Is AI (artificial intelligence) science or not?

AI is science, isn't it?
I think it is. We discussed it on 501 class tonight, one of my classmate thought that machine learning is a kind of AI, but it mainly deals with math problems, so it is not science. But I thought his understanding of machine learning is not accurate, bacause the fundamental rule of machine learning is pattern recognition, and the basic rules of pattern recognition is Bayesian Decision Theories. And these theories are based on how human make decision. So it is science.

After this discussion, one of my other classmate asked us an other very good question:" Why do we need to discuss that AI is science or not?"

Stop Sign

Stop sign is very popular, and it is part of American culture. My intervention is made for small town like Bloomington. And the change of currently used traffic control system is to use a moving target identification and crossroad traffic control system to instead of the stop signs which were currently used. In the moving target identification and crossroad traffic control system, there is a camera to identify the moving cars in certain direction, and control traffic light system according different numbers of the cars in different directions.

All stop signs should be instead by using this kind of identification systems and traffic lights. As a small town, Bloomington has a complex traffic control system and the traffic network connects everywhere. Lots of stop signs are used all over Bloomington. I lived in the west part of Bloomington, and every morning I drive fifteen to twenty minutes to come to school between 8am to 8:30 am. From my home to the Indiana Memorial Union (IMU) parking lot, I need to pass through 10 traffic lights and 8 stop signs to go to the parking lot of IMU. I noticed that usually a crossroad which uses a stop sign as a method to control traffic is not on a busy road, and most of the stop signs near downtown area or residential area. The speed limit around a stop sign is not higher than 30 miles/hour. Usually when I drive through a road which has a stop sign between every two blocks, my speed is as low as 20 or 15 miles/hour.

Code is culture or not?

In our class yesterday, when we discussed that code is culture, Shuti (The Indian girl) said code is about syntax not semantics.

I wan to ask some questions and at the mean time, I want to know if my following understanding is correct or not.

In order to argue if code is culture or not, we need to define what is code. In cryptography, a code is a method used to transform a message into an obscured form, preventing those not in on the secret from understanding what is actually transmitted. And in communications, a code is a rule for converting a piece of information (for example, a letter, word, or phrase) into another form or representation, not necessarily of the same type.(these two definitions from wikipedia) In computer science, code is a way we communicate with and command computer to do something for us. If we consider not only traditional programming pattern, but also the concept of Ubiquitous Computing, code can be any programming language, or our natural language, people's gesture, handwriting, etc. Human's language and actions are culture. Even under the traditional programming pattern in software engineering, it is not appropriate to say that code takes care of syntax only and no semantics content. Every reserved word has a special grammatical meaning, and even the variables defined in a piece of program have meanings too. The genre and value are their meanings. And now several rules for naming variable names are used especially in the Object-oriented programming languages. The variable have meaningful names and properties. And if the code in CS doesn't include the content of semantics, how do we understand it? What is a code in informatics, maybe the way that the message embeds in the sign?

David Hakken: The programs we write are not culturally neutral but instead reflect the cultural presumptions of the writers; this is I think one of Forsythe's points. Not just that there is meaning, but that we are not in control of the meanings we write into programs. Thus, the culture is not just in the context (pragmatics) but also in the semantics.

wristwatch--a design exercise

Problem: design a wristwatch which should be intuitive to use and easy to adjust

We do design two sketches within 15 mins

The first one is a “talk watch”. The watch tells the users what time the local time is every time the users push the only button on the watch. Users don’t need to adjust it, because the local time update by itself, and synchronized to national/international time zones depended on the location of the watch.

The second watch is designed for blind people. The numbers just pop up a little and the blind people can know the time by touch the numbers. For example, the numbers 1,2,3 in the hour circle and 1 to 15 in the minute circle should be popped up if the local time is 3:15. And there is a arrow notch on the watch chain, blind people can know the right way to ware it.

Discussion about Usability Testing and Heuristic Evaluation

Usability Testing-- UT; Heuristic Evaluation--HE. This discussion happened at September 30, 2006, and the big part of answer was provided by Dr. Lim (Youn-Kyung Lim).

Argument: If HE and UT link to the intrinsic features or not, and which one tend to link us with the design’s intrinsic features?

The key to find the answer of this question is the fundamental relationship of usability test and design process.

After we have a design mockup or product, the following process is the process of how to improve it:

A design> do usability test to the design> find usability problems > find out the cause of the problems> get some solutions about how to solve those problems > redesign> implement the redesign > do usability test again…
Now it is time to clarify the roles that can be involved in usability testing--finding problems, analyzing problems to find causes, and solving problems as design solutions.

Now the next problem is which work should be done by usability testers and which work should be done by designers? Do the testers find out the reasons of why the usability problems happen when they do a test or just provide those problems only? Of cause I believed that both the tester and the designer (maybe they are the same people) should know the cause and solution, but in reality process, who has main responsibility for this part, tester or designer? Or is there a role as an analyzer connect tester with designer?

In terms of role distribution, there is no hard answer. It depends on the situation. In the real world, distribution of the roles happen very heavily though. For example, usability specialists may not be involved in design so they may just report what the problems are and what caused those problems--if they can find it from the think-aloud protocol or questionnaire or debriefing interview--to designers who may be able to utilize those information for refining their designs. This is in many times a common situation in the real world, although it may be ideal if designers do the usability tests by themselves and they improve the design based on what they see by themselves. And this could happen too in the real world if the situation supports it.

So if the testers should provide not only problems, but also causes, my conclusion from this is that both of these tow methods link with the intrinsic features of the design.

In my opinion, the process of finding the causes connects the usability problems (external, such as "the log in page is difficult to use, because users cannot log in very easily") and the design's intrinsic features. This means in order to find the causes, the testers should think through the design's structures, functions, the way of its representations, etc, these things are the intrinsic features.

In order to figure out the causes, we may need to have design knowledge about what kinds of defects of design may cause those problems. And the examples of heuristics in HE are actually the examples of design knowledge. HE actually helps you to think about the causes of problems,
which is right. So you got it correctly. Then I guess your question is then how UT then is related to supporting the finding of causes of problems. And it is true that UT does not guide directly what causes of problems are. It is more of a process that helps testers to collect the necessary data which will help them to figure out problems and also causes by looking at the data they gathered carefully. And due to this reason, what expertise and experience the UT testers have definitely matters in terms of their capability to figure out appropriate causes of problems and even for design solution suggestions. So UT does not directly guide you to find the causes, but the data you gather from UT--think-aloud protocols, observed behaviors, debriefing sessions, etc. together will definitely help testers to figure out what may have been the causes of the problems you found. That is why it is dependent on the testers' expertise.

In terms of the distribution of the roles again, it is always a benefit in any person in a large design team if s/he has a multidisciplinary knowledge. So for example, even if her/his specialization area is usability, it will be in many times more useful if s/he also has knowledge and experience in design as well since the person then can better communicate with designers and also can find problems more critical for design and even can extract more appropriate causes for those problems, and can even suggest right directions for recommendations for redesign.

Another point you may need to keep in mind is that finding causes may require design knowledge. However, there are other types of causes may also inform design critically even if they are not based on typical design knowledge--actually "what is design knowledge" is also a
difficult question. Anyway, for example, in a usability test, if we found that a user had a trouble to figure out the right sequence of actions they need to go through to achieve a task, the cause of this problem may include the mismatch of user's typical model of approaching to that kind of a task and system's model that provide the features to guide user's to follow the right sequence. This reasoning requires more of cognitive psychology related knowledge which requires the usability specialist to figure out how to understand user's cognitive model, and how that should be interpreted to the system design. Of course in a broader view, this is definitely a kind of design knowledge, but it is more of structural and architectural and task-model based problems which require different expertise to figure out right causes. I mention this so that you may get a sense that the causes should be extracted from various point-of-views and using multidisciplinary expertise.

everyday is a new ladder

my argument about how to improvement of the design about public transit system

What we are considering about is the slug system, and its "big concept" is share cars with somebody else (maybe use private cars in the "public" way). Based on this problems the current slug system have, we want to design a website or a forum to provide a space to the users to talk with each other, share their travel information (they will go to a special location from beginning location at certain time) and finally share car with each other.

Based on this, I am thinking that why don't we build up a similar website for all the people in the US instead of Washington DC? We can use google map's API, users register in our website, and
provide information about when and where they will go (for example: 10/23/2006 8:00 am I will go to Washington DC) . If more than one people will to there at the same time, the system combines them together and reminds them to contact each other. And also, if other users want to know if somebody want to go somewhere else at certain time, they can just simply click the area they are on the google map, then the relevant information will show up( for example: users click on the main library of IU, the information: 10/23/2006 8:am, John will drive to Washington DC, 10/24/2006 4:00pm Joy to New York ), at the mean time, other information such as if the registered users want to drive by themselves or get rides from other people, the price the driver wanted provided.

There are some questions abut this:
Firstly, it is similarly with our original idea, but I don't know the US culture and how do the US Citizens think about this idea.
Secondly, the security problem is the big problem, but I think we can solve it by the method similar with usernames, and protect users' privacy.
Third: If this method feasible, we can solve the problem of the slug system easily.
The problem of the slug system: we never use the slug system by ourselves, and nobody in DC can help us get some useful data about it.
Then how do we do the context inquiry and usability test? How do we find more problems we need to solve?

Ubiquitous Computing

When we talk about computing or programing, what show up in our mind immediately is:
1)someone sitting in front of a computer screen,
2)the person is inputting some kind of 'sentences' which include letters, numbers or other signs in some kind of 'languages' by using Keyboard or/and mouse. These 'languages' are not the languages we used in our everyday life. They are abstract, used by people who have
some special computer skills only.

Sometimes, the problem we need to solve is about other things rather than computer or software, and computer is just a tool to help us solve the problem more easily. The big problem is why we cannot use computer as a commonly used tool by every person in everyday life ,
such as table, cup and pen. If people can input information into a computing system by things other than keyboard and mouse, for example, maybe people can talk with the computing system, then everyone can use it. "Ubiquitous Computing" concept is introduced into research field based on this question at 80'.

This concept was supported by researchers, people did lots of research work about how it is helpful, how it can be used in reality, and some models were proposed. Lots of research works have already done and lots of research outcomes about "Ubiquitous Computing" have alreasy been used by industry or our society. For example: pen-based input system, speech recongnitionion system, ets. What we interested here is about how can we make a connection between those theories and human behaviors. If we can find out this connection, we can use the theoretical models in our everyday life. At the mean time, we can test those models are
rational or not.

Actually, the main direction of our interesting is still how human behaviors affect the ways people use a tool (our design), and in advance, affect us to do a design which should be fit human
behaviours.

Human behaviors are very complex and not easy to be observed, because not only people sometimes are not very sure why they do some action by a specific way, maybe they would like to call it a habit, and also people's activities are happening in an environment, but not isolated.
Rationalize and generalize people's behaviour is not an easy job even you observe people and their actions very carefully.

discussion about fieldwork

What I am thinking is maybe we forget something in the process of desgin- fieldwork.

Before we begin a design project, maybe it is helpful to looked around and find out what is going on in our world. Maybe some very good design is in use or already provided to public as a design prototype. After known the related existing designs, we can find out their advantage and disadvantage, at the same time, we can save a lot of time to design an existing thing.

For project2, e-learning quiz system, maybe it is not a bad thing if our design is similar with some existing system in someway. Users can very easy to use it, because users feel familiar with it. And users can concentrate on the content of the quiz, but not the software surface. But for the mickey mouse project, if our design is very similar with something already existed, users maybe feel that our design lacks imagination or maybe cannot fascinate users. This difference becomes from the different design goals and different design using environments. E-quiz system is used in a very serious way, and it should be transparent as a tool. Mickey Mouse project should not be very transparent, because users should get a lot of fun from it. I believe that if we went to disney together, and observed there for one or two days, we could have more fun and diverse design.

wodom said:
I agree that fieldwork is a very important part of the design process, particularly in regards to understanding your target user group and the environment they interact within. In the disciplines of Folklore and Anthropology—where the main goal is to truly understand the soul and cultural construction of the observed group—fieldwork (or ethnography) is the principle data collection methodology.

Understanding the other designs and research already publicly available in the field is essential to the design process as well. Design doesn’t always have to be creation of something completely new. In fact, often it is improving something by linking components that already exist is a new and imaginative way. I don’t necessarily think that if something is more transparent, it is less fun, actually I believe very much the opposite. In essence, transparency refers to how well users can interact with the core idea of the design, opposed to getting bogged down with technical/usability problems. From my point of view, transparent design generates fluid transition and user imaginativeness, while oblique design actualizes a wasteland of cognitive dissonance.

tympace said:
Fieldwork, without a doubt, is the preferred means for understanding the motivations and processes of a user group. However, designers are often not given the opportunity to pursue rigorous user experience research. How do we draw the line between what should be done and what will be done as fieldwork?

I'm curious as to how oblique design creates a sense of conflicting cognitions among users. Any examples?

me:
I think maybe I misunderstood about what is transparency. I think transparency means users even forget what kind of systems or tools they are using, but concentrate on the content or enjoy the functions the systems provided. For example, when we use a web browser, we can just notice the content of the website, but not it IE(Explorer) or Mozilla Firefox. But if for fun, users should notice that what the design is, and the imaginativeness get noticed very easily.

vdiaz said:
changm,

I think your example of transparency is right on track. To use your example and go a little further with it, if you were browsing the web and using a browser other than the one you are used to and not aware of this change it is absolutely transparency.

When I think of transparency i think of a system that i can work with having never needed any sort of training or learning time. It may be the case that a truly transparent system would be discussed in terms of affordances rather than transparency.

Does anyone have a simpler example of transparency?

--Vince--

wodom said:
Right, so what I was getting at with 'oblique' design is exactly the example Mingxian brought up with using a web browser to see website content without having to concentrate on browser itself. Marty made a good analogy using Microsoft Word to explain transparency. Transparency should allow the user to engage in fluid thought an expression. When you are composing a document in Word and you have to stop to figure out how to insert a table or correct formatting, you lose cognitive fluidity and the experience is adversely affected.

Transparency and computer imaginativeness appear to be joined at the hip. From my own experience, the contrast between oblique and transparent design in no more apparent than in my production of music. For years I battled with computer-based music production programs, but I could never achieve the sound I envisioned in my head. I spent endless amounts of time tweaking digital knobs and sliders, ultimately never being satisfied. Too many options were offered and embedded within so many windows that it was difficult to keep track of them. I couldn’t interact with these imaginative components because the design was so oblique.



Eventually I transitioned to using a hardware sampler. The screen display was much less complex and I immediately began producing the sound I had been looking for without opening the manual once. Although the interface was foreign to me, I could intuitively figure out any problems simply by touching and manipulating it. My focus was taken off navigating a cumbersome visual interface and centered on the sound itself.



Transparency = Creativity = Sustained Interaction

me:
Thanks alot, it makes sense for me.
Transparency is realated with easy to use directly, and if a design is transparency, it is creative and accepted by users.

If I want users notice my design product very easily, it is not called 'oblique'. It should still be transparency, and at the mean time attract users by its aesthetic or other kinds of features.

tympace:
Perhaps it is the juxtaposition of transparency and obliqueness that confused me. At first I thought you meant "opaque" as the simple antonym of transparent, but with your example I think you're addressing the alternative meaning of oblique by commenting on design that deviates from an accepted, (maybe even transparent) path.

Changm:
I think there is something between transparent and opaque. Just like what we discussed at Youn's class today, you can not just give two or three answer choices for a question in a survey like this: How do you feel this system?
excellent, just OK(maybe there is even no this choice), devil.
The right way to let users to chose is provide five choices, such as Excellent, good, not good and not bad, bad, very bad.

Maybe there is no totally opaque design, (maybe yes, who knows? But if yes, Why they design such things?) we said opaque here is just for the designs which is not very transparent in order to compare. I think.
balchenn:
Our group would completely agree that fieldwork is an essential part of the design process. For the disney project, we set out to design a system that helps visitors customize their trip and a navigation system that integrates with that customization. We were almost ready to chalk out an entire design, when we realized, by a chance comment from our mentor to see if we were solving a problem that existed, that almost everything we had envisioned was present on Disney's website.

We would have saved time if we had done earlier research. But, I am not sure if not going through the process of rejection, would have led us to our idea about the magic mirrors. The way we got to that idea, definitely had to do with brainstorming and deliberation, but we can't rule out the fact that certain unplanned events helped us get to our idea. That makes me wonder if there can really be a process to get to the good design. My understanding is that the process would include elements of the events that we couldn't include but happened by chance, thus making a good design.

me:
If a system is transparency, I would like to say that it is creative, and maybe eariser to be accepted by users.

sramalin:
Field work is definately a factor that could possibly give us a better design in the end, but how long can this be done? In the real world, I am not sure if enough time is given for a project to conduct effective fieldwork. This is atleast true for a few companies, unless people are specifically employed to do this work not as part of a specific current project. I do think that fieldwork could do a whole lot of good for the end product, but isn't it true that companies (especially software) are always working towards a deadline? When this happens, it kind of boils down to the importance that the management places on fieldwork and other research.

rfrieser:
I think field work does happen in the outside world. Just maybe not quite as often in a very formalized or ethnographic research context, although some of the big boys have been said to keep their own in house ethnographers on hand.... - Field work, if I am interpreting this term correctly from the initial post, is abstracted to market research fused with technology strategy (which must always take a holistic approach to the industry sector and beyond - at least this is how I have approached my past consultancy work in this area), and product revisions based on customer and competition response.

The idea of operating in a conceptual vacuum of writing code or creating artifacts - "and they will come" is a luxury that went out of the window when the last dot com bubble burst [see Mike Kuniavsky 2003, Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research, Chapter 1]. This does not mean that some companies will still try and do this. But I feel that, as with many things out there in the wild, there is the academic ideal and then there is the pragmatic real world implementation. What matters is that the concepts and goals are understood and applied.

I think we have seen this even in our own work here, quoting one of my fellow student's during one of Youn's lectures "We are being taught all the good methods and then forced to pick up all the bad habits implementing them" - while they may be bad habits, it is still better than not having any concept of the methods at all. So we should integrate field work into our projects in whatever guise, otherwise we will end up with nothing but technocratic solutions that prone to disregarding human needs, and failing in the real world.

Cheers,
Ralf

PS: Another staggering example of this could also be the methodically sound but sociologically flawed social housing project of post war britain that are now famed for their distinct dehumanizing qualities [See Brian Lawson 2006, How Designers Think, 4th Edition, Chapter 13, Fig13.10, "Streets In the Air"]; A lot of which the author blames on the isolation of the designers from the real world and the concepts this world operates by.

A good book

"thoughtless acts? obervations on intuitive design" by Jane Fulton Suri+IDEO

A very god book read today. there are pictures the author get about people's behaviour from everyday life.

Seeking inspiration from real life...
"captures the amusing and provocative ways that people react to the world around them, By sharping your sensitivity to human behavior, inspires you with examples of intuitive design and encourages you to apply your insignts"

Jane Fulton Suri is the director of human factors for IDEO

Thanks Yen-ning who found out the webpage link for the book the IDEO:

http://www.amazon.com/Thoughtless-Acts-Observations-Intuitive-Design/dp/0811847756/sr=8-4/qid=1159934765/ref=pd_bbs_4/104-6071514-2843143?ie=UTF8&s=books

It has many very intertesting pictures which indicate people's unconscious behavior.

And this is the website of IDEO. http://www.ideo.com/
I love this company and I think they really do fieldwork before designing.

experience-centerd design:Observation

Yen-ning and I went to Youn's office today after the class of 501. Yen-ning asked several interesting questions about experience-centerd design.

How to do it? Firstly, designers should observe people's everyday life about how they do some things. Maybe sometime people do something very intuitively. Can the observer find out of the similar characters about certainly group og people? And what conclusions observers can get from reality depends on the observers. It's not only about the reality, but also the observers' skills, philosophic, and psychological aspects. Even they can get correctly related information about people's experience, can they correctly translate those information into the design field? As a designer and an observer, one should know why people do such things by a specific way like this! Is it a common way or not? Intuitive or not? How to get some solutions in order to fit people's way in a real design?

Another difficulty is that it needs a lot of time to observe a large group of people's behaviour naturally. Observers would be very exhausted and despair if they get nothing useful information after two months observation.