The worst possible event in the life of a grad student has happened to me - my PowerBook is incapacitated. The pin of the power adaptor snapped off and is now lodged inside my laptop, preventing it from being powered up. I have 40% of my battery left, and then … death. To my PowerBook, anyway.
The good news is that this apparently happens quite frequently. The bad news is that Apple is quoting me upwards of $1000 to fix it. That number changed a lot, it was initially $470, and the guy at AppleCare education “got it down” to $350 (I think he thought he was working at a used car lot, but I wasn’t interested in bartering for the life of my laptop).
So, as with most things in the life of the grad student, we go with Option B: the one that costs less than $10. I’m going to try and use superglue to get the pin and pull it out. If it works, I will be extremely overjoyed… I’ll keep you posted.
I sat through another lecture about the importance of using metaphors in interface design today, and I reached my breaking point. I’m gonna come right out and say it: I think metaphors get more credit than they deserve in interface design. Yes, I know that many design objects have names that map to real world objects (desktop, trash can, windows, tabs, etc.), but, to reference an idea in today’s lecture, just because the designer uses a real world object as inspiration for a design decision does not mean that the user reaps any benefit from the metaphor.
Let’s think about this logically for a second. What about a desktop metaphor suggests that we overlap windows on top of it? Papers, yes, but windows? What about a computer window mimics the real world object anyway? Are we really suggesting that, when a computer user sees a window on the computer, there’s some subconscious process that says, “Oh, because I’ve interacted with windows in the real world, I know how this computer object should work.”?!?! For that matter, when you see these things on internet forms:
do you really rely on your knowledge of one of these?
Despite the fact that the interaction is the same, I say no, and here’s why. According to Cognitive Psychology, if one object (the metaphor) relies on another to be interpreted, a concept called “spreading activation” will bring the second object to short-term memory (which is why, if I say “fly,” words like “bird,” “bug,” and “sky” might come to mind). Acknowledging that humans are bad at introspection, think back to when you saw the picture of the car radio. Was the correlation natural, or did you think about it? I don’t think it’s a natural leap, but I’m guessing you said it was natural because we are so used to calling the object on top a “radio button.” If you associate the two, I contend that its a learned association through computer use, not natural like metaphor enthusiasts would suggest.
I should say that I’m not against the use of metaphors all together. I happen to use them frequently if my user research implies that it would be helpful. I find that objects that are part of the work (whiteboards, diagrams, etc.) make better metaphors than objects that support work (desktops, file folders). If you want to try a fun exercise in support of my stance, take your laptop to an elderly person who has never used a computer. Let them explore a little bit. After 5 minutes, close or minimize all of the windows, and ask them what they are looking at. Do you really think they will say “a desktop”?
Maybe my stance is too extreme, but it’s in response to this complacence in the HCI discipline everywhere I go that metaphors are universally good things in interface design. Yet, both at UNO and here at CMU, the lectures on metaphors seem to be implying just that. With a bad metaphor, the best you can hope for is performance on the same level as if you hadn’t used a metaphor at all. At worst, you’ve screwed up the user’s mental model even further. To quote my esteemed Project professor, the lecturers should consider hedging.
I gave my last presentation for the semester today. It seems really odd to be saying that after only 3 weeks of sitting in classes, but hey, I’m not complaining.
I’ve been watching grad student presentations for the past year now, from students at CMU and elsewhere, and doing a fair number of them myself. Frankly, I think presentations should be fun, which probably explains why I turned my undergrad senior thesis presentation into a video game and gave Jack a pat on the back for his off the wall IID final presentation (click the presentation link on this page to scope it out).
After watching so many presentations, I’m echoing Braden’s thoughts quite fervently. I recommend scoping out the Presentation dos and don’ts that he links up to… I’ve sat through one too many conference paper readings - er - presentations to not applaud what that author has to say.
But it’s not the complete story, and today I realized what was missing: Any mention of what happens after the presentation; namely, the Q&A. I’ve seen a few good presentations in the past year that have fallen apart during Q&A because they had the wrong approach. I’ve also seen a friend present who was so nervous she was shaking (I’m not kidding…), but despite the anxiety she brought it home at the end because she had a good rapport with her audience.
Coming up with answers on the fly is hard, but if I had one piece of advice, it would be to treat the audience as your friend. Don’t take things personally. If people are asking questions, that means you did a good job getting your point across!! You’ve hooked them, and they want to know more!!
Even if you don’t think your audience is being friendly (I’ve been there, believe me), pretend that they are anyway. Nothing encourages a malevolent audience member than someone who starts fighting back (I’ve watched that presentation too… anyone remember Seminar last year?). If you keep your cool and welcome your questions, then your presentations will end on a high note.
More hilarity and hijinks in my Software Engineering Class as we begin our Contextual Design unit. For the non-HCIers in the audience, Contextual Design essentially involves going to a user’s context and modelling his/her work in order to thoroughly understand it. It’s the formative method that I feel is most emphasized in our program.
The assignment for today in Software Engineering involved creating work models. Part of the instructions were to “pretend that you have just done a contextual interview with one potential user (you) of a problem frames modeling tool, and you want to use this information to construct work models.”
Now, I’m a pretty talkative guy in most conversations; but when the instructions tell me to pretend that I interviewed myself… man, they have no idea what they’re getting into. I happen to consider myself a pretty interesting person… so in the process of constructing work models, I can pretend that I said all sorts of stuff to myself during the work (I probably was thinking half of these things during the meeting in question anyway).
In no model are my desultory musings more relevant than in the Culture Model. This is where you model the more intangible influences on a person’s work. And let me tell you - I told myself all about these intangible influences that were distracting me from the meeting. I felt sympathy for my professors (read: I was lazy) so my culture model is pretty basic…
(click image to enlarge)
…but not without one random influence (hey, it was the day of my birthday celebration) and a cheap shot at the professors for how long the project took. Hey, it’s their fault for telling me to pretend that I talked to myself.
After spending a month in Texas, I decided I had better post a little reflection about my time there. It wasn’t as bad as the title suggests; that’s just a take off of the phrase spraypainted on a wall down the street from my hotel (”Who put the shady in shadyside?”). Anyway.
You always hear that lots of people drive SUVs in Texas, and it’s true. It’s not like they get a lot of snow down there. Maybe the rain justifies the buying habits, but I’m not sure it rains enough to justify higher SUV rates than a place like Omaha or Pittsburgh where it actually does snow. I guess the car companies cater to their buyers preferences: Houston has more Hummer dealerships (3) than in the Pittsburgh and Omaha metropolitan areas combined. What do you need a Hummer for in Houston?
This trend is frustrating, but in and of itself not enough to warrant a blog entry. My problem is that Texas is pursuing an aggressive advertising campaign called “Don’t Mess With Texas.” The idea behind the campaign, as I understand it, is that if you litter, your friends and family will call and leave tons of messages on your answering machine berating you for “messing with Texas.”
Callousness aside, the frustrating element is that people only consider it “messing with Texas” if the result is something you can see. Yet SUV drivers are messing with Texas every time they use a gallon of gas to drive 13 miles (source). Instead of, “Hey, you dropped something,” dontmesswithtexas.org should change their slogan to “Hey, your SUV is polluting our clean air and ruining our environment.” Maybe it would work as well as their anti-littering campaign.
Studio 8 came out yesterday (Happy Birthday to me…), so I decided I would take the time to scope out what they actually improved about Flash 8. I ranted about this in an earlier post, but the short version of the story is that Flash MX 2004 (that’s Version 7) was a very small upgrade from Flash MX (Version 6). The two most notable changes were an increase in the ActionScript capabilities, and a reorganization of the Menu commands so that I couldn’t find any of the commands I had gotten used to invoking. Since I struggle with the latter far more than I enjoy the former, you can see why I’m a little distressed.
Well, Macromedia is making it up to me (not… only me, but still…) if I act in the next couple of days. As of right now, it seems that the cheapest (legal) way for me to get Flash 8 is to pay $250 (education price). However, the education price for Studio MX 2004 is $200 (education price), plus you get a free upgrade to Studio 8 (with Flash 8 in it). Seems like the better bargain! The tricky part is that Studio goes up in price by $100 on Thursday (yup, two days away!). Act fast!
Oh, regarding what I like in the new version of Flash. Well, it seems as though they’ve put a lot more video support in to the app, which is great from my point of view. However, I don’t use a lot of video, so I was looking for some other cool things. It seems as though they went back to the drawing board on some of their animation capabilities, especially with Tweening. They give you a lot more control in this new version.
Plus, they’ve built Filter effects (a la Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks) directly into Flash. I think the quality of animations will soar after this release.
If you want to take advantage of this, snatch MX 2004 from your school software store (but no fair gettin to the copies at CMU before I do!). Once you’ve bought a copy, keep your receipt and all that good stuff, and check out Macromedia’s website for how to get a free upgrade to Studio 8. A little bit of a hassle, but its cheaper than the alternatives I’ve found!
I hate feeling like I don’t belong. Like that one time in swimming lessons when I was 8, and I was “promoted” to the advanced class, where I was required to hold my breath under water for a minute as a warm up exercise. Excuse me?! “I think I’d like to go back to the Beginner class,” I said, and I was off dog paddling to the other end of the pool.
I’m getting a similar feeling in my Software Engineering class this semester. The class is called “Methods: Deciding What To Design” – which sounds relevant to HCI (and actually, it is). But all this excitement doesn’t negate the fact that it is, in fact, a SoftwareEngineering class. So when someone asks a question for clarification, and the professor says, “You can think of this like a Heap Sorting algorithm,” and everyone in the class is suddenly enlightened (except for the lone HCI student in the room, who has undergone a comprehension loss), it’s easy to feel like you don’t belong.
In truth, I’m not too worried about the analogies per sé. I can understand the textbooks pretty well (except for Problem Frames by Michael Jackson… no relation to the singer guy… but more on this later). My concern is how an MSE student, who relies on analogies like “Hey, this semi-tricky concept can be compared to a complex sorting algorithm” is going to turn around and explain this semi-tricky concept to his/her non-technical supervisors when he/she is managing a group of software developers. My eyes glazed over at the heap sort explanation, and I have a Computer Science degree.
It’s a bit of a conundrum. The point of an analogy is to get the confused party to better understand the material, so I suppose the professor was right on target in using it. But at the same time, I think this calls to light the rift between technically-oriented people and those who aren’t. But then, I guess that’s why HCI is great - all the technical knowledge with a healthy dose of design and psychology to ground the knowledge. I knew I made the right decision.
In Summer 2004, my friends and I worked at The Gallup Organization on a self-administered version of their employee engagement metric. You can check out a screenshot.
Here’s Summer 2005, and those Target commercials get running. You know the ones – you don’t actually get any information, but it shows this girl drawing on a piece of paper, and it says oddsagainst7even.com. After seeing that commercial for the 100th time, I finally checked it out. Whaddaya know! I guess we were leading a trend. But… since our product was never put into use, Target did it first. Oh well.
Technically, though, I think J. K. Rowling gets credited for the desk theme first. Her site is fun, though, because you can solve puzzles. Puzzles are fun.
