Virtual Reality Psychodramas

"Researchers at the University of Buffalo (UB) are producing immersive virtual reality (VR) dramas in which the users are given some goals at the beginning and are interacting with 'self-aware' computational agents. The UB Reporter writes that they are putting a new face on 'user-friendly' VR environments. They already created a psychodrama called 'The Trial The Trail' in which 'the user is given two companions named Filopat and Patofil and told that at the end of her experience she will get her heart's desire.' And because the software agents are continuously improving and 'improvising' around human users, the show is different every time. I don't know if this will lead to some mainstream application, but I'm sure that the researchers had lots of fun in their CAVEs-like systems."

How are we doing?

Now that "Usability In The News" has been publishing for over a month, we were wondering how we are doing.

Please let us know if the site has been useful to you and any changes that you think would be benneficial.

Use the "comments" or "contact us" (email) to post your comments or suggestions.

Thanks for your help.

Form Usability

My local area was one of the first to require dialing the area code for local calls. Remembering was difficult at first, but not after a short time since this practice spread to other locations. This change also impacted a brand new telephone that had a cool feature where you add a phone number to the address book straight from caller ID.

One problem, it recorded only the latter seven digits of the local caller's phone number; or it included all ten digits plus the 1 in front turning it into an invalid number. The feature rendered useless.

Forms are frequently left out of the usability equation especially for telephone numbers

Live pictures in 3D

A design engineer’s job is never easy – designing exhaust pipes, packaging or industrial plant demands considerable ingenuity. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz Institut HHI can help, with a new 3D display solution called Free2C. At CeBIT, the team will be demonstrating a variety of applications for the 3D monitor that works without special glasses.

'Wrist Video' Gives Israeli Army an Edge

Israeli troops are now sporting gear that Dick Tracy would be proud of: tiny video screens, worn on the wrist, which display video shot by unmanned airplanes.

Similar screens have been in use for close to a year in the Israeli military's attack helicopters, helping pilots identify and strike Palestinian militants within seconds.

The screen being field-tested by a limited number of footsoldiers is about 3 inches wide, and weighs just a few ounces. Code-named V-Rambo, it's attached to the wrist by a velcro strap. The LCD screens display color video that is beamed directly from drones in real time at 30 frames per second the same rate as broadcast TV. Attack helicopters have been fitted with five-inch screens. The "Video Receiver" systems also include small reception units that are installed on the vehicles and helicopters or carried in soldiers' vests.

The Question and Ducklings

Ah, "The Question." You UXCentrics know which one I mean. You're in a meeting with a Client talking about great UX and UCD and enthusiasm rises. And someone asks, "Could you give us a list of sites with great user experience?"

I don't like The Question. Not because there aren't any outstanding sites to mention, but because it can suck the creativity out of a team. Great examples of UXCentricity are not a panacea to what's ailing a design team. They're not even a good source for great ideas. The best ideas come from within—from a project team obsessed with their own users. Other sites are for other users. Why look there for answers?

The Question has a subtle undercurrent: If a site is successful (say an Amazon or Yahoo!), it's often assumed that the UI and UX is superb. I beg to differ. I'm a big Amazon customer and I'm reasonably pleased with SBC Yahoo!—but I don't see these as paragons of UXCentricity. Those sites are successful for other reasons than UX.

The Real World - Your Company

In previous articles we've spent plenty of time looking at the tension between design and usability, but this week I've been thinking about the relationship between UX people and management. In the community the story has always been: "how can we convince the stakeholders to listen to us?! ARRG!!" For effect this should be said in an exasperated tone with hands clutching inward, shaking in the air.

Our response to this problem has traditionally been to evangelize and "demonstrate the value" of both usability and design to our managers and their managers. This has proven difficult. We blame it on our inability to accurately quantify the ROI for testing, or even the essential nature of design being difficult for non-designers to grasp. To date, these tries have been largely unproductive.

Having representatives at all levels in the organization means that our evangelizing workload gets much smaller and we can spend more time on designing the best products for our users. It also provides a more exciting career path for those who study UX disciplines. The ability to move from designing widgets to designing organizations around UX is compelling and is what is needed for our discipline to become mature.

Built-In Bluetooth Hands-Free Equipment Comes To VW Passats

Newly redesigned Volkswagen Passat automobiles sold in Europe will come with a special Bluetooth-based hands-free unit, the German automaker and Nokia said Friday.

The companies said this is the first time an automaker has included a Bluetooth-based communications system in an automobile. The new system uses Bluetooth to read information from the SIM card that is part of GSM mobile phone networks, the companies said in a system.

A number of functions, such as the phone's address book, can be accessed using an external keyboard and buttons on the steering wheel, the companies said. The system also integrates voice control.

Car navigation unsuccessful in US

Car navigation systems have been less successful in the US than in Japan, according to the largest vendor of car navigation chipsets, Renesas Technology.

"Only 300,000 car navigation systems were sold in the US last year - 250,000 pre-installed in cars and 50,000 sold in the after market - although new car production was 17 million vehicles," said Anand Ramamoorthy at the Globalpress Summit Conference in Monterey on Wednesday.

By contrast four million out of the five million cars sold in Japan last year had navigation systems in them and 80 per cent of them used the Renesas chipset based on the SH microprocessor.

Repurposing the Powerbook Motion Sensor

This isn’t something new for you to buy (sorry), but it’s so cool I had to share. Amit Singh patched into the six-axis motion sensor in the new Apple Powerbooks—originally designed to measure quick movements, like drops, and park the hard drive to prevent damage—and wrote a program that rotates the windows based on the orientation of the laptop to the ground. But that’s not all it can do. Singh offers these examples:

• Panning across large maps (consider Google Maps: you slightly tilt the PowerBook backwards to go North, tilt it slightly to the left to go East, and so on)
• vertical and horizontal scrolling in general, say, in a web browser
• Input for games (for example, a flight simulator)

Interesting new HCI possibilities ...

Will social databases give way to social protocols?

At first, the news about how LinkedIn is going to start charging for tying job listings into its social network didn't strike me as blogworthy. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered what the long-term prognosis will be for companies like LinkedIn, Ryze, and Plaxo that run hub-n-spoke relationship management databases. You're the hub to yourself but a spoke to your contacts; your contacts are spokes to you, but hubs to themselves. If we chain hub and spokes together, then--via Kevin Bacon-like six degrees of separation--you could get introduced to a friend of a friend (by the second friend) or a friend six times removed with the chain of people in the middle whispering into each other's ear and handling the introductions. It's like what happens when a single guy attending a wedding spots a single girl that he wants to meet and has to figure out the chain of people he must go through to get introduced. The bride or groom are usually the fastest route, but not always accessible. With networks like LinkedIn, there's always an alternative path.

The cranky user: Baby duck syndrome

What if something neither looks nor quacks like a duck, but users think it is a duck? The cranky user comments on baby duck syndrome and how it can trap users with systems and interfaces that don't really meet their needs.

The phenomenon of baby duck syndrome is well known -- it's what happens when users judge new and upcoming systems by comparing them with the first system they learned. This means that users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems.

The name comes from the observation, made in the 1950s, that baby ducks imprint on the first entity they are exposed to for any length of time, treating it as their mother ... even if it's not a duck.

This syndrome has substantial impact on user interface design. Developers must take into account previous user experiences to make users comfortable if they want these users to move or upgrade to their system.

Baby duck syndrome can also make usability studies difficult as users familiar with a given system almost invariably describe deviations from it as confusing or problematic. This is not just limited to perceptions; all else being equal, users are more efficient on systems they are more comfortable with and a great deal of comfort can overshadow even a fairly significant actual improvement in usability.

The User Testing Backlash

It appears that user testing is going out of style. I've been to three seminars in the past month in which the speakers mentioned at least once that testing was generally not necessary. Kim Goodwin gave a free seminar at Cooper last week and said that usability testing is a low priority because it is expensive. There have a few heated discussions on IxD about the issue as well. Design blogs are making major arguments against Nielsen methods of design.

Everywhere I look, designers are pooh-poohing design decisions based on usability testing, in favor of other design methods like modeling, persona creation, and framework definition (still based on research). Which is interesting for me as a designer, because-I think most designers would agree on this-usability testing is soooo booring, and yes, it's expensive and time consuming.

Paint Your Web Site's Sales Message with Color!

Color theory, to keep it simple and not too geeky, could be described as the study of the cultural symbolism ascribed to various colors. It is the study and discipline that graphic and more recently web designers, use to symbolize the business identity and purposes of a web site. Certain colors have cultural symbolism and implications to persons in our society. Therefore, you can convey and imply certain images and messages about your web site, company, or brand with the chosen colors of your web site.

There are of course, other elements which convey your ebusiness’ corporate identity, image, brand and goodwill. Like your logo, promotional materials, or corporate communications, and even your sponsorships and charities that your company engages in, also increases the overall perception of your company in the marketplace.

However, since most of your site’s visitors first impression will be their proverbial “lasting impression”, it is important to get the most basic elements of your site’s features correctly — its colors.

Good Experience - The Best Month for Customer Experience

While waiting at the bank the other day I noticed a sign posted behind the bank teller. The text was gray and shabby from the several generations of tellers who had photocopied the sign over the years. It read:

The best months of the year to invest are September, February,
May, March, January, November, August, December, July, April,
October, and June.

I'm thinking of posting a similar sign above my desk, to hang under its own thumbtack for the ages. I'll just edit it a bit: "The best months of the year to invest in customer experience are September, February..."

Or maybe I'll rewrite it entirely - something like this:

The best times in a project to focus on the customer experience
are the beginning, the middle, and the end.

There's no right time to focus on the customer experience. Certainly not at the end of the project, when some companies suddenly decide to evaluate the user experience, or run customer research. Instead, customer experience should be an all-the-time activity: a constant commitment, from this day forward. For the best companies, it's a way of life.

Browser to become tomorrow's mobile phone UI?

"Opera Software, France Telecom, and Orange are exploring ways to add a browser-like home screen to mobile phones, to improve usability and to make lucrative data services more accessible. 'Platform,' which is derived from Opera's mobile browser technology, replaces the handset's normally idle homescreen. This makes creating a custom UI that combines typical phone operations with access to Web-based content as easy as designing a Web page, the companies say."

Usability market to surge in 2005

The usability market has come of age and is set to top the £100m mark in annual revenues during 2005, according to new research.

The report, published by Internet marketing firm E-consultancy, puts the UK usability and accessibility market at £90m in 2004 in terms of revenue.

The sector will grow by a further 25% in 2005, to between £108m to £117m, driven by increased awareness of the benefits of improved website usability and accessibility, according to the report.

Learning and Reading by Artificial Intelligence Systems

Selmer Bringsjord, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Laboratory and professor and chair of the Department of Cognitive Science, and Konstantine Arkoudas, research assistant professor of cognitive science, are the principal investigators for the project called "Poised-For Learning."

“Humans learn best and most efficiently by reading – and yet the brute fact is that machines, though often touted as learning this and that, can’t read. And humans do something very special when they read intelligently: they ponder, almost automatically, how their new knowledge might solve future problems they encounter,” said Bringsjord. “Our goal is to take appreciable steps toward implementing machine learning at the genuinely human level – an intelligent machine that can read books, comprehend and reflect on what it’s read, answer questions in English, and then explain why it answered the way it did.”

The Poised-For Learning intelligent machine is in the design phase and will be based on Multi-Agent Reasoning and Mental Metalogic (MARMML), a machine reasoning system based in turn on Athena, a system developed by Arkoudas in previous work.

Problem based learning in medical education

Problem-based learning (PBL) is probably the largest area of educational research in medicine today. PBL is based firmly as a constructivist implementation whereby learning occurs through interaction with the environment and particularly other people. This essay considers the impact of PBL upon medical education with a short consideration of how PBL may be used in training novice users to handle computers.

In its broadest sense, PBL is implemented by presenting students with problems which they have to solve. It may be useful to draw a distinction between liberal implementations of PBL, and strict. The strict implementations require a firmly constructivist outlook: tutors should not “teach” per se, but rather be an interactive guide to the learning process. The whole idea of constructivism is that the learner is responsible for their own learning: the tutor simply ensures that an effective framework is set up.

Liberal implementations of PBL however simply rely upon the presentation of problems to encourage learning. These do not necessarily require an interaction between the learners and the instructors, and may be taught in an orthodox manner (using a problem as a worked example, for instance).

Most research considers the strict view to be the correct implementation, though there is no unanimity amongst researchers.

Father of Moore's Law to receive Marconi prize

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of "Moore's Law," The Marconi Foundation at Columbia University will bestow its Lifetime Achievement Award on Gordon Moore, the law's author and an Intel co-founder.

Moore's Law, which predicts that chips and computers will steadily increase in performance, has been the guiding principle of the electronics industry for the last four decades and has held remarkably steady. Today's computers and cell phones are not only far more powerful than their predecessors, they also cost less to make and are much smaller.

Extreme Bookmarking - Selection From 50 Del.icio.us Add-Ons

A hot technology trend of 2004 was social bookmarking, with the hype primarily circling around del.icio.us, Furl and Spurl. Last week I dug a little into the technical background of del.icio.us and was astounded at the enormous amount of tools available for it at this time.

Of course the success of del.icio.us can be attributed to its ingenious reciprocity, allowing you to wander from one topic of interest to another. Another strong aspect of del.icio.us is that it lets you see who else bookmarked a particular URL. These two functional aspects of del.icio.us—together with the excellent implementation of RSS feeds that it provides—have convinced hundreds of thousands of users to use it on a daily basis.

But another, perhaps trivial and voyeuristic way of explaining the del.icio.us popularity is that it is just as exciting as to browse—with the owner's full consent—through a book or CD collection without the collector being aware of your prying eyes.

Motorola PEBL V6

It seems very rare that a manufacturer actually publishes real live photos of their handsets. Sure, we see photos of people holding the handsets and such, but those are rarely true photos. Typically they are PhotoShopped creations.

Motorola bucked that trend a bit with the PEBL V6. They have provided true live photos of the device. You can even see a random spec of dust or two. Since they are so nice, and since one of them actually gives a hint as to what the keypad might look like, I thought I'd post them for all to enjoy.

Audio Location

Audio Location, developed by James Scott at Intel Research Cambridge, is a low-cost location sensing mechanism based on the use of off-the shelf microphones attached to cheap PCI sound cards in a standard PC.

The system doesn't require the user to wear any tag, it can detect human-made sounds such as the clicking of fingers or clapping to accuracies of around 15cm for a 3D location.
Possible use of the system include any application which might otherwise involve a real button interface. Finger-clicks on virtual 'buttons' in 3D space could control lights, music players, etc. On a computer desk, audio location might be used to quick-start or control often-used computer applications. PDF of presentation.

Floatables

Our data shadows follow us around: information about us leaks out of buildings, seeps out of our devices and is accessible to anyone with the appropriate bit of hardware or software. In an urban environment that is so data-saturated can a distinction between public and private space really claim to exist?

It is the contention of this project that private spaces are increasingly scarce. All spaces are public, except spaces of absence. If privacy once existed in the home, now such a space no longer needs to be tied to a particular location.

The data that portrays our lives and lifestyles is accessible by so many individuals and organisations that it can longer claim to lie outside the public domain. The fact that there are many individuals and organisations that are not able to access this data does not make it any less public -- the great myth of public space is that it is a space open to all. Public space, whatever the cultural definition, has always sought to limit access: to particular members of a community, particular citizenships, particular genders or particular income groups. In such a situation, what is needed is a truly private space: a space of absence.

Visualizing shared metadata: the tag landscape

Let’s talk about tags, baby. While some continue to debate the usefulness of tag-based folksonomies, others are starting to build abstraction layers on top of a growing body of user-tagged data. Java and flash-based tools are beginning to emerge that visually map the relationships between tags, as well as exploring the relationships between users themselves.

Flickr graph is an application in Flash and Cold Fusion that explores the social relationships inside Flickr. It uses classic attraction-repulsion algorithms to create a realtime graph of users’ contacts, allowing you to visually traverse the Flickr community. This layer of abstraction is made possible by Flickr’s open API, which allows external applications to poll the Flickr user dataset:

Visionary Machines

Back in the 1960s HAL 9000's glowing red "eye" served as one of the first realistic ideas of machine vision (as opposed to Gort from "The Day The Earth Stood Still", and others). But the reality was that machine vision was barely more than simple light beam interrupt sensors -- the kind that you can now find in products as simple as children's toys. Now, almost 40 years later, the technologies once only dreamed of are allowing real products to see for the first time. Tech Thursday looks at the new opportunities opened up by these artificial eyes.

How many times have you wished that a product, like a garbage can, could just see you coming and open up, or turn on, or maybe even just cook you dinner? Before computer vision systems began cheapening up in the last few years, these were pipe dreams, but now, we are approaching a time where machines will be able to "see" a wide variety of information, and make decisions based on it. But, even the human eye is broken up into different areas for different purposes; peripheral vision is designed to detect motion and shadow information, while your central vision fills in the detail information in the brain. Machine vision is no different, and each different system has strengths at a special facet of vision. Take a look at your options:

Library Shuffles Its Collection

Checking out a new iPod now applies to more than shopping trips or web browsing. This week the South Huntington Public Library on Long Island, New York, became one of the first public libraries in the country to loan out iPod shuffles.

For the past three weeks, the library ran a pilot program using the portable MP3 devices to store audio books downloaded from the Apple iTunes Music Store. They started with six shuffles, and now are up to a total of 10. Each device holds a single audio book.

The few library patrons that have checked them out seem to have had positive experiences.

Bio-Pen offers secure signature protection

Just as debit and credit card signatures are being phased out in the UK in favour of Chip and PIN (and now it's so much easier to just read people's PINs over their shoulders rather than having to practise forging their signatures), along comes this bit of biometric technology to bring new life to the humble autograph. Secure Signature Systems (SSS) has been busy developing this Bio-Pen that's been designed for use with laptops and PCs to prevent unsavoury types from logging onto wireless networks and VPNs. The chrome ink pen uses biometric technology to identify users via their signatures, providing a wire-free security system.

It's is a pretty neat idea - although we're guessing that it's as open to problems as laptop fingerprint scanners and all the other biometric peripherals out there. It does offer a number of different opportunities for use though - including presumably, good old credit and debit card authorisation.

Philips rollable displays to offer paper-like reading experience in mobile applications

Philips Polymer Vision, a line of business within Philips Electronics, announced today that it has made significant progress in strengthening its leadership position in the area of rollable displays for the mobile-device industry. The new 5-inch PV-QML5 rollable display has a decreased radius of curvature, improved operational and mechanical lifetime and paperlike viewing contrast. These are major steps forward compared to the world's first rollable display prototype introduced by Polymer Vision in February 2004. Moreover, current process and yield improvements will enable production within two years.

Increasingly, business users are demanding access to broadband information while on the move. Rollable displays are projected to be the primary solution to the consequent demand for larger displays in mobile devices -- without increasing device size, weight, or power consumption. Philips Polymer Vision's rollable display is well positioned to accommodate the user with smooth, paperlike viewing in all sorts of data-centric mobile applications, such as text, agendas, e-mail, electronic maps, and multiple-data information services.

Intel Mobile Concept PCs provide vision of digital lifestyle

Intel Corporation has unveiled its latest concept mobile PCs during the Intel Developer Forum Spring 2005. The new designs demonstrate how future Intel Centrino mobile technology platforms could be used to provide "on-the-go" entertainment for consumers and enhanced innovation for "digital office" users.

The on-the-go concept mobile PC is a new, ultra-mobile notebook PC that would allow consumers in the future to enjoy digital entertainment away from, in and around the home. Intel envisions that software would allow consumers to access ("outside-in") and/or synchronize ("sync-n-go") content from a digital home PC or network to use with the concept mobile PC.

Small enough to fit in the user's hands, its touch screen doubles as a flat surface speaker, eliminating the need for a keyboard. The unit is designed to aid easy communications for on-the-go consumers. It comes equipped with a wired or wireless keyboard, detachable DVD player, GPS navigation system, a built-in camera and array microphones. It also offers a sneak peek at future computing and communication capabilities, including WLAN connectivity, advanced PC system features and performance benefits.

HSV's limited edition SV6000 with Driver Dynamic Interface

Developed by the General Motors Technology Management group, together with HSV Engineering, DDI combines all the attributes of a modern personal digital assistant with the convenience of satellite navigation.

The release of this unique new technology highlights the link that has been forged between HSV's engineering department and General Motors Technology Management Group located within the Detroit R&D centre. Essentially created as a high technology 'think tank' unit, GM's Technology Management Group was responsible for the basic DDI concept after which the development and refinement of the system was handled in conjunction with HSV engineering. The result is another amazing coup for HSV as it is the first to market this technology and has now established a mutually beneficial ongoing flow of ideas and information.

The DDI system combines the attributes of a modern PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) with the convenience of satellite navigation, as well as opening a direct line of communication between the driver and the car. For the many HSV owners who are busy, successful people and tend to spend long hours behind the wheel the DDI will be an absolute boon.

When functioning as a PDA, the pocket-sized DDI is portable and offers all the usual features of its type, including a Microsoft operating system, Bluetooth download capabilities, address book and appointments notification, just to name a few.

Transparent transistors could mean cheaper, smaller electronics

A new class of materials in development at Oregon State University and HP will soon be used to create transparent transistors which, besides dripping with the sci-fi factor, are cheaper to produce than their silicon counterparts. The new material is created by mixing zinc oxide (the same stuff that provides UV protection in sunscreen) and tin oxide (found in food cans), and was originally intended as a cheap replacement for the expensive transparent transistors currently used in solar cells. However, the consumer electronics industry already has other ideas in mind for the technology and is driving demand to bring these materials to market.

Potential consumer applications include electronic glass displays (think information displayed in shop windows or car windshields), improved LCD technologies, foldable electronics, better solar cell technologies, and a broad range of entirely new consumer products. Also look for devices incorporating glass to become smaller, due to the transparent transistors’ ability to embed mechanical support systems into areas of glass that currently go unused. If these transistors eventually replace the traditional silicon transistors in your computer monitor, TV, or CPU, it would accompany a drop in consumer electronics prices. These transistors can be produced so cheaply they may even find their way into one-time-use disposable electronics, like the constantly updating foldable plastic newspaper as envisioned in everybody’s favorite movie (yeah), Back to the Future II. We’ll leave the 80’s fashion behind, thanks, but we’ll gladly take this vision of a transparent sci-fi world on the horizon.

Use Cases Part II: Taming Scope: A List Apart

When web projects go wrong, the cause can often be traced to misunderstanding and miscommunication about scope: what you thought your client wanted and what they thought they were getting doesn’t match. The later in a project this is discovered, the costlier for someone it can become.

To manage scope effectively, we have to define what the site must contain, what optional features would be good to have, and what features are irrelevant – and then we have to deal with newly requested or discovered needs and enhancements.

The use-case model can be a powerful tool for controlling scope throughout a project’s lifecycle. Because a simplified use-case model can be understood by all project participants, it can also serve as a framework for ongoing collaboration as well as a visual map of all agreed-upon functionality. It can, therefore, be a precious reference during later negotiations that might affect the project’s scope.

The "i" behind iPod - innovation, integration, or inertia?

More than two decades after the debut of the Macintosh, Apple decided not to license the iPod design generally. The one exception has been HP, which is currently acting more as a reseller than a licensee. So, as with its famous computer, the iPod’s fate rests solely in Apple’s hands, Those hands have pushed the polyphonic pods toward a dominant market share. However, how much of this has been due to innovation, the integration with iTunes, or simply brand momentum?

Early iPods had clear form factor and ease of use advantages versus their competitors. Nowadays, though, the hardware competition has become much stronger, particularly in the “mini” segment that’s seeing strong growth. The changes that we’ve seen since the debut of the iPod have mostly been refinements — thinner designs, color screens, smaller form factors, shuffled controls, and tweaked interfaces. Compare this with Apple’s iMac, which has seen two dramatically different form factors since incarnation. One could argue that the slow-growth consumer desktop computer market needs more pizzazz to create excitement, but shouldn’t a company be advancing the product that’s driving its growth most aggressively?

Are Your Visitors Seeing What You Think?

"You may think visitors to your company's Web site are carefully reading every word on your home page. But they're not. People glance at a fragment here, a fragment there, and decide within a matter of seconds whether to stay or leave.

Now a remarkable study has measured this hummingbird-like effect that your site's visitors have. Web pages that have been changed to exploit the findings of this study have sometimes generated two to three times the response rate from visitors, at little cost to the site owner.

Web experts sometime say, 'No one clicks a button they didn't see.' How could a visitor get to your site and not see a button that's right there, waiting to be clicked? Read on to find the answer. "

Product usability weblog: Utility: what do you expect?

"While usability concerns people's ability to use a product, utility is the extent to which a product has the features required to complete a task. A hammer is a better product to use to hit a nail than a lipstick. For a VCR it would be recommendable to add a record function. People expect it to be there and they might consider a VCR without a record function annoying or sub-standard. If the VCR is able to record, but the user cannot operate it, that's a usability problem."

But the expectations of what features a product should have can change. For example, in contrast to a VCR not every dvd player is (yet) expected to have the ability to record. On cars, people are starting to expect airconditioning, while a few years it was a luxury. So these expectations can change. But they can also be influenced.

User Experience Education

Tom Smith's diagram is yet another illustration of the multidisciplinary nature of user experience. His network diagram shows connections between multiple fields, methods, and thinkers, clustered like so:

* Knowing the technology (e.g., content management)
* Knowing what you have to work with (e.g., content inventory)
* Knowing how the mind works (e.g., mental models)
* Knowing what people really want (e.g., story boards)
* Knowing what people really have done (e.g., log file analysis)
* Knowing what users actually do and think (e.g., ethnography)
* Knowing what users want to hear (e.g., marketing)
* Understanding users are not alone (e.g., social networks)
* Knowing how you are doing (e.g., metrics)
* Knowing how this all fits together (e.g., ROI)

The obvious implication of Tom's and similar UX illustrations is that one person can't be expected to demonstrate expertise in all these areas; organizations need to invest in multi-disciplinary *teams* if they're serious about UX.

See the diagram. Too large to reproduce.

CIA 'too cautious' in killing terrorists

"Despite the broad new authorities to use lethal force it was granted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, critics say the CIA continues to be too cautious in employing the ultimate sanction against the terrorist enemies of the United States. One former intelligence official told United Press International that even the agency's most touted new weapon -- the Hellfire missile, which can be launched from the remotely piloted Predator aerial platform -- is hamstrung by the excessively legalistic attitude of the agency's senior management.

But according to Scheuer the concern meant that operations ended up being micro-managed by administration lawyers. "It got so ridiculous," he told UPI. "When we were training for an operation to capture bin Laden, the lawyers made us build an ergonomic chair in which he would be comfortable. ... At one point we took three rolls of tape to the lawyers (at the National Security Council) -- duct tape ... masking tape and white adhesive tape -- so they could decide which we could use to put over his mouth that would be least uncomfortable."

Every terrorist deserves an ergonomic chair ... I couldn't resit ...

Stopping suspects' vehicles via radio wave, a net, or a mobile phone

"UK police is showing interest in futuristic gadget that would disables suspect vehicles without involving high speed chases:

At the flick of a switch, a radio wave zapper directs a beam of radio waves --from a roof-mounted antenna, which has a range of about 50 metres-- at the suspect's car and makes it stall, then stop. The systems targets computer chips, now used in most cars to control the fuel injection and engine firing systems, and use them against the driver: by knocking these out the car cannot be driven.

Home Office scientists are testing the system but still want to know more about the effect of the device on non-suspect cars in the area. And, of course, it does not work on vehicles built before on-board computers were standard. "

STATIC! Increasing Energy Awarness

STATIC! investigates interaction design as a means of increasing our awareness of how energy is used and for stimulating changes in energy behavior. Revisiting the design of everyday things with a focus on issues related to energy use, we are developing a palette of critical design examples - prototypes, conceptual design proposals, and use scenarios. These will be used a basis for communication and discussion with users and designers, for developing a more profound understanding of energy is design, and to support awareness of design issues related to energy use early in the product development process.

Household lamps typically have very basic functionality with respect to energy - expressed in lit states of ‘on’ or ‘off’ or somewhere between. In the ‘Flower Lamp’ example, it is not just the light of the lamp but its very form that reflects energy used. The lamp ‘blooms’ – changing its shape and thus lit expression – when energy consumption in a household has been low for some time, thus reflecting the cycles of local energy use. In order to make the lamp more beautiful, a change in behaviour is needed.

Tailored Virtual Surgery

Stanford engineer and surgeon Charles Taylor has worked for about a decade to bring more predictability into surgery. He and his collaborators have amassed medical data including MRIs and CT scans, and combined them with algorithms the team has worked out to predict blood flow, the flexibility of veins and arteries, among other parameters. His goal is to develop a simple software tool that allows surgeons to practice each individual operation before touching scalpel to skin.

"It's the ultimate video game," said Dr. Jeffrey Feinstein, a pediatric cardiologist at Stanford who is helping Taylor develop the technology. "You sit down and make a change and you see the results in real time. You can try a few things without actually having to try them on the patient."

If surgeons adopt the tool, it could fundamentally change the way doctors approach surgery. Today, they rely on diagnostic tests to find out what's going on with the patient. But they can't test their ideas until they actually perform the surgery. Because every patient is unique, diagnostic data can't tell a surgeon what approach will work best. Maybe a patient would have been better off with a different type of bypass, or without surgery at all. Maybe he would have benefited more from simply changing his diet.

World’s first Walkman phone

Sony Ericsson kick-started its entry into the mobile music market with the announcement of the W800, the first Walkman® branded mobile phone. It will now be possible to listen to music, handle phone calls and take great pictures and video, all with one device and with no compromise on quality. The Sony Ericsson W800 is the first product to combine a mobile phone, a high quality digital music player with up to 30 hours’ battery life, and a 2 Megapixel camera. All of this is packaged in a slim, lightweight device with ultra-stylish design.

The W800’s intuitive interface makes it a breeze to use the music player and the functionality of phone, music player and camera are carefully integrated. Also, owners need never miss a call when listening to music, as the phone ring is played through the stereo headphones. If the user chooses to take the call the music is paused for the call’s duration. The music player is operated with just one Direct Music button that plays, pauses and stops tracks, and player and phone can be used independently of each other, so for example the user can switch the phone off for a plane journey while still enjoying the music player.

Un-finding & Web Navigation

"In the offline world we can utilize physical cues and established conventions for context and constraint. For instance, a traditional product catalog can be searched through established conventions like an index, a table of contents, page numbers, and browsed through section headers and physical cues (the beginning, the back, etc.). This combination enables us to move between searching and browsing fluidly and to restart easily. Online, however, we are missing the cues and conventions that guide us in the real world. Instead the constraints we employ are always presented to us as flat interface elements. "

The CDW example above provides a consistent means to remove search filters (keywords) as well as browsing filters (attributes such as categories). This not only indicates what factors are responsible for the current item list, but also allows users to undo portions of their finding process easily.

In our information-saturated cyber lives, a day may come when the process of un-finding (navigating out from specific results) becomes as crucial as finding (navigating to specific results).

Lufthansa introduces new business class operations to Frankfurt

"The new Business Class on long-haul routes is now offering its Kuwait based business class passengers daily operations to Frankfurt on the Airbus A333.

Mr. Rafik further elaborated, 'With the new Business class now operating daily from Kuwait to Frankfurt we are opening up a new dimension for our customers. We have put special consideration to the convenient Arrival and Departure timings for our passengers and hope that it will suit them well. 'In addition, we offer maximum comfort, more space, more peace and quiet, a diverse information and entertainment programme and excellent service on board. Our customers fly in style on a multi-functional seat which guarantees ideal conditions for sleep, work and relaxation at the highest level. The two - metre bed makes a relax sleep possible in the Business class. We thus create an optimal situation for work, entertainment and relaxation, especially for our frequent flyers, thus creating a travel stress free environment.' "

Matt Locke on folksonomies

"Wonderful Matt Locke piece on folksonomies, which introduces not one but two substantial ideas to the debate:"

Perhaps this illustrates the limit of folksonomies - they are only useful in a context in which nothing is at stake. [Emphasis his] Folksonomies are, in essence, just vernacular vocabularies; the ad-hoc languages of intimate networks. They have existed as long as language itself, but have been limited to the intimate networks that created them. At the point in which something is at stake, either within that network or due to its engagement with other networks (legal, financial, political, etc) vernacular communication will harden into formal taxonomy, and in this process some of its slipperiness and playfulness will be lost.

Bowker and Star identify three values that are in competition within classfication structures: comparability, visibility and control. Folksonomies have elevated visibility, but at the expense of comparability (being able to translate classifications across taxonomies or contexts) and control (the ability of the classification to limit interpretation, rather than interpret ‘emergent’ behaviour). Whilst nothing is at stake, and there is little lost by not being able to transfer taxonomies from one context to the other, or users are not disadvantaged by the need to independently assess and contextualise meaning, folksonomies will provide a useful service.