Our design project teamwork

In this post I want to review my own ideas and questions related to the design project work in our team, including some short notes about my own field studies (physical or virtual) and inquiries of relevance for the design project.

Our design team decided to model our travel-related website after the metaphor of a digital dinner party. It is at dinner parties where people gather and share their ideas about different things. On a more material level, they also choose items from a menu. We wanted to use this concept to design a pleasing experience, a place where people could plan and share their ideas about travel to various specific places.

My own experience of engaging with this team of designers was that, first, designers themselves should have a good understanding of the domain of the design--the problem space--and the usage of the digital artifact, in this case the travel website. Without a good understanding of real applications of the digital artifact, team members are not able to implement an effective project. The most important prerequisite for any interaction design work is for team members to imagine the experience of using that artifact prior to beginning the work of the design itself. Importantly, they should come into contact with potential users of the digital artifact. In order not to get distracted from the proper vision and goal of the project--to create user experience--the designer must be focused on the would-be user, their real interests, wishes, and needs.

The second point that bears consideration in any interaction design work is awareness of the relationship between the designer and his/her tool. The designer should have a deep understanding of the capabilities and weaknesses of said tool. Every tool we use has its own limitations and constraints. Although any tool offers capabilities that help the designer, it has weaknesses, as well, due to technology constraints. These constraints can prevent the designer from implementing his/her design idea effectively. For example, if a designer only considers the capabilities of the tool at hand, s/he may lose the opportunity to think more broadly than the possibilities offered by the current tool allow. So, having a critical point of view about the tool used for interaction design, as well as thinking beyond any given tool's capabilities, helps the designer find new and creative ways to design a real user experience.

My reflections and critical remarks from our guest lectures/workshops

These lectures were about practical ideas and techniques of interaction design to create user experience. The ideas and techniques that they offered are mostly based on behavioral science, including psychology, with a tendency to analyze the requirements and needs of users based on outer understanding of users. But what is ignored or not seriously addressed in these lectures is a discussion of understanding inner wishes of users as people.

I want to point to the ethnographic methods that try to understand people as users in their own contexts--their specific wishes, rituals, and desires.

In fact, in an engineering school that tries to have a human-oriented aspect, or user-centric approach, toward design of interactive digital artifacts -- supposed to be easy to use, easy to learn, and easy to understand by users -- focusing on behavioral approaches based on scientific observation of people as users is not a great achievement. This is not enough. This approach unfolds only one part of the solution. The other major part of the solution, one which is more important is teaching the students of engineering programs how to understand users of digital artifacts as people with their own specific interests, needs, and wishes. In this way, the education system should take an approach that broadens the world-view of students beyond limited observation based on scientific methods, be it engineering, psychology, or behavioral science. The students should learn to see the problems, the usage domain, and the people beyond laboratories, with a real attempt to understand people, rather than different design methods and designs--the understand people in their social and human context.

My Short Paper on Literature Seminar 2

II:1 introduces the concept of calm technology that engages both the “center” and the “periphery” of our attention, and in fact moves easily back and forth between the two, and this is encalming. According to II:1 calm technology does have the advantages of :

• enriching our space of artifacts;
• enriching our opportunities for being with other people;
• playing a central role in a more humanly empowered twenty-first century.

As an interaction designer, by studying II:1, I learn to design a product which engages both the “center” and the “periphery” of our attention and moves back and forth between the two, to achieve an enriched sense of locatedness. The other important point is that the way to become attuned to more information is to attend to it less.

Criticizing the traditional usability engineering and testing, II:2 introduces to the concept of “new usability”. II:2 argues that established methodologies are ill-suited to the context of emerging interactive products, and the business context in which they will be developed and applied to the market. II:2 particularly questions the effectiveness of laboratory-based usability testing approaches in the new context. Based on II:2, the “new usability” challenge is how to respond quickly to emerging technologies and applications and the following questions lie at the heart of the “new usability” research agenda:

• What is the role of usability testing and its relationship to usability inspections and enquiries in usability engineering methodologies and tools that can be applied that can be applied successfully to emerging interactive products?
• What new usability engineering and testing methodologies are required for the new context?

II:3 seeks to summarize the past trends in ubiquities computing (ubicomp) and outlines remaining challenges in the three themes of “natural interfaces”, “context-aware applications”, and “automated capture and access” by providing some interesting samples. II:3 also points to the undertaking issues of “scale”, which is implicit in the definition of ubicomp research: computational devices, physical space, people, time are mentioned as dimensions of scaling.

II:3 describes “everyday computing” as an emerging area of interaction research and addresses some required features of informal, daily activities, e.g. “interruption is expected”, …

Then, II:3 focuses on four challenges of research in everyday computing. Finally, II:3 addresses two important topics for ubicomp research: evaluation and social implication.

To me, this paper is the most helpful and thoughtful paper in this collection.

II:4 (The Invisible Computer) begins with a good sentence: “we are analog beings trapped in a digital world, and the worst part is, we did to ourselves”. By this introduction, II:4 provides some comparisons between humans and computers and between biological and technological evolution, and emphasizing the ever-increasing pace of change, points to the issues raised by treating people like machines. Finally, II:4 offers humans and computers as cooperating systems. The style of writing of this paper is interesting for me.

II:5 presents an ethnographic study of family communication and the role of new media in supporting emotional closeness. I learned a lot from the method used in this study, especially the way it considers and interprets the personal objects and family communication. This kind of study has enabled II:5 to get a better understanding of communication patterns and the use of communication technology in domestic life. The three prototypes developed in II:5 (lumicard, tree-lamp, 6^th sense) are good and interesting ideas, but the discussion provided at the end of paper requires more elaboration.

The last paper, II:6 has helpful points for interaction designers from urban planning perspective. II:6 argues that it is time to start inspirational research into the nature of newly emerging technological urban spaces. At the intersection of mobile and social computing, II:6 motivates a discussion about research on understanding this emerging space of computing within and across our public urban landscapes, “Urban Atmosphere”. This research could address four urban sub-themes: Place, Community, Infrastructure, and Traversal. II:6 offers Urban Probe as a “lightweight, provocative, intervention, methodology designed to rapidly deconstruct urban situations, reveal new opportunities for technology in urban spaces, and guide future long term research in urban computing“.

References:

II-1: Weiser, M & Seely Brown, J (1996): The coming age of calm technology. Working Paper, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, pp 1-7

II-2: Thomas, P & Macredie, R (2002): Introduction to the New Usability. ACM transactions on CHI, vol 9, no 2, June 2002, pp 69-73

II-3: Abowd, G.D & Mynatt, E.D (2000): Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in Ubiquitous Computing. ACM Transactions on HCI, vol 7, no 1, March 2002, pp 29-58

II-4: Norman, D.A (1998): The Invisible Computer, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, excerpt from the book (chapter 7)

II-5: Tollmar, K & Persson, J (2002): Understanding Remote Presence. In Proceedings of Nordic CHI 2002.

II-6: Paulos, E & Jenkins, T (2005): Urban Probes: Encountering Our Emerging Urban Atmospheres. In Proceedings of CHI 2005, Portland, April 2005, pp 341-350

My Short Paper on Literature Seminar 1

In Exam2 of this course HCI Design, as an individual task we need to review a set of papers for our two Literature seminars. The following is my short notes reflecting on six papers selected by teacher.

In general, the main subject addressed by this set of six papers is HCI and Usability:

In I:1 it starts to doubt the effectiveness of engineering approach to developing interactive systems; in I:2 it provides a theoretic classification of perspectives on usability as a central concept in HCI; I:3 explains the role of HCI in Computer Science and Software Engineering curricula, highlighting the concept of usability engineering; I:4 reflects on the concept of design representations in HCI; I:5 describes Contextual Design (CD) as a user-centered design process in HCI; I:6 I:6 presents an approach to generating visions for the future use of computers.

First of all, as a graduate of engineering school, I readily understand the concept of “engineering design” and “models” in I:1, and “usability engineering” as a perspective on usability in I:2. However, according to my practical experience in software development, I notice that the engineering perspective is not enough for the success of interactive systems, so it is interesting for me to elaborate further on the other perspectives of software development, such as “creative design” which is described in I:1 under a theoretical framework called “design methodology”.

According to I:1, design process (methodology) consists of three qualitative steps: conceptual step (which is guided by the designer’s vision which could be clarified compared to formats), constitutive step (in which the design concept is confronted with typical situations which yield requirements and constraints), and consolidatory step (refining the solution in terms of “simplicity and elegance” and “appropriateness of the long use”). In my opinion this design process should be iterative, not a waterfall process. Also, I wonder if the concept of “formats” is equal to “patterns” in software architecture. To sum up, the major implications of applying “design methodology” to “software development” would be emphasizing the role of designer, participatory approach, the implications of

After reading the five perspectives of usability in I:2, furthering more on the “usability engineering” happens in I:3. This paper believes that usability engineering would provide the necessary framework for the development of usable systems. Examining the role of HCI in the context of the Computer Science and Software Engineering curricula, I:3 suggests there needs to be much more integration between Computer Science and HCI. To do so, I:3 proposes adopting HCI as the underlying principle to the development of systems.

In I:4 with a thought-provoking introduction with a real example, the main question of the paper raises: “how do we say what we mean?”. This introduces a discussion of different design representations that designers usually use to communicate with other development team members and users of the system. I:4 tries to define the “design representations” via a rough categorization of representational “form” : conversations, proposals and plans, spaces and clusters, sketches, symbolic and schematic, scenarios and storyboards, and prototypes. Then other aspects of design representations are described: “content”, “role”, “scope”, “relationship”, “rhetorical intent”, “genres and interpretive communities”. This is a thoughtful paper.

I:5 describes Contextual Design (CD) as a user-centered design process developed by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblat. This approach is based on the designer’s understanding of how the customer works, focusing on designer’s detailed understanding of a customer’s need and the possibilities introduces by technology. “Ethnographic methods” is used for gathering data relevant to customer’s work, field studies, rationalizing workflows, system and designing human-computer interfaces. Contextual Design involves these parts: Contextual Inquiry, Work Modeling, Consolidation, Work Redesign, User Environment Design, Mockup and Test with Customers.

I:6 presents the concept of Future Workshops and metaphorical design as an approach to generating visions for the future use of computers. This approach tries to improve the user-designer cooperation with a focus on helping users about their work situations in the future. While reading this paper, I was thinking of the “Lundaland” case study we discussed in Strategic Management and IS course; how citizen groups with limited resources who wanted to participate in the decision making processes of public planning processes; how to generate visions about the future. A Future Workshop is divided into three phases: the Critique, the Fantasy, and the Implementation phase. Playing with metaphors in the Critique and the Fantasy phase makes it easy for the users to express their relevant likes and dislikes.

My favorite papers in this collection are I:2 and I:5;

- I:2 provides a comprehensive view on theoretical foundations of existing approaches to usability as an central part of HCI. I would like to elaborate more about relations of these five perspectives with philosophical foundations of research and study in information systems, like positivism, constructivism, critical theory, design science research, behavioral research etc

- I:5 offers a modern user-centric method to designing interactive systems and seeks to embed some interpretive techniques like ethnographic methods in Contextual Design, which allows designer get involved in participatory observation to understand the customer and his work. I would like to learn more about Contextual Design and to compare it with the other famous method called Soft Systems Methodology (SSM).

The selected papers referred in my essay are as follows:

I:1 Löwgren, J (1995): Applying Design Methodology to Software Development. Proceedings

of DISD ’95, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, pp 87-95

I:2 Löwgren, J (1995): Perspectives on Usability. IDA Technical Report 1995, LiTH-IDAR-

95-23, Department of Computer and Information Science, Linkoping University.

I:3 Faulkner, X & Culwin, F (2000): Enter the Usability Engineer: Integrating HCI and

Software Engineering. Proceedings of ITiCSE ’00, Vol 32, Issue 3, pp 61-64

I:4 Saddler, H.J (2001): Understanding Design Representations, AC Interactions,

July/August 2001, pp 17-24

I:5 Beyer, H & Holtzblatt, K (1999): Contextual Design, ACM Press, Interactions, January/

February 1999, pp 32-42

I:6 Kensing, F & Halskov Madsen, K (1991): “Generating vision: Future Workshops and

Metaphorical design”. Excerpt from Greenbaum & Kyng (1991): Design at work: cooperative

design of computer systems, Hillsdale, N.J, Chapter 8, pp 155-167

Beauty and Aesthetics in Interaction

Jonas Löwgren, the author of "Thoughtful Interaction Design" and some papers in INFX15 Compendium, has recently written a paper on how the aesthetics of interaction design can be handled through Interaction Criticism. This paper briefly states that:

"Even though the emerging field of user experience generally acknowledges the importance of aesthetic qualities in interactive products and services, there is a lack of approaches recognizing the fundamentally temporal nature of interaction aesthetics. By means of interaction criticism, I introduce four concepts that begin to characterize the aesthetic qualities of interaction.

• Pliability refers to the sense of malleability and tightly coupled interaction that makes the use of an interactive visualization captivating.
• Rhythm is an important characteristic of certain types of interaction, from the sub-second pacing of musical interaction to the hour-scale ebb and flow of peripheral emotional communication.
• Dramaturgical structure is not only a feature of online role-playing games, but plays an important role in several design genres from the most mundane to the more intellectually sophisticated.
• Fluency is a way to articulate the gracefulness with which we are able to handle multiple demands for our attention and action in augmented spaces."

Read this "beautiful" paper here.

Augmented Reality as one of 10 Web trends to watch in 2010

Pete Cashmore lists his 10 Web trends that we'll be talking about next year:

1- Real-time ramps up

2- Location, location, location

3- Augmented reality

4- Content 'curation'

5- Cloud computing

6- Internet TV and movies

7- Convergence conundrum

8- Social gaming

9- Mobile payments

10- Fame abundance, privacy scarcity

Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He is writing a weekly column about social networking and tech for CNN.com.

The story highlights:

• Sparked by Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, the real-time communications trend will grow.
• The cloud-computing movement will see a major leap forward in the first half of 2010.
• 2010 will be the breakthrough year of the much-anticipated mobile payments market.

He states his idea about Augmented Reality in the next year as follows:

• It's yet to become part of the consumer consciousness, but augmented reality has attracted early-adopter buzz in the latter part of 2009. Enabled by GPS, mapping data from the likes of Google and the accelerometer technology in modern phones, AR involves overlaying data on your environment; imagine walking around a city and seeing it come to life with reviews of the restaurants you walk past and Wikipedia entries about the sights you see.
• When using Layar, for instance, the picture from your phone's video camera is overlaid with bubbles of information from Yelp, Wikipedia, Google Search and Twitter. The challenge for such services is to prove their utility: They have the "cool factor," but can they be truly useful?

Read more here.

Piano Stairs

Giving a lecture on the concept of "virtual dinner party" as the main theme for our creative practical project, Erik provided a simple, but notable example to explain how technology could make people happy while improving their life; here is that example:

An initiative of Volkswagen called "The Fun Theory" motivates and supports this kind of ideas and inventions. TheFunTheory.com "is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better."