April 27, 2006

Social Computing 3

Social Computing 3
Jeremy Birnholtz - Chair (U. of Toronto)

- Paper: Creative creation and sense-making of mobile media

- CHI note: Watching the cars go round and round: Designing for active speaking

- CHI note: Ethnography in the Kindergarten: Examining children's play experiences

- CHI note: Robot-human interaction with an Anthropomorphic percussionist

Continue reading "Social Computing 3"

Posted by sv7 at 04:08 PM | Comments (1)

Social Computing 2

Social Computing 2:
Victoria Bellotti (PARC)

- Paper: Using intelligent task routing and contribution review to help communities build artifacts of lasting value
- Paper: groupTime: Preference based group scheduling
- Paper: Accounting for taste: Using profile similarity to improve recommender systems

Continue reading "Social Computing 2"

Posted by sv7 at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

Thursday - Disabilities - 11:30 - 516D

Paper Feeling what you hear: tactile feedback for navigation of audio graphs
Steven Wall, Stephen Brewster

Paper Remote Usability Evaluations With Disabled People [Best of CHI Nominee]
Helen Petrie, Fraser Hamilton, Neil King, Pete Pavan

Paper Desperately Seeking Simplicity: How Families with Young Adults with Cognitive Disabilities Adopt Assistive Technologies [Best of CHI Nominee]
Melissa Dawe

Continue reading "Thursday - Disabilities - 11:30 - 516D"

Posted by sv4 at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

Papers: Beliefs and Affect

[In progress from 11:30 - 13:00 at 511abde]

HCI, with its roots in Human Factors Engineering has traditionally been focused on efficiency and task completion. Lately, though, there is recognition that the affective aspects of human-machine systems play a role in the users' experience of a system, as well as having important implications for the usability of interfaces. Drawing on a tradition of psychological work on belief and affect, the speakers in this session present papers on how the affective aspects of interfaces can improve interaction, and how to measure and use affect in designing interfaces.

Paper Can a Virtual Cat Persuade You? The Role of Gender and Realism in Speaker Persuasiveness
Presents findings revealing how virtual characters are as persuasive as real people and that cross-gender interactions transfer to virtual speakers. Explains how virtual characters can be exploited for persuasive interfaces.
Catherine Zanbaka, Paula Goolkasian, Larry Hodges

Paper The Sensual Evaluation Instrument: Developing an Effective Evaluation Tool
Describes an instrument for collecting real-time self-assessment of affect. Portable, may work across cultures, offers consistency and flexibility. Can help elicit emotional feedback quickly and easily during the design process.
Katherine Isbister, Kristina Höök, Michael Sharp, Jarmo Laaksolahti

Note Listening to Your Inner Voices: Investigating Means for Voice Notifications
Reports on an user study of the notification qualities of voice and the development and deployment of a system exploiting the results. Suggests that voice familiarity is a useful property for notification.
Saurabh Bhatia, Scott McCrickard

Note Adaptive Language Behavior in HCI: How Expectations and Beliefs about a System Affect Users' Word Choice
Experimentally demonstrates that users adapt language behaviors depending on beliefs about the sophistication of a system. Suggests that designers should attend to relevant 'non-functional' system characteristics.
Jamie Pearson, Jiang Hu, Martin Pickering, Holly Branigan, Clifford Nass

Posted by sv3 at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)

Panel: The State of Tangible Interfaces

Thursday, 04/27/2006 11:30-13:00

http://www.chi2006.org/sessiondetail.php?sessionid=4213

Oren Zuckerman from MIT Media Lab and Lars Erik Holmquist from Viktoria Institute are the moderators.
Brygg Ullmer from Louisiana State University, Hiroshi Ishii from MIT Media Lab, George Fitzmaurice from Alias, Yvonne Rogers from Indiana University, Wendy Mackay from I.N.R.I.A., and Tom Rodden from University of Nottingham are the panel members.

Pioneers and active researchers in tangible user interfaces (TUIs) will give an up-to-date picture of TUI-related projects, research findings, and industry adoption case studies. The panel will discuss the merits and drawbacks of TUIs, review the open issues in the field, and hopefully help interested researchers to better direct their future research efforts.

Continue reading "Panel: The State of Tangible Interfaces"

Posted by sv10 at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

Wednesday - Does Think Aloud Work? How Do We Know? - 14:30 - Room 517AB

This panel consisted of experts in the field of usability testing. All panelists seemed to agree that think aloud is one of the most important methods used in usability testing. Concerns were raised about how think aloud is conducted and potential areas for future study regarding think aloud protocol.

Continue reading "Wednesday - Does Think Aloud Work? How Do We Know? - 14:30 - Room 517AB"

Posted by sv6 at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)

Wednesday - Why Do Tagging Systems Work? - 11:30 - Room 517AB

This panel provided an overview of tagging and also raised the issues and concerns that go along with it. The panel was primarily comprised of people affiliated with Yahoo!, including the founder of del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter.

Continue reading "Wednesday - Why Do Tagging Systems Work? - 11:30 - Room 517AB"

Posted by sv6 at 07:58 AM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2006

Papers: Awareness and Presence

Awareness and Presence:
Steve Benford - Chair (U. of Nottingham, UK)

- Paper: From awareness to connectedness: The Design and Deployment of Presence Displays
- CHI Note: Negotiating Presence-in-Absence: Contact, Content & Context
- CHI Note: Using Linguistic Features to Measure presence in Computer-Mediated Communication
- Paper: The paradox of the assisted user: guidance can be counterproductive

Continue reading "Papers: Awareness and Presence"

Posted by sv7 at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

Visualization 2

Visualizing email content: Portraying relationships from conversational histories
Presents a visualization of email content. Discusses different interaction modes that emerged in user study: exploration of overall trends and detail-oriented investigation. Can help improve user interaction with email archives.

Clipping Lists and Change Borders: Improving Multitasking Efficiency with Peripheral Information Design
We compare abstraction techniques in peripheral interfaces to determine their effects on task flow, resumption timing, and reacquisition in multitasking situations. Our empirical results will help guide future peripheral design.

A Fisheye Followup: Further Reflections on Focus + Context
Further understanding for creating small interfaces to large information worlds, includes unification of several visual techniques, discussion of non-visual fisheye-views, and models for why these kinds of presentations are valuable.

Continue reading "Visualization 2"

Posted by sv1 at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)

Papers: Online Communities

Papers: Online Communities
26 April 2006
16:30 - 18:00

Insert Movie Reference Here: A System to Bridge Conversation and Item-Oriented Web Sites
Sara Drenner, Maxwell Harper, Dan Frankowski, John Riedl, Loren Terveen

Motivating Participation by Displaying the Value of Contribution
Al Rashid, Kimberly Ling, Robert Kraut, John Riedl

Talk to Me: Foundations for Successful Individual-Group Interactions in Online Communities
Jaime Arguello, Brian S. Butler, Lisa Joyce, Robert Kraut, Kimberly S. Ling, Xiaoqing Wang

Routine Patterns of Internet Use & Psychological Well-being: A Complex Interaction [Best of CHI Nominee]
Irina Shklovski, Robert Kraut, Jonathon Cummings

Continue reading "Papers: Online Communities"

Posted by sv8 at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)

Papers - Awareness and Presence

From Awareness to Connectedness: The Design and Deployment of Presence Displays
Describes user-centered process for designing awareness displays and evaluation demonstrating these displays improve sense of awareness and connectedness. Assists display designers in building displays that effectively support awareness and connectedness.

Anind Dey
Ed de Guzman

The study used contextual inquiry and urban probes to evaluate 10 awareness and presence design prototypes in college students' bedroom.
6 undergraduates were interviewed through a common blogfor 10 days and 2 of the design were selected for further study.

Negotiating Presence-in-Absence: Contact, Content and Context
Develops an analytic framework integrating previous HCI findings on intimate communication and illustrates it with a case study. Offers a design space for social presence systems.

Steve Howard
Jesper Kjeldskov
Mikael Skov
Kasper Garnæs
Olga Grünberger

How can we understand presence in absence?
This research investigated intimacy through cultural probes and contextual inquiry

• Contact is supported by communication acts (saying I m thinking of you)
• Content express the relationship in substance and form
• Context

The Cube is a single shared object between partners used for quick messaging. It uses symbols to represent expression and personal effort through creativity.

Using Linguistic Features to Measure Presence in Computer-Mediated Communication
Presents a new technique for measuring presence in computer-mediated communication using linguistic features of dialogues. Provides an easy-to-use method for assessing the effects of communications technologies on presence.

Adam Kramer
Lui Min Oh
Susan Fussell

Presence is rarely measured in computer-mediated communications and the typical measures of presence are either retrospective or too intrusive.
The study make the hypothesis that people use different words to describe their presence based on their feeling of persence and co-location.
Based on their conclusions, the self-reported presence can be predicted by a small number of linguistic features. Therefore, linguistics markers can be used to measure presence, even if performed after the facts in a video-conferencing session.

The Paradox of the Assisted User: Guidance can be Counterproductive
This paper contributes to the empirical and cognitive foundation of principles underlying human computer interaction. It shows that guidance in interfaces by externalizing information does not always yield better performance.

Christof van Nimwegen
Burgos Daniel
Herre van Oostendorp
Hermi Schijf

This paper discusses externalizing information required to run tasks by providing guiding interfaces does not always yield better results. Having information externalized tempt users to not learn what they need to do. This study used the simulation of a conference planner to test the impact of externalization vs internalization of information related to tasks.
The "external" version showed the participants the timeslots where they could place a particular speaker while the "internal" version did not have this information available.
The "internal" version took longer to complete and require less superflous moves but users of this version used "smart strategy" more often and felt less lost. Users of the "internal" version scored higher in terms of declarative knowledge.

Posted by sv5 at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)

Panel: Managing Deviant Behavior in online communities

Manging deviant behavior in online communities:
Panelists:
Amy Bruckman - facilitator(Georgia Inst. of Tech)
Catalina Danis (IBM)
Cliff Lampe (MSU)
Janet Sternberg (Fordham)
Chris Waldron (cartoon network)

This session continues the conversation of deviant behavior in online communities from the original 1994 session. The bulk of this panel session took the format of panelists giving their input to scenarios raised by the facilitator and elicited from the audience members as well.

Some of the issues that were raised in the panel were:
- laws and norms of online communities vary widely depending on the communities being served.
- not all deviant behavior is the same and sometimes the boundaries between legitimate deviant behavior is not clear.
- general avoidance of the term deviant and the parallels between the situation involving graffitti in cities
- whether victims/perpetrators of deviant behavior are allowed to speak out
- the issue of whether social justice can take place in online communities that are mostly owned

For other points that this entry may have missed, refer to the following blog entry:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0133184/2006/04/25.html#a546

Posted by sv7 at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)

SIG - CHI Design Community

Wednesday, April 26, 16:30 - 18:00

The CHI design community is concerned, in one way or another, about the question of how to better incorporate a meaningful and productive dialogue about design work into the conference culture of CHI. There was a general vibe of frustration in the room regarding the difficulty of getting design work accepted in paper form, and this led to questions about whether the current reviewing panels really include enough people who know enough about design to offer a fair and informed critique. David Gilmore and the other committee representatives charged the people in the room to step up to that challenge, saying that they had an incredibly difficult time finding designers who were willing to serve as reviewers this year, so pointing the finger at CHI is not entirely fair.

This challenge seemed to be fairly well received, but other issues arose, including

• frustration with Experience Reports because some tenure committees are apparently not valuing them at the same level as short papers, so researchers feel pressured to avoid them


• frustration with the difficulty of presenting work from the practitioner's perspective - seeing the real process that people go through, and presenting work that is interesting even if there isn't time to write a paper about it


• the question of the relationship between CHI, DUX, and DIS -- what sort of work should be done where? What happens when individuals are required to choose one over the others? If designers feel excluded from CHI publication, and migrate to the more specialized conferences as a result, what will that do to the CHI vibe?

Continue reading "SIG - CHI Design Community"

Posted by sv9 at 02:18 PM | Comments (2)

Panel: Institutionalizing HCI - What Do I-Schools Offer?

Tuesday - 11:30 - 13:00

Sorry this is a bit late. I had some technical difficulties. :)

This panel was a discussion of the trend towards the formation of "I-Schools": schools of Information, Informatics, Information Science, or some similar derivative of the "I" word, and the issues that this trend raises for the CHI community as a whole. As HCI matures and becomes more institutionalized, we need to consider what sort of institution we want to be, and this panel was about exploring that question. The panelists were representatives of I-Schools from around the world - John Carroll (Pennsylvania State, US), Paul Dourish (University of California - Irvine, US), Batya Friedman (University of Washington, US), Masaaki Kurosu (Soken-dai, Japan), Gary Olson (University of Michigan, US), and Alistair Sutcliffe (University of Manchester, UK).
The main ideas that the panelists raised were that:

• I-schools explicitly focus on the intersection of information, people, and technology, which leads to a more central role for HCI than is usually the case in schools of Computer Science or Engineering.


• I-schools are interdisciplinary in nature, which:


• provides a supportive and rich work environment within the school itself


• encourages faculty and students to take a broad perspective -- asking a wide range of questions, drawing on a wide range of theories, and reaching out to other areas of the university in order to deepen their work.




• As independent units within the university, I-schools have a high level of autonomy, which gives HCI an institutional clout that it usually does not have when it is a less central component of a larger school.


• I-Schools raise questions regarding the evolution of the relationship between HCI and CS, and not all of these questions are easy or pleasant.

Continue reading "Panel: Institutionalizing HCI - What Do I-Schools Offer?"

Posted by sv9 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

Papers: Novel Methods

Thursday, 04/27/2006 11:30-13:00

http://www.chi2006.org/sessiondetail.php?sessionid=4109

Overview

Paper Event-Contingent Experience Sampling To Evaluate Ubicomp Technology In The Real World [Best of CHI Nominee]
Presents an event-contingent experience sampling technique to gather situated opinions on technology with reference to real-life situations. The technique can improve the design of mobile and ubiquitous computing applications.
Giovanni Iachello | Khai Truong | Gregory Abowd | Gillian Hayes | Molly Stevens

Note Design and Experimental Analysis of Continuous Location Tracking Techniques for Wizard of Oz Testing
Describes and evaluates two new gesture-based techniques for continuously tracking a moving object by hand, for use in Wizard of Oz studies of location-aware systems. Study shows an improvement in terms of task load.
Yang Li | Evan Welbourne | James Landay

Note Emotion Measurement during Interactive Experiences: Boys at Video Game Play
Describes the use of facial EMG as a measure of positive and negative emotion during interactive computer games. These methods appear useful for associating the player’s emotion with game events, and could be applied to HCI in general.
Richard Hazlett

Paper A Continuous and Objective Evaluation of Emotional Experience with Interactive Play Environments
We present a method for modeling emotion, based on physiology, for ludic experience. Our modeled emotions are quantitative and objective; have a high evaluative bandwidth; and correspond to reported emotion.
Regan Mandryk | M. Stella Atkins | Kori Inkpen

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Continue reading "Papers: Novel Methods"

Posted by sv10 at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)

Visualization 1

GUESS: A Language and Interface for Graph Exploration
The main contributions of GUESS are a) the design of a domain-specific language for graph exploration and the experience of its design, b) the interactive interpreter which connects visual components to the progammingn environment.

The Sandbox for Analysis - Concepts and Evaluation
New sense-making system uses innovative human information interactions and visualizations to provide flexible, expressive thinking environment for analysis. Experiments show it's easy to learn, encourages best practices and saves time.

Paper Exploring Multivariate Networks with PivotGraph
This paper describes a new visualization technique for a common type of graph structure. We believe it is broadly applicable and a useful complement to current graph visualization methods.

Continue reading "Visualization 1"

Posted by sv1 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)

Everyday Uses of Mobiles

[14:30 - 16:00 at 516ab]

Paper Everyday Practices with Mobile Video Telephony
The paper presents a study of everyday use of mobile video telephony. Real use episodes highlight key motivations underlying video calling and the social and practical barriers that hinder it.

    Kenton O'Hara, Alison Black, Matthew Lipson

Note Sashay: Designing for Wonderment
Presents a cultural perspective on locative media, and descriptions of two projects that intervene in the urban landscape. Provides a strong rethinking of methods and goals for designing systems in urban context.

    Eric Paulos, Chris Beckmann

Note urbanhermes: social signaling with electronic fashion
Describes a prototype "communicative accessory",' a brief user study and the underlying conceptual framework for social signaling. Draws insights for the design of "fashion signaling" systems.

    Christine Liu, Judith Donath

Paper Because I Carry My Cell Phone Anyway: Effective Everyday Task Management
Develops a novel location-based reminder system. Demonstrates its utility for everyday task management and identifies a rich model for effective location-based information delivery.

    Pamela Ludford, Dan Frankowski, Ken Reily, Loren Terveen

Video phones are the latest kid on the block: faster, more capable technology combined with high speed data channels, and convergences in content and carrier corporations means that Star Trek-like video communications aren't that far fetched. But this doesn't mean that video telephony technology as it currently exists is usable.

The discussion of ambiguity in mobile device interface design returns to CHI this year, this time in a study of video call in the UK, presented by Kenton O'Hara of HP. Kenton et al's diary study on how and why video technology has met with mixed success revealed that video technology - while valuable by providing new and interesting modalities of conveying information - still suffers from considerable problems with managing presentation of self and maintaining public/private boundaries during usage of mobile video calling devices.

 

Perhaps it is a problem of discovering that video telephony doesn't need to be the same as audio telephony and can have divergent - and surprising - uses. In any case, this segues into Eric Paulos & Chris Beckmann's talk on designing for wonderment: Sashay is part of Intel ' Urban Atmospheres ' project, where the focus is not on improving productivity, but on exploring our collective urban experience. Sashay is a mobile phone application that tracks one's paths through physical space in terms of the cell towers one is consecutively connected to. This is a fundamentally different way of experiencing location - instead of knowing the physical location from the cell tower, one reaches the cell tower from the physical space, and the geography is not of the land but of the carrier signal.

 

Which brings us to Christine Liu and Judith Donath's description of urban hermes - a signal of a completely different kind. Urban Hermes - or shoulder bags with image displays - act as a fashion signal, displaying, communicating, degrading and acknowledging the possession and transmission of images of interest within a community of bag users, which may be acquired electronically from a variety of sources. Whether this will be the next version of flickr remains to be seen, but at the moment it is certainly a very interesting way of exploring how our electronic identities may be embodied in and expressed through material artifacts.

 

Like having our tasks follow us around, and pounce unexpectedly on us when we drive around the city, just at the right place and time for us to do them. Naggie , anyone? Pamela Ludford et al presented a study on the geolocated task reminders, and heuristics for determining service/message delivery. Issues explored include a comparison with the affordances of pen and paper, delivery modalities, and the somewhat unpredictable relationships between public "everyday" spaces and personal tasks.

Continue reading "Everyday Uses of Mobiles"

Posted by sv3 at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)

Interactivity: Touch Me: Haptics and Clothes

Interactivity: Touch Me: Haptics and Clothes
26 April 2006
14:30 - 16:00
session chair: Eric Lee, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

MultiVis: Improving Access to Visualisations for Visually Impaired People [project site]
David McGookin, Stephen Brewster, University of Glasgow, Scotland

A Haptic Memory Game using the STReSS2 Tactile Display
Qi Wang, Vincent Levesque, Jérôme Pasquero, Vincent Hayward, McGill University, Canada

Memory-Rich Clothing
Joanna Berzowska, Marcelo Coelho, Concordia University, Canada

Continue reading "Interactivity: Touch Me: Haptics and Clothes"

Posted by sv8 at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

Papers: Ubiquitous Computing

Wednesday, 04/26/2006 11:30-13:00

http://www.chi2006.org/sessiondetail.php?sessionid=3209

Overview

Paper Beyond Record and Play - Backpacks: Tangible Modulators for Kinetic Behavior
Backpacks are physical components that modulate parameters of motion recordings in modular robotic creations, extending the conceptual limits of record-and-play by making tangible some of the benefits of symbolic abstraction.
Hayes Raffle | Amanda Parkes | Hiroshi Ishii | Joshua Lifton

Paper Embedded Phenomena: Using Position-Sensitive Ambient Media to Support Classroom Science Learning [CHI Best Paper]
Describes method and case studies extending ambient media to represent simulated science phenomena in classrooms. Can assist designers in development of classroom learning environments and activities supporting science inquiry.
Tom Moher

Note TAP: Touch-And-Play
Describes a system for controlling interaction between intelligent devices using intra-body signaling. Provides designers with a practical and intuitive means of creating ad hoc device networks.
Duck Gun Park | Jin Kyung Kim | Jin Bong Sung | Jung Hwan Hwang | Chang Hee Hyung | Sung Weon Kang

Continue reading "Papers: Ubiquitous Computing"

Posted by sv10 at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

Tuesday - Security - 16:30 - Room 516C

This paper session on security was primarily concentrated on phishing, and also the social issues surrounding encrypted e-mail. First, a paper was presented by Rachna Dhamija of Harvard that explained a phishing study addressing why users are being deceived. Shirley Gaw then presented a study from Princeton that looked at why encrypted e-mail is not being used, despite its benefits. Finally, Rob Miller presented a user study from MIT that analyzed popular security toolbars.

Continue reading "Tuesday - Security - 16:30 - Room 516C"

Posted by sv6 at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

Making a Difference: Integrating Socially Relevant Projects into HCI Teaching

11:30 - 13:00, 517c

 

There once was panel at CHI
That asked the deep question of WHY
Do some have yearning
To do service learning?
The benefits are hard to deny.

When students help the community
It leads to peace and unity
Students do more
Than just get a score
It’s a real education opportunity

Nass, Jones, then Bishop, and Friedman
Marsden, Lazar, and Shneiderman
After coffee and tea
Come to 517—C
Be sure it’s a part of your plan!

  After this delightful ditty from the panelists, it might be easy to dismiss social motivation in HCI teaching as flower-power motivated feel-good scholarship. That would be to underestimate the power of socially relevant project work, as the participants in this panel testified. Ben Shneiderman, Jonathan Lazar, Batya Friedman w/ Janet Davis, Ann Bishop, Gary Marsden, and Erica Robles (in place of Cliff Nass) described various approaches to how they have used socially relevant projects to both make important social contributions and to improve learning around HCI. Why would one want to adopt this model of teaching? One of the most important reasons is that socially relevant project work is situated and participatory, which makes it much closer to real world situations, with much the same sorts of conflicts, disappointments, relationships and constraints that people face when they work in the industry. This brings together their skills and models of understanding and puts it into practice - with immediate and often clearly measurable effects. This brings out the issue of value sensitivity: making it clear that artifacts have politics and that designers have perspectives, and the designs they create will reflect that.

However, this is not easily or frivolously accomplished. Batya Friedman of the University of Washington's Information School talked about their work on value sensitive design, and student trajectories through the Information School that were supported by that perspective. Students in the graduate program carry out a capstone project with student defined information problems and methods of investigation that tie together the strands of human centred and technical design, in order to make a positive difference to some set of people. Planning for this project starts up to a year before, with conceptual, technical and empirical mini-investigations. Her student, Janet Davis, presented an example of what a socially relevant project might look like in the end, in this case her dissertation work on urban indicators for public policy planners and householders. Of course, not every project needs to be of that length and complexity: Ann Bishop of the University of Illinois, and Jonathan Lazar of CIS/Towson University talked about their (very successful) experiences doing short term interventions in and around their university areas their students.

It may seem like these efforts, though excellent venues for education, do not necessarily generate new knowledge. Erica Robles discussed how studies of language and communication in technologically mediated systems provided the basis for grounding project work in socio-technical perspectives while at the same time helping further critical theory in the field. For those who argue that this kind of knowledge does not necessarily result in implications for design, Gary Marsden from the University of Cape Town, South Africa brought forth the somewhat startling report that for their work, protoyping based design processes simply did not work, and that contextual inquiry and ethnographic, participatory design was crucial to the success of these kinds of efforts. Unfortunately, the academic community at large does not seem to appreciate the merit of these projects, and most panelists agreed that it was harder to publish papers on these projects than others; the story of two CHI reviewers who rejected a recent paper on the grounds that projects about illiteracy are irrelevant because "most users can read" is extremely disheartening. Hopefully the situation will change.

Discussants:

 

Continue reading "Making a Difference: Integrating Socially Relevant Projects into HCI Teaching"

Posted by sv3 at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

Panel - Why do Tagging Work

The discussion will be about how tagging work, why people tag and how does it scales.

Presenter
Kevin Fox, Google
George Furnas, U of Michigan
Scott Golder, HP Labs
Joshua Schachter, Del.icio.us
Rashmi Sinha, Uzanto
Marc Davis and Mor Naaman, Yahoo! Research Lab

Yahoo! Research Lab presented Zonetag, a tagging system for photos.
A live tagging game is available to CHI attendees
Live Tagging Game

A network centric view of tag is to relate tagged entities together by using similar tag.
Another way to look at tags is to add handles, add routes to get at things.
The issue then is that people come with different ideas to refer to the same things.
Tags can be understand as additional layers of attention according to Joshua Schachter.

Tagging has become a social phenomena in addition to the information organization system it used to be.

Tags can be used to annotate things for other to find and the idea of consensus tags is developing. For example, people attending CHI will tag their things with chi2006 for others to find more easily.
However, tags can also be used for self-referential use (ex: job search, my car,...)

Why people tag?

Only 25% of people agree on one consensus tag for the same object. 20 or more tags are needed to get 80% consensus.
People overestimates how well they do when they tag and how they will perform when retrieving.

If people are connected in a social network (friends on Flickr,...), their tags tend to convergence and community are developing around tags.

A video showed that most people don't know what del.icio.us is.

Will tags be adopted by users outside of the tech community? The discussion came down to whether tags was the proper word to use. label or keyword may be a better fit.
Will tags become mainstream if integrated in MySpace and it is possible to tag users? There is a chance that in this context they may be understand as badges representing the social status of the user being tagged

How does it scale?

A issue that was discussed was the granularity of the tagging. A person may tag all his Tokyo photos as tokyo including ones of his hotel room, which may not seem relevant to other people looking for tokyo related photos. One solution discussed was to use photos pool and groups.

Posted by sv5 at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2006

Wednesday - Healthcare - 16:30 - 516C

Healthcare Session

[PAPER] Investigating Health Management Practices of
Individuals with Diabetes
Lena Mamykina, Siemens, USA
Elizabeth D. Mynatt, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
David R. Kaufman, Columbia University, USA

[PAPER] Tensions in Designing Capture Technologies for an
Evidence-Based Care Community
Gillian Hayes, Gregory Abowd, Georgia Institute of
Technology, USA

[CHI NOTE] Pride and Prejudice: Learning How Chronically Ill People Think about Food
Katie A. Siek, Kay H. Connelly, Yvonne Rogers
Indiana University, USA

Continue reading "Wednesday - Healthcare - 16:30 - 516C"

Posted by sv4 at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)

Wednesday - Student Design Competition Final Round - 11:30a - 516AB

Fitster: Social Fitness Information Visualization
Noor Ali-Hasan, Diana Gavales, Andrew Peterson, Matthew Raw
University of Michigan, USA

Reflecting on Health: A System for Students to Monitor Diety and Exercise
Brandon Brown, Marshini Chetty, Andrea Grimes, Ellie Harmon
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

NutraStick: Portable Diet Assistant
Barry Diarmuid Mulrooney, Mairead Ann McDermott, Nick Justin Earley
IADT Institute of Art, Design, and Technology, Ireland

Chick Clique: Persuasive Technology to Motivate Teenage Girls to Exercise
Tammy Toscos, Anne Marie Faber, Shunying An, Mona Praful Gandhi
Indiana University, USA

Continue reading "Wednesday - Student Design Competition Final Round - 11:30a - 516AB"

Posted by sv4 at 07:42 PM | Comments (0)

alt.chi: it's a small world after all

This alt.chi session was interesting bacause of the variety of presentations. Having presentations of papers that would not normally be accepted for the regular paper sessions provides perspectives that would otherwise be lost. For this blogpost personal impressions of the first 2 presentations and summaries of the last 3 will be provided.

chair: joseph kaye (cornell)

Continue reading "alt.chi: it's a small world after all"

Posted by sv7 at 06:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (733)

Panel: Service Innovation and Design

Tuesday, 04/25/2006 16:30-18:00

http://www.chi2006.org/sessiondetail.php?sessionid=2413

Panel format:
3 cases of service innovation and design
2 discussants
Q&A from audience

Jeanette Blomberg from IBM Almaden Research Center and Shelley Evenson from Carnegie Mellon University are the organizers and panel chairs.

The three cases discussed are Maggie Breslin—The Mayo Clinic—Healthcare Delivery, Mark Jones—IDEO—Retail Banking, and Paulien Strijand-Yahoo!-Yahoo! Answers.

Continue reading "Panel: Service Innovation and Design"

Posted by sv10 at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

Expert Design Critique: Xbox 360

Tuesday, 25th April, 2006 | 09:00 - 10:30 am

How does one take the fastest selling product in the game console industry and make it better? Russ Glaser and Paolo Malabuyo led us through the design process for the Xbox 360, Microsoft's entree into the gaming hardware market in a presentation that took just under an hour to complete, and took us through all the issues and challenges faced, from the consumer research, the design principles, a detailed walkthrough of the phases in the design process, all informed with a discussion of the context - whether it was the industry, the company, or the nitty gritties of the hardware constraints.

The Xbox 360 is targeted at a broader audience, unlike the earlier Xbox which was mainly for hardcore gamers: the  new approach invites the novice gamer using the exploding globe signifying openness, and the '360' signifying universality and accessibility to everyone. Using this as a starting point, Russ and Paolo described the 4 design principles that underlie the philosophy behind the 360: open, clear, consistent, athletic, and mirai. Mirai is a japanese term meaning "future" - the team wanted the design of the 360 to be forward looking, and this is reflected in various levels of the design from the industrial design with space for expansion and upgradation and the way the software is updated and delivered to the users. This was based on a consumer research effort, which resulted in the xbox being defined according to appropriate segments console hardware, games, and being defined according to the needs of game developers. 

As compared to the previous effort, the UI for the Xbox 360 is a hundredth as small in memory footprint, was made by 19 designers in concert with 4 external design firms (EXG design/Microsoft, Distro, Hers Experimental Design Lab (osaka), AKQA, JDK, Burlington). This meant that the design process was less like one large team going through several phases iteratively and more like several teams iteratively designing various aspects (IA, UI, interaction, industrial design, and features) simultaneously and converging to put the product together towards the end.

One of the new features of the 360 is its community guide, which connects you to your gaming community in a unified manner across all games. Russ and Paolo described their design of this feature and how it was constrained by the hardware and OS requirements, and the particular set of compromises they made. Like everything else, the features exposed in this part of the 360's design were but the tip of what had been designed - most of it didn't make it in because of constraints on time, or technological constraints, or project constraints.

Following this,  Peter Boatwright of the Tepper Business School, CMU discussed his framework for describing innovation - he also talks about it in his book The Design of Things to Come - and how it might apply to the design of the 360. According to Boatwright, some ideas are important for innovation: that the starting point is the individuals, the process should be from people to product, and that innovation must be pragmatic (that is, that the product must deliver real value). The Microsoft team described their experiences designing the 360 in terms of how serendipity and having different teams synchronize with each repeatedly helped them innovate.

Nicole Lazzaro from XEO Design then discussed the '4 keys of creating emotions in game design' - achievement, experimentation, purpose, and the social - and how these applied to the 360, especially the community guide which appears to be an expression of the social. A repeating theme throughout this panel discussion seemed to be the story of how the 360 design team had to work within multiple constraints.

Then came a barrage of questions, from  confusing aspects of the UI, to better input systems, and what the MS team thought that the best strength of the 360 was.

One might think that this isn't necessarily a critique, since each party was describing the 360 from their own perspective without necessarily asking systematic questions about how it might have been done better, or specific things that posed problems, but any such discussion for a product as complex as the 360 must necessarily need more time to critique. In addition, this panel provided us with a rich description of how the design process plays out in practice, and made us aware of the many contingencies and dependencies which dominate product design.

Continue reading "Expert Design Critique: Xbox 360"

Posted by sv3 at 02:03 PM | Comments (1)

Meet the Artists: Music, Dance, and Painting - Commentary

Meet the Artists: Music, Dance, and Painting

Magic Asian Art
Presents a system that lets viewers of a painting influence its contents dynamically, using gaze tracking, object movement models, and Asian-style rendering. Can make art viewing a more interactive experience.

iSymphony: An Adaptive Interactive Orchestral Conducting System for Digital Audio and Video Streams
Presents an interactive exhibit that recognizes different conducting gestures and time-stretches a digital recording accordingly in real time. Lets users conduct audio-visual orchestral recordings while adapting to their skill level.

Virtual Rap Dancer: Invitation to Dance
Presents a system that displays a virtual avatar dancing to the beat of incoming music or human dance movements. Uses captured styles of various rap dancers to generate its moves.

Continue reading "Meet the Artists: Music, Dance, and Painting - Commentary"

Posted by sv1 at 01:38 PM | Comments (1)

Design: Creative and Historical Perspectives

25 April 2006
14:30 - 16:00
Papers
Design: Creative and Historical Perspectives

Session chair – Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University

Dispelling Design as the Black Art of CHI [Best of CHI Nominee]
Tracee Vetting Wolf, Jennifer A. Rode, Jeremy Sussman, Wendy A. Kellogg

Interaction in Creative Tasks: Ideation, Representation and Evaluation in Composition
Tim Coughlan, Peter Johnson

Implications for Design [Best of CHI Nominee]
Paul Dourish

Continue reading "Design: Creative and Historical Perspectives"

Posted by sv8 at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)

Paper: Games and Performances

Games and Performances
25 April 2006
11:30 - 13:00

Alone Together? Exploring the Social Dynamics of Massively Multiplayer Online Games [Best of CHI Nominee]
Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nicholas Yee, Eric Nickell, Robert J. Moore

Interweaving Mobile Games With Everyday Life [Best of CHI Nominee]
Marek Bell, Matthew Chalmers, Louise Barkhuus, Malcolm Hall, Scott Sherwood, Barry Brown, Duncan Rowland, Steve Benford, Alastair Hampshire, Mauricio Capra

Designing for the Opportunities and Risks of Staging Digital Experiences in Public Settings
Steve Benford, Andy Crabtree, Stuart Reeves, Jennifer Sheridan, Alan Dix

Continue reading "Paper: Games and Performances"

Posted by sv8 at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)