, I do think Chinese room can actually act as Turing machine.

The last part is Turing test. This simply is a test that a judge will ask question to the machine and human. however, he would not know if he is actually asking a human or machine. If he cannot reliably tell the difference between them, then the machine passed the test.
So after understand these four concepts, I will summarize the Chinese Room concept below. Suppose there is a computer that understand Chinese, and it takes Chinese as input and output Chinese. It will follow some kind of program that been designed. The idea is did the computer really understand Chinese or not. Searle argues that the computer doesn't understand Chinese. He then later talk about how he 
After reading this Chinese Room, I have many concerns about this topic.First is that has this problem been solved. I found the answer in the reading which is no, and there are many people question about how correct that Searle set this room. This is very important to a research like this, and in my own opinion, I do think he set this correct without any biased factor. Other than that, there are many replies to this idea. Also I have a reply to Chinese Room which is 

Book reading #1: Design of Everyday Thing (Chaps)

Reaction to first chap:
It opens the door for me in the area of design. It gives a solid idea how to design simple things with multiple criteria  These criteria include two main principles, such as good conceptual model and make things visible. This is mentioned in first chapter with great explanation to them. The conceptual model is mental simulation of a device's operation. And make things visible means interface must have visible features, inferring the right messages to people. He give a good example for poor visibility, the glass door. He mentioned about how his friend is trapped inside a glass door because there is no sign or clue how to use it. This example showed how important visibility is in the real world.
In the market, there are many poor design of any thing. As a engineer, I think about my future jobs when I was reading this paper. I feel like I should simulate my product on the customer's side of view. This will be helpful for create any thing in the future.

Reaction to Chap2:
The author introduce 7 stages of action which are forming the goal, forming the intention, specifying an action, executing the action, perceving the state of the world, interpreting the state of world, and evaluating the outcome. These seven states help for checking if gulfs of execution and evaluation are bridged. I am really how he explains Aristotle's naive physics. He said this is our naive way of explaining the phenonmenon we witness in everyday life. And there is one more important point that I agree with him, which is spiral of silence. I believe people do these really often on daily life.

Reaction to Chap3:
This chapter talks about memory is in knowledge in the head and the world. The most interesting thing I got out of this chapter is the four reasons that we can complete a task without precise knowledge to it. The reasons are information in the world that we get touch with, great precision not required, natural constraint, and cultural constraint. This explain why sometime people can complete some task that they never done before. The reasons behind this kind of task is what really get me interest in it.

Reaction to Chap4:
This chapter talks about how constraint makes a good design. I really agree to what the author states that people normally can't choose when there is more than one option. He uses build a Lego motorcycle as an example to illustrate the idea. He mentioned constraints includes physical, semantic, cultural, and logical. To conclude, a good design should have good constraints to limit how can a person to operate it.

Reaction to Chap5:
This chapter is mainly about how to design a product with minized error and able to correct them right away. He introduce many kinds of errors, such as capture, description, data driven, associative activation, loss of activation, and mode errors. As a programmer, error detecting is one of the main function we have to write about. This chapter reinforce how important this is to me once again.

Reaction to Chap6:
This chapter describes the process of design. He describe a good design should be tested, found the problem, and modified the design. And this kind of process should be repeat until out of resource. However, there are some people that have two kind of problems, and I did meet some of this kind of people. It was really not a good experience when we have time constraint to our project. So back on track, the two kind temptations are creeping featurism and make it complex just because it looks cool. These two problem can really cost problem to occur, and no one wants it!

Reaction to Chap7:
This chapter basically summarize the whole book which is about user center design. It reinforce the idea that we are designing something that users need to easily understand and to use. In my point of view, I do think this is very easy to talk about. However, it actually is really hard to design. I agree an idea that it talks about, which is simplify the structure of tasks. It basically is saying that we should use technology to make something invisible(parts that we don't want users to see) and visible(parts that users need to operate with). And I do think this is what technology is for, so I give a plus to this idea.

paper reading #6:Improving Command Selection with CommandMaps

Intro:
title:Improving Command Selection with CommandMaps
reference information:Austin,Texas
author bios:Joey Scarr†, Andy Cockburn†, Carl Gutwin‡, Andrea Bunt. All three come from different Unviersities, Unverisity of Canterbury, University of Saskatchewan, and University of Manitoba. Their majors are all the same: Computer science.

Related Works:

1. Measuring the true cost of command selection: techniques and results
2. Benefits of merging command selection and direct manipulation
3. Toolglasses, marking menus, and hotkeys: a comparison of one and two-handed command selectiontechniques
4. Integrating laboratory and field study for improving selection: Development of a battery for predicting air traffic controller success.
5. Marker-assisted selection to improve drought resistance in common bean
6. mproving command and control speech recognition on mobile devices: using predictive user models for language modeling
7. Speech-based cursor control: understanding the effects of target size, cursor speed, and command selection
8. Design and analysis of delimiters for selection-action pen gesture phrases in scriboli
9. Improving the execution speed of compiled Prolog with modes, clause selection, and determinism
10. Using task context to improve programmer productivity

The related work talks about how to use command selections to improve programmer speed, or other speed of users. However, the topic of this paper I read is very novel according to what I have read. It talk about how to improve the command selection, and in other works that they try to combine command selection to improve performance. This is related, however, it's totally different idea. It's not common to see this topic in other papers. In one related work, it talks about benefits of merging command selection and direct  manipulation. This is very command in other related work, but this paper have totally different idea. 

Summary:
Current GUI application's commands are design in hierachal structures. This increase the time to find a specific command for expert users. And they found there is way to improve this performance by CommandMap. This technique has two main properties: they show all of an application's commands at once, and they do so in a spatially stable fashion, allowing users to build up spatial memory of frequently used commands.They have integrate this CommandMap within Microsoft Office Word. As the research goes on(details on evaluation section), they found out there is not much effiency for novice users; however, much faster result for expert users.

Evaluation:

Their overall hypothesis is that spatial memory can be the basis for command-selection interfaces. The first study consist 12 participants from local university, and ask to perform three tasks. The first one is to determine familiar commands which is to inspect the study system's mock up of the Word 2010 interface and to indicate which Ribbon-based commands they were familiar with. Second tasks is to specify locations with Ribbon hidden, and last task is to select commands using the Ribbon. The result founding is for many commands, people do have a spatial memory of the commands' locations in the GUI were known to within 100 pixels. And other founding is people know the tab location of most of their familiar commands. And there is another main experiement which consists 18 participants, and they were ask to use Commandmap and normal menu with similiar task I described above. The result showed speed increase for expert users of 34% over menus and 25% over Microsoft's Ribbon, and the other showing no significant performance differnce for novices. They used unbiased measuers and quantitative measures according to what I showed above. The methods they use is systemic because it did many studies over this topic.

Discussion:
I do think this work did contribute to many other areas. In the related works I read from, if this people use CommandMap and other works together, then the speed of computing would be much faster for novice and expert users. The contribution is very novel in this area, since other works didn't talk about it.I am really intereseted in this topic that I hope I can do something related to it in the future.

Paper reading #5:Tell Me More? The Effects of Mental Model Soundness on Personalizing an Intelligent Agent

Intro:
Title:Tell Me More?The Effects of Mental Model Soundnesson Personalizing an Intelligent Agent
Reference Information: In London
Author Bios:Todd Kulesza1, Simone Stumpf2, Margaret Burnett1, Irwin Kwan1
Students and Staff at Oregon State University and City University London. They interest in artificial intelligence.

Summary:
People are using intelligent agents more frequently, such as Facebook, amazon, and Pandora. In Facebook, they use facial detection to guess who is in a particular photo. But this kind of intelligent agents need to learn from the users. And this paper is wonder how to improve the intelligent agents by users. The result is people who knows how to debug the intelligent agents will have better agents. This is due to their knowledge how to fully operate the agents.

Related Works:

1. Intelligent agent supported personalization for virtual learning environments
2. Intelligent agent-based systems for personalized recommendations in Internet commerce
3. User models to personalize an intelligent agent
4. Intelligent techniques for web personalization
5. User–interface agent interaction: personalization issues
6. Personalizing information appliances: a multi-agent framework for TV programme recommendations
7. “ARCHIMIDES”: an intelligent agent for adaptive-personalized navigation within a WEB server
8. Programming with an intelligent agent
9. Learning for automatic personalization in a semantic taxonomy-based meta-search agent

10. Agent technology for personalized information filtering: the PIA-system

I think this topic is about novel, due to existing and recently trends of usage of intelligent agents. The work I found has many research on this topic, however, I still think the work I read about is novel in this field. Many research has the familiar result as the paper I read of.

Evaluation:
There are 62 participants in this study and separated into two groups. One group with only necessary information with the AuPair (Radio station that researchers developed to research on) and one group with deep explanation how the radio station will operate depends on their actions. The researchers use quantitative and unbiased measures. The method is systemic.

Discussion:
I think the contribution of this paper is medium that is due to there are many familiar researches out there. This paper did not mention how it will really applied their research into the real world.

Paper #4: Digital Pen and Paper Practices in Observational Research

Intro:
Title:Digital Pen and Paper Practices in Observational Research
Reference Information:
Author bios: NadirWeibel, Adam Fouse, Colleen Emmenegger, Whitney Friedman, Ed Hutchins, Jim Hollan
  All of the authors are from University of California, either a PHD student or Professor.

Summary:
This paper talks about how digital pen and paper practice can be integrated. It contains many studies that goes along with this topic. They show how their research can use on many different reality world, such as video process for flight control, take notes with digital pen, and process notes with digital pen.

Related Works:

1. Beyond paper: supporting active reading with free form digital ink annotations
2. Annotation: from paper books to the digital library
3. Usability testing of a digital pen and paper system in nursing documentation
4. Only touching the surface: creating affinities between digital content and paper
5. PenLight: combining a mobile projector and a digital pen for dynamic visual overlay
6. Designing pen-and-paper user interfaces for interaction with documents
7. Papiercraft: A gesture-based command system for interactive paper
8. Despite technical problems personal digital assistants outperform pen and paper when collecting 

9. Tabletop displays for small group study: affordances of paper and digital materials

   10.CoScribe: Integrating paper and digital documents for collaborative knowledge work

The work I read about is not novel, this is because many people had research on this kind of topic already. It talks about other related work in the study since they use other's work to combine with theirs.

Evaluation:
Both qualitative and quantitative measures. Aviation human factors researchers used  symbol to quantify the number of AER interaction. for qualitative, they used forms for emergency drill.  It's systemic because they conducts many researches to show their research result, such as handwriting recognization for categorical data and the proximity of the elephants.

Discussion:
I think this topic is very interesting to read about and had much contribution in this field. This field is very useful to researchers and students like me, since we have to take many notes in school. Today in the society, we are transiting from paper notes to digital notes. With that in mind, this function is super useful to everyone in the society.

paper #3:Curation, Provocation, and Digital Identity: Risks and Motivations for Sharing Provocative Images Online(1),TeleAdvisor: A Versatile Augmented Reality Tool for Remote Assistance(2)

Intro:

Title:Curation, Provocation, and Digital Identity: Risks and

Motivations for Sharing Provocative Images Online

Reference Information: Carnegie Mellon University

Author Bios: all three authors are from Carnegie Mellon University. all of them are PHD student researching in Digital Data.

summary:

In this paper, they discuss why people want to posting personal images online that would risk their identity.They conduct a study based on 10 Flickr users, and ask them what is their intention for posting these kind of photos. Each duration is around 1-2 hours. As result, they found people advocate for the right to be themselves, the rights of others, and seek to protect others.

Related Work:

1. Images of organization
2. Teens and sexting
3. Sharing neuroimaging studies of human cognition
4. MySpace, my friends, my customers
5. Camera phone use and its implications
6. Provocative awareness
7. Managing corporate image and identity
8. Examining students' intended image on Facebook:“What were they thinking?!
9. Provocative and unforgettable: Peter Carey's short fiction–A Cognitive Approach

10. Social communication in advertising: persons, products & images of well-being

    It's about novel that the paper i have read. It did talk about previous researches and how it contributes to theirs. The previous researches didn't ask the same question, but come out with the same answer. The related work is mostly on the same topic, however, they are not doing survey instead of the paper i read about. 

Evaluation:

They used qualitative and biased measures. The method is systemic since this is the only way to ask true feelings of people. The study consists 10 Flickr users that vary in the gender, age, interest. I think even the number is pretty small, however, it does include the whole system. They interview 10 users and ask what do they think about posting inappropriate pictures online. And then they would analyze the answer and discuss the answer to readers.

Discussion:

I think the work is pretty concise and tell us what people think about photo sharing. It did contribute to whom is interested in people who like to share photos. Especially most of the users they ask has post photos that are considered inappropriate to most parent. This study is actually really fun to read since it tells us about what people think and why they think that way.

Intro:

title:TeleAdvisor: A Versatile Augmented Reality Tool for Remote Assistance

reference information: Israel

author bios: They are all from Israel doing research. Their lab is IBM Haifa Research Lab.

summary:

teleAdvisor is remote assistance device that consists camera, projector, and a machine hand. it bascially is a remote helper. it's used to help people over the network with portable device.  it is able to project text, image, and pointer. So the device can help people to go through some simple installation.

Related Work:

1. Remote assistance: a view of the work and a view of the face?
2. The development and deployment of a multi-user, remote access virtualization system for networking, security, and system administration classes
3. Personal networks enabling remote assistance for medical emergency teams
4. Remote assistance experiment during the manned space flight Altair
5. System for the remote monitoring of a reproduction apparatus
6. Cooperative assistance for remote robot supervision
7. Telesurgery:: Remote monitoring and assistance during laparoscopy
8. Enabling secure remote assistance using a terminal services gateway
9. Wireless video audio data remote system

10. A digital television based solution for remote health care of rural people

    This idea is not very novel, since this topic has many people research on it. This is also because this is mainly what many people thought of when they think about computer human interaction. The related work I read about seems to have a well developed situation on this topic. Compare the works i read to the paper, it seems like the overall situation is well develop. However, in the paper, they said this is just initial step of this kind of work.

Evaluation:

it uses qualitative measure mainly and unbiased measures. I believe it did measure part of the system, since it only did a study over 10 people with two tasks. The first task is ask the participants to build Lego assembly work, and the second task is to install TV and DVD cables.  It did show a good result on the study. 

Discussion

I think the work is a very useful device to develop on. However, it's only still in a baby stage that many people have not try to make it into reality. The evaluation is appropriated since it help us to understand more about this device. The contribution is about novel, because it show people a way of doing remote assistance.