Certain musings. Education, HCI and Public Spaces

social status and fanclubs

2009-01-17T22:15:00.000-08:00

How do u become somebody from nobody?

well u land a plane safely in a airport says one of the tweets that i just saw.

Now if it was the pre-social media age and this person wud have got as much attention on the traditional media. But in the age of social media, you get to know how popular this guy is among the general pubic, one of he ways cud be this:

A face book page on the person and you see that within a day you have about 255,022 fans in the world of just facebook. but in real world could be more.

here is the fabook page.

the social media turns a hero into a celebrity.

Ideas : geo-tagging e-mail

2008-11-21T04:09:00.000-08:00

Now this idea is around the hypothesis that there are are these sect of global people who are on the move, traveling to atleast two locations globally within one week. and the other user group being the mobile email users.

and so when they are accessing email when on the move, they make this metal note of the context they are in when they are reading that email. so if there is an automatic geo-tagging of the mail that happens one can start searching mail based on locations and contexts.

this is just a thought and my hypothesis cud very well be wrong

archives in long time: Atoms vs. Bits

2008-09-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

originally posted on iSchool, i202 course blog

In ‘everything is miscellaneous’, David Weinberger’ argues the benefits of Bits over Atoms. He points out that bits can be duplicated without effort and that they can be re-organized instantaneously to conform to our immediate contexts.

Apart from pointing at this inherent mutability of bits, he refers to the fact that digital information is easier to preserve. This is, in a certain marginal sense contradicted by a very interesting project to preserve a snapshot of all human languages. The Rosetta Project, run by The Long Now Foundation and The National Science Foundation is a collaborative effort to create a record of all human languages from 02000 to 12000.

This near permanent record, apart from being an online archive is a physical artifact designed for long term storage. The design of their Rosetta Stone is very intriguing. It is not digital, and is designed to be read without the need for any specific devices. The Stone is human readable, and has inscribed on one side, in many languages - “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.”

It is interesting to note of the design considerations and concerns change when designing for Long time. Kevin Kelly, a participant designer (and founder of Wired) points to some of the issues on his blog. Good quality, properly stored paper can easily last for 2000 years. Moreover we can be quite sure, that it will be understandable and accessible after that time. On the other hand

“Pages stored on plastic DVDs are neither stable over the very long term, nor readable over the long term. Unless digital information is ceaselessly migrated from one fading medium to another new one, it will quickly cease to be accessible. Two decades ago the floppy disk was ubiquitous. Most personal digital information then was stored on this format. Today, any information stored only on a floppy disk is essentially gone. Imagine the incompatibility of today’s DVD in 1,000 years.”

Mentioned by Vannevar Bush in his 1945 paper, the most appropriate technology for long term storage is still micro-etched film. The composition (and cost) of the film obviously changes based on how important the data is. The Long Now Rosetta Stone contains 350,000 pages of text written in 1000 languages, designed by linguists are inscribed onto a nickel cast of a micro-etch silicon mold. It comes with a built in magnifying glass. They came up with this design as part of the discussions on Managing Time Continuity. Following the archiving principle of LOCKS (Lots of copies, Keep ‘em Safe) the project is distributing copies of the disk globally. They have also placed one in space - on the Rosetta Space Probe, that will sometime in the future land on a comet, leaving the disk to circle around the sun for many many years to come.

Obviously this is not the first attempt to preserve human language and culture for posterity. Other interesting projects are namely the Crypt of Civilization, placed in a underground bunker in Atlanta, Georgia; The Westinghouse Time Capsules and the popular (but short-timed) Yahoo! Time Capsule designed by Jonathan Harris.

Relevant Lectures: ISSUES AND CONTEXTS (9/3), ORGANIZATION {AND,OR,VS} RETRIEVAL (9/8), INFORMATION INTEGRATION & INTEROPERABILITY (10/6)

Jobs meets Calvin and Hobbes

2008-08-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

Thermo

2008-08-09T00:28:00.000-07:00

Thermo, slated for release in 2009, will let designers build rich internet applications (functional components) directly from artwork created in Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks etc. Check it out!

40 Demotivational Posters

2008-08-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

a nice article...though not a great deal take home from them

Innovative land irrigation system...

2008-08-04T23:49:00.001-07:00

refer the picture...I found it in California Countryside... simple use of wheel technology to device a mechanism for watering large patches of agricultural land...wish this method is taken up in India would definitely be pollution free and a lot more convenient.

History's 5 Best Interface Designs

2008-08-04T23:40:00.000-07:00

Modern interface designers hate you. With few exceptions, the modern gadget is as impossible to navigate as were the seas before the sextant and the marine chronometer. The reason? The internal functions bear no relationship to anything we might encounter in the real world, so arbitrary abstractions are needed to bridge the gap between microchip and brain. Add to this the fact that the UI is often an afterthought in most devices and you end up with something like the RAZR, hated far and wide for its labyrinthine control layout.

It wasn’t always this way. Perhaps if today’s designers payed a little attention to the past they might come up with something a little easier to love, and a little less frustrating to use.

Knol: A unit of knowledge

2008-08-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

Taken on as Wikipedia's competitor, Google has opened up Knol, which puts a stronger emphasis on authorship and encourages users to start different knols for the same subject.

The Knol project is a site that hosts many knols — units of knowledge — written about various subjects. The authors of the knols can take credit for their writing, provide credentials, and elicit peer reviews and comments. Users can provide feedback, comments, and related information. So the Knol project is a platform for sharing information, with multiple cues that help you evaluate the quality and veracity of information.

Everyone knows something. See what people are writing about, then tell the world what you know: http://knol.google.com/

CUIL

2008-07-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE AP Business Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.
She believes her latest invention is even more valuable - only this time it's not for sale.
Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.
The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

Read on http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/G/GOOGLE_CHALLENGER?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-07-28-00-09-23

Telecom Companies are looking for Innovations

2008-03-14T23:27:00.000-07:00

Everyone is talking about the growth of the Mobile telecom industry, half of today's population already use the services offered by this ever increasing industry. Future trends predict that it is only a matter of a decade and some years to capture the other half of the population. There is one industry that is suffering the most due the success of the Mobile telecom business, the traditional Fixed-Line Telecom industry.

In an interview with the New York Times, chief executive of the British Telecom, Ben Verwaayen, is betting that services like customized applications for corporate clients and advising companies on their networks can generate profit growth in an industry where they are loosing out to the subscription base of end users pretty fast. He stresses on how there is a need to move away from selling the telephone calls and sending faxes to more services which are backed up by social networking capabilities.

He points out that the way to innovate is not by investing in a large Research and Development team but to form small innovation teams across the layers of the industry which are closely in touch with the customers. He points out that British Telecom has a huge team of 26,000 people working for them in India, not because the labor is cheap but the fact that they see more entrepreneurial people in the Indian markets.

Read the interview here.

One mobile for every two people in the world

2008-03-06T23:29:00.000-08:00

The year was 1981, the first Nordic Mobile Telephony (NMT) networks were switched on in 1981 in Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Norway.

1982, 100 Mobile Phones weighing about 2 pounds each were given to consumers in Washington (which then had 7 cell phone relay towers). People were excited about the fact that it got no wires. They tested it on top of buildings, while playing tennis, on the streets.

Peter Erb, president of a pioneering cellphone company called Millicom, made a seemingly extravagant claim: "We're talking about 50 to 60 million over the next 20 or 30 years." He only underestimated by a factor of 60.

Not as legendary or fateful a mistake as AT&T's, however. In 1980, the company whose Bell Labs invented cellphones listened to McKinsey, the consulting company they'd hired. Its estimate of the market in the year 2000 was off by a factor of 120 -- not even 1 percent of the real number. Based on that, AT&T decided there wasn't much future to these toys. Not coincidentally, in 2005, it was swallowed up by SBC Communications Inc., originally a Baby Bell.

It is believed that in November 2007, the mobile phones have crossed the number 3.3 Billion, thats exactly the half of world's population.

"Communication, not cleanliness, is next to godliness." says Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired magazine, who is writing a book about "what technology wants." He observed whle staying at a house in Tibet that houses there had no toilets but every household has a mobile phone.

Getting back to the numbers, there is now one cellphone for every two humans on Earth.

From essentially zero, we've passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years. This is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history -- faster even than the polio vaccine.

"We knew this was going to happen a few years ago. And we know how it will end," says Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Google. "It will end with 5 billion out of the 6" with cellphones. "A reasonable prediction is 4 billion in the next few years -- the current proposal is 4 billion by 2010. And then the final billion or so within a few years thereafter.

"Eventually there will be more cellphone users than people who read and write. I think if you get that right, then everything else becomes obvious."

"It's the technology most adapted to the essence of the human species -- sociability," says Arthur Molella, director of the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. "It's the ultimate tool to find each other. It's wonderful technology for being human."

What does this mean, has man finally made for himself the ultimate tool that can be made with technology or has the technology attacked the human race with its ultimate destructive ammunition. There seems to be view points from either side of the coin. there are people who believe that mobile phone with features like Mobile payments, camera, music playing , radio... has seamlessly integrated every possible gadget into one single piece of tool that goes comfortably into one's pocket. On the other hand there are people who think the mobile phones have made their lives more of a nuisance and people have started to loose their touch with their surroundings while they are constantly making efforts to keep in touch with people who are faraway.

Nevertheless, there is still scope to design and innovate people's experiences with a mobile phone, so that it becomes more friendly than nuisance, before the other half of the people also get used to the Mobile phone as it is now. This revolution of innovations need to happen now, for both increasing the penetration and also to make sure the existing users have better experiences with the mobile phone.

Love: Quicksilver

2007-09-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

Quicksilver is the best (more than) launching, searching, organizing, personalizing tool ever created. And you don’t even know it’s there until you summon it and then it goes right back to sleep.

There is no quicksilver for Windows. Most people who have ever used a mac (and quicksilver) and use windows know that it is something to cry over.

The Vista start bar – search and launching is quite neat! And with Start++ there is some respite – it allows commands such as
Sudo, allows web search, widgets, and integrates with windows vista search folders. But No aliases yet

Other palces to look at

Enso http://www.humanized.com/
Skylight Launcher and Automator http://www.candylabs.com/skylight/

For more information if you share the pain of not having quicksilver on windows:

http://lifehacker.com/software/quicksilver/windows-equivalents-to-quicksilver-fall-short-249426.php
Dash – Command for Windows http://trydash.com/home/ [looks nice]

An international cellphone service provider

2007-09-28T23:17:00.000-07:00

This is a classic example of disruptive service innovation to cut down International calling by placing the calls through IP. The system right now has a lot of glitches but with the doors open now, i am sure there would be more such services which cut down on the costs of talking across the globe.

An extract of the original article from NYT:

"On this phone, rates can fluctuate. But at its launch a 20-minute call from the Bahamas costs costs $7.40 (that’s 87 percent off T-Mobile’s rate). The Cubic price from Russia is $1.24 a minute (75 percent lower than AT&T).

Calls from the U.S. to Greece cost $1.77 a minute (37 percent off), to Iraq, $2.02 (28 percent off) and to Australia, $1.77 cents (51 percent off).

It works like a prepaid phone, where you put some money in your account and use it up as you talk. There’s no traditional monthly fee, although you’ll be charged 1 Euro a month (about $1.42) if you don’t use it. "

you can read the full NYT article here

Google Office Talks now avaiable online

2007-04-28T04:18:00.000-07:00

Authors at google is a series of talks by the some of the best writers whose topics range from science fiction, sociology to technology, politics to business.

http://www.google.com/talks/authors highlights the latest talks held in Google Offices

Designing for AJAX

2007-04-20T10:33:00.000-07:00

A great presentation shared on SlideShare. The presentation is about Designing for AJAX - principles and patterns for rich interaction.

Mac vs PC

2007-03-12T00:52:00.001-07:00

Apple "Get a Mac" ad takes a dead aim at Microsoft's Vista!

SLS: innovation which caters to fight Illiteracy

2007-02-28T00:53:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.worldchanging.com

After our recent post on the use of Bollywood style film for instructional videos, we got a note about a kindred educational tool, applying same language subtitles (SLS) to films as a way to improve literacy -- not a brand new method, but a brilliantly simple and effective one. According to PlanetRead, one of the pioneering organizations in this field, SLS was first introduced on Indian television in 1999, broadcast with Bollywood songs. The visual association of written words with familiar song lyrics proved incredibly successful, making the process automatic and subconscious, as well as cost-effective. They found that "every US dollar spent on subtitling a nationally telecast program of Hindi film songs, gives 30 minutes of weekly reading practice to 10,000 people, for a year."

5 Second Test : Quick Technique for Evaluating Content Pages

2007-02-14T03:55:00.000-08:00

How can design teams be confident their content pages are understandable to users? How does a team ensure they've designed content pages that communicate the essential information effectively?

5 second test provides valuable insight into which features are the most eye-catching, which features cause confusion and which ones are ignored altogether. Specifically, this technique can be used to assess search efficiency, branding, online advertisements, navigation usability, overall design and many other site components.

One of the 5-Second Test's biggest advantages is how quick it is. Because this technique is quick and easy to implement, it is perfect to run in locations where we can gather many users at one time, such as trade shows, conferences, and the company cafeteria. We can gather large amounts of user data in a short time.

Read the Article: 5 Second Test

Eye Tracking: The 'F' Shaped Pattern

2007-01-28T21:52:00.000-08:00

The 'F' shaped pattern

F for fast. That's how users read your precious content. In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school.

According to Nielsen (2006) users tend to focus on the left side of the body of a webpage when reading and fixate very little on information located on the right-hand side. Users maintain this ‘F’ viewing pattern with a few horizontal scans, the first one being longer than the second and a long vertical scan (Figure 1). Implications of this are that users may miss valuable information located on the right-hand side of the page.

To read more, click here.

Crowd Wisdom vs Google Genius

2006-12-27T04:44:00.000-08:00

Read about the Wiki's new product Wikiasari to be launched in the market based on user search behavior. The idea is that Web surfers and programmers will be able to bring their collective intelligence to bear, to fine-tune search results and make the experience more effective for everyone.

Local Innovation - Branded Eggs

2006-12-25T23:33:00.000-08:00

Ever seen a brand stamp on eggs ??? Here you go

I saw these "desi-eggs" during my recent vacation in Delhi. Other than marketer's stamp on the shell, the colour of egg shell is a little brownish-yellow. They came in market recently and are known to have more energy than traditional white-shell eggs.
Its like .. old wine in new shells .. ;-)

privacy branding and a little about history

2006-12-24T13:30:00.000-08:00

With the advent of Web 2.0 social networking websites have begun to explore varied forms of interaction and expression. Participants of web-based social networks have begun to expect an increased richness in the content that they share with friends and acquaintances.

Increasing acceptance of online networking and with users involving themselves for great lengths of time, designers have started looking at methods to provide greater intimacy and more 'real' ties between people. This has seen the growth of social network websites that focus on specific context such as music ( last.fm), shopping (zebo.com ), craftspeople (designstolove.com). These context specific networks have grown to be very particular with sites catering to people who love shoes ( sneakerplay.com), Indian cricket fans ( sixer.tv) social notes for students (stu.dicio.us) and others. (www.socialint.com)

Through the increased exposure to people from around the world, and sharing content and comments there is also a growing need for defining identity which transcends the traditional notions of your nation, school or locality. People increasingly need to construct themselves as an eclectic mix of identities expressed by belonging to interest groups, being part of cults or fan clubs. In the growing tribal system of life where traditional identities are elusive, there is want for creation of the collective by defining rituals and semantic closures over language. Web2.0 entrepreneurs were quick to realize the want for telling collective stories and social constructions of brands through which people can identify themselves. This has resulted in various web-spaces which allow people to share life stories, form collective narratives or 'social biographies' of our world. Also, like always, these new innovations on the web allow for family and friends living geographically apart to connect and maintain a close link, by sharing life through anecdotes.

social biography networks have been growing and several websites provide services which range from constructing a social-biography of products such as the Apple Macintosh ( folklore.com ) to Dandelife (dandelife.com) which allows people to construct and share their biographies in rich media (with support of services such as Flikr.com and youTube.com). Previously mentioned sites such as Platial.com also provide many of the services that are promoted by social biography networks. MySpace.com, the leader in online social networking provides many features for lifecasters ( Dandelife.com/info/lifecasting) and allows for selective sharing of blogs, images, contacts, videos etc.

Dandelife has talked of a business model where people will be able to license portions of their online biographies for branding or for use as case studies. This sheds line on the blurring lines between private lives and work, and also the extent to which corporate sponsors may reach to personalize their offerings. Dandeline gives you the option to make your biography private, and ensures that the you get to negotiate the terms of the license (with Dandelife as mediator). These services will create question if communities and society will allow people to be the final decision makers for selling their private lives, which are also a part of the silent-intimate history we share.

links
www.dandelife.com
www.myspace.com
www.ourStory.com
www.folklore.com
www.wikimapia.com

tepofied from
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/13/brand-your-life-story-with-dandelife/
http://www.uncovertheinternet.com/lifecasting-with-dandelife/

Heuristic Evaluation

2006-10-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

Heuristic Evaluation (HE) is defined as "Inspection of an interface against usability heuristics, with the goal of identifying usability issues." It is conducted by 3-5 trained evaluators and it does not involve end users.

Problems can be identified across several UI categories - Branding, Site Strategy, Navigation, Layout, Wording, Graphics, Animation, Color, Fonts, Control Elements, Web Standards, Error Handling etc.

Usually following severity types are considered:

Showstoppers – Catastrophic issues that prevent people from accomplishing their goals.
Major Issues – Issues that cause waste of time, increased learning and error rates
Irritants – Minor cosmetic or consistency issues that slow users down slightly / are a minimal violation of usability guidelines

Here are couple of examples of a typical HE:

Cheers!

inspired from one of the pdfs dahiya gave...

2006-09-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

in 1950's ppl created spaces outside home thru automobiles..., then in 80s personal musical spaces thru walkmans , and in 90's personal communication spaces thru mobiles.... and now thru blogs.... we dont speak to people next to us... but to the whole world... what do we want? an anonymity- a public personal space?

Games and Learning: To mphaxise

2006-06-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

Readings:

Kurt Squire, he has been doing Video Game Theory in and out, done all aspects, anthropology, sociology, cognitive psychology and some more,

Activity Theory, and that is something that is essential to understanding group and social behaiviour in areas where you have both personal and social goals and intentions, eg, for a gamer we have to take into account the goals and intentions of the gamer himself when he is playing the game, the way he finds solutions, the gameplay, the way he reacts to the UI, the moment-to-moment interactions and also the socio-cultural contexts he is playing the game in, why is he playing it and what does society regard the game and the gamer.

www.socialimpactgames.org

musings:

A typical game development cycle today is about 3-5yrs if the game is built from scratch and 1-2yrs for a game with licence base, but the learning industry is looking for very fast outcomes, what is required at this stage is to capture market by establishing platform, standards for sharing content and adaptin game engines to incorporate the accuracy, transparency, customisability and feedback mechanisms that games for learning demand.

A few companies have made a headway but the industry has not reached a critical mass(which is essential) of content, not only games, but mods, courses, storylines and object libraries are needed in excess before we can call this a mature industry that can sustain itself. Invesments are needed to leverage the research that has been undertaken by various social and academic groups(along with some corporates), including MIT Games-To-Tech Project, the SeriousGamesInitiative, Research at GeorgiaTech, The SLOAN foundation (Virtual U) and Microsoft iCampus.

Much can be said about COTS (commercial off-the shelf games) being used in education and games that seem to have an educational purpose, but to list and understand these games and the companies involved in their production, design is a never ending process.

The MIT research focussed on creating games speciafically for learning purposes without sacrifising in the entertainment value of the games and they wanted that technology should match the level of popular games currently in the market. very interesting were the ideas which involved teachning university level mechanics, optics, structural engg., eletromagnetism, medicine, Anthropology.

It is really the design and New Media community that has focussed on serious gaming away from military and aviation, the commercial eLearning companies have until now stayed off or not exxcesively publicized their little efforts, mostly I see most of them very primitive, interactive puzzle systems for specific clients and tasks. Simualtions are something that are very big (and for good reasons) in the eLearning industry, and it is not to harsh to say that almost all learning-game engines should have a good simulation support at the core level.

about the opputunities:

(most of these overlap and come in relation to one another, a company would almost always be involed in more than one of the indivisual areas even for a perticualar product, I am differentiating to provide a clear view of what major tasks exist)

1. Game Design:
Design for educational games is very imp. course structure should be clearly analyzed and only a GAME DESIGNER should be given the task, with atleast one game literate instructional designer to support him, this area has immense opportunities as multiply oppurtunities in game design to ways to present a course material.

2. Game Content

A. Course Content For a game being developed or for a platform that already exist, creating actual content that goes into the game to support learning, some parts of dialogue, story and supporting material. IMP: It may be that games used in education are not so much responsible for learning as the context and env. It is extremely important that the support lectures, instructions and learning outcomes be clearly defined and exist as a single structure which includes the game.

B. Digital Game Content Courses evolve, change, contexts of learning change(esp. in Enterprise env.) To create game content for this is a mojor activity, to package storylines, models, interactions, course content and deliver in a package (hail XML and the engines for learning) to upgrade, change, and evolve the content in a game.

3. Game MODs
very easy to understand. I have some priliminary material on how MODs have better reach, what to take care of,. and what is different if you are working towards games for learning. A great lecture by Tim Holt of Value at SGS GDC2004.

4. Game and Delivery Platforms
Since this is still a nascent field not many specific platfroms exist to distribute games for learning, these could be software or hardware(LeapForg), or enterprice systems, such as LMS supporting game distribution( QBInternational and lecture by Ian Bogost at GDC). Muzzy Lane has released a properitary GameBasedLearning Multiplayer platform and regulary provide expansion packs and also have an SDK for the system. Also it is necessaty to focus on the mobile games sector here and the distributive capabilities of indivisual networks (like R-World) and more importantly BREW.

5. GameDev Tools:
The game industry has recently focused a LOT on not only developing applications that support game developers and artists but also to support non-gamedev's to develop games using a point and click interface, NO CODE, this kind of constructs lend themselves naturally to learning environments, where a student designing game physics is surely to know more physics than playing QuakeIII and appreciating it. Such complex Fill-inThe-Blanks are another method which can significantly aid learning, esp. for higher learning in an env. where students are exposed to computers. Also it is very important to create tools such that the DevCycle that the eLearning industry is used to is met, Games have to be highly modular with AI, Physics and other rules providing an external access, so that the core is not touched while changing such parts of the game, Improved game dev tools, aimed specifically to learning env. and developers will take games-for-learning a long way

6. Packaged Courses (COTS Games)
Companies who have a lot of psycologists, educators and intructional designers on roll, can create and package courses with COTS games and include traditional eLearning presentation and guidelines for teachers and students, to aid normal classroom learning with games, again to stress that environment of games is very imporatant so this area should not be taken lightly.

7. Pervaisve Worlds (MM RPG's)
Create online or corporate pervasive worlds which increase interactions people play roles and are regularly given exersises and games-to-play, these would mainly be team based games to increase temwork and promote collaborative-Learning [TPLD www.tpld.ltd.uk has done extensive research in Team learning]. these could be simple environments like the online crosswords, word games, biz sims and virtual stock markets or complex worlds like EverQuest or RagnaRok.

My major failure has been to pinpoint areas (both physical and contextually, age group or any other classification) where game-based learning would be most applicable and which games to relate to 'what' courses. Any help in this reagrd would be greatly appreciated.

Case for open ended simulations for learning.

2006-06-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

it is usually argued that to provide feedback, learning games based on simulations should not be open ended, so as to provide feedback( and thus learning) when the learner takes an incorrect step. This feedback can be provided instantaneously at the time of mistake, or mostly after a certain direction has been travelled of the ideal path.

The case for open ended simulations lies in the fact that to encourage collaborative efforts outside of game environment and with supplementary reading material, there is need for factors to exist which can use extra information to leverage scores of learners. This requires either carefull selection of variables that can be handled by extra information or more easily, an open ended approach where the simulation is free and will respond if you have more control over a greater number of variables in the system.

A study that can be seen as a pointer is Betz(1995) who worked with SimCity 2000 and freshmen engineering students of Materials and methods. ( The use of computer and video games for learning, LSDA 2004, Ultralab m-learning )

Consortium for Educational Communication

2006-03-20T09:02:00.000-08:00

Cashing on the benefits of the Internet, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has developed an e-module through which students can watch and listen to lectures by experts on various subjects, and appear for web-based tests from the comfort of their homes.

Programmes of India's Vyas Channel, dedicated to education and managed by the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC), an inter-university centre of the UGC, is now available on its website www.cec-ugc.org. "The module presents the lectures in a systematic manner”

The CEC has a target of converting all 15,000 programmes into the e-content module.

GDrive from Google

2006-03-15T04:04:00.000-08:00

"With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today." — excerpt from Analyst Day presentation notes.

The Web world was abuzz this week over rumors that Google is preparing a service that will let people store every bit of their data online. Details about the GDrive product leaked onto the Web after Google accidentally posted notes online from a slide presentation given by executives during the company's analyst presentation day .

In a Windows environment, most users know how to use the typical C: in "My Computer". Network drives work exactly the same but are given a different letter and the files within are not stored on the computer. GDrive is simply a network share, most applications could take advantage of this service without modification. The question of course is how Google will monetize a service like this. See screenshot

Online storage with GDrive could be an important part of Google's future plans — universal access to your data will soon become reality.

on Education [draft 1]

2006-02-28T06:45:00.000-08:00

Certain readings and people that have influenced whatever notion of learning and education i have formed.

The most influential and amazing work is by Lev Vygotsky, and the wealth of his work which lay undiscovered for long. His writings and ideas on Child Learning, Developmental Phycology and education form a basis of a lot of other works.

The world was introduced to the ideas of Vygotsky after many years after his death primarily through the works of Alexander Luria, another russian phycologist who worked mainly on memory and brain injury drawing heavily from the social, cultural and historical implications on an individuals psychological state that Vygotsky had explored.

Bernard Weiner gave interesting insights into the motivational aspects in education and learning. He developed a new form of the socio-psychological Attribution Theory has indepth patterns and studies on the role of motivation in achivement and learning. Closely linked to motivation is the theory of flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi which has heavily influenced game design, instructional design, interactive education and also classroom and worspace designs (Group Flow). His work draws ancient diciplpines such as yoga and meditation into modern phycological thought.

Probably one of the most popular names in education, John Dewey, with his belief in learning as a communal process (like Vygotsky) worked on various ideas such as Democracy and Education, logic, human nature, esthetics and thought processes. His works are available free at Project Gutenberg.

Personally i have greatly appreciated the writings of Prof. M.P. Ranjan of NiD, Paldi. His writings on education and Design pedagogy are very relevant in context of our environment and time. Also his reflections on the evolution and change in design education from Bauhaus, Ulm and NID gives an insight into the realities of building new pedagogies and institutions to further learning.

This post is a draft and was primarily meant for me to create a map of education and learning that i have been exposed to. I can not claim to have read many of the texts mentioned.

I hope that further inputs will expand our view of these fields that are at the heart of any act in civilization.

Just two words on interaction design

2006-02-06T08:58:00.001-08:00

Recall , Recognize!

Paper Prototyping

2006-02-01T12:14:00.000-08:00

Concentrate on paper work before the actual work! This funda applies to design of interfaces as well and is called Paper Prototyping. Paper prototyping is a cheap and fast technique for rapid iterative design of user interfaces. Here a few examples:

Paper prototype of typical forms-filling screen.

Paper prototype of a tabs-based design.

Testing hardware user interfaces: mockup of a kiosk.

[via Nielsen Norman Group]

Cheers!

Invisible Blog

2006-01-19T00:39:00.000-08:00

Invisiblog is a new service that promises absolute, totally anonymous blogging. Unlike other blogging and hosting services, Invisiblog doesn’t have access to any potentially sensitive information about you - not even your email or IP address. All contact between bloggers and invisiblog.com is via the Mixmaster anonymous remailer network, which uses encryption and ‘mixnet’ techniques to hide the source of an email.

It allows you to keep a completely anonymous blog using GPG and the Mixmaster anonymous remailer network.

They claim." You don't ever have to reveal your identity - not even to us. You don't have to trust us, because we'll never know who you are. ". So, quite a interesting way to make yourself lost..

India short of 60,000 professionals : HindustanTimes.com

2005-11-03T23:03:00.000-08:00

With a shortfall of almost 60,000 usability professionals, Indian IT and ITES companies presently face a real threat of missing the current boom in this sector.

Check it out ...

Theatre in Virtual world...possibility

2005-10-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

I promise this is my last one for the night... just that i thought this would be an interesting way of sharing information and happenings around, maybe for a start we could share information through various findings and have a discussion in the comments section.

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Tristan Pope’s Not Just Another Love Story is a love story made in World of Warcraft (so it’s machinima, Animated filmmaking in a realtime game environment) by a theatre student in New York. It’s about a troll and a human who fall in love,[...]

Real world activities effect your game character

2005-10-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

G-Link by Ross O'Shea is a student project where your real world activities effect your game character. This hip pouch and badge is full of electronics and as you wear it throughout the day, it senses and records data; how many steps you have taken, how much you speak, size, temperature and brightness of your environment.

This device has currently been prototyped using the RPG Morrowind. In usual circumstances, a player might make an avatar that is a fitter, stronger more attractive version of themselves. The G-Link reverses this and says if you sit in and play games all day, your character will be weaker, yet if you go out for a walk then your character will be stronger. Also if you go out in the sun your character will be light aligned, yet stay indoors and it will go over to the dark side. Recently part of the CoEDD graduate exhibition.

IGDA Game Developers Demographics data

2005-10-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

IDGA has released their new report: Game Developer Demographics: An Exploration of Workforce Diversity on Oct 18. You can download it as a PDF. There were 6,437 responses, with 4,006 responses ultimately used in the report, as these were active in game specific jobs rather than overall software jobs.

Digital Humanities Quarterly: Call for Scholarly and Creative Work

2005-10-26T17:24:00.000-07:00

Matt Kirschenbaum just sent out an exciting announcement about a new journal that will serve as a forum for scholarly and creative work in electronic media. Digital Humanities Quarterly will publish scholarly articles, editorials, experiments in interactive media, and reviews of books, web sites, new media art, and digital humanities systems.

Bingo Game For Shoppers

2005-10-26T17:23:00.000-07:00

A company called Techno Wing developed so-called Mobile Bingo System that allows consumers to play a Bingo game while shopping at a retail store. A customer first need to sign up for the service, then she receives a QR code...

Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes

2005-10-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

Jakob Nielsen, often referred as the usability guru, has addressed usability issues concerning weblogs. According to him,

Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.

Click here to read the top ten design mistakes concerning weblogs. So ready to put this blog up for a usability test?

Various solutions from around

2005-09-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

I agree that this space has been neglected for quite some time now, and our friend Arpit here was constantly complaining about the negligence... we have certain issues where in members can take a look and give in suggestions:

1) get more stuff from the members...
2) get more members to the community...
3) popularize the community...

getting done with the administrative issues, here are some interesting links:

Our friend Lev, has been looking into stuff like collective intelligence and Knowledge management, heres a link to an article describing AIM project and their outcomes to thier testing of prototypes. They beleive
“Collecting ideas can and should involve everyone in a company from product designers and managers to people on the production line, together with feedback from customers and suppliers, the combined knowledge can greatly increase innovation, and optimise design and production processes by finding solutions to problems faster and more efficiently.”

Talking about web for the disabled is Wayne Dick of the W3C and their new product WebAdapt2me
He says:
“Early on, I understood that computer science can make a difference in people’s lives, that it was going to remove a lot of the barriers,” Dick continued. “Thanks to all of these advances and activism, I believe that in my lifetime, we’re going to remove all barriers for people with disabilities who want to use the Internet.”

Well here's an interview with a man, Vint Cerf, who has visions for internet like Sir Arthur:
“My mind wandered into the possibility of expanding the internet out into the solar system,” Cerf boldly went where no other man has gone.
and the link to his InterPlanet Project.

Fold 'n' Drop Window Interaction

2005-08-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

HCI rules!! With HCI gaining paramount importance, every organization is working towards discovering next big thing in user-interactive techniques. One such technique has been proposed by Mr. Pierre Dragicevic, a researcher in HCI at Intuilab, Toulouse for Microsoft's Window. Fold 'n' Drop is the latest in 'Desktop Innovation' and is described as a new interaction technique for seamlessly dragging and dropping between overlapping windows , Fold 'n' Drop allows the user to interact with layered or overlapping windows in a very intuitive manner.

Fold 'n' Drop allows you to fold windows while dragging objects. Although it is still a research prototype, having it integrated into most popular window managers is supposedly technically concievable.

-Arpit-

of Games and Learning [draft]

2005-07-24T11:36:00.000-07:00

As I near the end of my first dabbling into the field of games and learning, I am begining to identify a few areas where further research, products, or some kind of implementation is required. Most of the ideas are questions or problems faced by people whom I am talking to, that I have been unable to comment upon.

I need more ideas, and people to tear at the very few i have. This is just the first draft and i will add to it, but here's for a start

A study I did into modelling of a simulation as a Adventure/RPG on the lines of the old LucasArts game with some components of D&D, led to a question of how to implement story trees in flash, people are doing this, but the process is extremely time consuming and mostly each condition is taken one at a time creating a gigantic pile of crosslinked swf files.

Flash based API or even a development structure to aid such development can be of great help. I have not been able to isolate an existing engine or the requisite flash technology to implement such a system, but i think this is a great opportunity.

Secondly a study into what the rural areas in India can contribute to the game development process could have amazing fallouts on learning games that are developed in India. Looking at the kind of techinical and multimedia skills that are popularized by so called 'computer training' institutes can provide cheaper means of production, more localized content and new-age employment 'IN' the rural areas.

I am currently working to create learning-version of the game development cycle primarily from the book 'Game Architecture and Design' by Andrew Rollings with inputs from processes of the eLearning industry. I think this is essential and after refinement the model could provide a structured and professional way to develop games for learning in India, and also identify people skills and resources required at various stages.

A system on the lines of an LMS, that supports game delivery is also an interesting idea, but more than that to create either technical or operational structures for such content in flash with support of next generation tools such as Breeze from macromedia (an Open system would be any day better) can help set up an easy distribution and deployment network.

Coffee in ur mouse

2005-07-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

Two things we always have in front of us in the workplace are a mouse and a cup of coffee. Why not, the logic goes, combine the two and get the MugMouse? It only sounds completely unreasonable.

Untill this interaction designer, Louise Wictoria Klinker comes up with the MugMouse.

It´s just much slower. When filled with tea or coffee, the mug needs to be moved more carefully than a normal mouse. Working on the computer deserves a bit more time, reflection or personal involvement. MugMouse is in fact a reward: not only can you take a sip at your mouse but it acts as a signal to yourself and to others that you´re having a little more time away from work.

Part of SLOWEB, a project that rethinks the way people work at computer and introduces slowness in the life of hectic people.

Now there was someone wondering it would be cool if the MugMouse can keep ur coffee hot by using power through the USB port it has!

HFI sponsors World Usability Day

2005-07-15T00:25:00.000-07:00

first of all i apologize for the delay in my contribution to this blog, there has been a slack in the activity of the blog and i accept that in a way it was my mistake and hoping that there would be more activity from now on...

so i came across this mail from a yahoo group tellin about the World Usability Day which will be celebrated on November 3rd this year across many cities, till now there has been initiative from pune only from india and ppl are planning in other cities like bangalore and delhi to celebrate this day; following is the mail from Prof. Anirudha Joshi, IDC, IITB.
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HFI has been chosen as the lead sponsor for the 1st annual World Usability Day. The Usability Professionals Association is organizing this event and HFI's international presence will help promote World Usability Day globally. Free Webcast on The ROI of Usability Thursday, July 14, 2005 On November 3rd, 2005, a worldwide series of events will promote the benefits of user-centered design, with the theme "Making It Easy." "This is a great opportunity for usability to be recognized on a global scale as the key differentiator for technology," says Jay More, President of HFI. "We are proud to be involved with such a fantastic event." "Any event that brings user experience to the forefront of people’s minds is a good event for World Usability Day," says Elizabeth Rosenzweig, Principal, Bubble Mountain Consulting, and Co-Chair of the event. "The goal is to create a critical mass of enough interesting stories that will capture the collective imagination of innovative people around the world." Organizations interested in improving the user experience of technology are invited to participate in this event. Learn more...

Heuristics Evaluation

2005-07-03T22:49:00.000-07:00

Heuristic Evaluations – one or more independent reviewers perform an evaluation and consolidate findings into one formal document. Evaluators use specific guidelines and look for issues that could impact product success.

Usually before a product is launched into the market… one of the important aspects that should be taken into consideration is an analysis of issues that might have an impact on the success of the product. One way of doing this is to perform a Usability test where the potential users are invited and the product is tested in terms of the feedback received from the users. In terms of GUI it basically may refer to the extent with which users find it easy to use the software!

But there is another cost effective way as well… Using the pre-existing research to consolidate and view the issues that may arise during product usage. Let’s look at the brief pros and cons of the process.

Pros

• Best for reviewing advanced prototypes

• Can be performed quickly

• Experts can identify major layout and presentation problems

Cons

• Do not involve real subjects

• May not identify task organization problems, which may be critical to overall success

Well then I guess the best idea would be to look at how it’s done?

Nielsen Heuristic Evaluations

The most-used set of heuristics is credited to Molich and Nielsen (1990). These heuristics include:

1. Use simple and natural dialogue

2. Speak the user’s language

3. Minimize use of the user’s memory

4. Be consistent

5. Provide feedback

6. Provide clearly marked exits

7. Provide shortcuts

8. Provide good error messages

9. Prevent errors

10. Provide help and documentation

In 1994 Nielsen published a better set of heuristics. These include:

1. Visibility of system status

2. Match between system and the real world

3. User control and freedom

4. Consistency and standards

5. Error prevention

6. Recognition rather than recall memory

7. Flexibility and efficiency of use

8. Aesthetic and minimalist design

9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Gerhardt-Powals Heuristic Evaluations

An improved, research-based, set of heuristics was devised by Gerhardt-Powals (1996). These include:

1. Automate unwanted workload:

• Free cognitive resources for high-level tasks

• Eliminate mental calculations, estimations, comparisons, and unnecessary thinking

2. Reduce uncertainty by displaying data clearly and obviously

3. Reduce cognitive load by combining lower-level data into a higher-level summation

4. Present new information with meaningful aids to interpretation:

• Use a familiar framework, making it easier to absorb

• Use everyday terms, metaphors, etc.

5. Use names that are conceptually related to function:

• Make it context-dependent

• Try to improve recall and recognition

6. Group data in consistently meaningful ways to decrease search time

7. Limit data-driven tasks:

• Reduce the time spent assimilating raw data

• Make appropriate use of color and graphics

8. Include only the information a user needs at a given time:

• Allow users to remain focused on critical data

• Exclude extraneous information that is not relevant to current tasks

9. Provide multiple coding of data when appropriate

10. Practice judicious redundancy (to resolve the possible conflict between heuristics six and eight)

Notes on Media and Disaster

2005-06-30T01:47:00.000-07:00

For one thing, history shows that the world tends to lose interest in disasters in developing world once people stop dying in large numbers. If we don't think now about our commitment to helping these communities recover and rebuild after the immediate crisis has passed, we never will. (Architect, re-build Project. Tsunami 2005)

New channels everyday bring the destruction and to us, making it personal, raising concerns, curiosity about the cause, effects and dynamics of a disaster. Issues relating to a disaster get pondered over and discussed, raising the social awareness. In the post Silent Spring era where environmental degradation has become an all pervasive issue, it is discussed relating to the effects and causes of the disaster, and also how human intervention is affecting the environment. This social mobilization lays down foundation for various action groups and creates space for existing social groups to put forth their concerns. Corporates respond to the concerns and issue regulations and standards, advertising their efforts in turn helping social movements to gain momentum. These groups are responsible for involving the masses and also play part in formation and implementation of government regulations.

Social groups and NGO's working in the field of disaster management have only recently come to accept environmental awareness as a important part of the recovery and mitigation cycle. The first links between natural disasters and environment were drawn in the late 1990's. The international symposium in Japan, 2005 concluded that environmental protection is a component of disaster management and that an integrated approach to risk reduction is required. After the Berlin symposium 2002 there are four UN organizations including the UNEP, ISDR and many other implementing agencies responsible for identifying ecosystems in danger and spread of environmental awareness.

Many laws and directives have been passed by governments and regulatory agencies at all levels relating to environmental and disaster mitigation issues, but globally it has been seen that the lawyers who are major players in the fight for the environment, we need more scientists, ecologists, environmental engineers and less lawyers and politicians. We cannot hope to manage a complex system such as the environment through litigation; also most environmental "principles" (such as sustainable development or the precautionary principle) have the effect of preserving the economic advantage of the west and thus continue modern imperialism toward the developing world (B. Wilfred. A Poverty of Reason...).

Globalization is bringing people closer, and with the social movement gaining momentum globally, scientists, architects, designers, ecologists and people from various spheres come together to form international forums. Responses to disaster also foster growth of a community of experts and amateurs who think and document, raise issues regarding degradation and help create a rich knowledge pool with the internet as a platform. This is especially interesting because, in the present nobody is really sure what nature is really about, our understanding of natural processes is extremely shallow.

Such forums ¹ experiment with various aspects and create open-ended platforms for people to put forth their ideas, free of control from administration, politics, and other organizations, who always have a particular outcome in mind. Also in view of the modern revolution in science that gives a new understanding of nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, chaos theory, catastrophe theory, our view of evolution and ecology has undergone a major change (S. Riece, The Silver Lining). People from various areas are essential to undertake a fruitful discussion on the complex processes and ways of nature.²

The human pool of knowledge is not rich enough to explain even the most trivial of nature's ways; we are just specs in space-time and even as a race can know very little about the greater plan of nature

Micro-habitats and environments change. If a tree falls in the forest, and lands in the river, it will change all of the flow patterns near it. What was once a fast reach can be stilled. As the water seeks a downstream path around the log, a new chute will form. The microhabitats have all changed, and the community must change, too. What was once an excellent blackfly habitat is no longer suitable for the flies. The animals have to to survive. Some won’t make it. Some were crushed when the tree fell on them. Some will get stranded and die. Some will get up and go. Change is endless and has consequences for all living things. It is as obvious as day follows night and the change of the seasons. What is rare is constancy (S. Riece. The Silver Lining)

We need to understand that in the larger scheme of things we are just one of the billions of implements of nature, and it is more probable than not, that we have little or no capability to harm, or cause destruction in nature, or our purpose in the dynamics of nature is to destroy, just like many destructions in history have allowed for growth of new species, it is nature's way to maintain biological diversity.

Every Tornado’s funnel, every forest fire’s cloud of smoke has tremendous benefits for the ecosystem. (David, Victor. Climate of Doubt)

We think of ourselves as 'thinking' beings capable of changing the world, but it is easy to see that we are not any different from the countless cells in our body, we are cells of our planet, look from beyond with the earth as an organism then we are the cells, important one's we would like to believe, but the behavior of our collective mass can be described as simplistic.

Another analogy to this is the portrayal of the landlady in 'Tom and Jerry', from the view of Tom and Jerry, the landlady is just like a natural disturbance in our view, the face of the lady is never shown, and drawing attention to the fact from other viewpoints we are not the center of things. Tom tries to do all that he can to be safe from the bashing by the lady, but he also must get Jerry, and this is analogous to our dilemma, choose between rapid development or safety. It can be argued that a middle path can be taken, and therefore it is important to study all facets of human society and the science of nature, to reduce the effects of disaster. It is important that economics and politics do not interfere with learning and research in nature.

Organic Information Design

2005-06-29T19:57:00.000-07:00

Very few design techniques exist for modelling dynamic information which is primarily because dynamic information continously changes data taken as input from one or many sources. Very few techniques exist for visualizing dynamic information because of the extremely large quantities of data is to be considered and also extents and bounds of the data set are not clear as well.

Organic Information Design is a design technique that augments the perception of qualitative features of dynamic data by co-relating the design to the traits of organic systems which respond to a complex and changing enviornment similar to that of dynamic information.
This design technique maps the nine properties which are necessary components of primitive oragnic systems to design of dynamic information. These properties are listed below and what they mean in this design technique is listed:

Structure - It talks about how the nodes of the system are associated with different sizes and shapes.
Appearence - By changing the size of some of the nodes, appearence of the system changes and those nodes call attention to themselves.
Metabolism - The rules of metabolism are at the heart of what drives the system, the basis for what will result in an appearence that is qualitatively 'well fed' or 'sick'.
Growth - In computational medium, it refers to changes in the underlying structure of the data coming from an information source. Atrophy allows element to wither and die when they become no longer pertinent. A balance of growth and atrophy is important because the presentation space on hand is finite. There are both physical and cognitive limitations that affect the presentation space.
Homeostasis - It balances the system and does not allow values to run out of control which might cause the system to blow up. For example we can apply certain maximum limits to the values.
Response - There are three sets of response-stimulus rules: composition rules, data rules and interaction rules. Each rule taks about the response of the system when an activity occurs.
Adaptation - It brings with it ability for a visualization to stretch, allowing the representation to slowly shift based on new input.
Movement - Due to nature of human visual system, movement immediately attracts attention and control focus. By definition, it is one of the most dominating factor in temporal behaviour.
Reproduction - Here we are considered with the scenario of what happens when new data is added to the existing system, causing new elements to inherit characteristics from siblings that already exist in composition.

Organic Information Design is very useful for qualitative representation of information but fails for quantitative analysis or information which lacks structure.

"Organic Information Design" is the master thesis of Benjamin Fry submitted to MIT, Media Labs. To read the complete thesis, click here.

-Arpit-

Life Experience Design by Kevin Cheng

2005-06-29T00:58:00.000-07:00

We often talk about the User Experience when determining how people will use our products. The term has become so popular that the title of User Experience Engineer, or UX Engineer, has become somewhat commonplace.

Some design agencies now speak of extending the experience beyond just the product. The product is not enough, instead, one needs to extend design into what is called Life Experience design.

The premise of the philosophy is thus: you can design for the product experience and that is the experience you have when you interact with the product; you can design for the user experience which taken in its traditional sense really means the same thing as product experience - the user’s experience while they interact with a product; or you can design for life experience which is the experience the user gets with the context of a product in their lives.

How is Life Experience different from typical User Experience? Let’s take a look at some examples of how people actually do Life Experience Design and see if we can spot the differences.

The Solution Approach

So many consultancies these days sell solutions but very few define what problems they’re offering solutions to. The Apple retail store has an approach to life experience design. Instead of just looking at how people use iPhoto or an iSight webcam, they look at the context - the complete package. In the store, you will find laptops with iPhoto and iMovie connected to digital cameras and camcorders illustrating how these devices work together. In other words, even though Apple does not sell digital cameras or camcorders (yet), they design with the context in mind. How are people going to use Apple products in conjunction with other products and aspects of their life? Apple’s marketing screams Life Experience Design.

The Ethnographic Approach

Take a PDA like a PocketPC or Palm Pilot. What does the user typically do with this? They make appointments, keep address book information, check their calendar, and perhaps take a few notes. Today most of these devices will also permit you to take photographs, listen to music and play games.

From a product experience perspective, you may conduct some focus groups on the product, and run some tests on prototypes with some set tasks. The team working on the Palm Zire 71 camera presented at CHI 2004 and their design methods, with a lack of budget and time, were mostly in-house testing and iterating.

The issue these methodologies have is a lack of context. Paper and post-it notes are still the preferred method of taking down appointments and phone numbers. I own a Palm Pilot and I still prefer to give and receive business cards and never think to “beam” my information. Why is this? How does a usability test discover this?

The problem is that it’s very difficult to design for how a product fits into someone’s life. Sure, in work applications we can perform things like contextual inquiries but for consumer devices, you can’t very well follow them for a few days.

Enter techniques like diary studies. With diary studies, you find out what the participants plan to do, and have them record what they actually did. However, just comparing the two isn’t sufficient. The study demands an experienced eye to observe the nuances between tasks and every little discrepancy and then determine why. Why an action is taken is important. For example, why did I give out the business card rather than beam it? Why did I not go to my scheduled appointment? Why did this person interrupt me and why did I permit them to? In these nuances, one discovers how products fit in with life not just how people perceive their lives to be but how it actually is.

That’s Life

Life Experience design means designing to consider every possible nook and cranny of a person’s life. It’s important to note that anything can have influence on your design even when it initially seems unrelated. Unfortunately, this approach to design means a heavy invasion into the lives of participants. Although costly in terms of overall time, such a design methodology need not require too much of the facilitator’s time.

Is product experience sufficient or is there really a need for life experience design? How far is too far when we design a product to fit into the existing mold that is the consumer’s life? Were it not for the Hawthorne Effect, would we end up with Big Brother style usability labs where we watch our participants live their lives while we inject various prototype products? Or is this just another buzzword that will fade away faster than the next pop hit song?

Knowledge Management in Practise

2005-06-28T17:05:00.000-07:00

Well just for a start I guess, I would rather begin with something that I have been working on since past some time... It's just a human perspective of knowledge management system!

Knowledge can be defined as organized or contextualized information, which can be used to produce new meanings and generate new ideas. Defining where “information” ends and “knowledge” begins is not simple. Knowledge is created and consumed across a wide range of activities: individuals talking to each other, searches of information repositories, just-in-time learning and continuous education, and highly focused “knowledge repositories.” Effective knowledge management fosters and supports each of these activities.

Capturing tacit knowledge

Every individual and organization manages knowledge in one form or another. An expert mentoring a junior employee, two employees trading their experiences at the water cooler, an intranet repository of best practices, and a continuous learning program are all examples of knowledge management. The critical difference between knowledge management in disparate organizations is how effectively each expands knowledge creation and dissemination beyond a select few to everyone who needs it.

Tools for Knowledge Management

Before we move on to determination of the ways to determine knowledge management system for a particular organization, it is necessary to explore various information systems for the support of knowledge management within an organization.

Examples of such systems are:

Intranet Infrastructures	Document and Content Management Systems	Business Intelligence tools
Workflow management Systems	Artificial Intelligence	Visualization Tools
Groupware	E-learning Systems

Problems faced during usage

The concepts and solutions concentrate explicit knowledge leaving the fluid tacit knowledge of humans and the human carriers outside of the system.
Knowledge is considered without the context within which it was created. This limits its reusability to employees having background knowledge about the context.
The meaning of the terms used as part of structured or unstructured information is not explicitly stored in the system. Lack of proper glossary of metadata to keep information in context.

Factors for successful implementation of KM Strategy

There are three fundamental elements that must be addressed in any knowledge management program; these have been summarized under the following points:

People and Culture
Business Processes
Systems and Technology

The success of the initiative is ultimately determined by sufficient combination of these elements and their incorporation within the organization. Successful implementation requires not only that knowledge is collected and distributed, but also, more importantly, that knowledge within the organization is easy to use in daily processes, that it is accurate and up-to-date, and that people can quickly contact subject matter experts for feedback and questions.

People and Culture

(1) A Culture of pervasive knowledge sharing needs to be nurtured enabled within and aligned with organizational objectives. The underlying concern is employees do not want to share information, probably due to the lack of time or project pressure or fear of criticism. Usually successful organizations empower employees to want to share and contribute intellectual information, by rewarding them for such actions. And, with organizational leaders role models of information sharing and interface regularly with staff, teams and stakeholders in review sessions and openly talk about successes and failures.

Business Processes

(2) KM Organization: The first important variable is leadership with a vision, strategy and ability to promote change to incorporate knowledge management practices within the business processes of the company. Followed by

(3) Effective& Systematic Processes creating a “knowledge environment” with processes to capture the knowledge assets of the organization is important. Thus, the need for

Systems and Technology

(4) Strategy, Systems & Infrastructure establishes a clear definition of all required KM elements and an overall system approach and integration.

Business Processes

(5) Finally the Measures to evaluate the success of knowledge management, which can be considered
against pragmatic milestones, such as the creation of products, the development of new clients and an
increase in sales revenue

beginnings

2005-06-28T01:15:00.000-07:00

I am not sure it is the right way to begin, or if even I am the right person to do it.

through 113 mails in past 2 months, the musings finally find place here.

__mphaxise__

remember about what i said about postings on hci related material on my blog... iahve been thinking on it and i think i would be doing justice if i mix it up with my cribbings and looking at this long disscussion of ours i thought most of our mails could make good posts on a blog... so how abt a community blog on hci and related stuff, we could get new members as and when anyone is interested.

i know our past records of promissing ourselves to do stuff together which neva really took off, how about doing this for a change and actually start things working. we see a lot of materail online and read lots off stuff, all we need to do is accumulate all this on s blog... what say? plz do not dissapoint me...

__clakeSnapster__

actually even i was looking for a place to put some posts of mine on 'Games and learning' which look lost in the 'shit' on my blog, so this is a very interesting and welcome idea,

and what's best is that we've already started it. ONE thing that we would start. Atleast, go on set up a blog, send me a request, lets do this today.

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