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.

Lecture 10-9 Post-Mortem

The thing about this class is that, I probably know about 70%-80% of the content because I'm in computer science. Friends and teachers will sometimes show these nifty videos or Slashdot will mention it or it'll somehow cascade to you because it is relevant to what you do. It's something that the geek community passes around, revels, and applauds over.

So I suppose the reason why I am in this class is to see if there is something new to be absorbed, some different angle that was noted that no one has seen before. From a programmer's point of view, you see things in technical terms. (But before computers, I was really an avid artist in high school) And sometimes I look at things from an aesthetic point of view and I know why it didn't end up being successful despite the advanced technology it touts.

Therefore, what I do find interesting are the little side thoughts I have have when I review a lot of the information again.

For example, the car data extraction mentioned in class today (I had seen this earlier in a cognitive science class I had taken a few quarters back). Back then, I shrugged and said, "I guess it's interesting for the car makers to know this information". But this time. I noticed the 360 camera in the video and I sort of had a side thought of an idea:

The biggest concern with cars and driving in general are collisions.

Collisions happen when you don't see something, or see it but its too late to correct your mistake. As long as you are aware of everything around you and you don't actively collide into it, you should be fine (unless someone else runs into you).

Therefore, there should be something to consistently monitor what is around your car at all times.

Now I know in Japan, it's law to have the 4 corner cameras on your car, but that still means you have to monitor the objects in your car cameras.

But the idea I had was that you could create a detection system that monitored the space around your car. There can be a feedback either on a monitor that showed a representational model of your vehicle and all objects surrounding it or some other device to keep you aware of all things surrounding your vehicle at all times.

Now the system's advantage would be that if you were to turn your car, you would turn on your signal lights and it could scan the objects in the direction that you intended to turn your car. It would give a light 'be cautious' beep to tell you there is someone in the other lane. And a louder beep if there is someone in the lane within collision distance. (In addition, the system is also good because if forces drivers to turn on their turn signals -which is a huge problem and is also the cause of a lot of collisions today). This is a very initial idea and would need a lot of fleshing out, but perhaps it would be a better system than just putting camera monitors on the car's dash that the driver might not necessarily always be able to look at if they have to keep their eyes on the road.

Another thing I was interested in was the minicam that one of the researchers used, was it real time live stream or a series of intermittent pictures strung together? And if it's the former, it is certainly small enough to aid in surgical procedures. Why not use the tiny cams instead of the giant tubes you have to stick down a patient's throat?

Fun Stuff

I checked out the Processing.org page and it looks like a lot of fun, so I might fiddle around with it, regardless of if I'll end up doing a final project for it.

Yay, the professor showed the Image resizing video, I show this one all the time to my friends, along with this video:

Microsoft Image technology

*note: seadragon looks a lot like dynograph

I find that Photosynth was the much more impressive part of the presentation

I also found a tangible music table video last year that I thought would apply to this class very well:

Reactable

How cool would it be to have a live interactive concert with these?

HCI people research

I saw that by next Sunday, we had to find a 'Person of the Week' for COGS120. Not too sure about all the specs. of the assignment, however, I figured the best way to start was to find notable HCI people and then pick one out of all of them:


Douglas Engelbart - came up with the 'mouse'
Paul Fitts - math models of rapid/aimed human movement
Alan Kay - OOP and GUI
Steve Mann - Wearable computer (I've seen a video of this somewhere)
Ivan Sutherland - sketchpad

(that's what I have so far -and it's mostly people that I think have a bigger influence in general) But I will continue to look for others...

I'm sure, more will be covered in lecture.