Nov. 26 Social Issues - Commercial vs Free Software

Lab: Commerial / Free Software Applications

In comparing free with commercial software applications contrasts are most apparent to me in four areas (excluding cost): features, innovation, usability, and stability/polish. 

Free software applications tend to be limited in their feature set, frequently seeming to be a knock-off of the commercial equivalent of the application minus a generation or two. This relates directly to the area of innovation – free software applications can be wholly and quite distinctly radical in their approach – for example the free/indie game movement – but are likely the product of one person or a very small team and so frequently serve a narrow-niche problem; they tend not to fill general gaps like “word processing” or “spread-sheets” because these areas are well-served by larger, more general (and generic). These larger projects tend to lack innovation, trying instead to duplicate commercial software functionality for the free market. 

Free software products tend to lack some usability and polish because the resources in the group rarely exist to support these efforts and the adhocracies that build them are challenged to integrate testing on a “finished” product. The developer/user community may enable longer quasi-beta states after a launch – relying on a volunteer network – refinements and patches flow in when and if the community creates them. Software can feel like the work-in-progress it frequently is. 

An exception to may of these rules is the suite of “free” tools made available by Google. They are robust, rich in features, polished, incredibly user-friendly, and among the most innovative products on the market. However, to consider them “free” in the same sense that GNU/Linux or Open Office is free misses the point. Google is ad serving, a business model whose chief product is audience. Practically every service they offer is involved in the effort of aggregating audience or data-mining them to provide better targeting and market segmentation. Google is getting paid for their products and richly so. 

One key strength of the open source community is security. Because the communities and the source code are open to inspection, exploits are found, reported, and fixed quite readily. With closed, commercial applications there can be fewer eyes reviewing code for exploits, and reports of the vulnerability to the company may go unreported to the public until the company has a patch. There have been examples where well-meaning citizens have reported vulnerabilities and eventually felt compelled by lack of action on behalf of the company to go public with warning of a possible exploit and force the company’s hand. Microsoft has been placed in this position – with their near-monopoly user-base they are the choice for black hat targeting. Patching their systems can be daunting with source code in the multimillions of lines.

Now – all that said, I compared Open Office 3.0 to MS Office 2007 to a surprising revelation: Open Office is every bit as polished as Office. Now, much of the interface metaphor in OO3 is comparable to that of MSO2003 so the observation that free software tends to be a generation behind still holds. And I haven’t found anything truly innovative in the implementation, but then I didn’t expect to, given that this is general use, mass-market targeted office productivity software. But as features and polish are concerned, this is first-rate software. I was able to ramble my way through to a document with title page, pagination, columns, images and tables with captions in a way that was not consistent with Microsoft, but was consistent with the windows computing environment and so revealed either iterative testing and development or a savant on the dev team. 

I like it. 

Nov. 19 - Accessibility

Why should designers consider accessibility for people with disabilities?

Designing for accessibility serves three primary purposes – the first and most important being inclusiveness. Communities are most robust with the broadest talents and perspectives available to them. The perspective brought to systems by those with different abilities and constraints highlights weaknesses in systems that may otherwise go unnoticed. We cannot avail ourselves of the all intelligence available to us if we do not make the channels and forums accessible.

In Joe Clark’s book Building Accessible Websites, I learned that some form of vision, hearing, hand-impairment or learning disability is present in a little more than 10% of the US population. That is significant population of participants to exclude completely by design. 

The second reason is cost. Back to Clark again where he points towards a survey by The Office of Disability Employment Policy’s Job Accommodation Network (U.S. Department of Labor). They surveyed callers to their information line and found:

19% of callers incurred no cost to accommodate, 50% incurred $500 or less, and only 19% spent more than $1,000. A tiny 4% of callers could not identify a cost saving in carrying out the accommodation, and fully 25% of callers pegged the cost saving as between $20,001 and $100,000. A Labor report concludes: “Companies reported an average return of $28.69 in benefits for every dollar invested in making an accommodation.”

He goes on to state that “experts” estimate that accommodating accessibility in websites can add about 2% to development costs if done from the start

Finally, attention to accessibility needs for all creates opportunities to ensure that the site is accessible and appropriately meets the needs of those without physical or mental disability. As in the next example, while going through the steps of identifying the accessibility problems of the building for those with disabilities, it became apparent that the building was not very user friendly to those with all abilities available to them.

Find something in your everyday work or leisure environment that is not accessible, state why. What are some suggestions that could improve it?

Somewhat surprisingly, our new office building is almost completely inaccessible to those with physical disabilities. A two-story building built 90 years ago it has only a single freight elevator which is kept on the second floor and can not be summoned from the ground floor. A visitor to the building who is unable to walk stairs would need to know in advance that they can not access offices on the second floor without arranging for someone to bring the elevator down and let them in through the freight receiving door. There is no ground floor intercom to contact people in offices and pedestrian entrance ways are not fitted with mechanical assists. A visitor to the building who was also unable to open the door – a wheelchair-user, for instance – would be forced to wait until someone came to let them in to the building so they could begin recruiting help from ground floor offices to help them contact the upstairs offices. There are no accessibility concessions for the blind other than some company plaques having been engraved. Even way-finding for those without disability is quite poor, and the freight elevator is found by chance only.

Possible solutions include: 

• Fitting at least one door with mechanical assists
  
• Installing either a stair-lift system or pedestrian elevator
  
• Noting mechanically assisted door and elevator access on maps at all other entrances with a “you are hear” message and directions to reach the accessible entrance
  
• Braille or engraved signage at standard heights and locations
  
• Proper wayfinding for the sighted 
  

Nov. 5 - Design Tools and Applications

Pick one or more of the applications we discussed in this lecture & that you haven’t used before {Illustrator, Fireworks, Audition, Premiere}

Follow one of the introductory tutorials for a basic task

Critique the following:

• The interface
  
• The tutorial
  
• The overall ease of use
  
• General usability
  

Critique: Adobe Illustrator CS3

The interface

Definitely an expert-user's interface. The power of the tool is incredible but the novice user is both swamped with options and, at the same time, unable to find the tools they need because they are buried in tabs and menus.

The tutorial

Good instruction provided one slows down to read all the instructons - layout may have helped here by providing step summaries in a call-out box. On-screen reading tends towards scanning and can bypass critical information or miss important steps if one believes he has the knowledge to complete the action. Familiarity with other Adobe programs can lead to overconfidence and there is a slowly growing realization about the difference in interface and operations between Photoshop and Illustrator despite the vector-based tools that reside in Photoshop.

A picture "on the course website" is to be used as a final reference for what our picture should look like. This should be included in the tutorial. Ah - it is, further down the document. That is most unfortunate - I spent a good deal of time looking for that.

The overall ease of use

After the use-relationships between objects, tools and attributes has been internalized, this is actually a very easy program to use. And with every new trick, it grows more powerful. I love it.

General usability

Usability is quite high once the steep learning curve has been ascended.

Oct 22 - Communication Interfaces

Why would a user want to use video conferencing instead of audio conferencing or text chat?

A user would most likely want to use video conferencing rather than audio or chat during those times when the communication is improved by having access to the richer amount of information provided by body language and other non-verbal signals.

How would you solve the message overload problem with email?

If I could solve this I would probably die wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. That said, the first thing I would do is move all my email systems over to a gmail-style interface mostly because of the automatic grouping of messages into conversations, archiving, the search functionality, and tagging. Integrate this email client within a broader suite of archived, grouped, searchable communications tools including chat, audio and video conferencing, blogs, wikis, to do lists, project workbacks and calendars. Most things email is being used for are would be far better suited to other channels. If messages were sent in the most appropriate channel it is likely the overload decrease. 

If content could flagged easily for obsolescence or even track itself as an issue that could be marked as “resolved” then archive itself, I’d be happier.

Oct 15 - Navigation Design

Consider your projects, and discuss some of the issues that may arise when designing a navigation structure for the interaction. 

My project is an interactive installation designed to involve users standing in a queue. It features a very simple concept requiring a relatively flat learning curve due to the short time available to learn the interface and enjoy a satisfying experience. 

As such:

That the piece is interactive needs to be readily inferable, interacting an attractive and enticing proposition, and the intent of the interactivity readily deducible from the layout and any exploratory interacting.

The availability of actions and options need to be constrained to a minimum, and those options and their outcomes made readily apparent or easily undoable.

The motions need to be simple and natural as there will be little time for new motor skill acquisition

Because it is possibly a one-time only experience, and it occurs in a public area with distractions and quite probably an audience, the cognitive load should be kept low, “terminal” mistakes should be prevented, choices made recoverable, and successful action made easily attainable.  Options should appear only as needed and vanish from the cognitive load afterwards. 

Also to be considered, though, is that many of the users frequent the Tim Hortons regularly if not frequently and therefore may have a number of repeat exposures to the piece. If there can be a level of meaning or outcomes revealed to those who come many times, that would add depth and perhaps longevity by defraying the sense of “I’ve seen all there is to see here”. 

In a smart home scenario, discuss some of the problems with designing help systems, and some potential solutions. 

Some general problems with designing smart home systems include:

Distracted users – the home is a busy place and users may not be paying attention either to input or feedback. 

- possible solutions here include alerts, utilizing sight-lines to locate affordances and feedback mechanisms, timing feedback to occur directly with input and direct the feedback at a sense that corresponds to the input (i.e. tactile such as vibration or force-feedback corresponding to manual input).

Users are frequently engaged in the task and it occupies some of their ability to give input or receive feedback – either with filled hands/mouth/eyes, inability to leave a location, cognitive load. Input/Feedback devices that were built into the tools or the location that correspond to the smart tools that the user desires to recruit could help with this. Additionally, the house could be “smart enough” that – through observation of the activities of the user could offer help. 

Misinterpreting signals – the smart home could misinterpret signals and act to implement actions the user did not wish to have happen. This could be prevented by having the house offer help and require the user to approve but I can imagine this being quite annoying if not done quickly and subtlely.

Security – a computer system produces its own set of insecurities which could be exploited by someone seeking to gain entry to the house, vandalize, or defraud. Most breaks in security systems are human failures – leaving locks unlocked, passwords besides keypads, etc. Designing the security system for human usability could help.

System failure/lockout – a failure in the system could lock users out of their media, appliances, or home. A failure could result in safety mechanisms not operating. Care would have to be made to design systems to announce their dysfunction as a failure-default mode (i.e. “no power” draws power from a batter to announce a power failure). Essential systems should have redundancy and software failure should return machines to “dumb” functionality so that, even if you can’t program the oven you can use it.

Some of the categories of things “smartened” in a Smart Home include:

Lighting – controlling which lights go on when and in response to what environmental or user conditions.

Home Theater/Music – controlling show recording or media acquisition (watching blogs or ratings lists for things the user likes), playback conditions (mode, zones, channels/media changing/playlists, volume).

Heat/AC – home environment temperature in response to weather conditions and occupancy

Cameras/security – monitoring the premises for intruders, alerting the occupants, triggering alarms or authorities

Fire/smoke/evacuation – monitoring for evidence of fires, alerting emergency response crews, highlighting exits, providing evacuation instruction, identifying the source and possibly cause. Preventative monitory – i.e. watching for “hot spots” or other problems and alerting the user before there is an emergency.

Kitchen – restocking and remote cooking

Irrigation systems – water plants in and out of doors

Maintenance and repairs – tracking maintenance, booking servicing, announcing possible problems. Seeking replacements. Monitoring upgrades.

Oct 8 - User Interface Components

What potential impact will pervasive and ubiquitous computing have on the way we use our desktop computers?

As pervasive and ubiquitous computing becomes more prevalent we are likely to see an overall decrease in the amount of time spent working at a computer; users will be freed from the artifact to go where the activity. Only certain kinds of action and certain habits of work are likely to be continued. Those users who are habituated to write or research are likely to continue to do so. Collaborative work where the users are geographically close may move to platforms more supportive of teamwork – table tops or walls. Personal work may be accomplished on intimate devices most appropriate to the task and will follow the user to their most comfortable place to work. Devices are likely to adopt a thin-client format accessing a cloud computing environment with ubiquitous access to personal data and tools, and the form factor will be selected based upon appropriateness to task and preferred use-context.

Why is form factor such an important consideration when designing i/o devices and techniques? 

Form factors affect use frequency, effectiveness, location, ability, and skill acquisition. A device that is easy to learn or that bridges a lack of skill is one that will be appealing to novices. A device that enables an expert to perform at a higher level of efficiency or effectiveness will be well favoured. The device form needs also to consider the context of use – the environmental, social, geographical, and kinaesthetic situations that the device is to be used in. 

However, the more design that goes into developing a device may increase it’s cost or make it so specific to the task that It does not find a sufficiently large audience to support it’s development. 

Oct. 1 - Narrative and Colour

What type of storytelling devices do you see in webpages? Give some examples.

Narrative suggests a perspective, one that is guiding the story recipient through the tale. With interactive environments, and as suggested by Brenda Laurel in Computers as Theater, the story being told is one of action by the user towards a goal.

From Laurel's original perspective, much has been accomplished in software design to move the user's focus from how the machinery needs to be told to get things done to what the user wants to do. The standard icon-driven website desktop and website gui permits what is effectively a branching/threaded/pathed experience through a content-space to arrive at an outcome; a piece of information found, an experience had.

While avatar guides still tend to occur, they tend now to be restricted to children's sites or to advertisements in the form of a Flash-video overlay that interrupts/invites the user to another site. Online games have a lot of this and - given the explicit use of characters in these true interactive narratives, it is in my opinion a better application of the device than as a help function on a website.

There is a dialogic charater to the "wizard" and being guided to complete online memberships.

This is especially true as accomplished in Linkedin, with a visible completion bar and guiding the user to the next action one should take to achieve "completeness". The experience of setting up an online profile here is much like creating a character in a narrative-based roleplaying game and is an excellent example of narration of action in the web environment.

Linkedin also uses the actions of the users network - so and so "joined the group" - as an opportunity to inform the user of options and to start new actions for the user with a story-like hook to "(f)ind a group for you".

The process of joining a group/site or making an online purchase tends to involve increasing revelations of the power of the network/tool (foreshadowing) while asking for ever more personal information and presenting legal responsibilities and disclaimers. There is a story-like build up with the awareness of costs and benefits to the user becoming apparent. Then there is the crux moment of hitting the "join/buy" button, when the process locks in and the action is completed. Aspects of narrative resolution occurs in the "thank you" and new story possibilities are introduced as possible actions by the site's narrator.

Do you think that all devices are appropriate on-line (why/why not)?

Aristotle's Poetics describes two types of drama, the representation of action; comedy and tragedy (it also provided the theory of dramatic narrative which has continued with minor modification to the 20th Century and formed the basis of Laurel's Computers as Theater). Comedy is a reversal of fortune from ill to good; tragedy the reverse. In Laurel's model, then, the successful interactive experience that designers are looking to create is interactive comedy. The user comes with a problem and - through their own actions towards a goal mediated by the technology - it all works out in the end.

Wikipedia has an extensive list of literary techniques, devices which are employed by authors to deliver their narrative. Many of them are quite appropriate to the question/search/answer use of the Web such as foreshadowing (anticipation), backstory (context), emplottment (delivering information as needed/for effect), catharsis (emotionally satisfying resolution of action).

Many of the techniques don't fit the "looking for information" model that well, but I can well imagine situations for nearly all of them where they would be appropriate online for delivering certain types of user experience. For example - "plot twist" is one of the key dramatic techniques recommended by Aristotle. Emplottment delivers information to best (dramatic) effect, with one piece of information delivered at a climactic moment suddenly "reversing" the understanding of the accumulated knowledge (Oedipus learning that he has killed his father and married his mother; tragedy!). For online use - learning, (re)searching, community participation - the plot twist may not be desirable. However, you can well imagine its use in search queries designed to inspire innovation by twisting the results, or by using juxtaposition and defamiliarization to help see things differently. Brechtian techniques of alienation or distancing could be very useful for breaking community/communication silos to aid non-partisan interaction in online political forums.

Find an example website and analyze whether colour choices reflect psychology. Explain your analysis.

Google's branding and interface is blue and white, with accents of red, green and yellow. Initially launched just over a decade ago to predominantly NA/Western audiences, the colour psychology chart appears to be quite an accurate reflection of the site intention: simplicity, accuracy, reliability. These primary attributes are all well supported by the white and blue colours. Accents of red, green, and yellow bring hints of power, luck and optimism, very well suited to the mind-space surrounding Internet search.

Sept 24 - Cognition

Why do you need to understand human cognition in order to understand design?

If the purpose of design is to create useful, pleasurable and easily understood tools or artifacts then understanding how humans think is critical to achieving a good design. Until one understands how a tool or artifact is used (and how people think about using it), how it creates pleasure (and how people experience pleasure), and how people learn, one cannot successfully and intentionally design for these things.

What is neuroplasticity and how does this change the way we look at human cognition?

According to MedicineNet.com, neuroplasticity is "(t)he brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Neuroplasticity allows the neurons ... to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment."

Human cognition, then, is ever adaptable to new environments and modes of thinking. For designers, this means we can use the past and the present as informing our design, but that we are not limited to the palette of existing solutions. Humans can learn, right down to the level of the brain's organizing structure, and a better design is something people can learn. Designers should take into account that human cognition changes over time and that introducing new things should reflect the understanding of a time of adaptation. Build solutions in the adoption of a tool to guide people along the learning curve to an expert understanding of its principles and functions.

Sept. 24 - User Assessment

1) When/why would you use HTA in designing user interface?

Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) is useful for simple linear or linear/recursive operations (and probably has its roots in the mathematical tool of Formal Decomposition). It is not useful for modeling operations that are subject to interruption, or to parallel or overlapping tasks. When applied to complex tasks, the notation becomes a burdensome mess of deeply nested and looping subtasks.

However, it is useful for getting a detailed look into the tasks and subtasks that serve to achieve a simple goal. It provides a broader perspective than focusing on the function of a specific tool; it is thorough and can reveal the paths and branches for achieving a simple goal across tools and the context in which the tool is used.

2) When/why would you use questionnaires or interview?

Questionnaires are useful for quickly and economically gathering data from a large number of literate users who are willing to voluntarily participate (constrained even more to those who have access to a computer and the internet if the questionnaire is administrated via the web. It is useful for polling user feelings and opinions about things with which they are already familiar and can could help identify the most valuable needs of a community that could be met by a tool.

Interviews serve a similar function as questionnaires, but it is possible for the interviewer to delve further and gather more qualitative information and context, or explore specific scenarios. Interviews go further than surveys at making users feel involved in creating the solution and, in this sense, are also valuable to the design process for the good will they can generate.

3) Do you have any experience either carrying out one of these assessment techniques or being a participant? If so, explain what happened.

One of the clients of the communications agency that I work came to us for help copy-editing their intranet Human Resources webpages. She wished that they would be more easily used by the 11,000 employees. On the call with the client, we learned that the scope of this project would be approximately 60% of the pages in their section of the intranet, or about 3000 documents. A sample of the writing to be fixed didn't help, either - we couldn't see anything obviously wrong with it. Some back-of-the envelope calculations suggested that diving into a full editorial effort would be well into the 6-figures and we still didn't have a clue what we'd be doing. 

I recommended having me down to their offices to  look at their site. After a couple hours of sitting with Jack, their college intern, it was clear that most of the problems weren't the writing but the tool and how it was used. The HR site had been born from the ashes of the HR kiosks installed in the plants in the early '90s and had grown with haphazard and inconsistent upgrades over the last 15 years. 

We hired a usability consultant to do a formal review of the site that involved indirect observation (analyzing the server and help center phone logs) and an expert usability review of the interface, key stakeholder interviews, direct observation of users performing essential tasks such as search, finding HR forms, and locating themselves on the org chart. The study revealed the primary uses of the site, the extreme challenges most individuals had orienting themselves and performing the essential tasks, and provided recommendations for the redevelopment of the site. The findings were sent through the organization and we were invited back to present the findings both to the IT department and to the senior leadership of the HR department. IT has decided to move to the Microsoft SharePoint platform and a global rebuild is in the works. Following this report, some of the key stakeholder communities are very aware of the need to design to the needs of the user.

Sept. 17 - User Requirements

Discuss your views on why user requirements may not be the main factor driving the development of new technologies.

I believe most new technologies have a perceived usefulness and the design team thinks that if they build something for themselves, something that they -  normal people that they are - would like, then it will work. However, budgets are tight, competition is high, time-to-market is a clock relentless ticking away the seconds during which time a competitor is gaining market share and shaving the edges of a nickel this quarter is seen as the best way to build "shareholder value". The user is somewhere in those intentions, design docs and project schedules but... if something has to get cut when time and money gets short (and it always done) it's the sticky problem of dealing with the end user.

What factors may be influential in motivating companies to apply more of the user centered approaches to the design of technologies?

If usability can demonstrably increase adoption of new technologies, confer a competitive advantage on the firm that does it best, and build brand loyalty, then companies would tend to be more inclined to do it. However, this requires a commitment from the corporate culture to driving for that kind of time and focus which costs a great deal of money from some very specialized people. It requires timelines that allows for prototyping, multiple iterations and challenging-to-organize usability tests with the target end users. This means the company must dedicate significant resources to R&D, and have a company-wide emphasis on innovation to support it. Few companies have the pockets deep enough and leaders who have sufficient vision to support this kind of approach. There will always be a niche for this kind of work and a market to support the high-end products that come from it; the rest will do knock-offs.

Sept. 10 - User Centric Design

Questions for reflection

1. Why is user-centered design important? Provide an example from your own experience where a design failed (or requires significant improvements) to consider user requirements. What recommendations would you make?

User centered design attempts to understand and involve user needs, desires, and intentions within the design process. 

The design exists to serve the activity. If the activity is driven by users to accomplish a user-defined objective, they need to be aware of the meaningful choices available to them. They must be able to understand the outcomes of their actions and form plans that allow them to use the tool to accomplish their objective. Ideally, accomplishing the objective is enjoyable and feels natural. The interface should feel like it supports their intentions, provides an understanding of how to proceed or retrace steps. Mastery of the skills to achieve the task should feel within their reach and they should be able to form reliable expectations of the outcomes. 

My chosen example of non-user-centric design is a graphical user interface, one that I face every day. Our office copier/printer has the human readable descriptor “Lighten/Darken” running counter to the operation of the copy darkness selector. The first several times an individual uses this function they inevitably select the opposite outcome of that which they desired. The darkness indicator is quite intuitive, indicating a relative darkness from “normal”. However, the title tends to be read first while navigating the GUI to find the function. This first interaction with the tool tends to order thoughts on its operation. Most often users get a failed outcome the first time they use this function and must stop and re-evaluate the tool’s operation to notice the reversed orientation of the tool from its descriptor.

My recommendation to fix this design is to reverse the orientation of either the title or the tool. That the firmware has not been flashed with a fix already cynically leads me to believe the design “flaw” was intentionally to consume more toner.

2. What are the interactive elements of a cellular phone? Why would you consider these elements interactive?

The interactive elements of a hypothetical cellular phone:

§         Form factor – size and shape that enable it to be used as a mobile device, access the keys with the thumb of one (either) hand; hear and speak into the device at the same time, read text only at an intimate distance

§         Microphone – voice commands, voice data

§         Buttons – key presses for data entry, volume, power

§         Incoming signals/data (call/message) that enable other users to influence the machine state

§         Speaker – enables the user to interact with the device (tones and other aural cues) as well as providing system access to aural menus and meaing-carrying tones (ringing, busy signal, etc.)

§         Screen – provides visual feedback and confirmation of many changes in device or accessed system states; incoming/outgoing messages, etc.

§         Firewire/SD cards/other jacks or sockets – uploading or viewing content – enables the user to interact with data-storage devices

§         Vibration – low-profile alerts

§         Orientation – some devices are adding accelerometers so the device may perceive changes in its orientation

§         Camera (video or still) – recognition software (i.e. bar-code activated content, face-recognition software) can enable the user to interface the device with certain types of visual information in the environment

 These elements are interactive because they present the choices of device operation to the user and they either require human action to toggle their function or indicate a change in the device or information carrying state that is being conveyed to the user.

ping

This blogspace is to be used for MT8314 Human Factors in Technology Design.