Exercise 5 - Andrey Chernykh

I love my Sony Walkman Bean Blue NW-E305 mp3 player. It is small and compact and easy to carry around. The form of it makes it easy to hold in your hand while pressing buttons. The affordances are successfuly employed making the usability pretty intuitive. I love the use of symbols (ex. folder on the menu button) and labelling because it makes it clear of what button to press when needed, hence good semantic mapping. The feedback that this device provides is excellent, combined with beeping heard in the headphones and feel of the click when button is pressed, so one does not have to look at the player and check. The visibility is also great; display screen works together with controls communicate the state that the player is in. I like the physical constaint in the device. The silver frame to the right of the play button slides not only to reveal USB plug but also provides a HOLD function. Slide towards the play button and all the controls are locked, slide it away and the controls are unlocked.

I hate my Cerruti 1881 calculator. Even though it has an unusual seductive form for a calculator it does not have many functions, just the basic ones. Mapping of the controls on it is not very good, having buttons arranged in a column it makes the thumb stretch a long distance to press a button, making it difficult to use with one hand. Also in terms of feedback, buttons are not that sensitive to the touch making you press them harder to yield fruitful results. Also some controls are pretty unknown to me for example the wide button at the bottom. It has a euro symbol and some unknown symbol that looks like a house making it unclear to me of what situation to use them in.

Project One is due on Monday - Good Luck!

Hi Class:

Good luck with Project One.

I have five last minute tips for you.

1) Go over my presentations, and think about how they apply to your interaction. Remember, 8 marks are assigned to "Use of Course Concepts to Deconstruct the Interaction."

2) On that note, read over the Project One description. Carefully. If there's any confusion, email me (before Saturday at 11:59PM).

3) Be sure that the scope of your exploration isn't too broad. Your interaction should have an identifiable beginning and ending, and your ethnography should be comprehensive enough to cover most permutations - this won't be possible if you've bitten off more than you can chew. Remember, you can also narrow down your focus after the ethnographic observation phase.

4) Remember to make your blog post!

5) Try to have your 10 minutes planned out in advance. All members of your group should participate. I will cut you off if you're more than 1-2 minutes longer than 10 minutes.

See you Monday.

Presentation: Basic Principles of Experience Design

Presentation: Basic Principles of Experience Design

Another Famous Map. . . and links from Week 3

John Snow's map of London's Cholera Outbreak, which "not only convinced the world that cholera was a waterborne illness, but ultimately brought about profound changes in science, cities and modern society."

Also, here's some more information about Charles Joseph Minard's thematic map of Napoleon's ill-fated march on Moscow. If Minard could establish structure and convey information through a map/diagram in 1861, then so can you!

Lastly, here are links to Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map, Mark Lombardi, and IntellectSpace, as shown in class during Week 3.

Supplementary Reading: James Corner, Mappings, 213-252

Supplementary Reading: James Corner, Mappings, 213-252

"Mapping is a fantastic cultural project, creating and building the world as much as measuring and describing it. Long affliated with the planning and design of cities, landscapes and buildings, mapping is particularly instrumental in the construing and constructing of lived space. In this active sense, the function of mapping is less to mirror reality than to engender the re-shaping of worlds in which people live." (Corner, 213)

Supplementary Reading: Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information, 12-35

Supplementary Reading: Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information, 12-35

"Even though we navigate daily through a perceptual world of three spatial dimensions and reason occasionally about higher dimensional arenas with mathematical ease, the world portrayed on our information displays is caught up in the two-dimensionality of the endless flatland of paper and video screen. . . . Escaping this flatland is the essential task of envisioning information - for all the interesting worlds (physical, biological, imaginary, human) that we seek to understand are inevitably and happily multivariate in nature. Not flatlands." (Tufte, 12)

Flow Charts by Martin Stevens

Flow Charts by Martin Stevens

Supplementary Reading: Colin Ware, Information Visualization 201-240

Supplementary Reading: Colin Ware, Information Visualization 201-240

"The Brain is a powerful pattern-finding engine; indeed, this is the fundamental reason that visualization techniques are becoming important. Ther is no other way of presenting information so that structures, groups and trens can be discovered among hundreds of data values. If we can transform data into the appropriate visual representation, its structure may be revealed." (Ware, 239)

Presentation: Establishing Structure, Maps and Diagrams, Conveying Information

Presentation: Establishing Structure, Maps and Diagrams, Conveying Information

Exercise Five: Jesse Colin Jackson

An object I love is the STAEDTLER Mars technico 780 C lead holder. I have 4 of them. One I've had since 1996, and the rest I've acquired later. In each I keep a different weight of lead: 6H, 4H, 2H and HB.

Affordances are subtle yet clear. The knurled end gives a tactile indication of where to best hold the lead holder; the clip keeps it secure in my pocket protector (ha, ha). As we expect, the end serves as a push-button to advance the lead. More unusually, it also serves as a sharpener, a possibility subtly suggested by its size (the same as the lead) and clarified by a diagram on the Staedtler website.

When the end is depressed, the lead advances. One potentially problematic aspect of the design is that unlike most lead holders, the lead does not advance incrementally. Instead, the push-button opens the jaws at the end that grip the lead, allowing the lead to potentially fall out of the pencil (an expensive error, at 2 bucks a lead). Once learned, it becomes natural to guard against this with your other hand when advancing a lead, and the infinite adjustability allows the lead to be sharpened to both a sharp and rounded tip, but perhaps a physical constraint could be introduced that prevents the lead from falling out completely.

There's no way to automatically differentiate between the different weights of lead, as the only available colour is blue. I've added an ugly label made of masking tape to each, which provides crude visible feedback, but it's an ugly solution at best.

[Disclaimer: I'll concede that I don't actually use a lead-holder much anymore. So perhaps there's some wistful nostalgia in my praise.]

An object I hate is my Sony Ericsson W810i mobile phone. It seems clever, at first: I'm impressed with the fact that the camera elements are mapped to a conventional camera. To operate the camera, you turn the phone sideways, which places the shutter button exactly where you expect it to be. By taking advantage of my existing camera interaction model, Sony has made it easier to take pictures. . . if I could figure out how to turn the camera on. There are no physical constraints to keep me from pressing the buttons when the phone is in my pocket, and these affordances are way too small in the first place: I'm forever turning the walkman on when I want to answer a call, as the buttons for these functions are right beside each other.

The audible feedback is excruciating: why can't mobile phones come with a normal ring tone? Why does my phone have to sound like a cat? I know, I know, I can download new ring tones - perhaps one of you can show me how.

Exercise 5: Tori

I don't think that I could go so far as to say that I 'hate' my old camera (pictured bottom left), but I will say that the new one (pictured top left) better suits my purposes.

The visibility of the DVX100 (top) is far superior. All camera functions are placed on the body, allowing for quick and easy changes. Additionally, the state of each function is clear via the use of dials and switches instead of buttons where necessary. So I can feel with my finger (without having to look away from the monitor) what my settings are.

The old camera required going into menus and used an organizational system that was not intuitive. This decreased the usability and therefore the image and sound quality, while simultaneously increasing frustration.

Mapping is also far superior with the newer camera. The joystick navigational tool for menu options up, down, left, right, and for forward, backward, play, stop creates easy navigation through menus and the VCR mode.

Credits:

I had to grab these images from the internet as my cameras are being lent out right now. The DVX100 was taken from here (and altered): http://www.compusales.com.mx/images/Videocamara%20AG-DVX100BP.jpg
and the PVGS70 was taken from here: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41K9Z3SMVVL.jpg&imgrefurl=http://shop.spack.net/p/pa/na/panasonic%2BPVGS70%2BMiniDV.B00008RUES.html&h=347&w=500&sz=27&hl=en&start=2&um=1&tbnid=IF6WXz1jbN7mvM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpanasonic%2Bpvgs70%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN
and the thumbs up image was from here: http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/hand-thumbs-up-2.jpg
The image inside the PVGS70 was taken by me in 2004 using that camera.



Also, I am obsessed with organization. These nesting Ziplock tupperware make my heart beat a little faster.

Nesting (Pg 104 under hierarchy).

Exercise 5 - Amanda Compagnone

Love my Tea/Coffee bodium, very intuitive and gets the job done. The disc shaped filter inside the mug shows you that it's holding something back so that you know to put the tea leafs or coffee grinds in first then fill it with water. When you screw lid on, the filter (which is attached to the lid) will pop up and stay on the surface of the tea/coffee. The physical constraint makes it obvious that you have to push the top of the filter down before you drink. If the top part of the filter is sticking up from the lid, it's impossible to open the spout,
therefore impossible to drink and get tea leafs/coffee grind in your mouth... yay!









Hate my really crappy can opener, although it's also pretty intuitive and based on physical constraints for the most part, it just doesn't work. The long black handles only move apart and together, they only grip the can when they're together which makes it pretty obvious what to do. This is where the design starts to fail, the double ended silver handle turns clock-wise AND counter clock-wise but only "works" when turned clock-wise. The only way of knowing that you've gone the wrong way is after you've circled the can and noticed that it left no mark. This can also happen however, if you HAVE turned the handle the right way because the gear isn't strong enough to glide the blade along the rim of the can. Either way the handle is really hard to turn and sometimes jams the gear rendering it's function pretty much useless... not yay!

Exercise 2 - Zack

Exercise Five: An Object you Love, an Object you Hate

In your home, find two functional objects: one that you love, and one that you hate.

Make a brief post to the blog where you describe your love/hate relationships, using the tools and vocabulary introduced in the Basic Principles of Experience Design presentation. Before you post, review the following terms in Universal Principles of Design: Visibility, Affordance, Mapping, Constraint

Be sure to include photographs of your objects in your post. Make sure the photographs adequately represent the source of your love/hate relationship.

Exercise Four is due on Sunday, January 27 at 11:59PM.

Exercise Four: Read a Map

You have been assigned a map. In one concise paragraph, deconstruct its strategies for conveying information for the class, using the vocabulary introduced in Exercise Three, as well as any new vocabulary you've learned from reading Universal Principles of Design (hint: this is bonus mark territory). Maps contain many visual elements: focus on one or two strategies only.

Conclude with a statement describing your visceral reaction to the map: does this map work for you? Why, or why not? Is this reaction solely a product of the success or failure of the map to convey information, or are there other factors at play?

Provide at least three images of your map: one of the folded map, one of the entire map, and one detail that shows the strategies in question.

Exercise Four is due on Thursday, January 31 at 11:59PM. Please do not lose or damage my maps!

Exercise 3 - Alex and Zach

Law of Pragnanz

Sometimes referred to as the "law of good figure or the law of simplicity" the Law of Pragnanz suggests that objects in the environment are seen in the simplest possible way. Pragnanz is a "Gestlat grouping principle of shape perception" which suggests that the whole of an object is greater than the sum of the parts.

Proximity

Another of the Gestalt principles, proximity or continuity suggests that "things which are closer together will be seen as belonging together. Although very similar, the law of continuity states that humans have a natural preference for continuous figures.

Figure Ground Relationship

The interaction of two elements known as shape and field is what is commonly referred to as a "Figure Ground Relationship". This relationship allows us to assess the space in what is being viewed by connecting the surface on which the figure sits.

http://graphics.ignatius.edu/flash_pages/figure_ground.shtml
http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/skaalid/theory/gestalt/similar.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/gestaltlaws_3.htm
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=792679

Exercise 2

Exercise 2

WHY VIDEO WONT UPLOAD!!!! ive been trying for the past 5 hours!!! i donno whats wrong!! im really bad at computers and never done this before!!!

Exercise 2 -Group - Song, Amy, Mark, William, Jessy

Closure, Good Continuation, and Uniform Connectedness

What is Closure?

It is a tendency to perceive a set of individual elements as a single, recognizable pattern, rather than multiple, individual elements. ( from textbook)

example of closure would be ...

<---- " when we draw the contour lines and try to ignore the continuity of the lines, like as this example, it creates a certain shape in our mind."

What is a Good Continuation?

Elements arranged in a straight line or a smooth curve are perceived as a group, and are interpreted as being more related than elements not on the line or curve.

<--- example of a good continuation would be this example on the side.


" visual patterns with good continuation may suggest to the viewer that the pattern continues beyond the end of the pattern itself. "






What is an Uniform Connectedness?





Elements that are connected by uniform visual properties, such as color, are perceived to be more related than elements that are not connected.






<--- Example of an uniform connectedness

" if individuals are connected to one another, our brain perceives this visual properties as a big chunk or an single group of one . "

Sources: Textbook :" Universal Principles of Design"

psychology.about.com/.../ss/gestaltlaws_6.htm
http://www.bastoky.com/GoodContinue.htm
www.macalester.edu/.../perception.html

Exercise 3: Mark Ovsey, William Lee, Song Kim, Amy Fong, Jesse

Exercise Three - Ann, Marlissa, Milena, Nicole, and Rob

Strategies for Conveying Visual Information - Summary of Terms
Information taken from Universal Principles of Design




ALIGNMENT (pgs.22/23) - The placement of text and/or pictures so that the edges line up in a certain way. In the text they state that aligning the visual elements to one side is more powerful than a centre alignment. Text may be justified in documents that are especially complex.



HIGHLIGHTING (pgs. 108/109) - When you want a specific area of the document to stand out. Highlight less than 10% of a design, and stick to a few techniques used consistently throughout your text or image. Using the technique of bold text works the best of you don't want to disturb the flow of your design. Underlining text isn't the best for its legibility. Avoid changing fonts for the purposes of highlighting, and if you're going to use colour, choose a less saturated one. Blinking is highly effective for highlighting the most important information, but the viewer should be able to turn it off, or it will distract from the rest of the document.



LAYERING (pgs.122-123) - When you simplify complex information by organizing it into related groups. There are 2 types of layering: 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional.

2-dimensional layering makes it possible to view one layer of information at
a time. It can be presented in a linear or non-linear way. When you are presenting
information that has a clear sequence (like assembly instructions) it's good to use a
linear method of layering, such as seen below:

Non-linear methods of 2-dimensional layering are best used in presenting
the directly hierarchal or parallel relationship between bits of information,

like in the family tree you see here:

3-dimensional layering is used when you want to view multiple layers of information
at the same time, so that you can see their relationship to each other. The stacked layers
may be opaque (like in a political map) or transparent like in a topographic map.

SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO (pgs. 182/183) Is the ratio of relevant (signal) to irrelevant (noise) information in the document. Ideally, you want to get rid of as much "noise" as possible.

Exercise 3 - Andrey C., Allison L., Eve Z., Leigh M., Zunera W.

Orientation Sensitivity:

A phenomenon of visual processing in which certain line orientations are more quickly are more easily processed and discriminated than other line orientations.

It is based on two phenomena that are observed in visual perception: oblique effect and pop-out effect.

The oblique effect is the ability to more accurately perceive and judge line orientations that are close to vertical and horizontal, than line orientations that are oblique.

The pop-out effect is the tendency of certain elements in a display to pop out as figure elements, and as a result be quickly and easily detected.

Example: The image illustrates the pop-out effect, the lines that are 30 degrees away from the vertical line are quickly and easily detected.

Common Fate:

When elements move in the same direction, we usually see them as a unit and they seem to be more related to each other than elements that don't move in the same direction or at the same time.

Example: We see the points that are moving in the same directions as single groups.

http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/visualperc1/Common.gif

Interference Effects:

In Societies today, cultures associate different icons and images with specific characteristics, such as colour. This makes interpretation and understanding of the visual faster and more efficient. Interference effects take place when characteristics or contexts of a particular symbol are changed, or crowded.
Example: When reading the word Blue written in Red, it will take longer for the reader to understand the word than when the word would be written in Blue.

Exercise 2- Song Kim