Bringing Physics to the Surface (UIST-2008 Assigned Reading)

Bringing Physics to the Surface (UIST-2008 Assigned Reading)

By: Andrew Wilson, Shahram Izadi, Otmar Hilliges, Armando Garcia-Mendoza, David Kirk

Summary:
This study was directed in the way of exploring how the intersection of surface technologies coincides with advanced games physics engines. The surface technologies being discussed are those that are capable of sensing multiple contacts as well as some shape information. A lot of work has been done recently on interactive surfaces as well as the need to provide richer and more realistic 3D images. In order for this to be possible it was necessary for a physics engine that allowed an appropriate interaction with virtual objects. They used the following strategies to describe these interactions: Direct force (contact point of force touches a virtual object), Virtual joints and springs (contact connected to object by a link so it is dragged behind it), Proxy objects (objects near the contacted object which receive friction forces), Particles (shape information available here), and Deformable mesh (an approach to model 2D of 3D shapes). There are two strategies for moving objects. The first is by applying the external force directly and then updating the position of the object to show what is being done. The second strategy is to attach a rope to the object and move it indirectly. To further understand the utility of the techniques mentioned a study was done where participants were instructed to do 3 simple physics tasks. The researchers analyzed the various behavioral and experience aspects of interaction during these tasks. The results of this study showed that even though the more familiar approaches offered more predictable control in the study, the particle proxy approach can offer good performance as well, but with new modes of interaction (example of cupping the ball). One problem with the system is that there is no way to determine how hard, or soft the user is interacting with the objects (no way to establish a magnitude of force desired). It was also discovered that grabbing an object virtually based off of contacts on its edges is very difficult. In the future the researchers wish to improve the basic sensing techniques of the system so that things like grabbing an object are easier.

Discussion:
I thought this was a very drawn out and dull paper. I think it is an interesting area of research, but that it was really not very well organized or something was wrong with the paper. It seemed to jump around a bit. I think the idea of being able to incorporate interactive surface input into a real time physics simulation was cool. I also think that it could be modified to make advancements into a more virtual reality in the world.

Do You Know? Recommending People to Invite into your Social Network (IUI-2009 Assigned Reading)

Do You Know? Recommending People to Invite into your Social Network (IUI-2009 Assigned Reading)

By: Ido Guy, Inbal Ronen, Eric Wilcox

Summary:

This paper talks about a UI and system that provides people with a set of recommendations of people it thinks match the profile for being a candidate to be in their social network. This system is based on an aggregated information set about peoples relationships which is retrieved using SONAR. SONAR is a system for collecting and aggregating social network information across the organization. SONAR extracts an employee’s social network by getting the information about relationships between people. The relationships include information about: organizational charts, paper co-authorships, patent co-authorship, direct connection as well as several other things associated with IBM. The UI allows for the scrolling through of recommended people one by one while it shows the “relationship evidences” as to why that use was selected as a candidate. People are recommended based off of an articulated set of social network information. This interface is called the “Do You Know” widget and is a new addition to the homepage of IBM’s next-gen employee directory. This recommender system shows a profile of the person as well as a list of things that are in common between the user and candidate. The DYK application recommends people who you may be familiar with, but are not yet connected with.

The evaluation consisted of 2 parts. The first was a field study where the use of DYK was monitored for 4 months. The second was a qualitative user study that includes things such as interviews, and surveys.

There were some very important discoveries with the usage of the DYK system. Many users said that even though the information about links between them and the candidate were known, that they were still useful because it invoked trust in the application. They also found out that even though users were given over 100 results at times, that users of DYK rarely searched through more than the first 20.

This evaluation showed that people recommendations can be highly effective in increasing the number of connects between users as well as the overall number of users in a Social Network Site. Greater ease in finding potential connections was found to enhance user utilization of the site as well.

Discussion:

This paper seemed very familiar to an expert recommender system paper that I read earlier in the semester. As I said then I think this is an interesting area of study. To be able to access data from people and then connect links between them is a very important aspect of life. It is important to be able to contact people when needed especially for work. With the advancements in the Social Networking System I feel that we are going to see many advancements in this area. I thought this paper was a little drawn out, but for the most part well written.

The Inmates are running the Asylum (Part 1)

Summary:
This book talked a lot about how the use of technology in the world around us is ever increasing. It also talked about how the current design process that is used by many software developers is based off of what they feel the user wants, and by whats easy to code, or based off of features that they would want, and not necessarily based off what the user wants. The book also discusses the difference between people. How there are "Homo logicus" who wants to know how things work and is typically a programmer, and that there is then also "Homo sapiens" who just wants to use the system and doesn't care about the working parts.

Discussion:
I thought that some of the points presented in the first half of this book were very intriguing. I particularly enjoyed the discussion about "Homo Logicus vs Homo Sapiens." The more I read, the more I realized that what the author was saying was completely true. There are people who like to see how things work, and people who don't care how they work, but just want to use the system. I thought for the most part the first half of this book had some good points, although some of it was rather drawn out.

WikiFolders: Augmenting the Display of Folders

Summary:
Traditional file systems allow the user to see and modify their file hierarchys manually, but it may be difficult to find them, sort them, or remember the relationships between those files. The normal means of editing are very limited and often times do not provide enough information for the user to successfully complete their task. People often use readme files to work around having to remember all the intricacies of a given file system arrangement that they are using. In this article wikifolders was discussed. It is a hybrid system for annotating file systems which builds on the regular file system with the use of wiki like functionality, but takes away the weaknesses of the normal file system. The end view of these wikifolders is similar to a traditional file view with some modifications: the user can see annotations for each file, the icon has added functionality, and the file system has these changes without requiring any wholesale changes in the system. Any current file system can be converted into a wikifolder by the click of a button.

Discussion:
I thought that this was a very interesting paper to read. I know that having a more descriptive file system would definitely help me more with my every day functioning on the computer. I would like to see more research go into a better way to display files as well as more flexibility with the icons.

Expert Recommender Systems in Practice: Evaluating

Summary:
This article had to deal with the concept of knowledge management (KM) which has had several leaps and bounds with how it is being used. A second wave of KM applications that would share knowledge among social networks and human actors (those seeking the knowledge) are now being postulated. This paper also has to deal with expert recommender systems (ERS ) which allow the finding of appropriate knowledge carriers based on an expertise profile. The difficult thing about expertise profiles for the actors is the quick, effective and useful design of the profile to be used in the ERS . This paper discusses an ERS which combines self reported information with keyword mining from a user's files. The basis of this ERS system as well as any other ERS is to take an input description of a needed piece of knowledge and output a list of sources (users with profiles) who have the highest outcome of possessing that knowledge. This ERS system was studied on a European industrial association called the NIA which offers services such as networking among member companies, legal regulations, standardizations and many other things to its users. The NIA is a highly decentralized organizational structure with many gaps in the transfer of knowledge between sections. This study was aimed at the increased sharing of knowledge between departments and members of the association. The ERS tested on the NIA was called the ExpertFinding which was created by doing the following: Studying the organizational needs, design a prototype to meet those needs, Roll out and evaluate the designed system. ExpertFinding's main purpose is to help redirect question requests to the person in the association with the highest likelihood of being able to competently answer the question. Profiles for ExpertFinding were created based off of two things. First, there was a large scale keyword list based off arbitrary text documents which would help establish a user's competencies. The second thing it was based off of was a listing of contact information, and other facts about the user that would help personalize their profile (education, job description etc.). The patterns of usage among the testers was that they need to feel adequately represented by the system to want to use it. Some of the testers wished there was a filter system to take out irrelevant terms in the searches. Some of the problems encountered where: the LSI matching algorithm was not the most efficient and the selection mechanisms were not best for the file system that emerged. One of the proposed solutions was the creation of a NIA specific thesaurus which would help filter out irrelevant words and phrases. The findings showed that this ERS could generate accurate profiles for the job, but not always complete.

Discussion:
I thought this was a rather interesting article to read because it seemed like a good idea to find out and use in the working world. I know at my work there are times when I find out someone has already solved a problem I was working on after I solved it. It would be a great help to be able to look up who has worked on something similar before and go talk to them to see their findings. I think that a company specific thesaurus would be a good idea for ways to improve it.

Comment:
http://computerhumaninteractionblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/
social-computing-privacy-concerns.html#comment-form

http://shauntgo.blogspot.com/2010/02/uist-predicting-tie-strength-with.html
#comment-form

"Pimp My Roomba”: Designing for Personalization

Summary:
The customization of personal objects and technological devices, such as cell phones, mp3 players is something that is becoming more and more important in the world. Existing studies find that the personalization of objects increases the users ownership and satisfaction. This article wants to study whether personalization led to positive outcomes in people's experience with the Roomba. This was a 6 month study which involved 30 houses. It gave 15 households personalization options for the roomba and 15 had no idea that it was even possible. The 4 effects of personalization are: perceived ease of use, recognition of mine from others, reflection of personal identity and the feeling of control. Researchers reported that people want to personalize things based off a motivation of self expression, or when they use that technology frequently which means they are comfortable with how to use it and where they want it customized. The houses that customized their roomba's reported that they felt more connected to it, and felt like it was theirs and not just a robot. Some people personalized to make it represent their own idea of preference as well. The researchers also showed that personalization does not just occur naturally, but that it can be encourage through the appliance design and choices available. Another thing that the users brought to the researchers attention was that any designs need to be able to endure daily wear and tear to be pleasing.

Discussion:
Honestly, I read this article because of the title. It was very interesting to see what users felt about personalizing a home appliance such as the roomba. I think this is a good area of study because it will allow users to be happier with their purchases. I think that the next step in this should be to extend the study to more homes, and with other appliances, perhaps the coffee machine or dishwasher.

“My Dating Site Thinks I’m a Loser”: Effects of Personal Photos and Presentation Intervals on Perceptions of Recommender Systems

Summary:
When interacting human to human, people perform actions and behave in certain ways to show everyone who they are as a person. When interacting with a computer this kind of representation is very difficult to achieve and sometimes has negative outcomes when the computer is trying to make inferences about what to show the user based on their representation. When the computer makes bad suggestions the user will not only think bad of the system, but it can also trigger behavioral modifications so the user can achieve the wanted representation. Personalized recommendation systems can present their data in 2 ways: Intermittently, as if responding to the user input at random intervals, or at the very end of the users input. This article tested a new web based dating algorithm called MetaMatch. The participants answered a set of questions for the algorithm and no matter what the answers were, the results for each person where the same based off a predetermined set of results. Users filled out a dating questionnaire, viewed the results and then filled out a post-questionnaire about their experiences with the site. Half of the users were given a resulting photo after every 10 questions while the other half where given the resulting photos at the end of the questionnaire. Even though the users were told the system was using their answers to pick results, the results were all predetermined. These results were designed to be undesirable by the users. The results showed that the way data is gathered and presented online has a profound consequence on how the users interact with the site. Frustration levels were highest amongst users who got intermittent results which did not match their desires.

Discussion:
I thought this was an interesting paper because I agree that the way information is presented affects the users perception of the site greatly. This just goes to show that there are correct ways to represent and gather data and that there are incorrect ways to do so as well which foster frustration and user unhappiness with the system. I think this paper should do more studies on not only web dating, but just on website layout in general.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

Summary:
This book tries to explain to the reader some of the many flaws that are encountered in the design of things that we use everyday, goes into ways that the designs could be improved, and discusses a process to design them better. He uses the POET process to describe the design better. This process is a user centered design process. Some of the principles of design that he uses include the following: Use knowledge of the world and knowledge of the head, Simplify the structure of the tasks, make things visible, get the mappings right, exploit the power of constraints, design for error, and standardize. Using knowledge of the world means that knowledge to use the design can be found from clues in the environment while knowledge of the head is strictly knowledge of the user. Simplifying the structure of tasks means that the design should make things as simple as possible. If things are too complicated then restructure them so that they are not as complex. One way this can be achieved is by keeping the tasks similar and providing mental aids to help the user through the design. Making things visible means that the design should bridge both the gulf of evaluation (how long it takes to evaluate the design) and the gulf of execution (how long it takes to execute the design). It is also very important to get the mappings correct. This means that what the user wants needs to match up with the functions and how they are executed. Using the power of constraints can greatly limit the errors that the user can make because it makes many wrong options impossible to even try. There are several different types of constraints: Physical Constraints (can't physically be done), Semantic constraints (things only make sense to do them this way), Cultural Constraints (culture dictating how something works based on a standard, or the accepted norm), and Logical Constraints (the conclusion we decide on when thinking about the problem). Designing for errors means that the design should take into account that there will be errors made because we are human. By making it easy to fix errors the overall design is improved.

Another thing that this book discussed was the use of memory and how short term memory and long term memory work. It is a known fact that we can only keep 5 or 6 unrelated things in our brain to remember at a time. The problem with long term memory is that it is harder to access and sometimes contains errors in the memory. We remember things by several different means. There is a memory for arbitrary things. These memories have no relationship to each other what so ever. There are also memories of meaningful relationships which form a relationship with themselves and other things that are already known which helps them to be remembered. Lastly, there are memories through explanation which are derived from an explanation, but not necessarily learned.

Discussion:
Overall I found a lot of this book to be repetitive. It had some interesting points about the design process and how things that we use every day do have faulty designs, but it kept repeating the process and why they were faulty over and over. This made the book rather monotonous to read. I feel like all the useful information in the book could have been discussed throughly and all the examples used in about half the space. I also felt like this book was a little bit outdated since it was first published so long ago. It had valid points, but in a few years I feel like some of the examples used will go over the heads of students because they will not have been exposed to some of the things used.

Ethnography Idea

My enthnography idea is to glue several different types of coin denominations on the ground in high traffic areas and see how many people try to pick them up. This is to see if there is a significant break in the amount of people who would pick up a nickle vs the amount of people willing to pick up a quarter (or other similar breaks).