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In this chapter Edward Schlossberg talks about reinventing museums as a place to learn about culture through experiential play. He provides background information on the public places he has worked on that conveyed this context of experiential play as an effective teaching tool for development and learning, such as the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I find it rather amazing that the first museum he designed was the Brooklyn Children’s Museum – it’s a big gig for someone’s first museum design. His ideas and goals for the BCM was very inventive and extremely creative, that it seemed like it was not his first gig at all.
There were two positions/ideas that struck me the most. First, …”the environment needed to feel as if it belonged to the visitors”, this also goes along with “conveying the message that anyone can be there”. My personal experience as a child visiting museums was that they often felt like static places where feeling like a visitor or a guest was heavily emphasized because many times we were not allowed to touch/feel or make any sounds, and can only asked questions when directed. Then again it could have been the authoritarian teachers, but the environment often reinforced those authoritarian attitudes in our teachers. So to read about creating environments where people can play, be themselves, and belonged was the kinds of museum places I missed out on growing up, but now as an adult, these kinds of public spaces are places I gravitate towards because it goes against what I had experienced or perhaps just making up for missing out. I especially love the notion of “eliminating intermediaries between children and their process of exploration”, so often it is the intermediaries in life the stymie creativity and exploration.
The second position/idea was designing an attractive entrance space. This may now seem like a no brainer, but often times think about the actual exhibit or object, but not what is surrounding that object. It’s not enough to create a “cool” object or display, but to create a contagious environment. So it was an epiphany, to think about the actual object’s surround, and how the actual exhibition or interactive design exist as a microcosm within a large space that has to also be taken into consideration when creating experiences.
Connecting Audiences
An aspect I took away from this article was the significance of the “over-the-shoulder” viewer experience – which has never occurred to me until I had read this article. Not only is designing for the user experience important, but the design must also take into consideration the experience of those who are viewing the user’s immersive experience. Again, this goes back to being conscientious and incorporating the “surround”. I especially found it useful when Ellzey poses questions, such as “What’s their experience? What do they see while they are waiting?” This connected me back to Schlossberg’s tenet of belongingness - to make sure that the over-the-shoulder viewers also feel like they belong to or are a part of the experience. So in essence, the viewer is a peripheral user and their experiences also count.
How is Everyware Different From What We’re Used To?
Reading this article made me feel like I was reading about 2050 or some sort of sci-fi world. I had a hard to grasping that everyware could be happening soon because I rarely see this idea of everyware, but it does not mean that it will likely not surge in my lifetime. The idea of having one’s physical space respond to one’s emotion almost seems impossible because I don’t believe that emotions can be truly programmable - perhaps the extreme emotions and any physiological responses (muscle tension, skin conductivity, etc) can be read. I’m not against this goal, I actually like the idea of an emotionally responsive environment because it oddly seems more natural, it’s just a very daunting task. I can not wait until we can largely move away from the keyboard and mouse to more of a physical interactions with gestural interfaces, to me this is what humans are naturally suppose to do – that is, to use the bodies in a natural and intuitive way.
XEODesign articles by Nicole Lazzaro
Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story
This short article talks about the Four Keys to releasing emotion during play without using stories. These Four Keys are: 1) hard fun 2) easy fun 3) altered states and 4) the people factor. In addition, it is important to recognize what kind of emotions happen during, such as fear, surprise, disgust, etc. I thought the most useful part of the article was how to use the Four Keys to unlock certain emotions, for example, if the game is made to be hard fun, it should structure the experience towards a goal and should generate emotions like frustration along with personal triumph. I found this article relevant to the project I am trying to design in this course because my interactive environment does not have a story or narrative and it is meant to be a collaborative game. The key factor that works with the environment I’m trying to create is more of the people factor, where this is a sense of teamwork and camaraderie necessary to meet the goal, however the author doesn’t provide a real framework for to create an environment the encourages cooperation, she just states that the people factor in games creates emotions of amusement, pleasure or pride, and boasting. Luckily this leads to the author’s next article.
Why We Play Games Together: The People Factor
This even shorter article gave a nice framework on how to create games that incorporate the key of the people factor. Especially useful to my design for the trash interactive environment are: create environment that relay and is interdependent on other people, and put on a spectacle - this is more for the over-the-shoulder viewers so that it is fun to watch if they are not playing.
I like how this article conveys that animators should treats character images as real actors, thereby also engaging in the act of acting. While reading this article, one thought that came to my mind was about how everyone at one point while growing up was an actor. Most children pretend play in order to understand human interactions and emotions, so I find it rather amusing that as adults, we have to write and read about acting cause we forgotten – in other words, we have forgotten how to act and how essential acting is in helping us develop skills in other domains. I agree with the author about animators being able to understand and incorporate acting techniques in order to improve their animation. My personal experience was that I never really saw a bifurcation between animation and acting techniques – except of course that obvious difference, that animators needs to also understand shading, line, lighting, colors, etc. But in terms of knowing your character, knowing the story, creating empathy, creating movement, it seems like animation encompasses the same technique seen in acting. Especially with the popularity of anthropomorphizing objects, it seems like animation and acting techniques overlaps even more. Actually, when I see static images, I have internal dialogues that are acting out those images, so to me, images also aid in acting…or it could be the natural child in us still engaging in acting.
Animation. In R.E. Mayer Multimedia Learning.
Richard Mayer briefly discusses how to design multimedia lessons using narrated animation. Most importantly, words and pictures should be coordinated “so that when an action takes place in animation, the learner is given a verbal description of action at the same time” (p.35). What I like about Mayer paying attention to animation in multimedia learning environments is that this hopefully encourages instructional designers to use animation more since it can aid in high levels of engagement but also show cause and effects that can clarify lessons. What I find so ironic is in the part when Mayer writes “people have some difficulty in learning and understanding explanations that are presented in words alone” (p.40), and how our whole academic system is based on learning that is presented with only words. We have research to back up claims that learning with mere words does not aid in retention and transfer, and yet academia (especially in higher education institutions) remains archaic in its ways. In most universities, it seems like coming up with theories are more important than implementing them in their own learning environment.
The Animation and Interactivity Principles in Multimedia Learning. By Mireille Betrancourt
In this chapter, the author suggests that animation and interactivity should be used when it can (1) help support the visualization and mental representation process such as in situations when the real phenomenon is not easily observable (e.g. plate tectonics), (2) produce a cognitive conflict, this gives learners alternative viewpoints between conventional conceptions or their own conception, and (3) enable learners to explore the phenomenon. Animation also can influence our mental model of what is being learned because animation can enable, facilitate, or inhibits our cognitive processing functions. For example, animation can provide a visual for the learners that can lower the cognitive cost of mental simulation thereby saving cognitive resources for learning.
Lastly, the chapter provides five design principles of instructional animation. The Apprehension principle states that external characteristics or representation should be readily and accurately perceived by the learner, meaning the design should follow the “conventional design representation of the domain” (p. 294). The Congruence Principle states that “changes in animation should map changes in the conceptual model rather than changes in the behavior of the phenomenon” meaning that distortion can occur if it can help the learner understand the cause-effect of the relationships (p.294). The Interactivity Principle states that information is better comprehended when learners are given control over the pace of animation. The Attention-Guiding Principle states that guiding devices should be used so that learners can be guided in processing important information from the animation. Lastly, the Flexibility Principle states that since knowledge and needs of the learners vary, provide an option to activate the animation, this helps avoid redundancy.
What I really enjoyed about reading this article was getting to know more about Raymond Scott the person as oppose to just reading about instruments, but I suppose one can not separate Raymond Scott and the instrument that he made because they were so intertwined. The authors did not glamorize Raymond Scott (e.g. “He earned notoriety as a session tyrant and was commonly criticized for treating his sidemen and vocalists as hardware” p.3) but did a very genuine job of conveying to the readers the creative genius he was and the unspeakable contributions he had made in the music industry because he was so relentless. One section of the article that resonated with me the most was Moog quoting Raymond Scott, “Look, I just want to sit here, and I’d like to turn this machine on, and whenever it does something good, I just want to record it at that point”, so in essence he worked really hard to try and create ways of being an efficient composer, which I have always viewed as the main goal/idea of ‘work’- it is to try to make the process of work less in order to focus on creating more. As a person who is not too familiar with Raymond Scott’s work, this article was so immersive it made me put him on a whole new level of respect he is so deserving of, as one of history’s great composer, inventor, and agent of change.
Playing by Ear: Creating Blind-Accessible Games. By Gavin Andresen
Reading this article about creating games for people with visual impairment through focusing on how sound moves actually influenced our group in another course, to incorporate sound techniques used in this article. We also begin just thinking about accessibility in general for our project. What I enjoyed about this article was how mechanics such as navigation and entrance/exits can be influenced just by how sound movements or placement is created in the environment, such as using occlusion to convey that there is an object but it is on the other side of the wall. In addition, I thought the statement “designing products that work for people with disabilities creates products that work better for everybody” (p.7) was such a great way to look at how to design in general. That was definitely a aha moment for me because instead of compartmentalizing designing for accessibility, it is viewed as incorporating better design techniques.
Music and the Brain. By Norman Weinberger
To be honest, I’m was completely ignorant about how music affects our brain and was surprised to find out in this article that there is no “centralized” location for music, “rather music engages many areas distributed by the brain, including those that are normally involved in other kinds of cognition”(p.90). I’ve always neglected how integral music is to our very fabric of being, but because of our class unit on sound, it made me reflect about music and it’s biological basis. I started to wonder at what point did the majority of people stop responding innately to music? Almost every baby naturally starts to bounce/ dance when they hear music, then as adults about half, or even a little over half, begins to stop moving their body to the rhythms of music. What I like about music and the brain is that forgiveness factor - it being never too late “retune” our brains. I remember walking around governor’s island in the summer of 2008 and there was this African dance festival going on, the music was so contagious that people who were walking by would automatically start bouncing (almost like infants) and it felt so pleasurable to hear but also to MOVE. I started to think that there might be a natural connection (perhaps somewhere wired in us) with music and the body.
Grooving with the Rhythms of Language
Reading about how to implement rhythms and music to literacy made me want to become a teacher solely because I would love to try out the suggestions that the author provided. She also mentioned that every text can offer some sort of music that can me used- its not just catering to a certain type of learner, this is essentially about makes learning fun and memorable, regardless of what sort of learner one is, which I think is essential for knowledge building. When the author pointed out that during her search there were no reading programs based on music and song lyrics, this just reinforced my idea of how dull and compartmentalized schools have gotten. Instead of seeing subjects being integrated with one another, everything has its own separate special time, for example as a kid I remember we would got to music class before math, and music class was the only time we could think about music, then when math came, we only thought in math terms, but math and music can very much be related to one another and that was the beauty all of us kids missed out on. I use to have a very rebellious friend in grade school, and he always got in trouble from the administration because he felt that schools were just another form of prison. At that time many teachers (I went to school in the Midwest) viewed ‘rap music’ as a bad influence. My friend decided to give his presentation “rapping” and the kids went ballistic, it was almost like a mini-revolution. But the funny thing is, I remember the rap and I remember his topic, which was how to avoid spreading germs, such as “ wash you hands with soap for bout 20 seconds, or else you’ll be holding those germs I reckoned”. So the point is, I agree that music aids in literacy, and it makes learning memorable but most importantly fun.
Panwapa Critique
In order to fully understand and critique the Panwapa site, I signed up and became a Panwapa kid!
According to Sesame Street, their goal in creating the Panwapa site was to “inspire and empower a new generation of children, ages four to seven, to be responsible global citizens”. It is a noble goal, but the task seems rather daunting especially when their target audiences are four to seven year olds. The site’s objectives are: 1) awareness of the wider world 2) appreciating similarities and valuing differences 3) taking responsibility for one’s behavior 4) community participation and willingness to take action 5) understanding of responsiveness to economic disparity. In order to incorporate their goal and objectives, the site provides four primary activities: 1) Panwapa World 2) Hide and Seek with Koko 3) Panwapa Movie Play-Along 4) Panawapa Videos. In this critique I am going to look at how the site’s activities try to convey their goals and objectives to the target audiences (primarily focusing on the Movie Play-Along activity), in addition to discussing/critiquing the site’s design.
The first activity I looked at was the Panwapa Movie Play-Along activity. This activity was trying to convey kids an awareness of the wider world and different living conditions by having children view short videos of real kids from different areas of the world. After viewing, the kids can ‘play along’ by finding moments in the film that Bill the bug tells them to find (e.g. when Moses speaks Swahili). This play along activity was most likely trying to teach kids to value the differences of other people. In addition, kids can answer Bill the bug’s question, which compares their answer to other kids who have played, so that they can see similarities and differences within the Panwapa community. I watched two movie videos: Moses from Tanzania and Shem Ping from China, and did the activities. Based on my experience, the videos and activities seems rather advance for four year olds (unless four year olds are very precocious these days). In my opinion, the play-along game activities seem most appropriate for seven year olds and older because what Bill the bugs tell kids to find requires advance listening and attention skills, such as “click the panwapa button whenever you hear Moses speak Swahili, according to my calculations, you should click four times”. Provided that kids are given cues/signaling on when to click the panwapa button (the button flashes), the activity is still rather advance for four and five year olds.
The problem solving/ thinking skills that the movie play-along activity incorporated were: 1- using a model (kids in the video modeling skills or activities, such as Moses speaking a different language an going to school, or Shem Ping trying new foods), 2- scanning for clues (e.g. players had to click on the panwapa button everytime they see Shem eat a new food), 3- multiple choice/ answer (Bill the bug’s question provides kids with possible choices/answers, and kids can choose films from the movie library), 4- interpreting data (when kids submit their answer to Bill’s question they are shown a comparison bar graph), 5- identifying relationships (comparison bar graph shows relationship between the kid’s answer and other kids, in addition having viewers identify relationship of foods, languages, lifestyles from their own experiences).
An issue I had about the design was at the end of the game activity when Bill the bug gives player’s their score, if you miss clicking the panwapa button at the appropriate time, in the end the player is told their score (e.g. 3 out of 4) but Bill the bug never specify which area the player missed. In other words, the site included feedback, but the feedback design did not give the kind of feedback that really mattered. What I will give kudos for is the movie library’s diversity (topics, ethnicity, etc), and its design to simulate a movie theater ambiance. The activity’s does meet its objective of promoting awareness of the wider world, different living conditions, and valuing of differences, but it only meets those objectives for older audiences.
I found this article to be an enjoyable read because the author’s conversational style was very personable. Nathan Sedroff discusses the elements of design that contributes to great experiences. First, experience designs should have a framework, meaning boundaries that can “differentiate meaning, pacing, and completion” (p.1). The experience design frameworks should include at the very least: attraction, engagement, and conclusion. Second, think of presentation and organization as separate entities. Third, visualization is the organization and design is meant to communicate information. A great, short statement that Sedroff makes is “great design communicate first and are beautiful second” (p.3). Fourth, experience design should have navigation that provides more than one way to get anywhere. Fifth, experience design should incorporate interactivity since “interactivity is the differentiable advantage of interactive media” (p.4). Last, experience design should encourage creativity. This last portion resonated with me the most because the author states creativity should not be stifled by the culture that conveys a notion of “not good enough to be creative”, and that every human has the capacity of creativity in them, so experience design should elicit that creativity.
Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth ProjectI did a quick scan of this report, since it seemed was rather daunting (read: long). This report investigates the culture of the digital generation and their immersion in, what the authors call, “new media” (traditional media converging with digital media). The genres of participation that youths use with new media is to hangout with their friends (online) such as to flirt and date and develop friendships. They also just mess around, but by this it means a more exploratory open-ended activity. What I especially like was the “geeking out” aspect of youth within new media, which means, “they delve into areas of interest that exceeds common knowledge…seek expert knowledge networks outside of friendship networks” (p.28-29). This indicates that today’s youth are very much interested in improving themselves in order to gain recognition and a reputation. The youths engaging in new media are not just accessing and inputting information online, they are participates of a digital culture that is emerging as a valid social activity. I would that this immersion in new media does not apply just to the youth, but society as a whole, however instead of adults as being the principle agent, it is the youths who are leading the change.
Principles of Multimedia Design, Richard Mayer
In the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML), there are twelve main principles of multimedia design that can be applied into one of the three theoretical functions of CTML: “reducing extraneous processing, managing essential processing, and fostering generative processing” (p.266). Below is the list of principles of multimedia listed under the theoretical functions:
* Coherence Principle – exclude extraneous variables
* Signaling Principle – add cues to highlight essential information
* Redundancy Principle – use graphics and narration (adding text to the graphic and narration is redundant)
* Spatial Contiguity – place words and pictures near each other
* Temporal Contiguity – present corresponding words and pictures simultaneously
Principles for Managing Essential Processing
* Segmenting Principle – present user pace segment as oppose to continuous unit
* Pre-training Principle - provide names and characteristics of the main concepts
* Modality Principle – use graphics and narration not animation and on-screen text
Principles for Fostering Generative Processing (relating new information to prior knowledge in order to build more elaborate knowledge structure)
* Multimedia Principle – use words and pictures, not just words
* Personalization Principle – use conversational style words, not formal style
* Voice Principle – use friendly human like voice not machine voice
* Image Principle – do not add speaker’s image on the screen
An important consideration to take when applying these principles is to understand the audience’s prior knowledge since “multimedia presentations work best for learners who are low rather than high on prior knowledge about subject matters”(p.275). This is known as the expertise reversal effect, that is, instructional methods that help low-knowledge learners can hinder high knowledge learners. Another consideration to make when deciding to use the design principles is the complexity of the learning material itself, these design principles apply more strongly for “multimedia lessons with high complexity and content and when pacing of the lesson is fast” (p.269). An effective presentation should be: multimedia, integrated, concise, and channeled.
Representation and Interaction Design Project Ideas
I had no idea how much of an impact the image of the man hunching over the computer keyboard in Dan Shaffer's "Tap is the new Click" would have on me. I think emotionally it made me heavyhearted to see that we have succumbed to accommodating the technology instead of technology accommodating us. That image wanted me to stay away from the traditional keyboard and computer screen for my project. I want to do something that requires a lot of big gestures. I thought of two project ideas, both having to do with environmental learning.
1). The first project idea is to basically answer the question: What happens to the stuff we recycle? I want to design an interactive room full of tall multi-touch screen panels, and on the screens are a bunch of garbage flying around/across the panels, and on some screen panels there will be a remake machine,but each machine will only take a certain type of material (e.g. a paper remake machine) and the kids have to go around the screen panels and grab materials flying around, drag, and stuff it in the remake machine. Once a certain level of material is collected, the remake machine spits out what it remade from the materials (e.g. papers put into the remake machine is remade into rolls of toilet paper). For this project, I want to show people that the act of recycling has outcomes they can see. Perhaps if people know what recyclable materials can be made out of, it will encourage more people to be conscientious about recycling. In this project, I want people to use their body when recycling, so it is more of an act of doing as oppose to clicking. I imagine this type of project in a museum setting, but it would be neat if it could be more pervasive, in a public setting like a park.
2). The second project idea was actually inspired by William Kamkwamba, he's from Malawi and at age 14 built his own windmill without any formal education. I saw his TED talk video, and was really inspired (and that's an under statement). So the other project is to have a large touch screen or table for kids to teach them about what goes into building renewable energy by having the kids build one. I imagine this as a more collaborative project, so each person has a material piece(s) and they help put together/build a solar wind mill. After they build it, the kid can blow into a microphone to create wind and see what the wind can charge (e.g. in the background lights from a house illuminates, or a radio is playing, etc).
Those are my two ideas project ideas and I'm having trouble deciding on which one I would really like to do. All I know is that I definitely want to play around with gestural interfaces.
The Designer's Notebook: Educational Games Don't Have to Stink, by Ernest Adams
In this article, Ernest Adams declares that "computer games don't teach", instead "games illustrate". In other words, the hype of using games to teach is flawed because games are not good at "imparting knowledge or explaining principles" (p.3), however games in education or not useless; they do help people learn since games are good at "creating understanding of knowledge that students already have...and transforming abstract ideas into concrete experience" (p.3). Adams provides a few suggestions for educational game designers:
Admit that games don't teach, they illustrate
Don't make games that are too much fun
Don't make games that aren't fun enough
Don't make games that take too long
Don't make games that obscure the principles that you want to illustrate
Include advisors (this is similar to a pedagogical agent)
Don't try to serve chocolate covered broccoli
I'm currently in a games and simulation class, in which we learn about various components of 'meaningful play' in games, such as game mechanics, conflict, rules, goals, play, and so forth. Understanding these basic elements of games is a good start towards designing, however when it comes to designing a good educational game - it is a little hazy and difficult to gauge whether the game will actually be 'fun' because I think the connotation of 'educational games' tend to bring into people's mind the "stink" that Ernest Adams mentions. From reading this article, I realized my issue is that I wish educational games were fun, since the educational games I've played I quickly got bored of, but Ernest Adams makes a great point that educational games are not suppose to be too much fun because if it were the learning becomes a by product. What resonated with me the most in this article was the sentence "Try to be the best at what you are, not what you wish you were" (p.4). I see the educational games sector still struggling to define itself, but I think this is ok, it's ok to struggle because that is what makes being an educational game designer exciting. It seems to me educational game designers want to compete at the level of these big commercial games, but perhaps they shouldn't try to be something they are really not.
In Praise of Paper by William Volk
This short article argues the benefit of rapid visualization via paper. I particularly like the authors straight forward mannerism regarding paper-based visualization, in which he sums up, " Rapid visualization allows you to explore the possibilities, come to a consensus, and most importantly, have an actual clue as to the that product is going to look like" (p.30). This weekend I spent most of my time watching TED talk, and in a talk by designer Tim Brown, he speaks about moving from design to 'design thinking' - in other words learning by making - "building in order to think". What this article and Tim Brown's talk had in common was the act of "building" or "creating" before thinking. We've been taught for so long to think before you do, but often times people stop at learning and never getting to doing or never think about how to begin building effectively, In Praise of Paper says, creating visualization is in a way the fledgeling state of "building" so that you actually think about the product/ design you want to produce. This article really brought into the forefront my need to rearrange the way I think about the system of design. The hardest part is learning to undo what you have learned, or as Yoda eloquently states " You must unlearn what you have learned".
The Effect of Positive Emotions on Multimedia Learning, by Um, Song, & Plass
The objective of this article was to study “whether positive emotions induced before learning are maintained throughout the learning”, whether pleasing design aesthetic of the learning material induced positive emotion, and if positive emotion experienced in multimedia learning facilitated cognitive process that leads to better learning performance (retention and transfer) and satisfaction of the learning material (p.2). Students were grouped into four conditions: neutral emotion neutral design (NEND), positive emotion good design (PEGD), neutral emotion good design (NEGD), and positive emotion neutral design (PEND). Each group was given learning material about the human immune system. Positive emotion was induced by the design of the multimedia learning material. The results showed that positive emotion induced before learning were maintained during learning and for those who indicated in the beginning as neutral emotion, showed significant increase in positive emotion if they were exposed to the good design. Therefore positive emotion can be induced by good aesthetic design. Secondly, positive emotions did promote “knowledge construction and problem solving”, students in the PEGD, PEND and NEGD scored better in the transfer tests than the control group (NEND) and also indicated satisfaction about the learning material. However students in the NEND and PEGD showed the least amount of mental effort, while those in the NEGD and PEND used more mental effort. The overall point: design effects emotions, which effects our interaction with what is being represented.
Mother and Son (55 word story)
“Most people don’t know how to raise their children, or make people better, or make people happy, “ he says.
“You’ve lost all hope,” his mother replies.
He turns towards her. “Hope is a political idea- it’s a profitable idea. I don’t want hope, I want freedom.”
He smiles at his mother and jumps backwards.
The Importance of Being Playful
Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong discusses the phases, characteristics (mature vs. immature play), and effects of play for young children and their development. Although I agree with the majority of what the authors stated, the section that I felt a discord with was the notion of immature and mature play, alluding that there are "good play" and "bad play". I wonder what the purpose of having the classification of immature play in the first place? Based on the authors description of immature play (which usually emerges during toddler age), it is "repetitive, unimaginative play...and does not affect children's learning and development" (p.2). It seems like the author was saying that immature play is a phase that one needs to by pass in order to get to mature play, this classification of play takes invalidates certain play. They should talk about play as an overall encompassing act because I do not necessarily agree that when toddler's are, their playing does not affect learning and development. I do not have kids, but based on my observation of my niece (who is one and a half), when she plays it seems like she is learning cause and effects of the play object (e.g. banging a toy drum or when she puts on adult shoes and waves good bye. This indicates that she must understand that when someone puts on shoes they are leaving). Even though she might repeat something why would I say her play is "unimaginative" and immature? It seems a bit harsh, since I think she has learned a great deal through play, such as psycho-motor and social behavioral skills.
Designing for Interaction: Structured Findings and Ideation and Design Principles
First, Scaffer is a great read because his writing is very straightforward, there are no pretension or him having to prove his intelligence by being unnecessarily verbose (read: relief because I've been given too many of these!). Of the two chapters I've read, the section I enjoyed the most was in chapter 6, Larry Tesler's interview on "How to be a Good Designer". What really hit a cord with me was his response to the personal qualities that make a good interaction designer, in which he wonderfully describes as having "Enough confidence to believe you can solve any design problem and enough humility to understand that most of your initial ideas are probably bad" (p.116). To me that spoke volumes not only as an interaction designer, but perhaps can be generalized for with any creative occupation. In addition, I love the examples provided on brainstorming ideas, especially the idea that one should spend only a fix amount of time on each point and then MOVE ON to the next session. Shaffer emphasis throughout chapter 6 to not get too caught up on one idea in order to keep the flow of ideas moving. His brainstorming techniques and examples are very practical and very obvious (yet somehow seems overlooked). I especially love Shaffer's encouragement to use the whole room and during a brainstorming session to put all ideas out there because in the beginning there are no bad ideas, which feels so liberating to me.
Two discussions I liked and found most useful in chapter 5 were conceptual models and personas. When I had a full time "real world" job, far too often presentations lacked the utilization of a visual conceptual model, instead many opted for bullet points or worse, pure text. By using conceptual models, the visual or informational elements seem like a strong response tool without having to overload one's information processing system, and I think it also can provide an excellent mapping tool because you can see how features or objects interact with each other and be able make accurate assumption about those interactions. Secondly, I never heard of using personas as a type of conceptual model (used for demarcating users by behavior, motivations, and expectations p.106).I found Robert Reimann's discussion on personas very beneficial, in particular when constructing persona models, one should refine the persona goals into three types: experience goals, end goals, and life goals (p.110). Furthermore, the majority of projects should have any where from one to nine personas and anything more will be difficult to design for. Perhaps I may be wrong, but personas seem to correspond with learner characteristics - except personas do not really encourage viewing people in terms of demographics, but I can sort of see how personas can translate to learner characteristics in that as a designer one should be aware of the abilities of your 'users' and so forth.
Here is a fun website called Personas - type in your name and it will show you how the internet sees you.
Interaction Design: Beyond Human Computer Interaction
This article discusses the affective aspects in interaction design, such as expressive interfaces (emoticons), interactive agents and toys, anthropomorphism (attributing human qualities to object), and so forth. One area I was confused about was the use of interactive agents and whether they are actually beneficial or not. In other courses, I was taught that providing a pedagogical agent is beneficial to learners, but in this article, the author states that it can be annoying and can actually be counterproductive. This may show my 'green-ness' in the interactive design field, but in what context would it be appropriate to use an agent? My intuition says tells me agents should be used subject areas where there is low prior knowledge about the content, but the should fade out once the learner continues to show mastery. However, users vary and some may want to have the agent with them throughout the environment. I remember having the "Clippy" agent appear in my old version of word, and although I rarely used 'Clippy' or 'Einstein', I knew a great amount of people that loved having those agent images with them throughout the entire time the application was open. One thing I think Microsoft did well with those agents was to have users choose whether they wanted to show or hide the agents - so i guess that might answer my question. One section I found completely outrageous was the dilemma of whether computers should say they are sorry. HA! My personal feeling is: nope. I really do not need my computer to tell me it is sorry for crashing, that is like me apologizing for being tired and sick. Everything is finite and everything must end (I guess this is the buddhist in me). Yes it is frustrating when things do not go our way, but must we feel entitled to an apology every time something happens? Oy-vye!
For our Representation and Interaction Design course, we were given a project to critique an everyday interface design. I decided to go to NYU's Bobst library and critique the library's Quickcheck kiosk, which I have never used before. I checked out a book called "Repressed Emotions" and I recorded my experience, which can be view from above. Below is my formal critique of the kiosk's interface and interaction design.
Interface Critique: Quickcheck kiosk
At first sight, the library Quickcheck kiosk has about five basic steps: 1) scan bar code on university id, 2) press checkout on the screen 3) scan the bar code on the book, 4) take the due date slip, and 5) press done on the screen. The mapping (relationship between the control and result/function) on the kiosk seemed rather straight forward, meaning it was pretty visible on what one should do, e.g. if I touch the screen it turns on, if I scan my id I am given options (check out or cancel) to choose from on the screen, if I press checkout, I then scan my book, etc. However, if one where to go beyond the brief superficiality of my behavioral interaction with the object's interface, there were issues that appeared in terms of affordance, function, feedback, and sensory.
First, the kiosk's affordances (properties of the object that gives some clues or indication of how to interact with the object). Approaching the kiosk, the first thing one sees is a black screen with a medium purple text scrolling across the center that says "Bobst library Quickcheck Machine- Touch the screen to begin." The dark screen with scrolling text does not appeal to users in interacting with the object (why would I want to touch a dark screen?). In fact I was the only person in the Quickcheck line, and there was actually a line of students in the traditional check out line! Once the screen was touched, the user can choose to scan the university card OR enter his/her university ID on the touch screen number pad, which had a reasonable touch size, but based on the screens introduction image, the prominent image was to strongly encourage scanning.
Second, the function of the kiosk limited one control to one action (with the exception of choosing to scan or enter in your university id). According to Norman, one control to one action is a good principle to abide by, however I tend to see that in this day and age, people want more actions for one control. The example I gave in my previous entry was the various options to copy and paste and, as in this example, the option to scan or manual enter one's university id. My main critique was that in order for me to check out, I had to press "check out" (you may be wondering what is the big deal?). I had the opportunity to observe another student using the Qucikcheck kiosk next to mine after I completed checking out, he did not press check out and assumed that once he scanned the book, the machine would automatically know he was checking out a book (I only knew this was his assumption because I had asked him after I told him he had to actually press check out). Although it seems like a good principle to have one control with one action, in my opinion, it seems like having more actions to get to one control is how many of our technologies are now built, thus our automatic thinking is that whatever machine/object we use will be "smart" and provide diverse features to the function.
Third, the overall feedback was fairly well done, such as when scanning a beeping sound would indicate that a scan has gone through. My only critique was that after the book was scanned, no automatic feedback appeared on the screen. The book did not appear on screen until after the due date slip was printed. My natural tendency was to look at the screen to make sure the scan has gone through the system and onto the screen, but the screen was blank and instead I heard a printing sound. I wonder if it was possible for the system to do both instead of one after the other? Another interface issue I had thought about was the absence of a "Cancel" option after scanning a book. I wonder if the designer thought that in a library environment, canceling a scanned book would not be a necessary due to theft or that just placing the scanned books in the return slot will not be an issue since the librarians will have to still do the work of shelving the book back.
Lastly, and relatively probably the biggest critique, was the object's interface sensory. The sensory on Quickcheck had low sensitivity, and according to Dan Saffer, sensors are the "secret sauce" to interactive touch screen design. I had to use more pressure than I typically apply to touch screens. At the end, when pressing "Done", the machine did not change its state or automatically exit out as quickly as I had anticipate, so I kept pressing "Done" until I saw some sort of feedback. I am not 100% sure if this is a sensory issue or slow feedback issue, but as I had mention, I did find myself applying pressure and becoming baffled with the speed. Overall, the Quickcheck kiosk was rather quick to use and limited gestures were needed.
Chapter 2: The Psychology of Everyday Actions from The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
Norman delves into the common tendency of people wanting to explain causal relationship for events with objects whether those causal relationship has a valid existence or not. Importantly are the faulty mental models that come with the failure to operate an everyday object- either placing the blame on themselves or the other. Blaming oneself tends to have a bigger psychological impact that can result in learned helplessness. Norman also introduces the concept of taught helplessness, which is that in instances when learning something is "taught so that difficulty in one stage hinders further progress" (p.43). This makes the person feel inadequately prepared and the cycle repeats itself and give way to self fulfilling prophecy. In my experience as a software support personnel, I have ran into too may people that would tell me they are technologically illiterate, but many of the people that called were baby boomer age and the few that were young, tend to blame it on the bad design. I wonder if this is largely a generational issue - where the blame lies. This is not to say that younger people do not feel helplessness,shame or guilt, but I think often time where they attribute the feeling of helplessness is towards the design first. For example, a few weeks back in class people were saying how difficult the printing system was and it was design inadequately- the blame was placed on the design first. I had the good fortune of observing people use the device first, and was able to use it without any issue, however during my observation it seems that most people were able to pick up rather quickly.
Learned helplessness and taught helplessness can be avoided if designers are aware of how people do things; Norman discussed that this could be understood as "Seven stages of action". The seven stages of action section in this chapter is what I found most interesting because it deconstructs the human psyche of the structure of action and also to me this becomes a design aid. The seven stages action comprises of: forming the goal, forming the intention, specifying an action, executing the action, perceiving the state of the world, interpreting the state of the world, and evaluating the outcome (p.48). Being conscientious of these seven stages of action can be an important design aid to be used in guided questions about the design.
Dan Saffer's Tap is the New Click and Designing Gestural Interfaces
I decided to combine my reflection of Dan Saffer's work because they basically overlapped one another. He gives a bunch of characteristics and attributes of good gestural interface design. In Tap is the New Click, I was struck by the image of the human hunching over the computer with a pile of programming books and Dan Saffer reminding the audience that humans are not design to be so inert, we are, by nature, designed to use our bodies! As simple as this message was, it resonated with me because I often felt that our bodies were meant to be more than machines and yet we force our bodies to do so many unnatural things. This is why interactive gestures/gestural interfaces are revolutionary and so popular among people because it resonates with people and gets people to use their bodies to interact with technology. Another important statement that Saffer makes is to be aware of the limitation of the human body - meaning to not just think about the typical able body, but those who have limitations due to age, physical disabilities and so forth. What was probably the most meaningful part of reading and watching Dan Saffer was when he mentions that "the best designs are ones that dissolve into behavior" where the product disappears into everyday behavior. I use to think that as a designer, one would want people to be aware or conscious of the design and not have your design go unnoticed - this is probably more my view of how artists are like. However, Saffer made me realize why design something if it is not going to make life easier and cause friction for people? Design should "frictionless", which I think where the real beauty lies in design.
What Every Game Designer Needs to Know About Story by John Sutherland
Although this article primarily focuses development of a narrative in game designs, Sutherland does point out in the beginning that "story is a universal human experience" (p.1). I tried to relate Sutherland's classical story structure to interactive design, although games are considered an interactive design, I was thinking more of interactive design in physical objects like our phones, kiosks, gestural interfaces and so forth. Since a good classical story structure is one that has conflict, friction, or incite an incident, I wonder if conflict even applies to gestural interfaces? Perhaps stories are good in certain conditions and in certain context, but not for all design in general. For instance, I can see how important it is to have a good story in a design if one were to design an interactive website teaching people about an environmental issue, but I doubt we have to turn everything into a story, does a phone's interface have to have a story. To me, this article was useful to bring into mind how important narratives are if one were to decide on a projects dealing with a game platform, interactive websites, a museum exhibit and so forth. Importantly though is not to just put in a narrative, but to think about the appropriate narrative style; as the author mentions, certain story forms goes more naturally with certain media.
Chapter 1: The Psychopathology of Everyday Things from Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
The main driving points Norman drills into his readers are the fundamental principles of designing for people, which are to “(1) provide a good conceptual model and (2) make things visible” (p.13). Good conceptual models “allows us to predict the effect of our actions” (p.13) and it is through the designer's conceptual model that determines the communication that will happen between the user and the system image (the visible part of the device). Visibility is important because it offers distinction, but also “indicates the mapping between intended actions and actual operations” (p.8). Norman brings up an interesting point that it is not only the lack of visibility on design objects that can bring about frustration but also an EXCESS of visibility. Norman says excess of visibility is intimidating to users, but I would also add that it causes cognitive overload, because too many visible activities will impose a heavy cognitive load which will in turn interfere with learning the proper functions and features of a design object.
One interesting statement Norman makes about design devices is that “whenever the number of possible actions exceeds the number of controls, there is apt to be difficulty” (p.22), in other words people will have a difficult time remembering and using any controls that have more than one function. Norman does not mentions this, but I started to think that devices used today, people are given more controls for the SAME function. For example, on my computer if I want to copy or paste something (a function), I have the choice of either using key strokes, clicking my right hand mouse, the toolbar, or the menu bar (controls). If I want to scroll up and down (function), I can use the mouse/ touch pad, the keyboard arrow, or just click on the browser's up/down scroll bar. I think Norman would say that excess controls are acceptable in design, perhaps because it is considering diverse visibility and users individual differences. I started to think that perhaps people prefer more controls for the same function, because it allows people the freedom to choose.
Information Visualization, Schneiderman, B.
Schneiderman defines information visualization as “the use of interactive visual representations of abstract data to amplify cognition” (p.580). The key word in this definition is 'abstract' because it is the “abstract characteristic of the data” that differentiates information visualization from scientific visualization (p.580). Information visualization typically involves data that have questions involving “categorical variables and discovery patterns” which have large datasets or even is extracted from larger datasets (p.580). Schneiderman breaks informational visualization into seven basic data types and seven basic data tasks. The seven basic data types are: linear data (one dimensional), map data (two dimensional), world data (three dimensional), multidimensional data, temporal data, tree data, and network data. The seven basic data tasks should have: zoom, filter, details on demand, relate task (which is to use visuals that can relate items or groups within the collections (e.g. color coding)), history (to keep history of action, undo/redo, etc), and extract. A thought I had came in the section when Schneiderman mentioned that “information visualization work in three dimensions is still controversial” (p.585) because 3D data requires more navigation steps and is harder to interpret. With the hype of augmented reality, I wonder if this will still apply? If so, what is the point in trying to make data in the third dimension if it will always be taxing?
Construction and interference in learning from multiple representation. Schnotz, W. & Bannert, M.
Schnotz and Bannert provides an alternative cognitive model of multimedia (textual and visual) learning. It is widely accepted that there are two different sign systems that are activated in our working memory to help us process information. The descriptive representation “consists of symbols describing an object”, this resides in the verbal/textual processing structure (p.143). The depictive representation “consist of iconic signs” (p.143), this resides in the visual/pictorial processing structure. They propose an integrated model of text and picture comprehension, which assumes that “propositional relationships and mental models are based on different sign systems and different principles of representation, which complement one another” (p.148). In other words, the “new” component that is added in the integrated model, which is not in the dual processing nor cognitive theory of multimedia learning model, is the propositional relationships and mental models' different sign systems and principles of representation and that the text surface representation and visual perception/visual image can pull information from either the propositional relationship or mental model. An important point that authors make is the difference between a mental model and visual images is that mental models “are not bound by specific sensory modalities (more abstract)...and contains information which is not included in the picture” (p.147).
To put the model to the test, the authors conducted an experiment in which students where given either an image of a time carpet diagram, a time circumnavigation diagram, or no images along with questions that required students to solve time difference tasks and circumnavigation task. From the results, the authors found that “subject matters can be visualize in different ways based on the form of visualization given, which affects the structure of the mental representation” (p.153). In addition, pictures presented with text is not always advantageous and can have negative effect; the kind of pictures presented with text is important. If the wrong picture is presented with the text, it will interfere with learners mental model construction, thereby interfering with learning (pictures should be tasks appropriate).
- Location:United States, New York, New York
Representation, meaning and language
The idea of what is 'representation' is deconstructed in relation to meaning and culture (language). Hall (1997) begins with a common term of representation: "using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people" (p.15). First, one must understand that representation involve processes - "a production of the meaning of the concept through language" (p.17), and there are two systems of representation/ processes: (1) a shared conceptual map system (mental representation), and (2) language system (which allows exchanges of meanings and concepts). A shared conceptual map is a construction of "a set of correspondences" between 'things' (i.e. people, objects, events, etc) and our concepts; and language enables people to express a set of signs (sounds, images, words) that stand for the concepts/ mental representation. Therefore the process that links things, concepts and signs is called representation.
Conceptual maps can obviously differ from one individual to another, therefore one can not truly be able to observe a persons mental representation without the use of language, which uses signs to create an observable or tangible system. Examples of language systems are visual signs aka iconic signs and written and spoken signs aka indexical. People who share the same culture, same conceptual map and same language systems are governed by shared "codes". Codes regulate the relationships of translation between systems.
Hall (1997) derives distinctions of how "representation of meaning through language works" by looking at three theoretical approaches: reflective, intentional and constructionist (p.24). The reflective or mimetic approach assumes that "meaning lies in the object, person, idea or event in the real world, and language functions like a mirror, to reflect the true meaning as it already exists in the world" (p.24). In short, language is just reflecting/imitating the truth of the innate objects in the world. The intentional approach assumes "that it is the speaker/ author who imposes his/her unique meaning on the world through language" (p.25). This is the opposite of the reflective approach. Lastly, the constructionist approach assumes that "neither things in themselves nor individual users of language can fix meaning in language. Things don't mean; we construct meaning using representational systems- concepts and signs" (p.25). Constructionist believes that all signs are arbitrary and it is the shared codes that fixes the meaning; meaning depends on the symbolic functions (what a particular image, word or sounds stands for).
Information Design: Emergence of a New Profession. Horn, Robert E.
Robert Horn defines information design (ID) "as the art and science of preparing information so that it can be used by humans with efficiency and effectiveness" (p.15). The key emphasis of ID is to create designs that are efficient and effective in communication context such as documents, designs of equipments, three-dimensional spaces, and so forth. Information design emerged as a profession in reaction to managing the ever-increasing information of our complex modern society- meaning developing technologies that can "operate with ever-increasing efficiency and effectiveness" and provide the right information (p.16). Another factor ID emerged as a profession was due to the "increasing cost of time" for management, technical, and professional organizations. However, the development of information design can be traced to inventors of charts, graphs, timelines, etc.; systemizers and analysts who tried "to bring all pieces of the graphic language together to analyze..", universalists who wanted to create a "purely iconic common language" (Horn purposes the use of VLicons which "integrates words and images in the same communication unit" (p.24)), collectors, writers of instruction manuals, aetheticians, popularizers (e.g. magazines), researchers and so forth. Therefore, information design can be seen applied in a variety of research foundations such as computer science, educational psychology, advertising, etc.
The prevalence of information design and its features have been democratized and are readily available in numerous computer software, which is causing tension between the emerging profession of ID and amateurs performing ID tasks. However, information design is professionalizing "the emergence of a new language" called Visual Language, which is "the tight coupling of words, images, and shapes into a unified communication language" (p.27). Horn maintains that visual language is a language because using only linguistic concepts is not sufficient enough to understand and analyze spoken language. The shift to visual language can be seen by the increase ratio of visual elements to words in current publications.
A living systems design model for web-based knowledge management systems. Plass, J.L., & Salisbury, M.W.
In this article, the authors provides a design model based on a living-systems approach for knowledge management systems. The essential idea behind the living-systems approach is to design a system with the anticipation of adapting to continuous changing needs within its environment. Since knowledge management systems functionality should fundamentally require modification of information by its users through interacting with the system, the living-systems design model can be applied and integrated to a KM system. The living-systems design model is shown as a continuous cycle that includes the following phases: Analyze End-Users Requirements, Develop Instructional Interaction Design, Develop Instructional Information Design, Implement System Design, and Conduct Developmental Evaluation. The living systems capabilities includes administrative tools that “allow for easy update and modification of user information” (p.42), knowledge management capabilities – acquiring, searching, storing, communicating knowledge/ information, and living systems capabilities – the overall system such as status/growth, demand and resources and usage. By design, the living systems model is meant to be an ever changing, never complete system.
