Sequential analysis

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Today I am learning the use of GSEQ, a software for the analysis of interaction sequences as desrcibed in this very interesting book: Observing Interaction : An Introduction to Sequential Analysis by Roger Bakeman, John M. Gottman. Sequential analysis is a technique that might be of interest to study timed-events like CatchBob! messages (as well as the logfiles). I found the very smart notion of transitional probability that I will use to study the probability of conditional actions in CatchBob communication processes. Like for instance whether the probability of having a direction request more frequent in teams with the awareness tool.

Usability and collaborative aspects of augmented reality

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Usability and collaborative aspects of augmented reality by Morten Fjeld, in Interactions Volume 11 , Issue 6 November + December 2004. Some excerpts I find relevant:

In the design process of an AR application, a series of questions related to human-computer interaction (HCI) call for attention: Who are the users and what are their needs? How can a system be designed to work effectively and efficiently for these users? How is effectiveness and efficiency measured in AR applications? Do users prefer an AR system or an alternative tool to go about their work? And finally, with what kind of tasks and what kind of alternative tools should the usability of AR applications be tested? (...) The need for studies evaluating the effect of computerized tools on human cooperation and communication is well justified and documented in the first paper, prepared by Billinghurst, Belcher, Gupta, and Kiyokawa [that's indeed a good paper that shows an evaluation of an AR table]

I think the same goes for studying locative media from an usability and collaborative point of view. My only concern here is that the evaluation they propose is a bit limitated. They just take into account frequency of events and differences among different conditions. There are plenty of other methods ranging from quantitative (as proposed in the evaluations described in this paper or with different types of statistical techniques like multilevel modeling or sequential analysis) to qualitative (ethnography, cognitive anthropology à la Hutchins, french ergonomics...).

For fans of fab prefab: fabprefab.com

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fabprefab.com is a good resource on moderne prefab dwelling. Their list of prefab is insightful.

Predominant mass-market housing programs such as project homes or tract housing largely fail to meet the desires of people who appreciate a modernist design aesthetic. Custom-designed modernist architecture is beyond the financial reach of many people and so prefab is viewed as a design and production ideology that has the potential to deliver affordable modernism. While kit or prefab homes have been available in a range of either "traditional" or "alternative" forms for many years, surprisingly few prefab homes exist that truly embrace modernist ideals.

Modernist prefab is still more of a meme than a marketplace. Most projects are “in development” and relatively few prefabs are available for immediate purchase.

While architects are clearly interested in exploring the use of prefabrication methods in design and construction, this is only one piece of the puzzle. Marketing a turn-key prefab dwelling is as much about understanding a business model as being able to design a structure. “Commercialization” is traditionally the domain of speculative builders and property developers rather than design professionals. So who will successfully bring prefab projects to market? What forms will winning business models take?

My favorite is definitely the first penthouse: However the problem is that put it in a boring way: I would have preferred to have this right above the street as in Alain Bublex's project "Unités mobiles d'Habitation" located on buildings' roofs:

Mediating social relationship through mobile communication within groups of teenage girls

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Ruth Kikkin-Gil's masters thesis seems nice. It's about "mediating social relationship through mobile communication within groups of teenage girls".

The extremity in teenagers’ attitudes and actions coupled with the opportunities of mobile communication, creates new behaviors and re-shapes existing ones. But however meaningful the phone is in teenagers’ lives, it is not designed to support their need for emotional communication and group identity.

The BuddyBeads project suggests alternative ways for communication among teenagers, ways which emphasize their social structures, behaviors and needs. BuddyBeads are techno-jewelry items that facilitate non-verbal and emotional communication among group members, through codes and signals which the group decided upon together. Each group member has a matching jewelry piece and can use it to communicate her emotional state to the other group members. messages are decided by the group in advance and construct a secret private code among its members.

I would be interested to see the results of the user-testing, like how could private codes emerge, how they are used or made of. In addition, I am curious to know how external persons perceive this or how they get what is happening. The disruptions created by tangible/ubiquitous computing is important and some people does not even notice that some stuff (like non verbal communication in this case) is happening.

Most influential things and designers nowadays

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ICON magazine has a good review of the 21 most influential people who are changing the contemporary design landscape and products, organisations and ideas that everyone will be copying in the immediate future:

Ikea is first...then it's Rapid prototyping, Easyjet, Milan, Design Academy Eindhoven...Alice Rawsthorne, Copying, Bouroullec Brothers, Blogs, Midsummer Light, Light Transmitting Concrete, the Readymade, South Korea, Rei Kawakubo, Ora Ito, Naoto Fukasawa, Entropy, Nintendo DS, Dunne & Raby, Murray Moss and Yves Behar.

Pretty europeans + asians as it seems when it's about citing people. But the trends (blog, copy, rapid prototyping) are much more transnational/occidental. I think this classification is a bit too... cosy, it needs more dirty/rebel stuff as claimed by Laurie Anderson about virtual environment at that time ("let's put dirt in virtual reality"). I mean I/we are interested into how people hack objects, find tricks or to re-use situationist terminology "détourne" artifacts. I would have definitely added "détournement" as an influential trend!

Pro/am relationships in technical research

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Agir dans un monde incertain: essai sur la démocratie technique by Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes and Yannick Barthe. Ed. Seuil (2001) (in french). This book addresses the relationship between experts and amateurs in today's current science debate exemplifying various topics (gmo, nuclear wastes) in France. Based on strong sociological bases it shows how science and society more and more diverged over time. There is now a big gap between the society and the scientists. Non-experts no longer trust science and fear news technical advances desrcibed as "progress" by engineers and scientists.

Now science is organized into three different moments the authors called 'translations':

  • translation 1: in which the research problem is transferred from the real world to the laboratory
  • translation 2: in which the research problem is explored by a research team through what Bruno Latour calls 'inscription' (i.e. written notes, drawings, napkin notes, printed measures...) and 'distributed skills'.
  • translation 3: in which the results are transformed into propositions brought back in the "real world".

The authors then claim that the 'civil society' might participate in each of those moments:

  • to help research problem formulation
  • to enlarge the research team and organize it
  • to help bringing back the results into the "real world"

Numerous examples are provided like how AIDS patient participated to AIDS research or french farmers helped the debate on nuclear wastes, raising new and unexpected questions. They emphasize the notion of "hybrid forums" where scientists and different 'amateurs' debated on the three research moments.

I think it's an interesting book to take into account in the pro/am debate. The book, through various examples, is a very interesting testimony about how researchers might be more connected with the other part of society.

Unit of analysis in CSCW: individual or group?

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My notes taken from Kenny, D. A., Kashy, D. A., Bolger, N. (1998) Data analysis in social psychology. In D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (eds.) Handbook of social psychology , vol. 1, pp. 233-251. Boston: McGraw-Hill.p233

  • majors strides have been made in the analysis of data in which persons interact with or rate multiple players
  • nonindependence of observations is a serious issue that is often just ignored then ANOVA is limited
  • replacing ANOVA by structural equation modeling OR multilevel modeling on certain kind of variables
  • which unit of analysis should be chosen: individual or group? If person is used as unit of analysis, the assumptions of independence is likely to be violated because persons within groups may influence one another (Kenny and Judd, 1986). Alternatively, if group (= couple, team, organization...) is used, the power of the statistical tests is likely to be reduced because there are fewer degress of freedom than there are in the analysis that uses person as the unit of analysis.
  • concerning the independent variable (IV) A, there is three cases: nested (when groups are assigned to levels of the IV such that every member of a given group has the same score on A with some groups at one level of A and other groups at other levels of A), crossed (when A varies within the group with some member in one level of A and other group members in another level of A) and mixed (both nested and crossed). [I often use nested variables like in my masters thesis then I will develop on this now]
  • for nested IV: there is a method to measure the nonindependence of the data using the intraclass correlation. Group effects occur if the scors of individual within a group are more similar to one another than are the scores of individuals who are in different groups. The intraclass correlation can be viewed as the amount of variance in the persons' scores that is due to the group, controlling for the effects of A. When the intraclass correlation is not large and total sample size and the group size are small, power is very low. Using the ANOVA: this correlation is equal to (n= number of persons per group): (mean square for groups within A - mean square for individual within groups within A)/(mean square for groups within A + (n-1)*mean square for individual within groups within A)
  • Summary: safer to make group as unit of analysis and so it is then necessary to collect data from a sufficient number of groups. general guideline: if there is nonindependence, then group must be used as the unit of analyis; if there is independence, the individual may be the unit of analysis. The usual standard for "sufficient power" is having and 80 percent chance of rejecting the null hypothesis.

Hopefully my data are nested then I can use ANOVA but with this discussion on which kind of unit of analysis I may choose. However, multilevel modeling might be useful and can be applied here. Here is an interesting resource to compute this index.

Reverse engineering on search engine uses

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IC agency, a geneva-based internet agency is focused on competitive intelligence as well as gaining a better understanding of what customer wants. Their point is to provide their clients with "creative insight and technical expertise in integrating autonomous online and offline marketing strategies". They recently released a world watch report in which they show today's trfends by monitoring customer inquiries and behaviors. Accessing those data allowed them to "track developments which can impact the competitive advantage of your own patents and trademarks". This is an intreresting approach that might effectively used in forecasting and customer/user analysis. Their study is focused on 12 prestigious brands on 5 markets, based on a comprehensive study of 25 million searches. The one available is about the luxury watch market (it's Switzerland yes).I would be interested to expand this methodology or adopt it for my needs, especially in the domain of location-based services. But how do they access the data????

Koko-memo (Here-it-is)

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Koko-memo (Here-it-is) is a a prototype handheld map annotation system that allow users of the system annotate maps close to the location of the users. It's done by Tomoko Imai, Naoki Sakakibara and Chika Sekine (UDIT Ltd.) + Hoshino Takeshi (Design Center, Hitachi Ltd.)

The hardware is a commercially available mobile phone with 2.2 inch liquid crystal display, a camera, and a global positioning system (GPS) receiver to allocate the location of the mobile phone. It weighs 125g and can be controlled with one hand. We developed Koko-memo software for the mobile phone and it allows users to obtain appropriate maps for the usersf location and paste photographs and comments on the maps. Users who are registered to a Koko-memo server can obtain the annotated maps and can add further information to the maps. Firstly, users capture images using the camera of the mobile phone and attach them to e-mails together with comments and location information that are detected by the GPS system. Then, they send the e-mail to the Koko-memo server. The server processes the messages and updates the information on the Koko-memo server. Then the users are able to watch maps with the latest annotations by accessing web pages with the URL of the Koko-memo server. Since each annotation data has a date, users can evaluate reliability of information based on the date information and the server can delete outdated information.

An electronic fly-swatting device

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(via), The fly catcher is an electronic fly-swatting device based on the idea of the Venus fly trap.

A non-toxic bait based at the bottom of the jaws lures the insect inside. As the insect crawls into the mouth of the trap, two sensors detect the insect causing the mouth to shut, swatting the insect dead. As the jaws open for the next victim Fly Catcher emits a loud burp, indicating satisfaction from catching a juicy bug. Nice one!! Fly Catcher is no ordinary pest control device. It is safe for children, making it fun for all the family (Adult supervision is recommended for children under 13 years of age).

Nice toy!

An chinese egg with a tail

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(via), an egg in China has been found with a tail:

The egg, found by chef Wang of at his restaurant in Anyang city, Henan province, is normal size, but has a tail that is 3 cm long. It is not known why the egg has the tail reports Dahe Daily. Wang says he wants to hatch the egg and see what will come out.

Visklek: exploration of the Chinese Whispers concept

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Visklek is a project carried ou by the Interactive Institute in Sweden.

The Chinese Whispers (visklek in Swedish) is a game that you might have played as a child. At [visklek.se] the game takes a new form - instead of sitting in a circle and whispering a word to someone sitting next to you, we have used answering machines, a web page and occasional actions in public spaces to create a game between different places and people. By one single phone call the participants can play the Chinese Whispers. They can also create a new game by calling another phone number and adding a story of their own for others to play with.

We have created a platform for the exchange of personal stories which, as they meet other participants, are reinterpreted, misunderstood, laughed at or create disturbance. These chains of whispers between people and places are available at [visklek.se]. At the site anyone can follow your own or other people’s stories change with time, by browsing through old messages or by listening to the game in real time.

A ski heads-up display with a speedometer

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Some hackers propose to put sensor under your ski so that you can have a measure of your speed displayed on your goggles!

Using optical mouse technology, you could mount an LED and an optical sensor to the underside of a ski or snowboard to measure the speed you are travelling over the snow. A numerical LED readout could be mounted to the top of the ski or projected in a heads-up display in your goggles for easy reading.

The device could also store your max speed, average speed and total distance travelled (so you could know just how much skiing you're getting in for that incredibly expensive lift ticket).

The comments are insightful and apart from giving a name to this project ("Obvious name: Skeedometer"), they raise numerous questions about it (i.e. surface granularity or calibration). Some are really doubtful and propsoe using a GPS instead of this mouse crap. It's too bad there is no mock-up!

Burn you flag! flyers and posters

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Regine's post reminded me that I am a great fan of a label/concert organizer called Burn Your Flag! in Lyon. They enable punkrockers to have thriving musical events there, with a wide bunch of underground bands that often worth it. What I particularly like is their posters they spreak around the city. Always black and white, with nice typewritings: Great DIY attitude, great art, keep on trucking!!!!

A virtual reality chair

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A virtual reality chair to explore frontier of 'telepresence' a project led by Pierre Boulanger:

Computer scientists at the U of A have already created technology allowing people to sit across from three-dimensional recreations of each other, even though in reality they may be thousands of miles apart.

I like that statement:

"From my perspective, an absolutely essential part of Pierre's work on the collaborative virtual environment is described by the word collaborative," said dean of science Gregory Taylor. "It's at the very forefront of what I like to call the new science, interdisciplinary science where the collaborative team becomes the vehicle for discovery."

People doing stange things with brain waves

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Well I should really create an "intangible" category here! If your are into neurofeedback, EEG biofeedback, brainwave interaction or brainwave controller, you should have a glance at the openEEG project:

The OpenEEG project is about making plans and software for do-it-yourself EEG devices available for free (as in GPL). It is aimed toward amateurs who would like to experiment with EEG. However, if you are a pro in any of the fields of electronics, neurofeedback, software development etc., you are of course welcome to join the mailing-list and share your wisdom.

Right now, this site is mostly about the hardware; schematics, part lists, building instructions etc. However, a few members have developed some useful software which is hosted on their own websites. You can find these through the software pages.

Why do I blog this I am wondering whether there will be a post-dorkbot trend: instead of "people doing strange things with electricity", the motto would be "people doing stange things with brain waves". Here are the already existing apps. I am looking forward to see crazy applications with tangible feedback created/controlled by intangible brain waves!