End of the Semester Crazies

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Project Proposal - ITEC830: Week 13

I've been working on my project proposal. You can check it out here and add comments to the wiki.

Web2.0 Expo - ITEC830: Week 12

Web 2.0 was interesting. I walked away thinking it's all about 'mash-ups', personalization through widgets, aggregation of content from different sources, identity management (all your social networks, IMs, etc in one spot for easy updating), and paring down information to show only what you want - customization.

There was a nice tool for online document collaboration where the alterations were highlighted in user specific highlight colors - created by HyLighter. I think Google Documents should add this kind of feature - they already track the changes, but showing the changes on the doc, until it's finalized would be a super bonus because then I can track/know what people have changed w/o looking at the tracking log.

Super cool for designers - creative feedback for remote collaboration - Octopz. Work in real-time with clients to get better feedback.

Those were the stand outs for me.

Happy Web 2.0!

Printing in the Bay Area (Oak-town)

I've been working with a new printer (new to me) to produce 1,000 full color brochures for iDo (Industrial Design Outreach). PSPrint seems to be a good organization. I've done two proofs, rejected both because of designer error (NOT printer error) and they've been OK with this - they said they give you 3 proofs before cutting you off. Everything is done through the website - upload of files, digital proofs, pricing, etc. - nice and easy.

Hopefully on Monday, all will be correct and we'll go to print.

Interface Design Critique of Edu 2.0 Website - ITEC830: Week 12

To read my critique of Edu 2.0, check out my wiki. Please add or alter content as needed. I'd love to get other peoples feedback about my analysis of the site.

Reflections ITEC830: A Whole New Mind Presentations 4.8.08

Christina and Barry presented "Story"

• People retain knowledge through story telling
• Episodic memory - memory of events, provides context
  
• Left brain thinking (analytical) is not a natural way of thinking for humans
• Harder to remember
  
• Doctors need to have both R and L brain skills
• Listening to patient stories can help solve medical issues/problems
• Drs. keep emotional log to help keep empathy with patients
• Procedural memory may be tapped during the writing down of these logs by the Drs.
  
• Americans record stories in sound/audio
• Record your own story at StoryCorps
• Storytelling is a skill that can be learned

Joshua, Marcus and Kurt presented "Empathy"

• Odiogo - web page reader that converts page content to audio
• Empathy is putting yourself in someone else's shoes to understand what they're feeling, understanding the situation, it's a holistic approach.
• It is not sympathy, where you feel bad for the person.
  
• Designers need to be empathetic so they can understand what a user needs and how they'll use the product
• Build empathy by:
• Volunteering in an area where people are different from you
• Eavesdropping on people's conversations

Greg presented "Play"

• Play will become the way we work in the 21st century
• Bringing game, humor and joyfulness to business and products will make them successful
• "mature manhood: that means
• Play a game that demonstrates real world physics - launchball
• Motivates kids to learn by play

Doris, Heidi, Yu-Fen presented "Meaning"

• Find out what you do out of enjoyment because it's meaningful to you
• Some helpful ways of finding meaning are:
• Spirituality
• Appreciation
• Relationships
  

Carlos presented "Symphony"

• 
  

Interface Design Critique - ITEC830: Week 12

Protecting Human Research Participants
http://phrp.nihtraining.com

What's Broken - ITEC830: Week 11

The mailbox installed in my house.

There is no possible way for any large format mail to be deposited wholly into the slot. Poor visibility and no feedback make it pretty easy to think that you've gotten all your mail, but really you haven't. The affordance (or implied actions for interaction) are pretty easy to determine because of the tiny nub of metal indentation intended to provide a place to grab onto.

The Design of Everyday Things - ITEC830: Week 11

In reading chapter one of Donald A. Norman's The Design of Everyday Things I focused on answering the following questions:

1. What does the author identify as some of the drawbacks of modern versions of objects, such as phones?
• When visibility is lessened, users ability to infer function and operation of objects becomes more difficult.
• In terms of feedback, natural mapping of controls enables users to better implicitly understand what to do by creating a close, natural relationship between the control and function.
• Another concern in the realm of feedback is that when the amount of feedback is lessened, ease of use decreases because users are unsure if their actions are producing measurable/visible results. By building feedback mechanisms into a design, something like a digital display or audio feedback, users can link responses with their actions which allows them to more easily operate the system.
• A negative result of technological advancement is that what can be done by an object also increases (the object becomes smarter and more efficient at its task), this often results in the object becoming more difficult to operate. Visibility into how the object functions is also often obscured by technological advances, as a result user feedback can become unimportant to the object and causality may become completely disconnected from user interaction. To quote chapter one, “…the paradox of technology: added complexity and difficulty cannot be avoided when functions are added, but with clever design, they can be minimized.”
  
2. How is the notion of causality relevant to interactive web design?
• Causality is essential to web design. Users control where they are going and how they get there by making decisions about what content they are interested in. If a user clicked on a link and nothing happened, they would assume that the link was broken. This broken link would result in a lessening of confidence of the user in the quality and reliability of the website. A successful website also allows users to predict the effects of their actions through providing a good conceptual model where purpose and results are closely tied.
  
3. How does design relate to the notion of schema which learners create in their heads.
• Good design takes into account the schema that a user will create and then crafts a solution that relies upon visibility, constraints and good mapping which arise from their schema. By designing to the user, the product is easier to use and more effective at its purpose. Good design is built upon an understanding of the conceptual model created by users about the purpose and use of a product. When the model of the product aligns with the user’s conceptual model, good design occurs.

Kids as Content Creators, Copyright (DMCA) and Culture

Larry Lessig Talks about copyright at TED

Excellent listen/view. I appreciate his discussion of the differences between "us" [pre net/tech generation] and "kids" in how they differ in passive vs. active content creation.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187

Ownership of material and appropriate rights to fair use need to be considered by us designers.

Designers Block

I am using the Arabian proverb, "The whisper of a pretty girl can be heard further than the roar of a lion" as the base for my final project in DAI525 - Advanced Graphic Design. I'm feeling uninspired although it's a great quote.

How do I apply that quote to my neighborhood - the Upper Haight? I keep envisioning long flowing hippie girl whirling around in circles at a protest... but that seems so cliche.

*sigh*

Reflections ITEC830: Brian's Presentation of SnapzProX

I currently use Grab which is free and comes loaded on the Mac, and I'm happy with it. But Brian showed that SnapzProX has a cool feature that allows you to record on screen animation and audio. It seemed like a really easy to use piece of software, and I'm going to keep it on the radar in case I need to capture some animation.

iDo - Industrial Design Outreach: Award Ceremony for the Community Bench Project

Hello All!

If you get a chance, please come to iDo's award ceremony for Community Bench created by a small and fortunate bunch of students at Thurgood Marshall Academic High School.



When: April 3, 2008 8:50 ~ 9:50 AM
Where: Thurgood Marshall,
45 Conkling St, San Francisco,
CA 94124 Second Floor in the iDO studio (Please sign in at the front desk)

Running My First Professional Print Job

I'm using BPS in San Francisco. I'm really impressed with the quality of the printing and the professional attitude of the staff; they're proactive in calling me about the job, and when I call they know the precise status of it.

Here's a digital file of what the brochure looks like:

Reflections ITEC830: Eugene Lee Presentation 4.1.08

Eugene Lee spoke to our class this evening about his company, Socialtext.

During his presentation, he touched upon the idea that students/kids younger than most of our classes median age (let's say 30) are digital natives. As digital natives, they are immersed in technology, they are used to flexible software, they are used to control and the ability to customize their technology. His point that made me realize that corporate America will change from what it was when I first began my career due to the fluency of these kids as they mature into the workforce. I've been trained in a static computing environment (in terms of software) and I'm used to it, so the thought that the software I use will change it's nature and the way I interact with it had not crossed my mind until he pointed it out.

When I consider this point in conjunction with some web applications and software that I know is being developed for the enterprise, or when I look at iGoogle, I can now see the value of this sort of dynamic interface within software. I do wonder though how this would impact productivity of workers, if the changes in productivity will be immediate or longer term.

Some other interesting tid-bits he discussed were:

• groupware (what is meant by this?)
• Twhirl
• Things like Facebook are interesting because it lessens the importance of a resume. The activities that you do (and the expression/documentation of them online) are more telling of who you are than what you stick on a resume. Everyone gets "Googled", so things are learned about you beyond what's in the resume.
• Howard Rheingold and Smartmobs - collaboration to cause social and political change
• Wikis provide transparency within an organization - quality of feedback can be evaluated by all and forces the quality of participation to increase.
  

Design chapter summary of A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink - ITEC830: Week 10

Check out our chapter summary of the Design chapter of Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. Presented to you by Giovanna Tuccori and Giovanna Ghio for ITEC830.

Guess What I Did on Spring Break... - ITEC830: Week 9

Check out what I did one day on my spring break... I used VoiceThread to create it.




Note: It's easy to resize the VoiceThread module by changing the dimensions embedded within the html portion of the post. That was a relief, because I could not find how to change the size within the VoiceThread authoring environment.