The human factor in engineering voice applications

If your work includes speech technology, you know that speech user interfaces and human factors professionals seem to get a lot of attention. But how do they work together, and just as importantly, why? Learn more about the human factors profession; you'll soon understand how much a project benefits from inviting these specialists into your finely tuned speech project.

The field of human factors has two major goals: to improve the effectiveness or productivity of people (for example, performance) and to enhance human values (for example, improve comfort, safety, or satisfaction).

Human factors practices are variable and can be called by just about any name. Often, human factors experts emphasize their particular method, because it is the method they use that produces measurable outcomes like ease of use, usability, or positive user experience.

Basically, anytime something comes up related to how people will use a technology, that is the appropriate time for human factors consultation. Human factors experts should be consulted to provide user requirements, use cases, design user interfaces, and user feedback on usability or satisfaction. They are more effective in the earliest stages of development; at this point, their work is proactive because the system has not yet been built. At the same time, this stage is challenging because everyone on the team needs to trust the human factors recommendations.

In reality, it's much more common for a development team to realize they need usability testing toward the end of development. This approach is reactive and does not allow the human factors professional to design a system around the user. This is a reactive approach and can lead to conflicts within the development team and usability problems in the speech interface.

A good introductory explanation ...

How to Change the World and be Home for Dinner: The art, science, and myths of videoconferencing

Existing videoconferencing systems often distort conversational cues such that the person, rather than the medium, is viewed with negative attributes. For example, a delayed response due to video transmission may cause the person to be viewed as slow. Lip movements not synchronized with speech due to video compression may cause the person to be viewed as less credible. And difficulties with eye contact due to camera placement may cause the person to be viewed as unfriendly. The power of "bad" video to do "harm" is one of the fundamental reasons that videoconferencing is still not ubiquitous despite its introduction by AT&T in 1927.

In this talk, we will describe experiments conducted at Stanford University on the characteristics of "bad" video and methods to overcome these factors. We will introduce VSee, the videoconferencing software based on these discoveries. Next, we will describe United Nation's deployment of VSee in Indonesia for tsunami relief, Department of Defense's deployment of VSee in Iraq and Afghanistan, and telework consortium's remote office experiments. Lastly, we will challenge some common myths of videoconferencing.

Dr. Milton Chen is the Chief Technology Officer of VSee Lab. Milton's pioneering research at Stanford University has shown why videoconferencing has failed to become ubiquitous despite billions in investments since 1927. His unique insight in how to make video communication an everyday experience has led to more than 30 invited talks to major research institutions around the world. Milton received a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Dr. Erika Chuang is a research scientist at VSee Lab. Her research interests include video mediated communication, computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning, in particular the study of human facial expressions and body language and their application in computer animation, humancomputer interaction, and multimedia. Erika received her BS/MEng degrees in EECS from MIT, and a PhD from Stanford University. Prior to joining VSee, she worked on acquiring 3D facial models, for virtual conferencing at HP and for special effects at Disney Animation Studio.

Meet Annik Stahl, Online Advice Columnist for the Microsoft Office Team

The Crabby Office Lady’s mission is to be useful, relevant, listen to customers, and put a human face on Microsoft.

In 2001, Stahl worked with a group of writers and editors on the Microsoft Office Team. They wrote assistance articles and created templates for Office Tools on the Web. Someone had the bright idea of adding a columnist to their site who could “humanize” how they presented help to their customers.

Stahl decided to create the character of the Crabby Office Lady. She imagined Crabby as a “secretary from a bygone era whose desk is littered with lipstick-marked foam cups of coffee, she’s the one who keeps the supply of sticky notes, and only she knows just where the bodies are buried (so to speak). This is the lady every office can’t do without. While mumbling keyboard shortcuts under her breath, she can instruct you how to transpose a row of text into a column of text… She’s got a hard edge with a soft heart; she’s a swivel chair guru—the resident Office expert.”

Lots of tips with an interesting approach ...

Is Localization of a Product Essential to Ensure Usability and Customer Satisfaction?

Do you believe that localization of a product is essential to ensure usability and customer satisfaction? What do you consider the consequences of delivering an English-only product for a user community that, by majority, speaks English as a second language?

The following is a true story about how one group of technical writers put customer satisfaction ahead of their careers.

Several Technical Writers of ABC Company (a pseudonym) decided to translate the user guides of a new system into Japanese. If successful, it would significantly reduce calls to the Help Desk about regarding information covered in the user guide. Support came from members of the company's office in Japan who graciously volunteered their time and effort to this undertaking.

Apple's Blueprint for Genius

Handling its own design work is one reason for best-sellers like the iPod and Shuffle. Steve Jobs is the other

Many executives believe that outsourcing design allows them to lower the salaries they must pay, and lets them have engineers working on the products across all time zones. Jobs thinks that's short-sighted. He argues that the cost-savings aren't worth what you give up in terms of teamwork, communication, and the ability to get groups of people working together to bring a new idea to life. Indeed, with top-notch mechanical, electrical, software, and industrial designers all housed at Apple's Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, Calif., the company's design capability is more vertically integrated than almost any other tech outfit.

Typically, a new Apple product starts with a big idea for an unmet customer need. For the original iPod, it was for an MP3 player that, unlike earlier models, could hold and easily manage your entire music collection. Then, Apple's product architects and industrial designers figure out what that product should look like and what features it should have -- and, importantly, not have. "Apple has a much more holistic view of product design," says David Carey, president of design consulting firm Portelligent. "Good product design starts from the outside, and works its way inside."

Social networks: All around the Net, but underused by news sites

In the last two years social networking sites mushroomed across the net, heavily fertilized by hype and the promise of six degrees of connection between socially dispersed people who shared common interests or friends. Now companies actively apply social networking principles to shift more stock and lure more clickthrus to their site.

So far, most newspapers have done little to develop the tools required to enable interesting, broad networks needed to foster ongoing relationships with their readers. Most newspaper innovation stopped with 'e-mail this story' and subscription models. Even less exists for deep networks.

But now some newspapers, too, are beginning to deploy social networking tools and components into their core services. The tribe.net experiment by The Washington Post and Knight-Ridder is an attempt to shore up the rapidly disappearing newspaper classified market and to engage more meaningfully with readers.

"Social networks are going to continue to evolve, and all the media need to pay attention to it."

Sound Added to Text Messages for Talking Images

Soon it may be possible to send short messages as audio documents with animations created by the sender. As a supplement to text messaging and MMS, Siemens has developed the Animated Instant Voice Message, which is being introduced at CeBIT in Hanover.

To create one of these messages, users photograph themselves with a cell phone camera and record their message with the dictation function. When the message is sent, the audio document is transmitted along with the image.

In conjunction with the text to which sound has been added, the person receiving the message is presented with the illusion of a live video broadcast, because the program automatically recognizes the lips in the image and moves them in sync with the text.

The BAT 3 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

The MLB Bat is a small, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that has capabilities typically found only in much larger and more expensive UAVs. The Bat is a complete UAV system that can operate autonomously, deliver high quality video imagery, and fits into two suitcase-sized containers. The aircraft operates autonomously, has a 6-hour duration, and telemetry range of up to 10 miles and can be launched from the roof of a car. Currently being evaluated to assist in protecting the soldiers traveling the dangerous dusty roads of Iraq, the Bat has many potential applications in peacetime operations too.

Because of its small size and lightweight, the Bat is launched using a car-top, bungee-powered catapult and lands autonomously on wheels. A small clearing is adequate to operate the Bat. A 2.0 cubic inch gasoline or JP-8 fueled engine powers the aircraft and its muffler reduces the noise level to nearly inaudible at a distance of 750 feet.

MLB has developed a compact ground station for operating the Bat using a laptop PC as the primary control console. The PC has a moving map display showing the aircraft’s location, speed, and height in real time. There are system monitoring windows to keep track of the Bat’s performance and a live video capture window. The flight path is specified as a series of mission legs, each with its own altitude, speed, and waypoint. The operator can change the mission plan by “dragging and dropping” waypoints over the map display and then uploading the new flight plan to the aircraft.

The interface for controling the Bat presents interesting issues ...

Can't remember phone numbers? You're not alone

If you have a hard time remembering phone numbers, and rely on your cellphone’s directory to keep track of all of your contacts, you’re not alone. According to The New York Times, cellphones have replaced little black books, PDAs and even Outlook as the central repository of contact info for many people. And since most people don’t make backups, if they lose their cellphones, they’re out of luck. A recent British study found that 29% of people worried that they’d lose touch with friends and business associates if they lost their cells. The solution: backup, backup, backup. Even if you have to do it on paper. Oh, and that part about not remembering phone numbers: It’s not your fault (or the fault of too much cellphone radiation hitting your brain). Turns out the human brain isn’t wired to adequately handle numbers longer than nine digits. With most phone numbers requiring at least 10 digits, we just can’t handle them. That, and with the cellphone as an omnipresent appendage, why waste your brain cells on phone numbers? Save them for something more important, like, uh, um, what were we saying?

The Interactive virtual showroom

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications HHI in Berlin are demonstrating a system at CEBIT that can display real environments as high-resolution 360-degree panoramas rather than simply on two-dimensional monitors. Videos, moving or stationary objects, and sound can be embedded in the display.

In cylindrical 360° panoramas, virtual scenes can be viewed all the way around their own axis. A new system now allows these scenes to be explored interactively by augmenting them with sound, pictures or films, creating living representations of enclosed spaces.

Vendors can demonstrate various products in a virtual showroom, or provide links to product information. “In this way, the customer can interactively create a personalized shopping atmosphere among the goods that are on show,” says Peter Eisert. "Furthermore, he can filter out products that are not of interest, retrieving info on individual products, and determining how many other customers will share this space."

Pioneer In Artificial-Intelligence Software Devises New Theory Of Cognition

Robert Hecht-Nielsen, an adjunct professor in electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering, has also been a vice president of R&D at Fair Isaac Corporation since the company acquired a software firm he co-founded, HNC Software. He outlined his theory of the fundamental mechanism of cognition in a seminar on the UCSD campus yesterday, and details appear in the February issue of the journal Neural Networks, in an article titled “Cogent Confabulation.”

The Hecht-Nielsen theory posits that all aspects of cognition – seeing, hearing, understanding, planning and so on – are carried out using a single type of knowledge (antecedent support) and a single information processing operation called ‘confabulation’ which is carried out between the brain’s cerebral cortex and thalamus. The scientist’s theory hypothesizes that confabulation is the only information processing operation used in cognition. The theory also explains the cognitive mechanism by which behaviors (thoughts and movements) are launched, moment by moment, throughout the day.

“In short,” he concluded, “brains carry out cognition using a simple, universal, information-processing operation – confabulation – in concert with vast amounts of accumulated knowledge of a very simple kind.”

Ergonomic MP3 player

Mads from Asono sent us a blurb on the Mica MP3 player, which, at 22 grams, you wear like a necklace. It's got great technical specs, but I like the form and the usability factor (cool joystick). I couldn't figure out how the integrated headphones work, until I saw this picture. Mica's design is by Norway Says, designers of the Alta bike and featured in Designers on Design.

Sharp Zaurus SL-3000 Linux PDA Review

The Sharp Zaurus SL-C7xx series and C860 PDAs have a strong cult following outside Japan, even though they're available only through importers. The reasons are clear: the device has a very usable keyboard, a clamshell design reminiscent of a highly miniaturized notebook computer, a touch screen, excellent expandability and it runs Linux. While you're greeted by a friendly interface that's optimized for PDA use, you can run Linux shell commands and even re-compile Linux apps for the Zaurus.

The Password design pattern: My single biggest web peeve

Okay, aside from the larger problems of having to have passwords at all, the need for multiple passwords to prevent your global security being lowered to the scruples/security of your weakest content provider, frequency attacks, and all the rest, my biggest peeve is entirely the site owner's fault, and is so easily fixed.

Courtrooms could host virtual crime scenes

Lawyers, judges and jurors could soon explore crime scenes in three dimensions in the courtroom, in the same way that video gamers explore virtual worlds.

Software called instant Scene Modeler (iSM) re-creates an interactive 3D model from a few hundred frames of a scene captured by a special video camera. Users can zoom in on any object in the 3D model, measure distances between objects and look at scenes from different angles.

Currently investigators try to recreate the scene of the crime in court by sifting through photos or sketches, but this approach is limited and time-consuming, explains Piotr Jasiobedzki, iSM's project manager at MDRobotics in Toronto, Canada. The software could also assist detectives during their investigations.

Toshiba Develops Detachable Display

Toshiba has developed a detachable display that the company says will combine the convenience of a Tablet PC with the computing power of a notebook. The display could be available in about three years, the company said at this week's CeBIT trade show.

The company has already developed a prototype stylus-operated display that can be detached from a notebook PC, and is showing it here. The 12.1-inch TFT LCD screen with XGA (1024 by 768 pixels) resolution communicates with a Toshiba notebook "base station" via the 802.11b wireless protocol, says Hajime Yamaguchi, a research scientist at Toshiba's Advanced Electron Devices Laboratory.

Toshiba Develops Detachable Display

Toshiba has developed a detachable display that the company says will combine the convenience of a Tablet PC with the computing power of a notebook. The display could be available in about three years, the company said at this week's CeBIT trade show.

The company has already developed a prototype stylus-operated display that can be detached from a notebook PC, and is showing it here. The 12.1-inch TFT LCD screen with XGA (1024 by 768 pixels) resolution communicates with a Toshiba notebook "base station" via the 802.11b wireless protocol, says Hajime Yamaguchi, a research scientist at Toshiba's Advanced Electron Devices Laboratory.

Robinson Armament XCR Multi-Caliber Carbine/Subcarbine for Military

Back in September, DefenseReview provided its readers with a quick "heads-up" on the new Robinson Armament XCR Modular Weapon System (MWS). The Robinson Armament XCR Modular Weapon System (MWS) was specifically designed and developed to compete in the USSOCOM SCAR/SOFCAR program. The purpose of the SCAR/SOFCAR program is to adopt a select-fire multi-caliber modular weapon system for U.S. Special Operations Forces that can be quick-converted between calibers and barrel lengths, and that will be more reliable and durable under adverse conditions and high round count than the M4/M4A1 carbine and various AR-15/M16-variant subcarbines. In the XCR-L, Robinson Armament Co. claims to have created an ambidextrous rifle/carbine/subcarbine that is as reliable and durable under adverse conditions and high round count as an AK-47/AKM, while simultaneously offering superior ergonomics, accuracy, and accessory mounting/attachment options to the M4/M4A1 Carbine. Wow. Where do I sign up?

A lot of anthropometrics and ergonomic design went into this ...

In-Car PC Entertainment: the Inperio Envader

Intel’s exhibit at the CeBIT technology show in Germany is home to a prototype BMW 7-Series, equipped with an Inperio Systems on-board infotainment PC called “the Envader” (man, do we need a whole new dictionary for made-up technology words or what?). According to the company, the device, based on a Pentium M-powered embedded PC, offers an integrated “infotainment, communitainment, and entertainment platform” (i.e., navigation, audio/video, TV, radio, games, Internet, and e-mail). Communitainment? Where do you even find North Korean strippers these days?

TomTom Go 700

The TomTom go 70 is the new range topper which adds communications capabilities to the Linux based SatNav device, by use of the Bluetooth 1.1 standard the go finally gets cosy with your mobile phone giving both voice and data connectivity.

The 700 boasts hands free communication by channelling the phone call from your mobile to the tom tom go unit much like a Bluetooth headset would, the on screen GUI allows calls to be answered, but it does go one step further giving the ability to access the phones contact list and to make calls from the unit.

This new feature allows access to your mobile on the large and clear TomTom screen which goes one better than the vast majority of hands free car kits, we were already impressed with the quality of the TomTom units sound and this bodes well for the new feature.

How do you feel about an integrated display with a rearview mirror?

Ethics for IAs - A discussion

Where to start? What are the ethical issues we face as IAs?

As professionals who are the interface between the client and the users, we may sometimes be asked to do some things by the client (and be handsomely paid to do so), but which are not entirely good for the users. Sometimes we might be asked to do something for the users which they don't want, but is in fact good for them.

What are the drivers for our ethics - is it truth, love, and beauty? Do no harm? Take the money and run? The purity of logic?

Reply to above:
Oh please... get over it.. this is one of the most utopian statements/topics that I have come across. Successful IA is a mastery of compromises.
Successful anything is a matter of mastery of compromises. This does not however mean that all ethics look the same -- what is alluded to in the above question is that different professions have different ethics: art vs medicine vs business vs ...

So, where do we start? What is the Librarian's ethics mantra?

Code of Ethics of the American Library Association

World’s lightest scanner

If the Guinness Book of Records certified it, it must be true. Canadian-based Planon Systems Solutions today at CeBIT showed off the “world’s lightest scanner,” the wireless Docupen R700, weighing in at under 60 grams (about the weight of, well, a pen). The flyweight device can scan an entire standard A4 page in one go in about four seconds at a resolution of either 100 or 200dpi. The ScanSoft PaperPort bundled software includes OCR functionality to convert scanned text into an editable format. It connects to a PC to charge, and will set you back about $200, making this another pen you really can’t afford to lose.

Video games can improve performance in vision tasks

C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester conducted a study in which they found that avid video game players were better at several different visual tasks compared to non-gamers (”Action Video Game Modifies Visual Attention,” Nature, 2003).

I’ll get to the specific tasks they studied a little later, because I want to focus in on the really interesting part of the study: just how much gaming do you need to do in order to improve your vision? In the initial experiment, Green and Bavelier compared gamers who played an hour or more most days for the previous six months to people with little or no game-playing during the same period. They reasoned that avid gamers might not have learned the visual tasks by playing games; they might naturally have been better at them, or their motor-control skills might be better.

After just this short training period, the results came in as predicted: the Medal of Honor players improved significantly in each task (though not quite to the level of the die-hard gamers), while the Tetris group showed no significant improvement.

Not the same as psychomotor performance ...

Your brain on multitasking

If you're a programmer, you know that context-switching in a multi-threaded system isn't 100% free. There's overhead with tiny bits of time lost on each switch, as a new thread takes control. Well, it's the same way with your brain. Only a lot slower. And it doesn't look like
Brain 2.0, Now... with Multi-Processor Capability!
will be coming anytime soon.

And although there have been plenty of studies to show otherwise, the belief that multitasking will let us get more done continues. Think of how many times you've been on the phone with someone when you hear that little click-clack of their keyboard. (I hate that. I do it to other people, but I hate it when they do it to me.) And it makes me crazy when I'm trying to have a conversation with someone in the same room, while they're saying, "Uh-huh... yeah... I'm listening...sure, I can do this and talk at the same time...". You know who you are ; )

Our brains can't do even two independent things that require conscious thought, especially if those two things involve different goals. But that's OK, you might think, since multi-threaded systems on a single-processor aren't technically doing two things at the same time.. they're simply switching back and forth so quickly that they just appear to be processing simultaneously. But that's the problem... the brain isn't a computer, and in many cases the brain works much more slowly than a modern processor.

RP-6: Now in ICU

A robot is doing rounds at a UCLA Medical Center intensive care unit in a test of new technology.

The 5-foot, 6-inch tall RP-6 robot's visits to the hospital's neurology intensive care unit function as a videoconference with the live doctor, who is able to work the controls from miles away from the hospital. A screen on the robot's head shows live images of the doctor.

A study by Johns Hopkins Hospital found that half the patients who received a virtual visit by their own doctor preferred it to a live visit from another doctor. About 80 percent said the robot made their doctor more accessible.

The World's most advanced (and expensive) Sony Playstation peripherals

One of the star attractions at recent motor shows around Australia has been Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution March 10, 2005 One of the star attractions at recent motor shows around Australia has been Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution rally simulators, even if judged solely by the length of the queues waiting to strap into the genuine rally seats, in the genuine rally cars that simulate the rally driving experience with more authenticity than you would have thought possible.

The cars are then able to race against each using the Sony PlayStation Grand Turismo 3 game in exactly the same seats, surroundings and even the same Momo sterring wheels used by the likes of WRC driver Harry Rovanperra in the Mitsubishi works team.

Sitting behind the driver’s wheel gives players a virtual reality experience of being on a rally stage as the seats vibrate and shake in synch with the action, and an explosive Sony sound system helps to re-create the experience of being in a real rally car as you race against a fellow competitor and the clock.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the entire simulation set-up, apart from the AUD$250,000 development cost is that the entire driver input is done via the existing controls in the vehicles – the same non-slip rally brake, clutch and accelerator pedals that Harry Rovanperra uses are those you’re pumping away at, the steering input and force feedback has been built into the steering column and even the handbrake works so you can back it into corners in absolutely realistic fashion.

The Asono Mica pendant player

You know Scandanavian design (and Japanese design, for that matter) when you see it, and this, friends, is consumer electronics design at its finest. The Asono Mica player may be a slight bit larger at 1.45 x 2.0 x 0.6-inches than the shuffle (3.3 x 0.98 x 0.33-inches, if you don’t have those numbers memorized in metric and imperial, like we do), but they did manage to fit a screen in there, and a whole lot more. It comes in 512MB or 1GB flavors (sound familiar?) and like most anything else Scandi, costs a freaking fortune: 1599 Norway Kroners (about $260 US) for the 512MB, and 2099NK (about $350) for the 1GB. But if you’re still interested, it plays back MP3, WMA, and ASF, has an FM tuner, line-in port, voice recorder, and a 12-hour battery. You know, it’s kind of weird finally seeing a pendant flash player that we’d actually consider, you know, wearing.

Nice design ...

Toshiba Qosimo G20, the big laptop

Sony seems to have released one of the sexiest PC's on the market, so Toshiba has to do better and presents this G20, a laptop with a 17" LCD panel with a crappy resolution of 1440x900 (Sony does a lot better), a Geforce 6600 graphics card with 128Mb, a SATA HDD with a capacity of 100Gb, a multi-everything DVD burner, ONLY 512Mb of RAM (LOL), a 1.86Ghz Pentium M CPU and a 915PM Express chipset. Oh yes, almost forgot, the advantage of this PC is that it has an integrated TV Tuner card. Well, I still prefer the FS90 A Spec.

A big one ...

The DX1: Is This THE Solution To Every Gamer's Problem?

I first saw Ergodex's DX1 back in March of 2004 at the Game Developer's Conference, where I had to fight through a mob to get to it. Then I saw it again in May of that year at E3, where we gave it one of our "Best of E3" awards and commented that "we cannot wait to put our hands anywhere we want on this device."

When you open the DX1's box you won't find any bundled games or gimmicks like a mouse pad or T-shirt. Instead, you'll find just a good handful of keys, some stickers, a driver disk, and a nondescript platform. The platform consists of two small buttons with lights, a USB cable, and a clear detachable plastic tray. The twenty-five keys are numbered and have a special adhesive surface on the bottom developed by Ergodex. This adhesive allows the keys to be secured anywhere on the plastic tray with a bond that is resistant to even the most aggressive gaming style, but that comes loose with a simple twist. Even after countless times sticking and twisting, the keys will stay tight and release easily. And if they ever do become a problem, a quick swipe of a damp cotton swab across the bottom has them working good as new again.

As I mentioned before, the keys can be placed just about anywhere on the board you want them; you can choose according to your comfort, speed, hand size, and playing style needs. There are no grids, hot zones, or marks of any kind that restrict where you place the keys, nor how far apart they are. This is accomplished through a wireless technology developed by Ergodex. The radio frequency system it uses operates at 13.56 MHz, and each of the individual keys is powered through inductive coupling. That means that you can actually hold the keys a very small distance off the surface of the board and they will still function. (Though totally useless in terms of gaming, holding a key in the air that still can fire your weapons is very useful in terms of coolness!)

Read ...

Wayfinding in Tokyo: Local Context and Direction Map Design

The design of web-published direction maps has a direct influence on the first physical interaction between small and medium-sized businesses and their guests. A poor map will preclude even carefully choreographed first impressions, with sweaty circling, frantic phone calls, and apologies. If business is theater, these maps could alternately be a courteous, silent usher or an endlessly spiraling staircase to the back row. This article discusses what these maps should look like and how cultural context drives some design decisions.

After 3 1/2 years living in Tokyo, wayfinding at the mercy of these maps can still be frustrating. It is surprising then how little scrutiny these maps often receive. Many suffer from fundamental contrast and legibility problems. Other sites avoid the task altogether by means of map services like Yahoo! Maps. While these services offer valuable features like zooming, they often lack the detailed landmarks needed for the complex neighborhoods of Tokyo. I have included Tokyo-specific considerations that have arisen in my own work, and encourage you to examine the conventions and characteristics of your client’s area.

As with all map design, the goal is an optimized information resolution, with as much detail as necessary to get the user to their destination with confidence and without incident, and not a bit more. While there are no guidelines applicable to all map designs, hopefully some of the approaches presented here will help.

Read ...

Samsung's 3GB Windows Mobile-powered musicphone

Samsung rocked us back in September with the SPH-V5400, the first cellphone to sport a built-in hard drive (1.5 gigger, to be exact), now they’re back in effect with the SGH-i300, a massively spec’d out 3GB model. The i300 runs on Windows Mobile (we haven’t gotten confirmation of which version, though) and comes with a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, Bluetooth, scroll wheel navigation (take that, iPod!), a 262,000 color, 240x320 LCD screen, support for playback of MP3, WMA, AAC, and AAC+ audio files, and a TransFlash memory card slot. Better still, the hard drive is plug-and-play, so you can connect the phone up to your PC over USB and just drag and drop your files as you please, there’s no lame interfaces to have to mess with.

Read ...

Is this Siemens SX-2?

I just dont understand why in the hell Siemens always doing something like this. I mean, SX-1 is a great smartphone but the keypad is just ... unusable (IMHO). Maybe this model will also be announced together with other models in CeBIT 2005 this week?

If this is going to be the SX-2, I think Siemens has done it again... Why just not stick to a traditional keypad? Oh Siemens... This time, the keypad is designed like the one on Nokia 3650 which Nokia later on re-designed in the 3660.

Read ...

There is No Spoon and there is No Usability

Usability isn't anything at all. It doesn't exist. Instead, usability is a label given to the results that we see or want. Just as osteoporosis isn't a disease, usability isn't the outcome of usability testing. You probably didn't know it but osteoporosis is just a label given to a cluster of medical symptoms. Analogously, usability is just a label given to a list of desirable features or outcomes associated with a product or service.

Let's not mistake the outcome of the usability process (e.g., testing) as usability itself. And, let's not clump usability methods together and call them usability either. Putting this another way, we should stop using the outcome as the label. Usability methods don't create usability, but they do produce outcomes that are beneficial to users. Usability methods help foster satisfaction, efficiency, desirability, and more, but usability methods don't produce usability itself.

You can measure temperature but you can't measure usability. For example, I can say that it is 78 degrees Fahrenheit in my room but I can't say that my room has any type or level of usability. There is not a usability metric. At best, we can throw together several usability outcome measures together, such as level of satisfaction and completion rates, but we can't measure usability itself. There is no metric for it. It just doesn't make any sense.

Summary: Usability as a term should be thrown into the pit. It isn't real. It doesn't exist.

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Forms

Forms play an integral role on the Internet in allowing users to communicate and interact with websites. Forms are an important way for website owners to collect information from their visitors. There are many ways to handle forms markup -- but the best way is the one that will benefit both the user and the site owner. This article was excerpted from the book Web Standards Solutions The Markup and Style Handbook, written by Dan Cederholm (Apress, 2004; ISBN 1590593812).

Interactivity has always been an integral part of the Web, letting the user and site communicate through the exchange of information. Forms allow us to collect input from users in an organized, predetermined fashion, and have always been sort of an “anything goes” area when building websites. For instance, we’ll discover that marking up a form can be handled in approximately 10,000 different ways. OK, perhaps not that many, but there are several options to consider as well as steps that we can take to ensure our forms are structured in a way that’ll benefit both the user and site owner.

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I Saw This and Thought of You: Some Social Uses of Camera Phones

This paper presents aspects of a study into how and why people use camera phones. The study examined people's intentions at the time of image capture and subsequent patterns of use. Motivated by current interest in "picture messaging", we focus on images taken to communicate with absent people and look at how they were actually used. We consider the timeliness of communication and the role of common ground to derive implications for design.

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Ethertouch 3D Capacitive Sensing

EtherTouch™ 3D e-Sensing is an advanced capacitive sensing technology engineered to usher in the next generation of human interactivity with machines and the built environment. This revolutionary technology replaces the electronic, mechanical and pressure electrical functions of current input and human interface devices. Traditional devices such as the computer mouse, touch screens, key pads, and other tactile input devices will literally be replaced with the wave of a finger.

More advanced and costly input technologies such as touch screens and quadrant IR sensing will find themselves replaced as this technology makes its way through the industry. In addition, the industrial applications for the technology are wide and varied, from security, process monitoring, proximity, dielectric measurements, level, flow, pressure and instrumentation applications to name a few. Key to the deployment in these applications is speed of development, low cost, and multi-channel processing allowing the integration of many locations and/or functions. Early adopters of the technology will obtain significant competitive advantage as there are no comparable solutions on the market today.

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Intel inside your car

If you happen to have a BMW Mini, that is. Intel showed off a Pentium-based PC stuffed into the dashboard of this luxurious automobile today at CeBit in Germany. Drivers can surf the web, check e-mail and play DVDs and MP3s via the device made for Intel by a company called EEPD. Move over, iPod.

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P2P and Human Evolution: Placing Peer to Peer Theory in an Integral Framework

The following essay describes the emergence, or expansion, of a specific type of relational dynamic, which I call peer to peer. It's a form of human network-based organisation which rests upon the free participation of equipotent partners, engaged in the production of common resources, without recourse to monetary compensation as key motivating factor, and not organized according to hierarchical methods of command and control. This format is emerging throughout the social field: as a format of technology (the point to point internet, filesharing, grid computing, the Writeable Web initiatives, blogs), as a third mode of production (neither centrally planned nor profit-driven), producing hardware, software and intellectual and cultural resources (wetware) that are of great value to humanity (Linux, Wikipedia), and as a general mode of knowledge exchange and collective learning which is massively practiced on the internet. It also emerges as new organizational formats in politics, spirituality; as a new 'culture of work'. This essay thus traces the expansion of this format, seen as a "isomorphism" (= having the same format), in as many fields as possible.

I will conclude my essay with the conclusion that P2P is nothing else than a premise of a new type of civilization that is not exclusively geared towards the profit motive. What I have to convince the user of is that 1) a particular type of human relational dynamic is growing very fast across the social fields, and that such combined occurrence is the result of a deep shift in ways of feeling and being. 2) That it has a coherent logic that cannot be fully contained within the present 'regime' of society. 3) As such, it is not an utopia, but, as 'an already existing social practice', the seed of a major transformation to come.

I will use the term cognitive capitalism most frequently in my characterization of the current regime, as it corresponds to the interpretation, which is the most convincing in my view. The French magazine Multitude is my main source for such interpretations.

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Samsung 5.2 Megapixel Anycall Phone with Optical Zoom

I’ve been begging and pleading for someone to do it, and I sort of thought it might be Samsung. Here’s a new 5.2-megapixel easy call with optical zoom. Now granted, it’s not the first optical zoom cameraphone—Samsung has had at least two others that I can think of—but this Anycall is fast approaching the future where we don’t have point-and-shoot cameras at all. Pressing the camera button on the top and watching the zoom lens telescope out made me much more giddy than it should have.

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Samsung Develops 7 Megapixel Camera Phone

Samsung Electronics has set the camera phone bar higher by developing the world’s first 7-megapixel camera phone. The world’s No. 3 handset maker announced Wednesday it is unveiling its new SCH-V770 phone at the 2005 CeBIT expo that runs in Hannover, Germany from March 10 to 16. The announcement comes only six months after it released the world’s first 5-megapixel camera phone last October.

The phone has 3x optical and 5x digital zooms and auto-focus. Unlike existing camera phones with low-luminosity flashes, it is also equipped with an advanced flash as bright as any high-quality digital camera's. The embedded digital power amplifier enables the phone to produce clear stereo sound and the display uses the 16 million color QVGA TFD-LCD (Thin Film Diode-Liquid Crystal Display) technology to produce a clear image.

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Sony ICD-CX50 Visual Voice Recorder

Sony has released seven new digital voice recorders today, most are what you'd expect from a recorder, they record. Except for the ICD-CX50 Visual Voice Recorder, it not only records voice, but it also takes digital pictures which can be viewed and framed on its mini-LCD screen.

The ICD-CX50's camera is 1.2 megapixels, it can capture close to 4,000 680x480 resolution pictures while storing them on an internal 256MB memory bank. The camera also sports 4x digital zoom to really intimidate your professor. The implications of the device are endless, no more taking notes off endless PowerPoint slides, just snap a picture and laugh at your fellow students.

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Software Helps Organizations Prevent Human Errors

New technology helps businesses prevent the human errors that cause safety and quality problems in the aerospace, manufacturing and chemical industries. Decision Systems, Inc. (DSI) announced today the release of RAID Behavioral Root Cause Analysis software. The new approach to human factors analysis finds things that can be done to help individuals avoid taking the wrong actions, making the wrong decisions, and placing themselves in the wrong situations. The RAID™ software introduces a simplified way of examining mistakes that individuals make on the job. It focuses upon the balance between the positive forces for control (produced by the job requirement and the assignment of the task) and the negative forces against control (produced by the personal dispositions of the individual and the environmental inducements in the workplace). Control is regained by tipping the balance back in favor of the positive forces. The RAID software is a product from the same DSI researchers who developed the REASON® Root Cause Analysis software that is used today for problem solving in our country's space program.

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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.

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IA Summit Folksonomies Panel

I'm back from IA Summit in Montreal and just starting to collect my thoughts about it. For now, here are the presenations from the Folksonomies Panel on Saturday morning:

Introduction (PDF, 2.2MB) - Gene Smith
Folksonomies: Better than Nothing? (PDF, 5.8MB) - Peter Morville
Metadata for the Masses (PDF, 1.2MB) - Peter Merholz
Folksonomies; A Wrappers' Delight (PDF, 468KB) - Thomas Vander Wal
I thought the panel went well overall. Enough friction to keep the discussion interesting, smart

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