Week 10 - last post

I find it interesting that the guest speaker on Tuesday was a girl that has been in my CSE classes before and she was introducing a lot of stuff that she said was new, like ubiquitous presenter, even though that sort of system has been used in my CSE classes since I was a freshman here. Now that I think of it, maybe I sort of took the system for granted, assuming that everyone else has used it and that it was used by universities everywhere. It wasn't until later that I realized that this prevalent technology in my CSE classes was only contained within the CSE department. It's very useful for me, as a student and so I had assumed everyone else was taking advantage of this, I actually didn't even know it was an ongoing experiment for most of my classes, really, I'm a bit embarrassed now at my assumptions. My experiences with ubiquitous presenter was usually great, save for the one or two times the professor lost the file that saved his inked notes. I thought it was cool that the TA also doing audio charting research, which would go great with ubiquitous presenter if done right. I've actually had friends who run nerd gatherings like 'bar camp' and SuperHappyDevHouse show interest in ubiquitous presenter, but I don't think it's open to the public. (Which is too bad, they really wanted something like ubiquitous presenter to preserve the lightning talks they have at meets.)

On another note:

I find it interesting that everyone likes to follow the ad hoc design of the curly tail to indicate a content is being copied when, in my own mind, I find it kind of lacking in usability. I kept hoping that most tablet companies would come up with a pen like the ones Wacom uses for their artist tablets, with little buttons built in on the pen so that you can actually use it like a mouse (with a left and right click). But I've noticed that most tablet pens are very simple, which is too bad, because I think clicking on a pen lends it self to being more easily ingrained subconsciously without having the user memorize key strokes required to do certain actions. The technology is certainly there, I'm just surprised that most companies haven't borrowed upon that idea. Moreover, they've even gone a far as adding additional components, like foot pedals and knobs to take care of the copy command issue, when adding a few buttons on a pen really isn't that difficult. It's surprising, what we overlook sometimes when pursuing a design.

Week9

Jan Borchers

I thought a lot of the projects he was currently working on to be quite interesting. I particularly liked the orchestra simulation and the ubiquitous snowboard instructor ones. Considering the sort of technology behind it,

I actually think the technology behind the ubiquitous snowboard instructor can easily translate to training in just about any other physical activity. For example, in baseball, it would be a great way for batting instructors to see exactly which part of a batter's swing is off, if it's because he cocks the wrists too early or follows through too early, if his feet are the incorrect distance apart, etc. If you had waterproof hardware, you could do the same for swimming. In fact, if you want to take it one step further, you can even use it for training in jobs that require someone to do physical things, like if you're a cook at a fast food chain restaurant. Unfortunately, the downside of allowing things like big business to get their hands into such technology is almost a guarantee of abuse of power. While in concept, it would be a good idea, in real life it would only allow employers to invade the privacy of their employees' even more.

Professor Borchers also mentioned tentative work with organic things, but organic technology is still very unstable at the moment because there haven't been any real breakthroughs in bioengineering that can really allow the cognitive science side to drive forward with innovations. However, I think Professor Borchers should keep an eye on the current movement to make electronic transistors carbon based. They've been able to successfully pull off making a carbon transistor, and they claim that using carbon transistors will require less electricity than silicon or germanium based transistors. Because the future of transistors may be carbon based, this might open the doors for a lot of bioengineering research. Unfortunately, there is still the electricity problem to contend with, and a lot of new organic technology (like glucose batteries that have a water bi-product) still cannot handle the electricity conductance problem.

Week 7

Project:

Everyone interviewed one person (my person was actually DJ, he was our first trial run to see how we should phrase the questions. He was able to give us some feedback on which questions he thought were better and which were unnecessary.) and afterwards we all tried to devise ideas on our own to figure how to deal with certain problems we thought were important to address.

After our interviews, on saturday, we all got together to write the essay. First we found out that some of the problems overlapped, so we had different ideas for solutions to those problems. Unfortunately the paper was limited to only 5 pages, so we made sure to be concise about which two problems we had to address.

Writing the paper was actually evenly distributed amongst all of us. We had two laptops and we divided pieces of the points we had to address in the paper. When one of us ran out of ideas to write, the other would take over, and vice versa. When we reached the 5 page mark in the end, we merged the points for the paper and each person took a turn reading through it, editing, and making sure the paper flowed together.

All in all, I thought it was a pretty good group effort, there wasn't one person that was forced to type the whole time and when someone was stuck, someone else was able to take over, so the paper was written quite efficiently. Everyone was agreeable with someone else editing their own information, so we didn't lead to any conflicts. I suppose, from a computer scientist point of view, you could say that we were 'extreme programming', but with an essay instead of a program.

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lecture comment:

I really thought the soap idea was terrific and I sent it around to my nerd friends up in the bay area, I think we're going to make a couple of them over winter break for our own amusement.

On the other hand, while the chumby is an interesting idea, I'm not so sure how marketable it is at the moment because everyone is leaning towards portable phones/applications and embedded devices that you can carry around in your pocket. Though the chumby is a good idea, it's very possible that if you could write the same sort of application for your iphone and just put your iphone on your desk instead. (well if not the iphone, then certainly the gphone can do this since it has an entire operating system on it).

first interviewee - Daniel J. Watson

DJ interview notes:
Getting on bike: left foot then right swing
Riding long distances (right foot on pedal, left pushes off of ground)
riding long distances and then getting on (left step, right step, left foot on pedal, right swing

Difficult to fix:
-difficult to adjust breaks (need special tools)
-if re-angling is required (should be done by a professional)
-spokes (loose), you can fix, but it's very hard if you manage to break them
-The frame bends easily if your spokes are broken

wheels are made out of aluminum or carbon-fiber if you buy a more expensive bike
best place to store things: behind back wheel (not the front, unbalanced)
The chain falls off easily if you have a bike with multiple gears, if you don't adjust them, they'll fall off at least once a day
knowing what to do with the gearshift -counter-intuitive, but the auto-gear shift bikes are expensive and poorly made

lock issue: takes forever to lock up bikes + you have to look for someplace suitable to lock them up
-is it possible to make a bike you can fold and carry with you?

seat: uncomfortable,numbing (esp. for guys)
seat is usually adjusted in the wrong place (located at the same place when the user first buys it, even though you're supposed to adjust it to fit you.

quick release: seat and front wheel (easy to steal)

standing while biking instead of sitting-biking: you only do this for short bursts -going up hills or changing gears
C shaped handles for racing
T shaped handles for general use (difficult to bike if you have food/drinks that you can't put in a bag)

Mis-use of bikes: sitting on front - easy to unbalance, topple over, difficult to bike with too (blocks view)
-standing on pegs in the back (dangerous if they're unsteady and you suddenly make a turn, they can get caught on your back wheel
-biking very fast and then mashing on the brakes (can cause the cyclist to flip over the front wheel (if they brake the front wheel before the back wheel))

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When asked: out of all the things he talked, what would he like to change/correct the most?

He said that locking up his bike has always been a big issue because when you go to lock up your bike you have to detour to where the bike racks are and spend forever unraveling, properly adjusting your lock so that you can lock up both the front and back wheels of your bike (and of course that doesn't prevent thieves from stealing the seat because most bikes these days have quick release seats). So perhaps one thing to deeply consider is how to make sure bikes are secure or how to remove the incentive of stealing the bicycle. (i.e. take away an important component that makes it impossible to ride).

We did sort of consider making a portable bike that folds together, but seeing how many companies have done it in the past and the usual critique of issues with 'too small' tires and still too heavy to carry around, folding up your bike will still be a problem.

However, two ideas that were considered were: what if you could 'accordion' the bike's frame and the other idea was, what if you built the lock into the bike or made it so that if you broke the lock, the bike would be un-ride-able.

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The other main point that was brought up, was the bike's seat. Which is particularly uncomfortable for guys. When we asked why they couldn't try using a rectangular shake instead of the usual triangle shape for the bicycle, he said it made pedaling too difficult if there wasn't a center divide between the legs.

Unfortunately, because the shape of the seat is integral with the efficiency of the cyclist, we were so far unable to come up with a solution so far. However, we do recognize it as a serious problem for the male gender. Especially since more than one claims that after riding the bike for a while, they tend to go numb in the areas in which they use to sit on the bike.

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However, there are a few features we can handle, for example, the carrying food issue. Because we usually want to watch and make sure our food doesn't spill/tip over and since food doesn't weigh very much, a light, collapse-able food holder on the front bars of the bike might be beneficial to a lot of cyclists.

Whereas, the heavier loads (like books and notebooks) can be attached in a container behind the back seat, behind the back wheel (but narrow enough that it would not cause additional air resistance (which could hinder the biker).

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And finally, there was the problem with flipping over the front of the bike, while it is possible to create a sort of device that will stop the bicycle from completely flipping over the front wheel. The problem still remains that you cannot stop the cyclist's own forward momentum. So even if you kept the bike stable on the ground, the cyclist themselves would still flip over the front bars. Unfortunately, anything short of strapping the cyclist to the seat wouldn't really help in this sort of situation because the cyclist has too much forward momentum when they try to abruptly stop.

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While interviewing, we also realized that there were too many different kinds of bikes to consider from special terrain bikes used for extreme sports cyclists to racing bikes to very simple bikes with no gear shifts.

We realized that would have to narrow our scope to bikes that people typically use. So for our report, we'll mostly stick to bikes that are generally used for transportation (not racing or sports) and can gear shift (since the bikes that don't gear shift are usually used by younger bikers).

week 5 (4?) things and proj2

Mostly this week, all of us were preparing/reviewing/taking the midterm. I really wish I didn't just take 3 midterms on Thursday though, I'm sure I did poorly on one of them. At the moment, I'm in a state of denial so I'm trying not to to think too hard about whatever trivial question I messed up on. Because really, that's what tests are all about... *sigh* how I missed the Montessori system.

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Project 2

Had a bit of difficulty thinking about what object to center our project on. While backpack wasn't a terrible idea. It wasn't a very interesting one either. We jumped around ideas from chairs to toothbrushes to laptops and finally we settled on the bicycle. If you think about it, the structure of a bicycle hasn't changed too much over the past few decades. Sure the materials for it have gotten better, made it sturdier. So, whatever issues people had with it's structure, it certainly still exists today. In addition, it is still a complex and specialized enough machine that it is fairly difficult for the common person to repair.

Here are some observations I've had from just watching people on bicycles:

Difficulty getting on - I've noticed that the old fashioned way bicycles were made, they were easier to get on because there was no middle bar and you could swing your leg over the front-center of the bicycle. While the middle bar does contribute to making the bicycle sturdier, is it necessary for the amateur cyclist?

Hard to store - as we have all seen, there will always be problems with storing the bicycle, it's always too large, you have to tie it up outside. Even if you had a central collapsible frame, you still have two big wheels to deal with.

Theft - theft of bicycles is prevalent on campus, which is why the school makes a lot of people register their bikes (for a fee). A lot of people don't want to pay to register their bikes with the school, so the school takes the bikes away? (sounds kind of like a mafia protection system to me -register your bike or else we take it away anyways?).

Maintenance - I have friends who have a tendency to treat their bicycles pretty harshly, like: hopping several flights of stairs. They're constantly changing the spokes on their tires, is there a better way to design the tire?

Storage - from water bottles to attachments on the back, people like tying things to their bicycles, but as many have discovered, this tends to impede movement if the object is too bulky, in the wrong place, or off balance, is there a better place to put your things so that you don't knock them around so often?

These are some of the ideas, our group (Vivien, Kim, Brian, Diana) will meet again next week to discuss this further and interview 4-6 people for our report.

Lecture 10-18 post-mortem

I think my reaction to the video on IDEO was: envy.

For me, coming up with ideas for things is sort of like a hobbie, it's idealistic, and to think that people actually do this for a living, it makes me think they're the luckiest people in the world. I have notebooks at home with doodles of things that I think could be designed better. If I hadn't ended up a computer programmer, very likely I would have gone into industrial design.

I find it fun to observe things and to squirrel away any new or interesting devices I find, either from articles, news, places I've traveled. It's all very interesting because people are interesting. And because there are things like 'Thoughtless acts', that make it so that designing things is always a challenge. How do you create a product that can appeal to every one? How do you make one that's smart, every button, every key, every shape and location on an object is important, despite our initial dismissal of them. For example, remotes, you should alway place the channel changer where-ever people will rest their thumbs while handling a tv remote because it is the most often used button. In addition, the power button should always be as far away as possible from often used buttons because no one wants to accidentally turn off the tv. All the buttons should be spaced so there's no double button smashing if someone uses the remote in a haphazard fashion, etc.

When it comes to creating things, if you're going spend all that time, money, effort into making a product, why not just make that extra little step to design it well so that it's user friendly? Because when the user is aware of the fact that you thought about them when designing your product, it is very likely they'll come back to you for future products.

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In other news, I thought we had a group of 3, but then I remember Diana joined the class, so we actually have 4... I was initially thinking about redesigning backpacks, especially for people that carry their computers around with them all the time.

I know that it's only supposed to be about interviewing people and deriving information from their complaints and wishes, but I think my brain already went ahead of myself, so I already started to think about how to redesign it.

Because having a computer in the backpack is important, we have to think about the strength of the frame of the backpack and the inner cushions so that the backpack isn't damaged. I was thinking that maybe the frame of the backpack should be fold-able in some way so that your backpack can stand upright when you're not carrying it (because there's usually concern about letting a backpack flop over if there's a $2,000 piece of equipment inside). In addition, does the foam cushioning most laptop bags use today even help if you accidentally drop a laptop bag? I've seen this sort of rubbery gel material (for keyboard wrist rests) that would work so much better if you lined the inside of backpacks with them.

Additional problem: where do you put the charger? what about recharge-able solar panels?

Other thoughts:
-Should we give the user the option to use the backpack like it's a backpack or a messenger bag? if so, how do we design it so that, it's okay to flip the bag the other way around?
-handles on a backpack are important, but if your bag can be a messenger bag too, how do you deal with the fact that the handle needs to be on the wider part of the bag now?
-multipart/customizable bag? You can attach additional parts to the backpack depending on if you need to carry books, stationary, or food that day. (this was a good idea too for the shopping cart, I think implementing this into the backpack may help.)

Hall of Fame: Amazon.com

Amazon.com

I would like to nominate Amazon.com to the Hall of Fame for their user friendly design and business ingenuity. Although, I must admit that the business ingenuity may not necessarily benefit the user. It is still interesting how Amazon.com can create an invisible under-layer to calculate how to keep a user on their page without the user ever really noticing. Amazon.com’s reason for creating a sticky webpage (a webpage that keeps the users on their page for as long as possible) is because it increases the probably that an item will be purchased. We will examine the different ways Amazon makes their site as user attractive and buyer friendly as possible through initial (base) HTML design, dynamic page creation, and knowledge of how their users behave.

If you open up the Amazon.com site, you will notice that most of their non-links and non-title text is black on white. Their title text is orange on white because it highlights the headers without making it difficult for the users to see (like yellow on white). User sensitivity to color is an important thing, a site lacking aesthetics with clashing colors can very easily turn away users. In this case, their tab bar is a fading shade of blue, which is complementary to the orange header text. They make sure to mostly stick with primary colors due to the fact that PCs and Macs can sometimes have color discrepancies and they do their best to accommodate user that still using 8-bit monitors. Amazon.com sections off links on their page using borders instead of different color shadings since it has been shown in studies that people can organize grouped information better if is contained within a box over if its background is shaded. They also make tabbed links across the top to make sure that the user can always find their way back to the original pages they came from. Now, one may think that everyone going on Amazon.com will get the same site, however, what most people are not aware of is that Amazon.com is a dynamically created webpage.

A dynamic webpage is a webpage that keeps track of each user that visits their site and when their system identifies a user that has used their site in the past. Records of which items the user looked at, which items were put on their wish list, and which items the user purchased are all kept on their servers. Moreover, they use the user’s cookies to store a lot information on that user so that the next time the user goes back, Amazon.com looks at your cookies and identifies you are the same user as before. From this information Amazon.com generates personalized pages geared towards each particular user and their interests. Double bundle deals and certain discounts for common items are generated so that they may entice the user to purchase more things from Amazon.com. In addition, they take advantage of the user’s desire to be similar to others and tell them how many people like them just purchased that item (it is a sort of reassurance technique to make the user feel like they understand trends and that they are not eccentric). Recently, they added ‘tags’ so that users can input keywords, to find items they have a tendency to drift towards. So, these tags will also contribute in dynamically building pages to suit the user. As fancy as dynamic webpage building is, there are a few other tricks Amazon uses because they understand how their users tend to work.

Amazon.com’s users have access to the internet, so it is safe for them to assume that users have visited other internet pages and possibly other online stores. If you notice in all online stores, they tend to follow the same ad hoc rules. Shopping cart in the top right corner and links will always be blue. One may notice that some other personalized sites have different colored links, but Amazon makes sure to stay with the convention (all links are blue) so no one gets confused. In fact, many sites like Amazon do tests on their site to see how often users will click on text or accidentally miss buttons (if they probability is too high, they make slight changes to their site –for example: increase the button size- so that users will never miss the button). Another user behavior that Amazon.com has studied is that internet users tend to ‘pogo’ through internet sites. They look for something by continuously going link after link until they reach a point where they want to go back to their original page, so they start hitting the ‘back’ button. Amazon makes it easy for us to retrace our steps by creating tabs at the top of the page so that you can go back to the home page much more quickly than if you were to continuously back space.

When purchasing something from Amazon, one thinks to click on the little cart in the top right corner. What most people do not realize is that Amazon had multiple ways to do the same thing on the same page; especially when it comes to time to check out and purchase the item. In addition to the shopping cart at the top, there is a button on the side next to the wish list, ‘add to shopping cart’ which will take you to your shopping list, and there is a My Cart link at the bottom of the page, in case you get lost and just decide to purchase whatever you have at the moment.

Another thing that is interesting to note is that Amazon’s bundle deals have been moved up higher to the top so as to attract the users, in the past (the product information and product customer reviews used to be higher up on the page. But as time passed, they have increasingly added more advertisements for other products (related to the product you are currently purchasing) closer to the top and pushed customer reviews to the bottom. One can theorize that t hey did this because customer reviews can be fickle and Amazon.com can never be sure that the reviews will be good. Sometimes the impulse buyer may never notice the customer reviews if they never reach the lower parts of the product page, so they will end up purchasing the item (as opposed to un-buying the item if they catch sight that the product is not good).

So as you can see, Amazon.com put a lot of thought into how to design their page to increase the probability of their consumers purchasing something from their site. While we may be indignant at the thought that they are able to maneuver us into buying more products than we initially planned on buying. Nevertheless, it is still very interesting in how there is a science to ‘internet shopper behavior’ and how Amazon.com has built a sort of efficient algorithm to entice their audience the best way they can. Because it is not just simply building an attractive site, it is building a site that is intelligent and caters to the things in which we desire and it takes into account that we are internet users who have brought knowledge over from visiting other sites and may apply that knowledge upon looking at their own site.