Wayfinding, GPS and social navigation

I really enjoy reading Jan's blog (future perfect). The author at the 'User Experience Group' at Nokia Research. Posts are very insightful and relevant to my research/interests. Today he posted a short account about wayfinding which I found SO RIGHT:

Jan actually comments this picture by saying: "Mobile with GPS and map application. So you want to make a map reference in a hurry? "It's easier to just ask someone" In many instances so it is".

Why do I blog this? I definitely agree with him, when lost and being immersed in a social environment, the most common solution is not take your ten-thousand-features gizmophone but rather to ask people next to you OR to find sign/cues in the environment that may make sense to find the solution. (This is called social navigation = footprints in the snow). Note: I don't say that the GPS is not useful but, rather, that it's more common for people to rely on others (present or not in the physical space).

A relevant resource about it: Dourish, P. & Chalmers, M. (1994). Running out of space: models of information navigation. Proceedings of HCI'94, Glasgow, August 1994.

Connected pasta: Russel also tackles this issue with his perspective. Worth to have a look!

A Web2.0 checklist

mmh this is so true: a Web2.0 checklist

Give us your email address, we'll let you know when it's ready! Public beta alpha Tags Feeds for everything Built with Rails Sprinkled with Ajax Yellow fade Blue gradients Big icons Big fonts Big input boxes REST API Google Maps mashup Share with a friend TypePad blog for a peek inside the team Feature screencasts (thanks, Waxy!) Hackathons for new features Development wiki Business model optimized for the long tail It's Free!/AdSense revenue stream

Now let's discriminate do's and dont'ts!

Nespresso hacking

Ok, it's in french but everyboday can get it: how to re-use nespresso caps, the authors was imaginative enough to come up with an idea about to hack nespresso system, I did not try...

The world of Glen Baxter

I am a tremendous fan of Glan Baxter, I recently stumbled across his website which is full of great stuff. This mix of absurd things and weird drawings is huge:

Corporate use of ethnography

Technolory Review has a short account of the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC> organized by ethnographers at Intel and Microsoft. I'm looking forward to read the proceedings. Among the purposes quoted, there are: "understanding emerging markets, such as developing economies, digital health care, and the digital home (Intel)", "find out how meaning manifests itself in people's live, and ethnography is a good way to get at that (Cheskin)". Though, I am a bit unconfortable of this huge mess:

Internal debates aside, ethnography is gaining credence in the corporate world as a form of market research. Ethnography focuses on a qualitative examination of human behavior. In a corporate setting, ethnographers typically examine how people treat a product, say, a mobile phone, in the context of their lives. Ethnographic researchers at the EPIC could be divided into seven general types: sociologists, human factors and computer interface specialists, computer scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, MBAs, and design specialists.

Why do I blog this? Although I think using corporate ethnography might be a good idea and even though I like multi/interdisciplinary things, I am wondering how all those people (interface specialists, computer scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, MBAs, and design specialist) make sense of the 'ethnography' methods.

Connected: Anne has a good post related to these issues.

Call for project presentations

In the LIFT conference , aside talks and keynote presentation, we are organizing a specific moment devoted for projects presentation. The format will be simple: presenters will have 15minutes to describe the project (there will be 4 projects = 1 hour). After this quick review, there is going to be a break in which we will set dedicated rooms wherepeople are invited to come over and ask questions/discuss about it. This is a tremendous opportunity to get some insightful feedback from people with various background and expertise.

We are looking for 2 projects that would meet this constraints:

• technological and user-oriented (architecture, web, interactive art, ubiquitous computing, open source platforms...).
• original and innovative (nobody wants to listen to presenterrs who reinvented the wheel). So please no 'rate this restaurant on a mobile phone' or 'social software for cheese eaters' will be accepted!
• it should not be marketing gig nor an elevator pitch, we are not VCs, we want a relevant account of how your project might be used (scenario-based approach for instance), what can it shows or what needs it may fulfill.
• at least at the prototype level so that attendees could see what is.

Please send your proposal to lift06 (at) gmail (dot) com before december 15th.

The editorial board will review them and get back to you.

Seamful design for location-based phone games

Seamful Design for Location-Based Mobile Games by Gregor Broll and Steve Benford. The article is about revealing and exploiting inevitable technical limitations in Ubiquitous Computing technology rather than hiding them. Relying ont their experiment about the game called 'Bill' (see here to get more information about it). To meet this end, they develop their own "seamful trading-game" called “Tycoon”:

Tycoon is a location-based multiplayer trading game with a simple producer-consumer-cycle that uses the different GSM-cells of a service provider network within a designated gaming-area, e. g. the centre of a city. Each of these cells in the physical area is virtually mapped to either a producer or a consumer in the game. Tycoon uses the metaphor of a wild west scenario to communicate its central mechanisms of collecting resources from producers which are called “mines” and using them to buy objects from consumers which are called “brokers” and have the names of cities or counties in California. These cells are called “brokers” because they sell objects in their areas in exchange for collected resources. While playing the game, players are travelling between the cells in the gaming-area, collect local resources in mines, use them to buy global objects from brokers and get credits for claiming them. (...) players start Tycoon by having to explore the gaming-area and discover mines, brokers and their locations by themselves. That way the players can gather their own knowledge about the gaming-area, where to find resources and where to claim objects.

Why do I blog this The pertinent point here is the discussion about understanding seams in mobile phone applications. The authors introduces general ideas and apply them to the design of location-aware games for mobile phones. This sort of stuff is of direct interest for some 4th place admirer in Barcelona

Usually mobile phone users are unaware of their current cell when using their phones, since the handover between different cells is handled seamlessly. (...) The invisible handover between cells is handled seamlessly so that users don’t get any information about their current cell and don’t have to worry about their position, dynamic cell coverage and propagation or flipping cells. While seamless design usually hides this information, we would like to present it to players and make them aware of this information so that they can take advantage of it during the game and use it as a valuable resource. In a location-based mobile game players are dependent on knowing where they are and dynamic boundaries and propagation of cells may raise interesting design-issues concerning the influence of positions and relations between GSM-cells on the behaviour of the users during the game.

There is a lot more to grasp in this paper for people interested in how interaction designers focused on cell phones/LBS could take advantage of seams.

The picture below depicts coverage and propagation of GSM-cells in an area of London based on samples of cell-ids and their GPS-positions. Their coverage is depending on many factors, cells’ boundaries and propagation are rather dynamic and fluctuating and it shows, cell-coverage has irregular shapes and adjoining cells often overlap and don’t share exact borders. Seamful design is a matter of showing this to the users, using is as a resource for the task to be performed (extracted from the paper):

The dark side of Pervasive Computing: environmental issues

It's refreshing to see that some scholars are working on the dark side of technology, especially when it's related to pervasive computing which is one of the 'research object' we adress here:Expected Environmental Impacts of Pervasive Computing by Andreas Köhler, Lorenz Erdmann:

Pervasive Computing will bring about both additional loads on and benefits to the environment. The prevailing assessment of positive and negative effects will depend on how effectively energy and waste policy governs the development of ICT infrastructures and applications in the coming years. Although Pervasive Computing is not expected to change the impact of the technosphere on the environment radically, it may cause additional material and energy consumption due to the production and use of ICT as well as severe pollution risks which may come about as a result of the disposal of electronic waste. These first order environmental impacts are to be set off against the second order effects, such as higher eco-efficiency due to the possibility to optimise material and energy intensive processes or to replace them by pure signal processing (dematerialisation). The potential environmental benefits from such second order effects are considerable and can outweigh the first order effects. But changes in demand for more efficient services (third order effects) can counterbalance these savings. The experience gained thus far with ICT impacts has shown that such a rebound effect occurs in most cases of technological innovations.

There is also a relevant document about it by the same auhor: Effects of Pervasive Computing on Sustainable Development.

Why do I blog this? ... well... there are some fundemantal drawbacks we have to consider (read worldchanging!)

An house made of dust

Non-cheese eater regine recently sent me this fabulous dust house (by Maria Adelaida Lopez). She surely knows my interest towards art project related to dust, dirt (apart duct tapes and inflatable things).

When Colombian Maria Adelaida Lopez moved to Philadelphia do a Master’s degree in art, she cleaned houses to help support herself, as she says, the way many other Marias do. Her series of Dust Houses are toy doll houses covered over in vacuum cleaner lint, representing the themes of domesticity and the other, the ideas of cleaning up after oneself and putting one’s house in order. Now an artist and educator in Miami, Lopez no longer cleans for others, but has filled vacuum cleaner bags given to her.

The 'imitation bias' in media design

Today, at the CSCW course, we had a good discussion about the 'imitation bias', a phenomenon studies in Human-Computer Interaction. The imitation bias is the false belief that a medium is more effective if it is more similar to face-to-face interactions. For instance, it's believing that adding video is better than simply having audio communication. Either this lead people to think that WAP is better than SMS for interacting with others using cell-phones. Well, more bandwith makes not always better products.“The richer the better” or “The more face-to-face like the better” have not been confirmed by empirical results. It’s difficult to invent something new and simple. Few points we discussed this morning: Concerning the audio+video versus audio-only, there is a wide bunch of studies which shows that adding video is not always fruitful, for instance:

• Chapanis and colleagues (1972, 1975): The studies revealed that adding visual information did not increase the efficiency of problem-solving, or produce higher quality problem solving
• Anderson, A. H., O'Malley, C., Doherty-Sneddon, G., Langton, S., Newlands, A., Mullin, J., & Fleming, A. M., & Van der Velden, J. (1997): They concluded that VMC with eye contact may encourage participants to “overuse” the visual channel, which may be counterproductive.

In general, those studies (among others),video has no major impact on task performance. Few excerpts from Pierre's course:

Compared to high quality audio-only systems, the presence of video does not have major effects on task performance, unless that work is inherently visual. Besides, video conversations are still more formal than Face-to-Face (F2F) but people prefer them to audio only conversations. Another important thing: there is strong evidence that reducing audio quality to incorporate video is highly disruptive of conversation processes.

Still, video can make meetings more satisfying for the participants by easing the mechanics of conversation, helping them understand nuances in meaning and mostly enabling them to track the remote participants’ presence and attentional state. One of the most obvious finding is that people like to see each other when they interact, especially when they do not know each other well: regardless of any cognitive benefit video may provide, people like having it.

Anyway, the last point is that we survive to video problems more easily than to audio problems. Audio is often the bug.

GPS devices usability

Via Usability News, Usability of GPS Receivers in a Sporting Environment by Rodney Sloan and Jacques Hugo(Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria):

In spite of the growing popularity of GPS, there are many usability issues to be addressed. (...) We looked at learnability and discovered that many GPS devices did not include even simple help menus. As we all know, most users read a manual only as a last resort! Most of us expect the device itself to answer our 'how to' questions. (...) the input systems employed had a low utility as it takes a significant amount of time to input data into the device. (...) In terms of personal safety to the user, giving attention to the device while performing specific tasks may be hazardous in the same way as driving a car while talking on a cell phone (...) What is not easy to memorise though is the data stored on the device, particularly waypoints, which could become confusing with large sets of data.(...) Knowledge of the buttons and controls for a specific device is needed, as is knowledge of the display. The user also needs a basic technical understanding of how the device functions. For example, it is important to understand how the GPS receives satellite signals and how it calculates the heading of the user. In field studies, users who did not understand these points became frustrated and complained that the device was not working properly.

I think ths most interesting critique is this one:

Most conventional GPS receivers are specifically built for the outdoors, with waterproof sealing and sturdy, drop-resistant design. These features suggest that the designers have taken some of the things the user will typically have to face into consideration. However, much more attention should be paid to the context of use, which includes a closer look at the variety of environments, specific user tasks and interaction modalities.

Bidirectional RSS: Simple Sharing Extensions

Ray Osszie (Lotus Notes creator and Groove founder) introduces a new standard called SSE (Simple Sharing Extensions for RSS and OPML) meant to support sharing and 'cross-subscribed' feeds. It's actually a RSS extension. What's interesting is that the SSE specification is released under a Creative Commons license, which is a gooD thing for MS. The SSE FAQ is available (as well as the SSE specifications):

Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE) is a specification that extends RSS from unidirectional to bidirectional information flows. SSE defines the minimum extensions necessary to enable loosely cooperating applications to use RSS as the basis for item sharing—that is, the bidirectional, asynchronous replication of new and changed items among two or more cross-subscribed feeds. For example, SSE could be used to share your work calendar with your spouse. If your calendar were published to an SSE feed, changes to your work calendar could be replicated to your spouse's calendar, and vice versa. As a result, your spouse could see your work schedule and add new appointments, such as a parent-teacher meeting at the school, or a doctor's appointment.

Why do I blog this? RSS was already a huge achievement in terms of information management, then I'm curious about this SSE thing.

Thinglink: connection information and artifacts

An intriguing post by Ulla Maaria-Mutanen about thinglink, a concept I was not aware of:

A thinglink is a free unique identifier that anybody can use for making the finding and recommendation of particular things easier in the Internet.

A thinglink identifier is based on the idea that many of the things we use in our daily life are quite particular. Perhaps we know their origin (who has made them, when and how) and something about their history or previous use (like with furniture and cars). Some things have more meaning to us than others. (...) Thinglinks are unique, 8-digit identifiers that anybody can use for connecting physical or virtual objects to any online information about them. A thinglink on an object is an indication that there is some information about the object online—perhaps a blog post, some flickr photos, a manufacturer’s website, a wikipedia article, or just some quick comments on a discussion site.

The purpose of the thinglink.org is to offer an easy way to learn about products and artifacts in their various contexts of production and use. Small-scale producers such as artists, designers, and crafters can use thinglinks to bring their products to the emerging recommendation-based market in the Internet

Why do I blog this? well this is very close to ID specifications of Bruce Sterling's concept of spimes! There is a website coming out about this: Thinglink Besides, it's closely related to our discussion about blogjects with Julian. This 'thinglink' idea could be seen a way of implementing the blogject concept since it's able to connect information (on the web) and artifacts. So Julian what do you think? Let's all meet and talk about it. Isn't there a workshop scheduled about this in 2006 conference? Well, let's have a workshop about blogject at LIFT then! (something like the day before).

Fender-Intel Guitar to surf on information superhighways

According to the very tech-related journal "The Sun", Intel and Fender are working on an internet guitar:

A NEW guitar allows rockers to surf the internet and send emails while blasting out riffs. Technology built into the Fender instrument allows musicians to download chords from the net to play instantly — and check their record royalties online.

The Intel Concept Telecaster Guitar — currently in the design stage — is likely to cost thousands of pounds if it hits the shops.

Picture by Aeropause.

DIY Bluetooth Glove

Farting around the web, looking for bluetooth clothes and gear, I ran across what this Jason Bradbury guy did. He seems to be one these cool DIY hackers who designer intriguing things. His bluetooth glove is pretty neat:

Made from a reconstituted Bluetooth headset and a gentleman's driving glove (well it had to be didn't it?) my phone glove will connect to any mobile phone that has Bluetooth. No wires, no plugs. With your phone stashed out of sight you can make and receive calls with your thumb as the speaker and little finger as mic.

I sandwiched the switch that came with the original Bluetooth headset between two small pieces of transparent plastic and heat sealed them together. Placed inside the glove's open knuckle the switch is activated by me flexing my wrist. With a flick of the wrist I can answer an incoming call; with two flicks re-dial the last number. And by holding it open (a mere extended kink of the wrist) I can voice dial.

<img src="http://www.jasonbradbury.com/jason_bradbury/images/foryou.JPG" width="180"

3rd generation of social-networking software

Ok, there's a new buzzword around here (Web2.0 spin): "third generation of social-networking systems" as attested by this TR article by Wade Roush. Instead than focusing on this '3rd' thing, the interesting point of this article is that it highlights the new important feature of social software: the ability to manipulate user-generated content:

"We've listened to our user base very closely, and we're also paying attention to what the competition is doing, and we've formulated a new strategy that is really about personal media," says Jeff Roberto, a marketing manager at Friendster. For example, users can now create blogs, control the appearance of their profiles, upload up to 50 photos, watch slide shows of the photos most recently uploaded by their friends, post classified ads that link back to their profiles, and share audio and video files stored on their PCs using peer-to-peer technology provided by Grouper.

"The uptake we've seen has been incredible," Friendster CEO Taek Kwon said in October, about a month after the new features were introduced. "We've seen substantial increases in media being uploaded, profiles being customized, and people posting classifieds."

It also talks about a new player: iMeem who puts this idea into practice, using an interesting model:

iMeem hopes to attract members to by building all their activities not around a virtual representation of their social network, but around instant messaging technology.

That's exactly how iMeem works. A downloadable application similar to Yahoo Instant Messenger or MSN Messenger, iMeem is built around a buddy-list window that shows a user which of her friends are online. From that window, she can send and receive instant messages, join group chats, keep a blog, and share photos, videos, podcasts, playlists, and the like with other users using a peer-to-peer system related to the technology behind the original Napster.

Aggregating all of these functions into one program sounds like a recipe for information overload. But Caldwell believes that iMeem users will act as each others' media critics, perhaps bringing real effectiveness to the much-heralded idea of "collaborative filtering." "There's too much stuff out there," Caldwell says. "Too much data, too much content, too many blogs. Collaborative filtering is one of the most important things that's happened on the Web over the past couple of years. It's holding back the tide of overstimulation."

Why do I blog this? This 'iMeem' makes me think of a 1st generation social software called Huminity I tested long time ago mixed with this user-generated content trend. I like the 'collaborative filtering' feature but I am wondering how it would work.

blubox: creative toolbox for bluetooth

Via the locative mailing list , blubox's blurb:

blubox is a unique bluetooth software and hardware application designed and developed by Maria N. Stukoff and Jon Wetherall for the creative use of mobile phones via bluetooth. as part of this development we are invited to trail the first phase of blubox technology - called fotobox an interactive installation with a public LED screen display - at the 3rd Salford Film Festival in salford/manchester tonight...

If you can make it, please join the LIME Bar for 9pm by the Lowry Centre and be part of the fotobox. an up-date with documentation images will be available later on at: http://mobilebox.typepad.com

The next phase of blubox will platform a 3D game environment controlled and played via bluetooth technology. we aim to release the framework for this mobile phone game by march 2006.

Bio Art? Group C

I like this work by group c. They are prints derived from the "Tissue software" they developed.

Exposes the movements of synthetic neural systems. People interact with the software by positioning a group of points on the screen. An understanding of the total system emerges from the relations between the positional input and the visual output.

The "cells" are also nice:

Cells of color navigate through an abstract architecture to create an active ecology. As the user defined architecture changes, the cells redirect their movements, thus modifying the structure

Just find them to be nice visualizations (and because of my long-ago background in biology I may atill have an interest in this sorrt of neural phenomenon).

Journal of HCI CFP: In-Use, In-Situ: Extending Field Research Methods

A call for paper that seems to be relevant for our research domain at the lab: In-Use, In-Situ: Extending Field Research Methods – Special Issue of the International Journal of Human Computer Interaction. Submission deadline: 10 February 2006

Human-technology evaluation paradigms differ substantially as to whether, for example, they employ high fidelity scenarios and real users, or whether technologies are instead evaluated "analytically" by non-experts. These different evaluations usually happen before the artefacts are introduced into the "real" world, and then often that is also where evaluation ceases. This seems a serious limitation, missing an opportunity to understand and evaluate how designed artefacts actually function when used in the intended context such as a complex critical workplaces or a domestic, leisure-focused settings. Such contexts, where novel technologies meet complex activity, present new challenges in anticipating how technology will be used in practice. Evaluation and re-design should be underpinned by an understanding of what do people do with the technology and how they adapt it or accommodate it into their work practices to make the technology work or work better for them.

What is the state of the art in the methods and techniques available for such evaluations? And perhaps more interestingly, what can or has been done to advance the state of research and evaluation paradigms for studying the cognitive, social and cultural impact of technology that is in-use and in-situ? This special issue invites papers that explore the state of the art in field research, experimental work, and other methods and concepts relevant to designing and evaluating technology ‘in-use, in-situ’. The aim of the issue is to identify gaps and problems for the development of evaluation and design methodology. Researchers from domains spanning the social and computing sciences, engineering, design, humanities, sciences, are encouraged share their experiences and perspectives, and reflect on the fundamentals of complex socio-technical systems and human-centred technology.

For details of how to submit see here.

Why do I blog this? this is the kind of journal paper we may work on, since we're using field studies to investigate various context-aware research projects.

The uncanny valley: why almost-human-looking robots scare people more than mechanical-looking robots

Yesterday I had a good discussion with Xavier Décoret (from INRIA-ARTIS) about the Uncanny Valley phenomenon. It's a a concept coined by japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori well described in this paper: The Uncanny Valley: Why are monster-movie zombies so horrifying and talking animals so fascinating? by Dave Bryant:

Though originally intended to provide an insight into human psychological reaction to robotic design, the concept expressed by this phrase is equally applicable to interactions with nearly any nonhuman entity. Stated simply, the idea is that if one were to plot emotional response against similarity to human appearance and movement, the curve is not a sure, steady upward trend. Instead, there is a peak shortly before one reaches a completely human “look” . . . but then a deep chasm plunges below neutrality into a strongly negative response before rebounding to a second peak where resemblance to humanity is complete.

This chasm—the uncanny valley of Doctor Mori’s thesis—represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting.

More about it:

• Mori, Masahiro (1970). Bukimi no tani [the uncanny valley]. Energy, 7, 33–35.
• Mori, Masahiro (1982). The Buddha in the Robot. Charles E. Tuttle Co.

This has also been studies in cognitive sciences: MacDorman, Karl F. (2005). Androids as an experimental apparatus: Why is there an uncanny valley and can we exploit it? , in Proceedings of CogSci-2005 Workshop: Toward Social Mechanisms of Android Science, 106-118.

Why do I blog this? This phenomenon is very interesting in terms of the consequences for practitioners like interaction designers and is a pertinent example of how some cognitive aspects could impact design.