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at the cross-point between 2008 and 2009

2009-01-01T22:43:00.000-08:00

2008 was gone with whatever belongs to it. And I read a plenty of words people wrote to remember, or called conclude it. Many dear Chinese didn't paid much attention to their personal growth and career path development, but almost all of them shared one mainline and frame: the snow damage happened around the Spring Festival 0f 2008, the great earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan province, the Olympic game in Beijing, the Shenzhou-7 and the brand new space record in Chinese history, and the financial crisis. Some people who are more interesting in politics would also mention the three direct links of trade, mail and air and shipping services across the Taiwan Straits. Although there are almost half and half in good and bad, many people would agree that it is a difficult time －“时艰” in common sense.

But I hope it is a fresh start at this moment!

越来越喜欢香港的天气

2008-11-25T19:14:00.000-08:00

不很冷，不很热，不很干，不很湿。长居北方的我，在这样的气候中，简直是太奢侈的享受了。
以前一直居住在四季分明的北方，很长的夏天和冬天，而春秋确是转眼就错过。现在好了，整个冬天都是我最喜欢的春秋天气。可以一下子把我多年的没有尽兴的天气补足！看到百货商店的橱窗里大衣加裙子的搭配，老公和我笑着讨论起来。而雪地寒风和厚重的棉衣现在想起来居然也不那么可憎了。

近日所见所历所学所思

2008-11-19T17:02:00.000-08:00

虽然以前也一直零星的投着简历，但真正开始紧锣密鼓的找工作确是从十月才开始的。为什么五月底就毕业却十月份才开始找工作呢？首先是因为从美国到香港，因为现锋的工作在去年春节那天完全确定下来了，我们决定了在一个陌生的城市开始新生活。考虑到很多细节的问题后，我决定先了解当地市场再把自己卖出去。其次就是四年没有回家了，很想利用这个机会回家陪陪我那年过六旬的寡居母亲。就算尽一点孝道吧。毕竟我还有漫长的人生可以去拼搏，却不一定会有同样长的时间来尽孝。我可不想重复那句“树欲静而风不止，子欲养而亲不待”了。对于父亲的过早离世，而十六岁的我那时不具备孝亲的能力，我是耿耿于怀的。

这两周有很多关心我的朋友都问我在国内找工作的经历和感受。对于在国内的朋友，我基本上都是以向他们学习了解国内现状的态度，虚心的向他们请教找工作和工作后的经验。而对于在国外的朋友，我想把我了解到的告诉他们。不是谬赞和抱怨，而是以客观的态度，希望在他们衡量是否要回国发展的时候能够更快的了解他们虽曾熟知但已渐忘的国内情况。

昨天在和一个朋友网上聊天的时候我们自然的聊起了找工作的话题。我们都是中国人，但却是在美国读人机交互时才认识的同学。他现在正在美国找工作，有时也在考虑要不要回国发展。他知道我最近面试了一个国内比较大的公司，可以说是那个行业的老大。就问我有没有得到那个公司的答复。

其实我目前为止得到的“官方”答复是“得到最后通知的时间可能会比较长，尤其按目前阶段国际国内的整体情况，一般很少在两三周内得到消息的，甚至可能更长，..." 我觉得这种情况可以理解。因为现在经济形式不好，很多公司在财政方面都会采取一定的措施。而且现在将近年底，或许对业务的侧重也会有影响。但这里我想就我的这次经历写下我的想法。

首先第一关就是面试。这家公司在面试的前前后后，一直对面试者们的包括名字在内的所有个人信息守口如瓶，这种信息不平衡我可以忍受，但是确是我第一次遇到，才知道自己原来连知道对方姓名的机会都没有。面试的时候，出于礼貌，我对其中的一位问了一句：“您贵姓？” 人家非常警觉的抬起头，好像这种问话对他很突然，很出乎意料，然后他发出了一个很长的“en”音之后回答说：“我姓＃。” 之后在面试我的过程种，这位尊贵的面试官大部分时间埋头看我的简历和申请材料，提问的时候也是如此，只是我说得“精彩”处他才抬头看看我那自信又紧张的脸，所以以前学过的与面试官目光交流之类的没怎么用得上。虽然面试的过程从早晨九点持续到晚上将近七点的大部分时间里我都不知道在向谁展示自己，但确在等待的时间里匆忙的结识了几位同去应试的朋友。给不同的人打电话，网上聊天，发email，他们也成了我在面试后的等待时间里得以主动获取更多的信息的一种资源，尤其是他们中有的人有在那家公司工作的亲属关系。

其实投这家公司的经历也是比较偶然的。一个偶然的闲聊机会，大约有十分钟，我遇到了一个该公司的员工。我提到了我在找工作，她就很热情的帮我介绍了这家公司的情况并主动答应帮我投简历。并在当天我们各自结束了自己的工作候找到了我，声情并茂的为我介绍了他们公司中可能比较适合我的两个部门，这两个部门的只能和目标，并问我比较喜欢哪个。她的热情和那种求贤若渴的眼神让我感觉我遇到自己平生第一个伯乐。当然，从投简历到安排面试用了两个星期，两个星期在我看来是比较正常的，对公司的办事效率在这个时候我还是比较满意的。

但后来从各处得到的消息确让我觉得匪夷所思。

一个朋友告诉我，这个等待时间是公司内部在走程序。
另一个朋友告诉我，他有一个以前的同学现在在这家公司工作。这位同学找这个公司的时候也是用了很长时间。他面试了这家公司后在等待的时间里又联系了另一家公司，后来都在另一家公司工作了，才突然接到了这家公司的电话问他想不想来去海外工作地点工作。因为去海外工作工资很高，他同学才接受了这家公司的offer。
第三个朋友告诉我，这家公司现在根本不招人，他们只是先面试，等需要的时候再聘用。

我觉得这三种可能都对我对这家公司的期待或者说这家公司目前为止在我心目中的形象有所伤害。

虽然第二个朋友和第三个朋友说的情形有些不谋而合，我还是希望公司不是这样做的。正巧这几天我正在读一本领导心理学的书“Psychology for Leaders” by Dean Tjosvold & Mary M. Tjosvold, 译者陈美岑。主观上讲，虽然作为一个应聘者，我可能会失去这个机会，但是我觉得从长远的角度想公司这样做虽然不至于自毁前程，但总是对自己也有伤害的，应聘者和公司没有赢家。

对于应聘者来讲，这家公司不行就找下一家，机会到处都是，总可以找到适合自己发展的方向。这是真的。

对于公司来讲，国内的人才多的是，尤其是刚毕业的大学生，想去他们公司的人多的是。大公司可以选人而不是应聘者们选它。这或许也是事实。但是从公司的发展角度想，公司将自己的诚信置于何地呢？这些经过面试而且被告知他们的能力比较符合公司需求的人可以说有很大的可能会成为公司的未来员工，但如果他们觉得自己被耍了，或许对公司的热情在长期的等待中被消耗，对公司产生负面的印象，对公司的诚信置疑，对公司的领导和决策能力置疑，对公司的办事效率不满，即使他们为了公司的社会地位和高工资水平而成为正式员工，试问他们能够迅速的投入到积极的工作之中吗？他们对公司的忠诚度能够很快的建立吗？他们能够对公司的领导信服吗？在公司领导层和基层员工之间的情感代沟就这样轻而易举的在还没有成为正式员工之前就建立，对公司的业绩，员工的满意度会有任何益处吗？没有。俗话说养兵千日用兵一时。是的，从小处上想，把军队散放民间是可以省下不少粮饷。但是，这种广撒网的面试和长等待的聘用方式会直接造成聘用率低，直接的后果还包括高素质的人才在长等待中擦肩而过，面试本身带来大量的人力物力消耗，员工可能工资高但是缺乏自主的精神，积极的工作态度，不求自我表现与提高，混日子。当然以上的分析都是基于理论和猜测，也许并不是公司的实际情况。我也希望公司不是这样对待我们这些待字闺中且跃跃欲试的晚生的。

feel good to write blog again

2008-11-19T01:57:00.000-08:00

Mingxian is coming back: say Hello to Blogers on Interaction Culture

2008-11-19T01:47:00.000-08:00

I am sorry to say that I came back just two weeks ago, and still that I feel difficult to truly 100% understand Jeff’s blog. I am sorry Jeff, but I could say that when I feel the difficulty to understand you, I believe that you are one of the best professor I have ever met! Most of the professors I knew don’t like to share their thoughts with us so selfless.

I was enjoying life in China in the past few months, and feel that I missed a lot great post here. Fortunately I caught up using the past week.

I met a past interviewer at the UPA China conference at the end of Oct. Of course, I went to there just have two goals, the first one is that to understand the Chinese industrial HCI world, and second, to meet people. the interviewer is a HCI designer, and she becomes my friend. I asked her:” Do you read about HCI?” She said:” No! I have already read enough when I was in School. But I read business news sometimes.” Maybe because I am doing nothing about HCI right now, it means that I couldn't learn from real experience environment, reading books and blogs let me feel strong, and at the same time, make me think. Sometimes I found I entered an endless thinking space filled with questions and colorful thoughts. I asked myself, why do I feel I should always keep learning, is it because that we will never have a standard method to find the perfect solution for a design problem or I am just a beginner? Anyway, I am happy that I still have big interest in it.

I don’t know what I am talking about, and also don’t know why I say these. Just say “Hi” to everyone!

user friendly 2008 conference

2008-10-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

I went to the user conference 2008 from 24-27, Oct.2008. The main theme of this conference is innovation for China. Most of the topics are around usability. It was hold by upa.China.

This is my first time to attend the Upa conference in China. I felt energetic after meeting with so many people in the field, especially, a lot of them are enthusiastic. But at the same time, I felt the confusion and unclear from some of them, especially in the round table discussion session.

Going back to mainland China Tomorrow

2008-09-18T17:34:00.000-07:00

It's time to go back to mainland China tomorrow due to my visa. I must apply "wang lai gang ao tong xing zheng" in order to stay at Hong Kong, which means that I must stay at home for at least three weeks. I could imagine how happy my mom would be when she saw me at first sight, although I have already stayed with her for around three months in June, July, August and September.

I stayed at hong Kong for one week this time, and I like it compared with the US. First of all, there is so much delicious oriental cuisine. The indigenous population like see food very much, and shrimp is an very active number on the table. And I LOVE shrimp!

People are very nice in this international city. Although sometimes there is language problem between us, they always trying to help understanding. It seems that their smiling face is saying that Welcome to Hong Kong to me.

The city is crowded, but everything is in the order. The pedestrian overpass system is so considerate that not only connected most visiting buildings but also avoided the solarization.

I didn't fully enjoy this week in the city, because Lehman Brothers was bankruptcy, which means my husband needs to find a new job. It is a terrible week for us. We are trying to find as many as possible plans for the new future.

We are all leaving!

2008-05-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

It is sad to say:"Bye Bye and Take Care" again and again at this moment. All the memories in the past two years come back again in my mind. Happy together, argue on projects, ... 此刻我为离别泪流满面。不停的重复着，再见，珍重！所有过去两年的记忆一起重现。

Although I tried to avoid to think about the ending of the life as a master student, because of the sadness of the separation before us, the separation emotion still filled all my heart, and the blood was stopped flowing, it is feeling the mood.
尽管几天来我一直试图不去想这一段生活的结束，因为一段生活的结束救意味着朋友们要各奔东西。
我尽力的去做事来淡化这分离的忧思，但它还是悄悄地蔓延在我的全身。仿佛我的血液也停下来体会我的心情。而我只能对一个个远行的背影无数遍的默道珍重。大脑已停止了思考，塞满了

An interesting dream 一个奇怪的梦

2008-05-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

昨晚做了一个奇怪的梦，而且在梦里感觉是那么的真实
梦开始的时候，我和一个朋友站在一个好像马棚又好像仓房似的平方房子里，整个房子只有一大间，但很大，但却很矮。里面堆满了各种各样的东西。我们好像在找什么东西。又很想找个地方躲起来，似乎发生了什么可怕的事情。我们找了很久都没有找到，我们于是来到了前门外。门外展现在我们眼前的又三个建筑。左手边也就是东边，是一个黑糊糊的四层建筑，在最东北的小角落里有一扇非常窄小的门。
下面每层大约有四五个房间，每个房间有一扇小窗。到处都散发出很黑冷黑冷的感觉。而且整幢楼似乎都在那里发抖。马棚前方不远处是一个红色的建筑，似乎只有两三层，太阳照在上面暖洋洋的，让人立即就有了精神。又面的建筑是乳白色的，也是只有两三层的样子。四个建筑围成了一个不规则的四合院。看耀眼的阳光仿佛是中午，乳白的光晕却像傍晚，黑洞洞的窗户却是黑夜。黑房子里似乎住了很多人，过着邋遢的生活。我们正在四处观望，从红楼里面走出一个长幼着长长翅膀，蹬着长靴，穿着宝甲的摩登女郎，一个细长的不知是尾还是手里的鞭子，与身上的黑色装束很配。她很友善，告诉我们如果想除掉恶魔，拯救其他人，只能找到鸡蛋。哈哈，然后我们就到处去找那个神秘的鸡蛋。我们在草地上找了很久，什么都没有找到，后来来到了一条小河，我们就沿着小河找。先着小河走啊走，走了很远很远，四周只有青草和小河。后来河里的鱼来与我们搏斗，我的同伴失散了，我被赶到河边，那里有一个小土堆我一回头，刚好看见一个鸡蛋躺在窝窝里。我走过去，拿起鸡蛋，就在河里游起泳来。只觉得浪头翻滚着把握我冲到了下游。下游风平浪静，我抬眼一看，水面好宽，我跟本看不到岸。这时，那个女郎又出现在握面前，对我说，别怕，是因为我拿到了鸡蛋，所以我们屏蔽保护起来了。我再也不用怕那个恶魔了。我感觉自己在水里，但仿佛又就在那个马棚的门前。

Hard to belive that I am almost done here

2008-05-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

it's hard to believe that I have almost done with the program.

There are 33 days left. 33 days later, I am going back to China where I miss so much! I will find a job not too far from there, so I could go back often and take care of my dear mom.

Today I tried to answer some questions for looking for a job. And I feel energetic. ^_^

At the end of the year 写在2007年年底

2007-12-20T09:18:00.000-08:00

Like the yellow leaves float down to the ground, 2007 is quietly flying away. What left behind is me, with my half full half empty mind.

就像黄叶飘向大地，2007正在悄然远离。留下我一个人站在孤独的荒野，整理我那半空半满的思绪。

looking back the whole year, I could not stop asking myself, what I did, what I have learned, what I have gotten, what I have lost, what is new to me, what is good, and what would I do if I could go back..

回转身看往逝去的一年，我禁不住问自己，我做了什么，学到了什么，得到了什么，失去了什么，什么对我来说是新鲜的，是对我好的，如果有机会再来一次，我会怎么做。

I started to play World of Warcraft. It is hard to believe how much I love it which I believe very time consuming, and only attracts those bored and lonely people. Just like Aaron said:"WoW can get you through pain, being sick, and even grad school. The trick is to not overdose or become dependent."

我居然开始玩魔兽世界了。真是难以想像今天我也会为网这些当初我会认为是浪费时间，
无聊而又空虚的人才会玩的网游而着迷。就像我的同学Aaron说的，“魔兽世界可以伴你经历痛苦，疾病，甚至研究生时期。重要的是要进的去出的来。”

I read Harry Potter, and watched its movie. It's ten or hundred times better than all the other papers and books except A Dream of Red Mansions. I am so glad that I read this fascinating fiction even though it seems has a great start but a hasty finish.

终于读到了哈里波特系列的最后一本书。它胜过这一年里所有我读过的文章，书籍和所有的
东西十倍百倍，除了红楼梦。我为能读到这样的好书而感到高兴，尽管最后有一点虎头蛇尾的感觉。

I got the Star Fellowship, took seven courses, worked in the best and the worst team, got several good friends, found my favorite professor and course，learned some theories, and accomplished several projects ...

我拿到了一个奖学金，上了七门课，在最好的和最差的团队中工作，交了几个好朋友，发现了我最喜欢的教授和课程，学了一些理论，做了几个项目 ...

My marriage nearly broke, and it was solved out after two months.

我的婚姻险些破裂，但两个月后我们和好了。

From the experience of the passing year, I understand something about life.
从这即将逝去的一年的经历里，我对人生有了新的认识。

Don't expected too much. 不要期待太多。

Don't wait tomorrow. 不要等待明天。

Don't hope for others. 不要寄希望于别人。

Be kind to ourselves and others. 要善待自己和别人。

Enjoy life. 享受生活

World of Warcraft

2007-12-02T07:34:00.001-08:00

Began to play WoW in the Thanksgiving break, I found I have already addicted to it. Last semester, I remember I asked Jeff that why people play games, are they very lonely, have nothing else to do or they are not interested in their surrounded environment? Jeff said no, but I doubt it at that time. Because I found I have a lot interesting things to do other than game. However, in the Thanksgiving break, my husband encouraged me to install WoW on my computer, and try. Then I spend three days in a row to play . Although sometimes I don't want to kill those tigers who have no money, no weapons to give me, it is exciting when I go up to another level. Sometimes, I asked myself, what makes me addictive? The logic is simple, get experience by killing, finding, completing tasks. As a warrior, my personal life just includes buying and selling, maybe sometimes aimless running.

Now I kind of understand why people care their avatar so much. She connects my heart because I create it and give her everything, living skills, looking, clothes etc. Maybe it likes my baby who will never do something wrong. There is no police station, is there? Think about those parents whose children are obedient and also do outstanding job, they must feel proud and like to do whatever they need to make them better. We are not the parent of our avatar, we are them and they are us. This even makes the connection stronger than parents and children!

This morning, my husband drove our car, and I sat on the right front seat. I feel a little bit exciting when I saw the warning sign beside the airbag which has a black triangle background and yellow exclamatory mark, and was thinking about "new tasks here"! HAHA

where creative exists

2007-11-17T12:14:00.000-08:00

We talked about people creating based on preexisting items instead of creating a brand new object in lass week on Jeff's class.

I could not stop think something about Cost-Benefit analysis. Let’s think about movie industry for a while and think which good movie has no followed serial II, III or even VI?

A professor for my another class gave us some numbers when she talked about Cost-Benefit Analysis:
The Lord of the Rings:
The fellowship of the ring Budget is $109M the profit is $860.7M
The Two Towers Budget is $94 the profit is $920.5
The Return of the king Budget is $94 the profit is $1129.2

Why the 3rd could spend less money and get more profit then the first one? I guess it is because the accumulated reputation from the first and second.

Couldn’t the directors come up some new characters and scenarios to make totally new ones instead of serial II, III? The answer is yes,they could. But why they need to create a totally new one??? If the new one could not guarantee a success?

If the numerical representation, modularity and automation makes the “creative process” easier， more efficient and productive, why we are always looking for totally authentic creative?

On the other hand, even though it is not authentic creative, I believe that creative exists somewhere when you make a choice, a judgment. How could things could re-used in a totally different order. Creative was invented by a more smooth way and evolved over time and by different people consciously or unconsciously. When we look back thirty years, we could find the huge difference between what we have now and at that time, even though we don’t think there is something new compared with things we used yesterday.

From shopping experience to syntagm

2007-11-08T12:57:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about shopping experience last night, (just for fun, and sometimes when I could not fall asleep, I do this kind of brain exercise), maybe it is very directly related with your post, sorry about this.

For traditional shopping, the store “designers” promote their business by design some routes or certain strategies. For example, milk was always put the another end of the store with the door or cashier desk, because they know much people buy milk when they shopping at a grocery store. This route strategy force customers to go through a bunch of other items, and attract them buy more things. Especially there is always something at the middle of the aisles. So go through some items maybe people don’t necessary needed becomes a part of the syntagm of shopping experience. And it seems that there is something similar with movie director’s camera. Both of them just put things there to force you to think about it or accept it.

For online shopping, because there is tool called “Search”, we could get whatever we want more directly and instantly. However, the “store” designers didn’t give up to attract us into their trap，knowing as we did that on line shoppers don’t always have a clear idea about what they are looking for. The designers model the traditional shopping experience by using the margin spaces and put their items in a specific list order at the left panel of their website I guess.

What I am really trying to articulate is that the syntagm is not always very economically logical. It means that we could always disorder or add something redundant and make the syntagm bigger and beneficial for “us”–maybe someone sells the paradigms, movie director, store manager…

How could HCI designer use syntagm?

I believe it is very useful for game designers to lead those gamers to jump into those scenarios one by one and feel very novel and exciting about the game.

I am sure there is a lot of more areas could benefit from excellent handling about syntagm, and hope I could come back to this post later.

why do we concern about theories when we deal with practical things

2007-11-06T13:33:00.000-08:00

In today's class, someone asked a very interesting, serious and tricky question: "why should we concern about all those theories as HCI designers supposed to work in a very practical field. I felt interesting because I was asking similar question when I read Roger's paper (A reading for today's class, Rogers, Yvonne, (2005) “New Theoretical Approaches for HCI”, ARIST: Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, no 38, 2004. ). My question was: "Are the HCI research community and industry community living in different ages?" Are those super good theories used in all kinds of labs and projects in some universities and colleges or some company ? How many companies are really using ethnographic methods to do their projects with dealing with their clients? I am asking these question not because the paper is not good, in fact, it is excellent paper, and I love it so much! I love the paper because it could trigger my thinking.

I agree that theories provide a common language to let people communicate and discuss the issues in the field. More generally speaking, how could people in the HCI field understand each other by using those same terms or "languages". It could make sense to each of us in the field. Theories provide tools for us to understand the reality situation a design involved in and critique research and designs done by others.

However, seriously, do we do research on theories because of the fear of handling the uncertain? Is it because we are trying to add more certain factors or trying to find an excuse of our responsibility to a design? Does it mean that we are not very confidence about our design ability?

When an "aha" idea comes up and the designer have 100% confidence about her design and its successful future, she could broke all the rules and theories and whatever. Even further, maybe she just creates a totally new theory! Who knows?! WHY? However, the "aha" idea doesn't come up with itself. It comes from the designer's knowledge, judgment, insight and her philosophies. Where these things come from, reflection-on-action? OR theories!

We need theories because we want to make fast designs. What do I mean fast design?
Since we have human society, thousands years ago, we are keeping to design things, all kinds of things, tools, organizations, etc. But thousands years ago, we don't have a lot of theories. For a single tool design, for example, a shovel, it design process maybe last for hundreds of years. Its designers and also users were always looking for better materials and changing forms. This kind of design process mend together with the product using process as well as usability test and redesign process. Therefore, the fast design means that we as both designers and users don't want to wait and go through with the very long design process. We need it now! And I guess my conclusion is that this is the theories for--to condense the design process.

Portfolio site interpretation –final paper idea

2007-11-06T13:25:00.000-08:00

I know my portfolio site is so terrible, but I just get a headache when I think about to make a new one, because that two words–portforlio site means maybe more than ten hour work! But finally, I could not tolerate anymore! I felt shame when I look at it and call myself a designer. Yesterday, I finally decided to make some change on it. When I looked around on others’ portfolio site, and lots of free templates, I got an idea about my final paper.

The idea is I’d like to analysis some portfolio sites by using structuralism and phenomenology theories from designer’s perspective.

Just like Lacy’s paper, I want to analysis portfolio sites by discussing the relationship between style, color with the professional field the owner in. And also how and why sounds becomes popular in a website. Is there different visual angles (virtual camera?) ? Or let’s say, where is the focus suppose to be? How big our screen the designers think we are using? Do you have some other ideas about this?—PLEASE tell me!

How do you think this idea? I have no idea about what kind of conclusion will I get, but is it necessary? Could I just analysis they way portfolio sites were created, the strategies and theories people are using to create portfolio sites and get a brief conclusion? Should I really come out a guild line of how to create portfolio site at the end?

neuron and brain

2007-10-28T19:42:00.000-07:00

Just forgot the mention that one of my friend Wei said that each of us is a neuron, and the whole human world is a big brain. I really like this metaphor because I was thinking about the connection between human beings, natural world and the artificial world.

The meaning of religion, culture and HCI

2007-10-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

Eight friends ate and played together in the evening on Friday after Pumpkin Carving. All the chatting remains on the same theme: the meaning.

The conversation began from Dalai Lama. I found that I almost know nothing about him except that he is a Chinese, got a Noble peace prize and there are several Tibetan restaurant in Bloomington. And in that evening, they told me that he has his philosophy, and wrote a very popular book which was popular all over the world except China and it is forbid. Someone told me that:" you could feel you connected with the natural and whole world very peacefully, and forget yourself in the moment when all of those Lama begin to chant sutras together". I don't know if I could feel that moment or not.

Another friend began to teach us about Christian because he is a Christian and all the others are not. He asked us some questions which I believe that he doesn't know the answers neither. For example: don't you think that there is the heaven? I really don't know.

I asked them :"Dn't you think all the Chinese believe Buddhism since thousands years ago?" I know I am totally wrong especially when someone mentioned minorities. They have their own God.

One person said that he comes from a literary family, so his family believes no God but science. Another one said her family believes no God too. She said, her family only show respect to her family ancestors when the most other Chinese were showing their respect to those Buddhism gods. But, they believe that their ancestors could know they were missing them, telling stories to them and asking helps from them in some way. What is the "some way" though? Where were they or their souls existing? This goes to the religion origin.

During the whole process, we were asking question about meaning--from a small sign to life. For example, what is the meaning of the cross sign? Which religion's sign has Jesus, and which hasn't? How should you treat us as a Christian? And finally,what is the meaning of your life?

I found these religion conversations very interesting due to its relationships with culture and HCI.

We define ourselves as Chinese student and hang out together every week or every several days, and suddenly we found our huge difference regarding our believes. How much does religion matter in HCI??? Does it only matter when the design will be used in Church or other religion place or for religion ceremonies?

I chatted with an Indian guy in a job fair half year ago. When we talked about why google was not the No.1 search engine in China, I said that maybe google just need another different Chinese name instead of using it's pronunciation in Chinese language. How many people tend to think about which country the company belongs to before they open a webpage to search? I don't know. But I think it is unbelievable if people consciously consider this. But why Chinese use Baidu more often than others? I believe that it is the name origins from Chinese (one sentence of a poem), and therefore it is easy to remember and type in.

I am not sure how much culture matters in HCI, but I am sure it really matters. Especially if we want to design ensouled artifacts.

I remember that Jeff showed us the short vedio about Spring Festival decorations and activities in World of War Craft in February. He said he thought it was nice to see this happened in the game world. I thought that it has special meaning to us only because of the connection between us and the culture. And of course, the meaning differs according the strongness of the connection. This back to the religion issues. We respect other religions, but not necessarily believe them or reject them. I guess in HCI, it is not about respect or others, it is about how to show the connections, get our emotions resonated. Where the meaning arises in a religion?

Well, thank you for reading to the end. This post is not well organized. It is just a flow of my thought, begins from a chatting evening, goes through whatever I could think of, and end at my brain stopped working. After writing this, I thought maybe this could be a pre-writing exercise, right?

a presentation experience on last friday

2007-10-22T17:59:00.001-07:00

A concrete activity:

I had a very special presentation experience on the last Friday morning. The presentation was given to a group of girls aged around 10 I believe. In the presentation, we (an undergraduate student from School of Informatics and I) planned to briefly introduce ourselves first; then one of us was going to ask them the question about that what kind of people they think we are as people in computing (here we thought we would get some answers such as nerdy looking, with big glasses, etc.); then we would present our questions (such as how does this person making his living or who is a computer scientists, those kids pick one from four photos) to them, and they could choose answers by using their remote handlers; after these questions, we planed to give them some project examples for what we do in computing. We have 16 slides and 9 questions, and for each questions, there are two screens, one is for the question, and another one provides the statistical result of the answers they chose.

Looking back at the phenomenon in the presentation process by using those theories we learned on classes:

We got a plan and practiced for around half hour together in that morning. The process was rationalized based on time. We predicted their answers for our question and made the different parts pf the presentation connected based their answers—our expectations from them. We supposed to get a nerdy figure our of their mind and show them that we are ordinary people just like other people, and you never separate them from others by looking their face and photos. However, those kids were not very cooperative. They told us people in computing are just usual people like us. They have already known the answers before we “convince” them! Related with HCI, this means the real context. We think we know what will happen in a certain context. But we never know before we actually observe the activities truly happened in real context. We share the same horizons about people in computing with those kids, but our horizons about who those kids are have some problems. Maybe this is one of those unexpected results of the artifact world. By surfing on the Internet, they can easily know these simple questions.

They showed their childish characters when they interacted with those questions though. For example, there is a question: what is this person’s profession? And we show "spiderman's" picture on the right side of the slide, on which he has his camera in his hand.

The options are:

A. Photographer
B. Actor
C. Computer Scientist
D. Super Hero

They chose all of these four answers even they were exciting at the time they saw this question and claimed that they know him.

They need to point at the adapter by using their handler when they chose their answer. However, they tended to point their handlers to the screen where the question was shown. When this happened, another presenter had to hold the adopter and reminded those kids that they have to point at it in order to get their answer calculated.

Here I got a point about “breakdown”: it could be very small thing and maybe totally unexpected. We found that those small girls could not understand the meaning of “profession”, their confusing made us very uneasy, and we have to change it into ”make a living with”.

In the whole presenting process, a lot of judgment was made to direct the process based on what was happening -- embodiment. We have several really cool and interesting examples about Music Informatics and Virtual Reality. But we cut them down because we were run out of time. Those girls were educated hopefully. They were very energetic and involved. In order to let them get the meanings of the presentation, we say it clearly that why are ask those questions and give those examples. They are not just for fun or cool feelings. We use them as media to show that we could do a lot of things such as game design and music control rather than just coding. We use a very simple sudoku game to show those girls that not all the logics are unsolvable or as abstract as E=mc2.

After this presentation was done, I did reflection-on-action, and new knowledge about presentation was gained. Such as, presentation could be interactive activities rather than lecture style. Also my experience of living in the US therefore horizons were enriched in someway both consciously and unconsciously.

An interesting question I asked myself is who could we use these philosophy theories interpret people’s unconscious behaviors? People’s unconscious behavior is highly context related, isn’t it?

what did I do in the last three days?!

2007-10-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

O MY GOD, I just realized that I didn't finish my pre-writing until now. However, I did some reflection-on-action work.

After Tuesday's class I decided to do the most time-consuming work: re-read those readings and gather all my notes and those underlined sentences together! It turns out that it is a huge project! Usually I read on my screen. I could not stop underline those so good sentences when I read those theories due to that the mouse would never short of "ink". Other than underline, I made so few notes on those pages! Although it is a huge project, and I didn't finish it until now and plan to stop now, I still believe that it is a so good idea I got from Tuesday's lecture. It is not easy time when I realized that I just throw all my learning methods away since some time I don't exactly know. I used to have a lot of good learning methods once upon a time. Reviewing old works is as important as learning new things. But now I seldom to re-examine the old works I did. I should do it regularly.

Now I decided to focus on pre-writing, and hope I can get something out of the messy mind.

from game experience to Activity theory

2007-10-14T20:51:00.000-07:00

Nine friends played Wii games today at my home including sport games and Mario party games. We have four handlers which means that we could have four people play at the same time. When we played those minigames, eight of us were really enjoy. Another one was very busy and working by using her laptop.

Clearly, everyone has a clear goal, win the game. In order to win, people use strategies, and share their win strategies with others. When we played 2 vs. 2 games, people shout their strategies to their partner about how to divide their labor, and how to aim their targets. Through the practice sessions, we were trying to find some tips by doing consciously. We were trying to stand out of others by predicting the others’ behaviors and actions. Sometimes we wanted to win, and also want others to be happy. Activities were mediated in the game experience.

However, it seems that nobody really think about the final goals of the party during the gaming process. Maybe they were thinking about it, but who knows!?

Based on this game experience, I got some questions about Activity Theory. In AT, we mentioned in our class that all the activities involved in conscious mini goals. How about when activities happen in a social contexts, and everybody has different mini goals and maybe has similar activity? Or maybe we all have same mini goals but express it in different ways? When these happen, we have no way to connect a specific goal and a specific activity due to the dependency on people and context. The mini-goal direct activities are always changing. How can we connect activities and operations with planed and un-planed?

In one game, suddenly one friend found a new way to shake the handler and he won the game. He was very happy to tell others that we could shake the handler faster by using his strategy. And every other three players stared at their own handlers and began to shake in that way. This is really a wonderful breakdown!

I also think that the mind/body theory was challenged in this game. It is impossible to think and plan our activities first before actions. The situation in every moment decided by the past activities and mediated by both the game environment and other people’s reaction. A lot of operations were conditional response. and happened unconsciously. However, if some players are very familiar with the game, and they got the ability to predict the possible situation in the future moments, and they kind of got “more time” to react to the situations they were facing. This matches the embodiment theory and this kind of familiar shapes the sensibility in HCI design.

Embodiment always exist in reality.

Ensoulment

2007-10-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

In The Design Way, Nelson and Stolterman said, “In any creative act, something new is brought into the world at the expense of the old—which is then destroyed.” But in today’s class, what we discussed about “ensoulment” destroyed this sentence. I have a kind of feeling that what Stolterman said in his book is always the first part, and if you want to know further or the “true reality”, you need to come to the class. HAHA …^_^

I was wandering that something exits or existed in this world was never destroyed by another design. Maybe it is much harder to destroy something than to create a new one, because the old things, something ever exists, was involved in users’ experience, the process people get knowledge and horizons, and becomes a part of the old world as the past, history and knowledge for ever. We need either a long time or very big effort to destroy or totally remove something from the existing compared with the creating process.

When we talk about ensoulment, usually we think about people give the additional meaning or value to the thing because of their own experience or the special relationships which the thing connected for them. For example, someone treasured his pen as a special thing for him because it was a gift from his loved ones. The pictures of dragon in the buildings of every China town in the big cities of the US become a kind of sign, or Chinese spirit symbol.

When we talk about the ensoulment, it is easy to think something concrete, real, or physical existing thing. They have their own aura. They were created by great effort, energy or time. They have their material characters, culture background or family or personal meanings.

How about the things in digital world? They have “no material quality”, and come and go very often which means usually very short live span. However, loyalty happens in the digital world. One of my classmates just like to use Powerpoint to create prototype and he doesn’t care other softwares which could perform similar tasks. A special thing for me is an online forum (http://www.smth.org). I went to the forum very often since I was an undergraduate student, around 8 years ago. At the first three or four years, I published posts on the forum, and talk with other people, some times we played together both online and in reality. Now, the old friends we make from that forum are all over the world. And people who goes to the forum very often now and I don’t know each other at all. But I ensouled that forum and feel be proud of it when people talk about it. I remember the virtual funeral hold for a real person who died in real world on World war of craft mentioned on Jeff’s class. There is some same thing in them. Virtual world or digital craft becomes a part of real life.

What is it good for HCI design? Yes, it is hard to design something eternal or ensoul it during the designing process. And no one knows how to design something to let people ensoul it. It is totally non-sense. However, before we begin the design process, we are kind of making an argument of why we need a new thing, or the design. The more we connect with people’s fundamental understanding of the need, and the meaning of the world and life, our design more tend to be ensouled later by people and deeply rooted in people’s lives. Or otherwise, who knows? !

Motion

2007-10-07T20:23:00.001-07:00

If it is the motion make films living compared with photographs, and therefore gives films overwhelming power to encourage the directors to express and create far beyond record and remind, entice audience to involve beyond just know and accept. What is the motion in HCI? The dynamics in a social network? The feedback and guiding point in an information system? The communications between people and people, people and artifacts, artifacts and artifacts? I guess, AND what else?...

If the motion is only the sequence of activities, it was bland and nobody will like it. This is why the directors make a lot of stories happen on those characters in a relatively short time. And of course, there are some stories happen rely on someone's imagination and would never happen in real life. However, these imposable stories have their root in out society including history, geography, religion and all other aspects could encompassed in cultures. Based on this point, what could we borrow from them to HCI?

The special effects were created and used to enhance viewers' experience. The special effects give directors more power to express their imagination. Sometimes, those special effects make the viewers timid and they still want to continue to watch. Technologies was used everywhere in this world now and for doing everything. But why do we use technologies if we can do same thing without them?--because the technologies give us more power to control the situations we are facing. Sometimes people want to go away from all technologies and pay high price to live in somewhere could not connect with any new technology (cell phone, computer, TV) for one or two night, but nobody want to live in the primitive society for their entire life. We are all looking for something, sometimes we know, sometimes we don't. If only we can know what other people are looking for, we got the motion for our film.

...

AMM culture in different cultures

2007-10-03T20:17:00.000-07:00

photos as statistic pictures are reminder of the past time, here and then.

Films, a serial of pictures which was called motion plus audio provide a much more vivid scenes to us. And we get a kind of here and now illusion. After we get the illusion, we enjoy them a lot.

TV shows, movies produced in the US tend to tell stories happened in the same year or age which was produced.

A lots of Chinese TV shows, movies, and especially those popular ones tend to tell stories which was happened decades, hundreds even thousands years ago.

In China, from thousands years ago, there is a special professional job. One person narrate, play multi roles, and some times also imitate natural sounds, animal sounds at the same time, to tell a story. We call it ventriloquism or oral imitation. Sometimes they use several very simple tools too.

You can find some similar one from the following link, but of course, it is in Chinese:

http://www.sddp.net/sh/china/shys/gdpspd.asp#

It is kind of the first example of “here and now” in Chinese culture.

Visual language, emotion empathy, spiritual worldVisual language, emotion empathy, spiritual world

2007-09-30T19:30:00.001-07:00

By stimulating sensors, Visual language add much more emotional elements. These elements are the media of the expression of the authors—their knowledge, horizons, skills, desire and much more, and were processed by the watcher’s horizons and experience. A good movie was accepted and favorite by many people, but each person has their own reasons to like it. However, people had more similar experience (age, education, living environment,…) tend to have more similar interpretations. And it isn’t necessarily true due to the complexity of human emotion and the nature of the world. The advantage of visual language is that it leaves enough space for audience to imagine or explore by themselves. And the feelings and believes (our interpretations) were enhanced or gotten more and more clear by the repeating elements of the movie. The repeating things could be motion, sound, sign, or other special expression effects. Some times we find that we lack of words to express the deepest emotions arisen from our heart. And the only thing we can do is to do some actions, real actions, such as sing a song, draw a picture, kick something very hard or drive a lot……water. Just as Tao believes that graphs are the better way to describe than words, I believe that actions is the more effective way to express our emotions. Through this expression and interpretation model, people emotionally and spiritually communicate with each other from the two sides of the media. The visual language connect not only the audiences with the media, but also the authors, actors, all the other people who involved in the making process with the media. Sometimes the virtual world and the real world were mingled together at some point, and you never know what is yours and what is your avatar’s. Although sometimes I believe that I could give my avatar a value at any time, it is not always true.

If we believe that the virtual world in which our avatars live is just a parallel world of our real one, we are just communicating with people (could be avatars), the technologies, the colors, the lines, the motions, the sounds and all the others are just tools, carriers of our emotions.

Some people said that we are all crazy in this world due to its complexity. Communication with others becomes more and more important for our live. Other than those ordinary ways, identity (living style, clothing style, sports and movie types) becomes more and more popular. And of course, the identity embedded in the media becomes a kind of label of the person who use the media. Through these media, we connect with those strangers in different ways. Moreover, this connection is in the spiritual world, and in reality, we use same thing, listen same music, like same movie…AND, SHARE SAME BLOG!

a story

2007-09-23T09:21:00.001-07:00

Six year ago, I listened a lecture given by a very famous music composer, Wang Liping(王立平). He composed all the 13 pieces of music for the TV show "The dream in red mansion" during 1982-84. "The dream in red mansion" originally is a novel's name. It is the best novel ever in China. Almost every Chinese know it after it was written more than 200 years ago. The author spent 10 year to write it. According the novel, movies, TV shows, operas, pictures, comics.... all kinds of media were created every several years. Under this kind of situation, all the creation according the novel was examined and critiqued by all the Chinese. The characters, the stories and the poems in everybody's heart beyond all of these media. Compose all the music for the TV show became a very stressful task for him. He began to compose right after the got the task first, because he believed that he read the book before, and knew the book very well. In the first three months, he wrote and wrote, but never satisfied. The he put down his pen, and began to re-read. He told us that he could not write down even one note more than half year. He read the book over and over again even he has already read the book for several times before he got the task. He could not eat and sleep well since the day he got the task. And one day, he suddenly knew the feeling of the author, what the author was writing. In the end, he composed 13 pieces of music for the show in those two years. The music and the show became a classic, and was applauded until now.

This story remind me that writing, and also design is a process which require us to step back and put a lot of effort on it. After Tuesday's class, I noticed that what I post on blog is pre-writings. Something, one thought or others words triggers our thought, a piece of thought shows up in my mind and I just write it on the blog. Some of these thought was destroyed by further thinking, some of them were revised in mind, and others were forget behind. If only I could persist a little bit more...maybe nothing will happen ^_*

Anyway, the hardest and most exhausting moment is the nearest point to the most creative point. I believe. And the worst thing is to give up at those moment.

structuralism vs. phenomemology

2007-09-20T08:57:00.001-07:00

If we think about the process of the language to be formed, isn’t it a phenomenological process? It’s just like the doing and undergoing model. We use our own language as a baby, but nobody can understand, then we learn, accept the language of other people which based on social rules, then we could be understood.

Does it mean that structuralism would ultimately end at phenomenology? Maybe no. This kind of relationship reminds me to think about the relationship between material and tool. Structuralism as a tool could participate the interpret process, will never be the material. Phenomenology seems more fundamental because it mixes the material and the tools together as phenomena. Is this true? I don’t know. Maybe nothing is true in the design world:P

Found or use conflict/related word is just the method of structuralism, but not their goal. By using those conflict words, they put the certain things into their frame which was composed by those words. In these sense, structuralism also include observation. And on the other hand, phenomenologists also organize their language before observe those phenomena, use their language to interpret.

Language is the tool and also the material for a writer, but only a tool for reader. A specific paragraph is constituted by language elements, but it is not common sense language anymore, it could be the special language to express the author’s mind at specific time.

interpretation of virual culture

2007-09-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, we truly have two very livid and refreshing classes. On the first class, Jeff brought several fashion magazines, and Tao, Zhuofeng and I as a group picked a serial of advertisement pictures as Jeff required to answer his questions in order to have the understanding experience.

Two of those questions are:
What message are those fashion magazine pictures sending to us? And who are those photos for?

Those photos are created and sent to those who are looking for them. And they (the creators) hope that it is basically everybody. The simple assumption here is that everybody likes beauty. We can say that those models are idealized ourselves, and they are living with our idealized lifestyles. But when they create those pictures, they are guessing the customers, what they like and what they want.

After think through the process of analysis, understanding, or maybe sometimes just guessing, it is all about “relationship” to me. Those pictures, objects or models, one or in a group, are trying to reach their potential customers by interpreting our relationships with nature, other people and objects, our position in everyday life and career, social status. The audiences looking for those pictures, those products are also trying to put themselves into a specific social position. It leads me to think back to “what is culture” again when I cannot get rid of this relationship concept.

After this practical theory class, we had another more interesting one on Erik's class. Two people as a group draw a face together. We learned that we can control ourselves--our roles, our characters as a designer.

Reading diary: “Theory of Present” --"The Language Of New Media"

2007-09-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

At the beginning, Lev Manovich proposed a lot of question, “Where were the theoreticians when….?”

These questions show us another aspect of design, theory, progresses, or we can say change: it’s unpredictable character. Although we are always trying to predict the future or the result of some action or design.

“I aim to describe and understand the logic driving the development of the language of new media. (I am not claiming that there is a single language of new media. I use language as an umbrella term to refer to a number of various conventions used by designers of new media objects to organize data and structure the user’s experience.) It is attempting to extend this parallel a little further and speculate whether this new language is already drawing closer to acquiring its final and stable form…”

What is “this parallel”? Is it between the “new language of the computer media”, which the elements of previous cultural form shaping it were still clearly visible and recognizable, and a ”coherent language”? If yes, why do we want or need to draw it further? Isn’t it good to let them melt together?

“What follows is an attempt at both a record and a theory of the present.”

That is true, we always record the past, and theorize the past experience. The present here, I am not sure, but believe that it is what has already happened before the theory made.

What is porblem?

2007-09-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

Problem was defined as the difference between what people expect and what they perceived by a paper I read for my elective class.

In that paper, I like the following sentence: one person's problem is an other person's opportunity.

Science, art, design

2007-09-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

CONTROL.

There is something we can control in these world, and something partial, and something we totally cannot. However, we are human beings! No matter we can control it or not, we always try to understand, predict and control the situations.

SCALE and SCOPE.

Based on different aspects we concern, there are different scale measurement. For example seriousness, the scope of the context, population, ...

Science, art and design has their own goals, outcomes, users, the method to express...But they always interweave together in the reality. It is only a simplified way to separate the complex concepts and try to understand the more complex situations and concepts which involved all of these concepts.

To Mingxian: Don't forget to check those papers, especially those you got from the first Erik's class, when you feel confused and frustrated.

Design theory, you make me crazy!

2007-09-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

It is amazing that three classes was taught by one professor within one day. The best part is that we only discussed the theories in the first two classes, because after the second class, my head was already painful and turn into mess because of those questions and my hard thinking. After almost three hours discussion, it's difficult to stop thinking those concepts, and terms. The interesting thought of my friend Tao is that it is so ridiculous to explain words by using words which were created by human beings. He also believes that the best tool to explain thing is image. We cannot deny that it is true for concrete things, but as for abstract words, I cannot imagine what kind of image we should use to. Maybe it is not very important to make a judgment about it rightness now, but I feel so happy to hear this kind of different sound. Even thought it just is one sentence said during a friendly dinner, it leads me to think.

We discussed what is material and what is the tools in interaction design. Bits, programs, programing language, content.... At first, I believed that the content is the material, minutes later, I convinced my self that the program is the material, but now, I think the program should be the outcome, but what is the material? Logic flies across in my mind for maybe just 0.0001s. if program is the outcome, language is tool, the bits are material!? Is what are are designing is the logics including work flows involved in a project? Then the material is maybe the mappings or connections between the e-world with the artificial world, the new world with the old world.

In the beginning of the first class, Erik wrote on the board:" the material without quality". This is also in his book. I believe that the outcome of an interaction design has certain qualities. My question is that how can we create something with quality by using those materials without quality? The Erik said told me that it is wrong that material without quality. Now I think that maybe it depends on how can we define quality here.

Why the old question–what is design was asked again and again?

2007-09-02T22:31:00.001-07:00

It is all about the old question:”what is design?” Because it is across disciplines and cultures, nobody can really give a single definition about it, no matter how many bullet items were added into the definition. When we add more, we find more which needed to be added and revised. Just because its complexity, it is full of “supernatural attractive” to those who want to truly understand what it is. And, yes, when we learn more, we find more to explore. From the using of technologies and fundamental materials to social responsibilities, from the products to the process, we try to understand it and make the design into a kind of creative, responsible, and realistic thinking process in the certain context based on all kinds of limitations. However, we still don’t know how to do the design, which means there is no patterns we can follow. Under this condition, to understand its meanings, its developing history and current stage, the design culture, and both the intellectual process and interactive relationships in a design becomes very important even necessary. We believe that the universal truth exists in all of these aspects of design. By understanding these, we will not be frightened when we face a complex system design situation; we could make balance and compromise but not wince; we make sound argument without reckless; we could feel less confused and frustrated when we face dilemmas during the design process.At the end of this post, I feel that the relationship between the three stages of technology use and the three waves of HCI. I’d like to say that the 3waves in HCI’s development is only an instance of the three stages although maybe it is not appropriate to say that HCI is a technology. The 3 waves are the history and the path HCI goes through. The happened at certain time and conditions. The three stages of technology use is always happening for a new technology. And they are mapped into the experimental stage, the beginning period of using as a principle of a method or a nontechnical support of a tool, and the matured practical technology to be fully accepted. Sometimes these three stages are not exclusive，and sometimes technologies get matured and new technologies emerged in the loop of these three stages.

Expression a design idea

2007-08-31T08:24:00.000-07:00

Reading: 'Saddler, H. J. (2001). Design: Understanding design representations. Interactions, 8(4), 17-24'

How to express ourselves design idea and represent it to other designers, clients and consumers clearly and non-ambiguously by using tools such as storyboard, wire frame, scenarios, prototype, sketch, symbols... ?

New semester and new beginning

2007-08-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

It was a nice summer, and I learned the most important course in my life.

New semester, new hope , new beginning, new life.

I feel so sad today

2007-05-11T19:55:00.000-07:00

Sad for myself. Nothing to do, nothing I want to do. Re-read "Thoughtful Interaction Design". In the first chapter, Erik Stolterman said:"Working with design means that you continuously need to define and redefine what you think of as good design. It is a never-ending process of thoughtful reflection."

As human, we need to define and redefine ourselves, and this process is never ending. That is why Marty said that the learning process is painful.

CHI Conference

2007-05-09T20:05:00.000-07:00

I had a fantastic week when I attended CHI conference, even though I caught a cold and was very sleepy after I ate the Chinese medicine.

First of all, I met three old friends who are my undergraduate classmates. This year is the tenth year we know each other. I had not seen two of them for six years, and another one three years. We all changed a lot in the past ten years. But it is really good to talk with old friend and our sounds turned smaller and smaller until we could not heard it at three or four o'clock in the morning.

Secondly, I got a lot of chance to talk with a lot of people including people who were always around but never got a chance to know each other, people met for the first time but the feeling when we talked just like old friends, because we are Chinese and we are students of the same university or neighbors.

Thirdly, it is amazing to find out that there are so many topics people are working on. I talked about the research about avatars with people who never know games. And when they asked me what applications these research could be applied, I told them it could be used in hospital, to let the live size avatars to accompany those lonely patients in the shape and behavior of their loved ones. Is this a future direction or not? I don't know. But I feel good after I said that as a potential use.

Fourth, ...

reflection at the end of the semester

2007-05-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

What am I learning in the School of Informatics?

In the classes of this semester, and the HCI/D master program so far, I am in the journey to explore the answer for the question: what design is, from both theories and practices. I try to answer it after I read, write, think, attend lectures and talk with others, and for many times, I destroyed the answer in my mind by myself right after it was formed. The answer was revised again and again, and more and more issues get involved. I am in the painful and happy journey of the exploration.

Terms, from creation to sustainability, decorates the way of the exploration. Although I learnt the theories and methods to evaluate and test the usability of a design, I still believe that the focus of the study of the first semester was on creation. From the interfaces of a thermostat and online quiz system to public transit design, I arbitrarily promoted my creativity, although I was following the themes and rules. It was the first step of the exploration of the HCI world.

With the concept that design is everything, I began to learn usability, feasibility, rationality, functionality and aesthetics. And from this semester, another set of new terms emerged. User-centered and interactive design was enhanced by experience and sustainability. On the other hand, feasibility, market analysis and financial plan were learnt from both theoretical and practical aspects.

From the movie, “Hole In The Wall”, I suddenly understood that sustainability is concerning not only environmental issue, but also social responsibility. And this is why Eli told us to design for the future in my understanding. As human beings, we should think and do things in a higher level than individual needs.

“Studio Culture” became an learning and working environment which we studied in. And it was so familiar when I saw the sketches all over the walls in the design school in Stanford University. There was one second that I wanted to tell people we did same thing in our school.

I draw my first sketch in my life. When Eli asked me where my diagram was, I was confused because I believed that diagram was not sketch, although I don’t deny that both diagram and sketch are good way to talk with my own mind, maybe diagram is better to help me think further.

It is so nice for this class to remind me to build my professional portfolio site. From the portfolio assignment, I understood the course which is for my success of the program and my future career rather than only one course. Honestly, I really appreciate the stand point of this course. And also, I guess that is why we had a team project which continued for a whole semester with a real partner: to work on a great project to build portfolio.

The text books are really good. I am going to read some of those book again in the summer.

I like this website so much

2007-04-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

Today when I look around on line and try to find more and more resources for my writing assignment, I found the article named the principles of design (available at http://www.digital-web.com/articles/principles_of_design/). At the bottom of the article, there is a "related resources on the web" section. And the first resource is
: Art, Design, and Visual Thinking by Charlotte Jirousek

If you click on the link, you goes to this website: http://char.txa.cornell.edu/

the theme of the site is :" Art, design and visual thinking. It's a good place to learn basic rules of graphic design.

what are the connections and differences between interaction design and experience desigen?

2007-04-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

What are the connections and differences between interaction design and experience design?

Basic need or high level need? Interaction is basic? Experience is at a higher lever? How about accessibility? Accessibility and interaction at the same level?

Interactions are needed for an experience design or not?

Keep in mind

2007-04-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

Some times I think about the HCI d program and the courses. I understand Eli’s class more and more after I read papers which were recommended by Jeff. Did I use knowledge which was gotten from other courses to do my projects for Jeff's class? Maybe I did. But I never thought about the papers I read last semester to make the argument more convincing when I did projects in this semester.

Sometimes it’s easy to connect what we need to use and our memories, sometimes it’s hard. Maybe it’s because of, like Pin Sym said, how well we know about the area.

Does it matter if I had a bad memory? ...

Accessibility

2007-03-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

When we talked about accessibility today, we focused on design for people who have one or more kind of disabilities. But I think that experience design and accessibility are at different level of human needs. I believe that accessibility is a basic need for a design, and of course every design has its specific target audience and utilization. Experience is on a higher level than accessibility. For example, if some people are struggling for food and clothes, they maybe will not pay the tuition to pursue their Ph.D degrees. And for normal people, what they are able to do sometimes are not what they'd like to do.

However, if the basic need is not well solved, the problem it could bring maybe very serious.

Poster for Mathers Museum of World Culture

2007-03-26T19:05:00.000-07:00

Made a poster this afternoon. This is the my first time to make a poster. Critique and comments are welcome and needed!

Visit Computer Science and Informatics Poster Session

2007-03-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

I visited the Computer Science and Informatics Poster Session in the evening yesterday. Other two my classmates and I have already worked on a poster for hours for our course project before we went the session. Before went there, I believed that poster should express one theme by using simple image, words and colors instead of complex diagrams, paragraphs. After I went there, I found out that most of the posters are framed by their research logic. For example:
Problem-> analysis-> solution->evaluation->challenge->future work.

My husband persuaded me that "Scientific poster is in this style". I agreed with him, and I saw that the posters which designed by HCI/d students are more romantic than those by computer science people. I like those artistic posters rather than scientific ones! But the problem is not which style I like! The problem is what style should we follow when we make a design poster? There is no answer. Maybe we can say that it depends, depends on the goals of why we make the poster, and on who are the audience of the poster. We can always say the words: “it depends" when we cannot get single， simple， right and wrong answer. Maybe the answer exists in the problem what design is, science or art. If we believe that design is a independent discipline, neither science nor art, then we have our own way to express our themes by using posters as a way, not a work flow, not a single piece of art.

Experience Design Experience

2007-03-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

Experience Design Experience, begins from the curiosity, and continuing with designer's emotional experience. As a designer, we walk into the context through our research work, understand it; and we get passion, are happy to change the unknown world into known, and begin to run; at last, we can fly on our imagination to design. The loop is continuing.

Experience design

2007-03-06T19:25:00.000-08:00

We were talking about the World of Warcraft game in Jeff's class this afternoon. And he said he was very happy that they celebrated lunar new year. There were lanterns and fireworks here and there as decorations, and they were invited and teleported to their enemy's territory to celebrate together and ate dumplings which were supposed to give them some super powers. And unfortunately, they were killed on their way back to their own place.

First of all, I'd like to say that I feel very happy that people pay attention to our Chinese festival, and celebrate it online in their virtual life. This means a lot for me as a Chinese.

However, when we talking about experience design, my first response is that culture experience design should based on deeply understanding of the culture and pay attention to details. For example, the fireworks are alway covered by red paper in reality. Maybe sometimes their are some pictures on it, but the background color definitely should be red.

Secondly, the experience designer pay attention to people's emotion experience. Lunar new year is so important to Chinese not because we can reunion with family and friends, eat good food and get relax from work, but because that lunar new year means the end of the past, and another beginning of a new period of the journey of our life. Therefore, there are new hope and chance. We never talk about words like die, pain, illness, kill, hurt ... We believe that the Bodhisattva, the personifications of wealth and happiness drop by our houses and give us bless, lucky and new chance at the moment between the old lunar year and the new one.The emotions were perceived in the reality experience should be promoted by the experience design rather than changed.

At the last part of the class we discussed about toy design. Toy design is following the way of modeling things happened in reality world and the natural order of the existing world.

Education and Experience

2007-03-05T17:32:00.000-08:00

The belief that all genuine education comes from experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. Experience and education cannot be directly equated with each other. From some experiences are mis-educative. Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience. An experience may be such as to engender callousness; it may produce lack of sensitivity and of responsiveness... a given experience may increase a person's automatic skill in a particular direction and yet tend to land him in a grove or rut... An experience may be immediately enjoyable and yet promote the formation of a slack and careless attitude...Each experience may be lively, vivid and "interesting", and their disconnectedness may artificially generate dispersive, disintegrated, centrifugal habits. The consequence of formation of such habits is inability to control future experiences. They are then taken, either by way of enjoyment or of discontent and revolt, just as they come.
---Dewey 1938:13-14

Article review:Toward intelligent styling for digitalmuseum exhibitions

2007-03-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

= Toward intelligent styling for digitalmuseum exhibitions =

== Reference ==
Jen-Shin Hong, Bai-Hsuan Chen, Sheng-Hao Hung. ”Toward intelligent styling for digitalmuseum exhibitions: modularization framework for aesthetic hypermedia presentations”. Int J Digit Libr (2004) 4: 64–68 / Digital Object Identifier (DOI) 10.1007/s00799-003-0059-3, 2004

== Synopsis ==

In current Web-based hypermedia environments, digital museums enable people to explore collections for inspiration, learning, and enjoyment by constructing and maintaining online interactive and aesthetic hypermedia exhibitions. However, constructing a large-scale exhibition is not an easy work, and in particular, the shaping of presentation styles requires tedious multimedia composing and is indeed extremely laborious. The function of an intelligent styling system is to help museums efficiently and effectively produce and publish attractive exhibitions online. The authors propose a fine-grained modularization framework that decomposes the styling of a typical hypermedia presentation into fine-grained style modules (FGSM) as the first step toward developing an intelligent styling system for digital museum exhibitions. By using this modularization mechanism, a hypermedia authoring system could be implemented which allows content providers to efficiently develop highly aesthetic, media-centric, interactive hypermedia presentations.

image:Role of FGSM in the styling framework.JPG (see the paper)

Generally speaking, a digital museum exhibition should contain content elements and style elements (e.g., background animations, decorating graphics, functional scripts, audio loop, layout setting, font typesetting, etc.). To achieve the reusability, portability, and flexibility of hypermedia styling, the style elements should be decomposable into a set of self-contained, cohesive, and loosely coupled fine-grained style modules (FGSMs).A FGSM presenting a specific content fragment. By assembling and switching FGSMs, a content document can then be presented in different fashions.

image:Logical structure of content document and stylesheet.JPG (see the paper)

A hypermedia document based on a “mono-modal media handler” and a digital museum exhibition management framework has been designed to realize the concept of FGSM. Mono-modal media handler means that one handler deals with a single multimedia file's style.

== Reflection ==
This paper mainly focuses on the modularization framework which helps museums to create digital exhibitions. The reusability of the FGSMs makes the work of shaping presentation styles easier by assembling different set of FGSMs than by creating styling files for every single exhibition. It becomes possible that to create an online exhibition without technology specialists. And also, it enables the exhibitions to be reserved forever after they are created by storing the hyperlinks between content documents and FGSMs.

image:Exhibition forever.JPG

The lines are the handlers mentioned above

However, the styles of exhibitions should be changed according the exhibition themes and goals. It is hard to prepare FGSMs for the future use. On the other hand, it is hard to find an appropriate set of FGSMs for a specific exhibition.

At the beginning of the paper, the authors mentioned the users’ interaction with the virtual exhibitions. I believe that the interactive mode could be integrated in the framework as a kind of special FGSMs.

== Reference ==
1. Van Ossengruggen J (2001) Processing structured hypermedia: a matter of style. PhD thesis, Vrije University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2007-03-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

=The Museum Experience=

== Reference ==

*Book: John H. Falk, Lynn D. Dierking. The Museum Experience. Whalesback Books, Washington, D.C. 1992.

== Synopsis ==

Museums have their origins and inseparable missions of basic research and public education. However, unlike schools and universities, the audience is self –selected, and the learning is self-directed. The Museum Experience systematically examines the conditions for museum learning for visitor’s perspectives, and “attempts to present the ‘big picture’ of the common, but still poorly understood, use by the public of places like science centers, art museums, history museums, historical homes, nature centers, aquaria, botanical gardens, and zoos.”

The Interactive Experience Model was created as a framework to present a coherent picture of the visitor’s total museum experience.

image:The_experience_model

*Personal Context

The personal context incorporates a variety of experiences and knowledge, including visitor's interests, motivations, concerns, and varying degrees of experience in and knowledge of the content and design of the museum.

*Social Context

Social Context includes that if the visitor was in a group or alone; the mesuem was crowded or empty; the interactions with museum staff, volunteers and other visitors.

*Physical Context

The physical context includes the architecture and 'feel' of the building, as well as the objects and artifacts contained within.

By analyzing people’s motivations before the visit, behaviors during the visit and memories after the visit in personal, social and physical contexts, the museum learning was defined and the problems in museum experience was deeply explored based on the understanding of museums as gestalt. At the last part of the book, “a professional’s guide to the museum experience,” insightful guidance about how to create the museum experience for different kinds of visitors, casual visitors and organized groups was provided also on visitors’ perspective.

The analyses in this book are not only fit in museum, but also refer to all kinds of informal educational institutions.

== Reflection ==

The Interactive Experience Model is created to understand the museum experience at museums. It can be used to analyze the theories in Human-Centered Design field. We do user study in target audiences’ personal context, do usability test in physical context. And comparing the coming of the third wave of the human-computer interaction design, social context get more and more attention from designers, user-experience and co-experience are both important terms considered during design processes. It is a useful framework to analysis an experience. However, the three contexts are inseparable and melted into the reality world. How can we create more and more effectively applicable methods for designers based on the Interactive Experience Model?

Another thing worth to mention is that learning is a long-term effect. “People learn best those things they already know about and that interest them, and people are interested in those things they learn best.”

Designer

2007-02-21T18:58:00.000-08:00

From recent classes, I got a conclusion: Before you become a good designer, you must become a good philosopher first, at least a good thinker.

I know that it is unnecessarily true.

future

2007-02-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

Today I went to another career fair for summer internship.

And yes, I think it is time now for me to think about my future. I want to go back to China sometimes, and want to get a job here sometimes. It seems that get a Ph.D degree is a good choice for me no matter to go back to China or stay in the US for a while.

The IT industry needs engineers and programmers more than pure designers for now.

There is no boundaries for designers or others, but different ways to get in the door.

NORMAN's words

2007-02-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

The conceptual model
Real affordances
Perceived affordances
Constraints
Conventions

Feedback

Norman, D. A. (1999). Affordance, Conventions, and Design.
Interactions 6, 3 (May. 1999), 38-43.

sure

2007-02-13T20:48:00.001-08:00

There is no second chance for certain things. So be careful, well prepared, always.

usability

2007-02-13T20:23:00.000-08:00

Design a software without a user interface is like designing a magnificent house without any door.

__Rajendra Kumar

It is interesting and true. A user interface is a door for users to go into the inner world of a software or a website. Easy to use = easy to open and lock.

Everything depends on your goals

2007-02-12T12:22:00.000-08:00

Write down the word "Design" on a whiteboard. You can write hundreds of other words related with it.

Pragmatic, romantic, scientific...
Functionality, Aesthetic...
Analysis, Synthesis, evaluation...
Science or art...
Limitations, Compromise
Human-centered, user-centered
easy to use, easy to learn, efficiency, effective..

The list of words which tinghtly related with HCI Design goes on.

Design is the eager desire to make an improvement.
Design is the challenging and struggling of designer's ability, foresight and inside world.

There are philosophies, principles, methods, rules. You can believe or not, follow or not.

There is no standard, no proper balance to weight your design. A design can be evaluated as a prototype. A design can be judged by users through the using process. Unfortunately, sometimes a design idea could only be seen as feasible one after a long time. Besides those which were believed decades after they were created, how many design ideas were abandoned without any evidence?

Everything in existence is reasonable. All depends on our goals and how do we look at it.
If your design is benefit for only one person, your design is good, even though maybe you thought it's not good enough, but who knows?

Just like life. What is your life goals? Maybe you can find that your life goals are keeping change. Life is neither science nor art. There are ethics, society, family and individual. You are here today and another country tomorrow maybe. Life goals maybe are changing with the locations and time. But whereever you are, you should know what you can do, what you should do, and what you want to do. Everything depends on your life goals. Life goals could be changed, but we shouldn't lost in them. There are different ways you can follow, and you never know which one is better.

Do whatever you believe in.

Experience

2007-01-24T20:00:00.001-08:00

What is experience?
Experience is not only look, observe, touch, think, remember, ...
Experience is engage, participate...
The emotion involved in experience should be deeply impressive.
Understanding and feeling a piece of art not only the surface, the physically beauty, but it's "Aura"! The Aura could be passed on to its insteaded one if the authentic was lost. And the losing itself becomes a part of is Aura.

Experience is human-centerd. It's human's experience. There is no experience if there is no human in the activities.

Experience is that what you are experiencing becomes a part of you, your life. Experice and you are inside of each other.

7 plus or minus 2

2007-01-06T11:47:00.000-08:00

Have only seven options on a menu;
Display only seven icons on a menu bar;
Never have more than seven bullets in a list;
Place only seven tabs at the top of a website page;
Place only seven items on a pull-down menu.

All of these are wrong. Why? ...

Joy surfeited turns to sorrow

2006-12-17T20:36:00.000-08:00

There is an adage in China which means:" Joy surfeited turns to sorrow."

After I came back from a party which was held by one of my classmates, I just found that I an going to get a A- for one of my course in the passes semester. It is sucks! I feel so miserable, angry, unfair, and...

Freakonomics with Design

2006-12-15T09:48:00.000-08:00

I believe that Freakonomics is analyzing problem in different perspectives. Have the meaning of "change roles between people, give a design task to physics, and let a software engineering draw some sketches. " At the same time, means sometimes between the design process, we really need to step back to re-analysis the original problem.

Here is the voices from my classmates:

dproyer
What does Freakanomics have to do with design? For me, it means considering the unintended consequences of our designs. A design is created for one purpose, but it will have other effects, immediately and down the road.

tympace
Freakonomics and design is definitely the idea of reaching beyond your initial design to look at the impact of your design in use. The idea of "sustainable design" is related to the "freakonomics" concept. What resources do our designs require and what resources to they replace? What can be reused by the replaced item and what is headed straight for the landfill? Why do we deliberately design for products to be replaced (consumer electronics)?

dproyer
Planned obsolescence, according to Wikipedia is "the conscious decision on the part of an agency to produce a consumer product that will become obsolete and/or non-functional in a defined time frame."

As a marketing undergraduate we learned about planned obsolescence and even how to decide how long a product should last. In a capitalist society, will this always exist? Can anything be done to stop it?

balchenn
I think it has relevance when we decide our design space. Maybe we're not identifying the real design problem, because we think what we know is right. If the fall in crime would have been attributed to economic boom, and not to the abortion law, and policy makers focused merely on incentives for the economy as a solution to decrease crime, and not tackle the problem of unattended children, the problem may not be solved.

ssshould
My concern in regards to Freakanomics is that as designers we have to be prudent and acknowledge that we do not put our needs before the users. There are a lot of good insights put forth in the book but I think that in a collabrative effort such as Freakanomics I think you have to be vigilant in making sure that your assessment is as objective as possible. I think that Levitt's research had several good points but the reflections by the co author Debner were somewhat suspect. I think the chapter about naming ones child and the subsequent success was not very well thought out. For design I think that this is a constant struggle to keep our needs out of the design process for the most part. If we are successful at this our design will be resilient and sustainable.

dproyer
I think the problem with parts of this book is the attribution of human behavior to a specific variable. Humans, and the societies we create are complex, and just because a behavior or societal change is correlated with a certain action, does not mean their is any causation.

I think this is important to remember when designing. Even if something "worked" for a previous design, it may not work for you. Changes in human behavior are affected by such a large number of variables, it is difficult to assume any causation. This is why user testing in context is such a good idea.

chang5
The user indeed matters. The predispositions of designers might lead to a totally different way after the user study or usability testing. I think Freakonomics values what is under beneath. I am really impressed by the cover: the peel is apple but something inside is orange. Maybe the idea is similar to what Marty said in class: dig deep. Finding out a nice solution to a specific problem needs not only thinking continuously and deeply, but also viewing the problem in different ways.

The discussion on this book also makes me think about another concept Marty mentioned. Sometimes, designers might confine themselves in a corner. The design ideas they come up with are going around a circle. If designers are able to achieve another corner, they might get some good insights and concepts. Freakonomics told me not to swamp into former logic and discipline, but to review the problem and find out a good approach to deal with or explain it.

sbhandar
Even I see, Freakonomics as a voice of researching in depth to find out connections that you never thought existed.

I will give you an example (again from one of the papers I read) -> an old lady was asked for a preference between a mobile phone with big buttons and one of those stylish sleeky phones.

What do you think she said --> no brainer --> big buttons right? since it is ultra usable for her (in most of the opinions), Right.

Actually no, she preferred the smaller phone since that would fit in her shirt pocket and she would not have to carry her bag (in which she would put her big mobile phone). And she disliked carrying bags because the bag kept slipping off her paralyzed arm.

I guess Freaknomics asked us to open our eyes to links like these though in itself the book was good, there are still few things which seemed to me too out there to believe (while i was reading it ) but point taken the example also calls for need of good contextual inquiry, but a small question surfacing in my mind now --> how many old people we would be observing or keeping in mind. Few opinions can't predict general trend right.

everyone is different, their needs, choices, tastes, dislikes.

Changm: Why "old people?" It is true that everyone is different, but people have some kind of same desires, same characters. When we face one thing, wehave similar opinions. We use some tools in a similar way...?

kshgupta
I think Freakonomics does not just attempt to discover a cause-effect relationship from a big set of data. A mathmatical correlation of the data may say that A causes B, but it does not rule out the possiblity that B caused A or the presence of another variable X which caused A and B together due to which they appear correlated. The answer may lie in triangulating the verification of research by multiple research methods, not ruling out any possibility. We conduct a research to verify the predisposition, but sometimes uncosciously our predisposition may drive our research and in our eagerness to prove something right, we may design a research method specifically to prove that something. I think what I learnt from Freakonomics is to be honest as a designer, overcome my personal bias, to look at the problem from all different perspectives, not ruling out any possibility and in two words "dig deep".

sfarouk
I agree with the comments above, and particularly like the chapter on "Why Do Drug Addicts live with their Mothers?" The researcher had major incorrect predispositions and it was only until he reached beyond his target group and interviewed, and did the the contextual inquiry with the drug addicts that he figured it out. I saw this ethnographic part, particularly role

What is design? Opinions from my classmates

2006-12-11T08:28:00.000-08:00

Changm:
When professional designers do designs, they should have clear goals, go through processes, apply all kind of skill, and consider involved factors .

nroberg
The various levels of transparency a designer must offer the user depending on the goals of the design.

I think of true design as really attempting to emphasize a more universal communication-"this is how you use me", "this is what I do (or don't do)"-that is obvious to most everyone (at least everyone of a particular culture).

cbaskin
I think the reason why I with struggle with the statement “everything is designed and everyone is a designer” is because we might be looking at the object, whatever it might be, in terms of “good” or “bad” design.

Although the products/works that are produced by the various designers are very subjective to interpretation, there was the intent to deliver a message.

sramalin
Design means to consciously put together bits and pieces of a whole with a strong sense of reason as to why each piece fit into one and not another. HCI as a field in which these self placed constraints are those that relate to human factor issues like usability, accessibility and experience. HCI is not 'just' about usability and designing usable interface, but also one that uses the principles of human behavior to make big impacts on people's lives. Using technology to change the way people think and feel is a large part of what makes HCI.

nroberg
Design is a process and a designer is, obviously, a person who would carry out the process. However, the process and the person do not have to be inextricably linked.
A Designer who has studied design has special tools, knowledge, and approaches to the process of design that makes him/her successful. But I think people, by nature, design regularly. In a broad sense of the word, I think we design our lives everyday.

I prefer not to make too much of a distinction between a sort of "high" design and "low" design because concepts, products, ideas come from all around us.

ptrendaf
A design may have a variety of meanings. Design can be a form of expressing your feelings, ideas and emotions. Design can be a way of speaking to the world and elaborating on ideas of public importance. During this course I realized that every design needs to be able to communicate ideas to the surrounding world.

Human-computer interaction design is the focal point where functionality and aesthetics meet.

A good design has to lead you in a certain direction.

Tympace
Our goal is not just communication, but persuasion.

Nroberg
Persuasion is the goal of sales and advertising but I think design is about communication and maybe even creating desire or enjoyment

tympace
I think persuasion, much like emotion, is more important in some projects than others. A UI is persuading a user to perform certain actions in a specific sequence which is a pretty subtle form of persuasion.

dproyer
Persuasion is the goals of sales and advertising, and much like emotion.
The world design is flexible, and can be applied to many disciplines. Is this problematic? Does it marginalize design? If everyone is a designer, shouldn’t everyone be given the opportunity to take design classes?

wodom
Persuasion is used to make an intended audience or target user group adopt a particular viewpoint and/or action. Naturally, persuasion is an important part of marketing; however I feel the true power—and perhaps more noble use—of persuasion is instituting behavioral change for such causes as this year’s CHI problem.
The dark side of persuasive technology presents future of lost freedom, mistrust, coercion, and manipulation.

Nroberg
Here it seems like persuasion comes from the transparency of the design and it's ability to instruct or guide the user.

I'm seeing persuasion and transparency being strongly interlinked.

balchenn
As a process, I think design is decision making.

ssshould
Design should focus on providing tools for problems. But the manner in which the tools are used seems beyond the scope of design. The concept of persausion is not new the scale of implementing it has changed. I think it is useful for designers to see that within the design process, there are always questions of policy.

chang5
For the communication thing, I think it is not only from designers to users. It should be a two way communication flow during design process. Designers keep gaining the information about the chracteristics of users and the context. Also, they design something to convey the ideas. The designs are the products of continuous communication.

Tympace
Isn't everything about communication ideas? Does that mean design is everything or design is the absence of something (i.e., nothing)?

ashahran
Design is a unique solution.

jmbooher
Design to me just seems to be a recreation of ideas into new things.

wodom
Disagree with that design should focus on providing tools for problems. The design of a tool, its application to a problem, and the manner or context in which it is used are intrinsically tied to each other. Faulty assumptions within these areas of focus will produce any number of design flaws. Simply focusing on creating a tool for a problem without addressing the manner in which it will be used leaves one designing for an ideal world, while living in the real.

kshgupta
For me, Design is all about rational thinking.

ashahran
Design is the process of practical innovation. In order to be effective, the process must accommodate consideration of novel and practical spaces and constraints. Design serves as a guide to an end. Design is a plan to reach a goal. The best design serves its purpose the best.

dmick
To me design is the amount of pleasure someone feels from using or observing a design. The criteria for which could be functionality, usability, and ascetics. All of which combine to form an excellent design.
jmbooher
I think that you can teach design but you can’t teach someone how to be a good designer. This is something someone either has an eye for or doesn’t. This does not mean someone can’t learn the basic rules and get by as a designer but they will never be doing design, just copying formulas and repeating others.

pnshah
For me, Design is in all the intricate things of the universe. We just need to put on our Designer Spectacles to see the design.

junykim
I agree that design is everything.

sinthiru
Design to me is about communicating ideas to the intended users in the best way possible and creating lasting impacts on people’s lives. Designs should stimulate the user aesthetically, create a feel for it and be usable.

Wodom
Design is a philosophy of metaphors and analogs.

Ssshould
I think design is informed by tacit knowledge and therefore we need linguistic tools such at these, to help us convey our vision.

Balchenn
Design is communication; an interface must communicate to the user what can be done by the complex machinery hidden underneath.

Ashahran
Design utilizes similes and metaphors and results in communication. Design is inventive, practical, and can establish medium for interaction.

sbhandar
Design to me is empowering the user to get her task completed without her investing her thoughts, or much time and it would be successful design if she goes back with a pleasant or absence of unpleasant experience.

selthand
A good design should always have some GOAL and it should involve a lot of THINKING. Most of the designs have some GOAL but it gets perfected only by the THINKING.

atrus
To me, good design is the process of creating a unique solution for a specific persona which clearly addresses their needs. Design can and usually should include elements already designed before. However, good design is usually one which has not been created in whole before and would be found inspirational to other designers.

sfarouk
To me:
As a noun, embodies a purpose - sometimes readily seen, and sometimes left to the eye and mind of the beholder. As a verb, is the process of creating a utility, which involves understanding the need, the stakeholders of the design, analyzing relevant issues, devising a strategy for execution, and communicating effectively about the solution. It is important that design creates something useful, particularly one that adds significant value because it makes it all the more purposeful for me to execute it till the end.

kanreed
We design in order to produce something which will aid a user in our target group in their everyday life. Like it has been said before, the design must be a unique solution when compared to 20 other similar solutions. The design must meet specific guidelines of usability, ease of learning, etc...

sk3
Now, I would define design is something that harmonizes human needs with creative activities.

Target Audience

2006-11-28T07:20:00.000-08:00

I believe that the target audience is an important part of a design and it should be known at the first phase of the design process. The target audience directly connects with the content, and their way to use, understand... And also, the target audience and the content decide the way, the methods we design and implement. Outcome is decided by goals.

Process to construct a website

2006-11-27T20:40:00.000-08:00

The following material is copied from http://movielibrary.lynda.com/ on-line training material

Content and target group

What is the content?

Who is the target audience?

Layout and design

Flowchart

Storyboard

Static mockups

Design

Development and implementation

Lay out the navigation

Design and implement the main and tertiary content

Create navigation interactivity

Deployment/Upload Testing

Attitude

2006-11-27T08:53:00.001-08:00

It's all about Attitude. Attitude is the most important thing in our whole life, both personal and perfessional lives.

answer to classmate's question:how important is emotion in HCI

2006-11-26T14:45:00.000-08:00

This is the same kind of question about when aesthetics is important in a design. I believe that this kind of questions always depend on the design. In Maya Lin’s memorial design, memorial is a kind of media to express human’s emotion. Emotion is a big part of music design too. But it would be very hard to design the emotion part in a serial of diving actions for Olympic competition.

When we talk about “Human-Centered Design”, I believe that it includes all the designs in our whole world. This is the human being’s society. Everything we designed, are designing and will design is for human use. Although sometimes we see something as a bad design, but we cannot deny that the bad design sometimes is welcome by some people. One difference between good design and bad design is that good design is in favor of larger group of people than bad design. In different design field, Architecture, music, dance, there are different factors involved. Human Centered design is not in the same taxonomy with them. I remember a word, but I forgot who said it:” if you want to design for all the people, you are designing for nobody.” Then why do we try to discuss all designs together if they are doomed to be different?

I believe that our goal to learn different designs belong to different subjects is not learn the designs in a fast way, but find out all the possible factors which maybe matter in our design. It doesn’t matter about what our design is, website, artifact, or others. We know we should think about functionality, aesthetics, emotions, complexity, laws, time limitation, budget… In our further works, we know where we should begin with after we get a design problem, what kinds of method or process we can chose.

What is design? What a designer could do?

2006-11-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

Who could be a designer? And what kind of activity could be called as a design?
Someone said, "everything is design, everything!" Some one said:” everybody is a designer.” I agree these words sometimes, maybe in everyday life or other discussions. But here, I’d like to say that “everything could be designed, and everyone could be a designer.” What’s the difference between them? I am trying to find my answer from three aspects: goal, process and skill.

Scene 1: One day, you accidentally entered an empty house. There was nothing in the house except one thing, and you never knew what the thing it was. You could do nothing to go out of the house without other people’s help. You picked up the thing, and tried to know what it is by knocking on different parts of it. You knocked on it continuously in order to let people get your signals asking for help. GOD! The sound you made was too melodic to be heard. Definitely you created a piece of great music at last even though you know nothing about the thing, the musical instrument. Yes, you created a piece of music, but you did NOT design it. There is no design goal about the music, and the outcome is not expected.

My opinion 1: A designer has clear goals for design works, functional, aesthetic, emotional…

A design has clear goals too, such as why the design is needed, and what problem a design work should solve.

Scene 2: Deliverymen delivered tons of furniture and decorations to the empty house. They have no professional knowledge about interior decoration, but they decorate their own houses very well. They fit all of articles in the house according some rules, such as the refrigerator was put in the kitchen, and the different furniture in same color and style were put in same room. The whole house looks great now. However, they did NOTHING about interior design, no matter the layout of the rooms was good or not, the color in one room was matched or not, and what special impression people could get from the style. You, as an interior designer, suggest that put all the things outside of the house, ask the owner what kind style s/he wanted the home has, investigate the structure of the house, provide a proposal about your design, test on if the proposal can get the result you want to create, make some change on the proposal, get to know if the proposal satisfy the owner or not, repeat some of the above steps, at last, get the house decorated. Well done? No, it is not enough. Beside of the color, layout, impression, there is much more need to think, such as convenience, comfortable.

My opinion 2: A designer has the ability to control the direction and make progress of a design.

A design should have its process to get matured.

My opinion 3: A designer has his/her responsibilities to a design, and all factors involved in should be considered by not other people, but designers. This is the difference between professional designers and people who just give a piece of opinion.

A design is about not only the things created, but also the influence on the context.

Scene 3: A new disabled family member is coming to the big house. New needs were asked, new conditions were generated…

My opinion 4: A designer has the skills to make some change to a design according the variation of the environment outside and conditions inside.

A design should keep change according the context.

Dance and Music design with HCID

2006-11-19T08:49:00.000-08:00

Music design and Dance design are user-centered design? I think so, but the role of "user" should be think over.

All of composer, performer and audience could be user.

Performer as a user, the human-computer interaction is performer- action, music, instruments and stage interaction.

Audience as a user, the interaction is between audience and performance.

So music and dance design have two different target groups, and two different interactions.

As a designer in music and dance design, the main theme is how to express emotions,
happy, blue, impressive...

They are different from some other designs because some other designs should able to help users to complete some task as necessary tools.

Question about design

2006-11-15T09:14:00.000-08:00

I got some questions in my mind someday last week. I am asking myself day and night, but I cannot get any answer for some of them. Can you discuss it with me?

How much functional aspect should be involved in an interface design, and how much aesthetic?

What kind of relationships exist between simple, beautiful, easy to use, easy to learn, user friendly, user-centered, efficient, effective...?

I believe that if I can do something efficiently, that means effective, right? What is the difference between efficient and effective when we talk about a design?

Usability is very important for a design, but how much more a design should include except usability?

How a design process different with a science research process?

notes for the lecture:"Usability and Risk Reduction"

2006-11-15T06:53:00.000-08:00

Usability and Risk Reduction, by Tim Altom 11/14/2006

Eight factors to affect Risk
Internal users vs. External users
Homogeneity of user population
Requiring site usage (if the usage is required, make some guessing is more reasonable)
Internal changes to procedures
Transaction or Information
Strategic Importance
COmpetitive Advantage
Visibility

simple notes for the lecture

2006-11-15T06:43:00.000-08:00

Introduction to Usability, lecture by Richard Bellaver

What is Usability:

Technologies for learning about and from users
A user-centered design process
A philosophy for approaching design
A result,

How many different things are they talking about?

Actionable, efficiency, memorability, errors, satisfactiory.

Dimensions of usability-- 5E: Effective, Efficient, Engaging, Error tolerant, Easy to use. How to balance these 5Es?

How to take full advantage of user research, design approach and test technology?

"The user is always right!"

Some name he mentioned: Jacob Nielsen, Dick Miller, Ginny Redish, Whiteney

Remote Control II

2006-11-15T06:40:00.000-08:00

11/14/2006 I went to Indianapolis to participate in the Usability Day activity. People sit on a same table automatically became a team, and every team designed a remote control.

Our remote control has two sides. A-side is called simple side, hard button side, which contains only simple buttons, such as power, channel plus and minus, volume plus and minus, and the ten number buttons. This simple side is designed for people who confuse by lots of buttons, and fear to use a complex system. They are old people, children, and maybe some others who fear to make mistakes or don’t understand technologies. B-side is complex and soft ware side. It is a touch screen. Users can choose what hardware they want to remote control, such as TV, DVD, VCR, sound box. According the hardware user chose, different control menu show up on the touch screen. It should be universal (control multi-hardware, recognize the hardware’s brand and model, and fit for people who use different language—universal signs), free (easy to get it). I also suggested that make our remote control smart. If it gets pressure or maybe is covered by some other things, that means it is not easy to be found by users, so it should give some “help” or “I am here” sound signal to people.

Maybe the control menu can personalize in some way. For example, if the user watches only several channels on TV, the menu doesn’t need to show all the channels anymore.

Multiple Used Remote Control

2006-11-13T05:41:00.000-08:00

Remote controls, for TV, DVD, VCR, DVR, sound box system, family theater, air conditioner, light, computer, telephone, door, car, and so on, are in everywhere and every family. And the state of art household electronic equipment has less and less control buttons and relies on remote control more and more. Remote control as a tool makes our everyday life easier and more comfortable, but at the mean time, it could be an exhausted work to find a specific remote control in a big house. My question is how many remote controls do we need to keep and manage in our everyday life? Do these remote controls really help us to make our life easier or make us their slaves? And according to my question, my intervention should be that we should be able to use one remote control to control all the electronic machines in our house, and I would like to call it a multiple used remote control.

I observed my family members’ behavior in my home. And get some conclusions here:

The main function keys, such as power, stop, pause, fast play, skip, up- arrow and down-arrow buttons, are on almost every remote control handhold. Some of keys changes a little in function when they control different terminals. For example, the key button with the picture of “>>” is a fast play button on a TV remote control, but is fast temperature up-change button (the temperature of a thermometer would go up 2 degree when users click the button one time) when it is on an air conditioner remote control.
Remote control is very easy to use or at least easy to learn how to use. Even my eighty-year old grandmother and five-year old nephew who never go to school are able to use remote controls to watch TV, play music and adjust the inside temperature.
It is often happened that people cannot find where a remote control is when they want to use it immediately. Sometimes even it is at somewhere that seems can easily be found by people, it still cannot quickly find by that person who want it. And also people can find several other different remote controls but not the one they want to find or use.
Sometimes people accidentally or intendedly use wrong remote control to try to do something, and hope that the wrong one can work.
Sometimes people give up to find a remote control if they still have no idea about where it is after looking for several minutes.
People get a bad mood if they cannot do something only because that they failed to find a remote control.

Based on above observations, it is very easy to manage if we can only use one remote control to control all kinds of household electronic machines. And if we can do this, maybe we can keep two or three same remote controls in our house to be standby, and do not have to spend lots of our time on looking for a remote control anymore.

Sudoku Puzzle game

2006-11-10T07:10:00.000-08:00

Sudoku Puzzle game is very popular currently. People can play it On-Line, or using small digital game boxes or on paper forms. Obviously, the most convenient way is that draw a 9*9 table on a piece of paper, and write down several fixed numbers in the table, then fill other blanks. But when I fill it, I need to erase the wrong numbers. It turns into a mass after several wrong guess. So I designed a new way to play Sudoku Puzzle game by using a plastic board just like checker board, and the individual numbers would be the chessmen. How to mark the right numbers and the guess numbers which you are not very sure? The answer would be using different color: one side of the number chessman is green, the other side is yellow, and everyone knows that green light in traffic means OK - safe. Play Sudoku game by this way, people neither need computer and Internet nor pencil and eraser. Checker board and chessmen would never out of power like batteries, and it is cheap!

Thoughtless Action (2)

2006-11-09T10:36:00.000-08:00

Wear watch on her small satchel

Thoughtless Actions

2006-11-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

Recommend a book to others

2006-11-07T08:47:00.000-08:00

Have you ever recommend a book to other people? I did it in last week.

The first person I recommended is a very nice professor, after I recommend my book to her, she picked up the book and take a quickly look, then she said:” yes, it is a good book, I should buy one.” Second, I recommend the book to more than five classmates. I told them it is a very good book, some of them looked at the book, and go without ask what the book is. Some of them asked what the book’s name is, but they didn’t write down the name. I recommend it to another nice professor. The following is the dialogue from us:

I: I read a very good book, and want to share it with you.
He: There are lots of books, …
I: It’s good because at the first part, the book talks about….
He: Send the book’s name to me….

???????????????????????????????????????????????????

NONE of these people would read it anyway. It is really a good book, but I would never tell other people its name again.

As A Graduate student

2006-11-07T07:22:00.000-08:00

Why graduate students need to have required class which they must take some time?

How could the classes we take be user-centered (student-centered)?

What is the meaning of "Professor"? Why do people invent the term professor? And what are the main tasks for a professor? Professor as a vocation mixes the meaning of teacher and researcher. We need teacher for class, instructor for project, researcher for research but not for student, manager for the education institutes not for teaching and learning.

These questions fit in the education field all over the world.

A fantasy idea about car’s turning lights

2006-11-05T19:20:00.000-08:00

When a car’s turning lights are turned on, they are always flashing. And you can hear the clicking sounds inside the car. The frequency of the flashing and the sound are consistent. Last year, I lost the right front turning light after a car accident. During the time between the accident and the light got repaired, I found the frequency of the flashing and the sound doubled, and the very fast clicking sound made me very uncomfortable. I felt that my heart was beating faster too. After that, sometimes I found that I feel uncomfortable even when I see other cars’ doubled flashing lights. Why do the cars need to double the frequency of the light flashing and the inside clicking sound? What if this frequency is equal to or a little slower than normal people’s heart beating frequency? It would be very nice, isn’t it?

Notes for reading "Design Wise"

2006-11-05T10:19:00.000-08:00

Alison J. Head's book--Design Wise, uses lots of interviews with professional people, get lots of insight about HCI interface design. It is a good book for a beginner, easy to read.

The first thing I want to remember is the "Considerable Factors in the HCI Approach to Interface Design"
1. Organizational factors: Training, job design, politics, roles, work organization
2.Environmental factors: Noise, heating, lighting, ventilation
3.Heath and safety factors: stress, headaches, musculoskeletal disorders
4.Cognitive aspects of the user: Motivation, enjoyment, satisfaction, personality, experience level
5.Confort factors: Setting, equipment layout
6.User interface: Input devices, output displays, dialogue structure, use of color, icons, commands, graphics, natural language, 3-D, user support materials, multimedia
7. Task factors: easy, complex, novel, task allocation, repetitive, monitoring, skills, components
8.Constraints: Costs, timescales, budgets, staff, equipment, building structure
9.system functionality hardware, software, application
10. Productivity factors: increase output, increase quality, decrease costs, decrease errors, decrease labor requirement, decrease production time, increase creative and innovative ideas leading to new products.

There are also other things such as IBM's four principles of the usability design process, Design Template

How can we keep up to date as a designer?

2006-11-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

I feel a little miserable today because one of my team members said:"While many of your ideas are good, occasionally your ideas are not quite related to the problem at hand." And he recommends me to:"When brainstorming, it might be helpful to ask yourself after each of your ideas "how does this relate to the *** problem?", or in other words, how does this relate to the big picture. If you cannot think of how your idea is related to our project, then just move on to the next idea." This is a very good advice. However, I feel more miserable after I read this because, my team member totally lost when he heard my "news and new ideas" which I really believe that they are tightly related with the project.

This different perspective from me and my team member comes from the different goals in our mind. What is kept in my team member's mind is our current project--current solutions exactly. What in my mind is current project, and how can we broaden our knowledge scope from the current project--up to date news which related with current project (maybe not very tightly), and how can we enhance our current solutions-- are their good enough or can we further improve them?

We are in an information society. How can we keep up to date in the exploding information? -- We are human, and we can individually process information then share it, then we as a group keep up to date. I can say that a project at hand, no matter how big or how good it is, is not the most important thing for us. The most important thing is learning, improve us rather a project.
Obviously I expect to get much more than my team member does. I want to grow up with my every project rather than only do it. Our project is ahead of our time if only we are ahead of our time.

The fifteen ruls of Dream Team.

2006-11-01T12:43:00.000-08:00

Copied from the book:"Creative Advertising, Ideas and techniques from the world’s best campaigns”, Thames&Hudson.

DreamTeam, A basis for every meeting
Your Brief creates space for a motivated team

Two kinds of information in the most briefs: the kind that restricts the team’s creative search-field, and the kind that enlarge the search-field for potential ideas and stimulates the imagination.

Switch on all five senses:

Great ideas come from direct, playful engagement with the product. The sulotion to the task is already there in the product. Your five senses are the tools you use to shape the idea.

Go into meetings with a clear goal

If you define the target group as everybody, you will end up addressing nobody. Emphasizing everything is emphasizing nothing. Working out a goal with a central statement, or single-minded proposition.

Always separate the ideas phase from the evaluation phase.

Make room for creative added value.

Avoid idea killers.

Use doodles to visualize your ideas.

Grab ideas and fun with them.

Look for the positive in other people’s ideas.

Make mistakes and have fun doing it.

Stick with it, the best ideas are yet to come.

Develop your sense of humour.

Wait before evaluating ideas

When you leave a successful meeting with a few good ideas and a feeling of euphoria, wait a while before assessing the ideas. Step back a little and don’t fall too much in love with the first….

Select ideas creatively

Develop new ideas from old…

Turing ideas into action

Dream Team

2006-11-01T10:55:00.000-08:00

About the point of group process, I read a very good book:” Creative Advertising, Ideas and techniques from the world’s best campaigns”. This book is not about specific design or advertisement. It is about brilliant ideas and how to improve creative thinking. The Part I of this book introduce us a new term—DreamTeam, it is a list of fifteen rules of creative teamwork.

These DreamTeam rules:

Produce a bigger catch of valuable ideas;
Give the team a creative boost;
Build structured freedom and prevent sessions of destructive chaos;
Foster faith in the team and enhance motivation;
Allow a brilliant “group brain” to develop;
Promote all sorts of fun and increase individual creative potential;
Save time, money and nervous energy in the hunt for ideas.

The above benefit of Dream Team is copy from the book:"Creative Advertising, Ideas and techniques from the world’s best campaigns”, Thames&Hudson.

all designs are compromise

2006-11-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

dproyer wrote:

In my opinion all designs have faults and failures in them, so it is better to figure them out during the design process and try to fix or minimize them, as opposed to finding out about these problems from the client or user.

Like the book "How designers think" said, all designs are compromise. At this point, who is the target group and what is your goal are very important aspect of a design. Do you want 100% of your target group people 70% satisfied or want 70% your target group 100% satisfied? In the book, the author said maybe you can only make 10% people of your target group 100% satisfied, but it is still a good design. Sometimes even we know the problem or the faults of a design, but we still cannot fix it (technical or methodical aspect) or sometimes the correction of one problem maybe brings other problems, and some of the problems are not under control, something like users' mis-manipulation. Under these kind of condition, what we should do is to eatimate the degree of risk or damage of these problems, and the cost to compensate and avoid the effect of these problems, maybe also should account the marketing aspects, and reach to the best we can.

success

2006-11-01T10:49:00.000-08:00

Sometimes we spend lots of time, money and our energy on something and hope we can get very good result, but the process and result tell us that the method we used or the way we chose are impossible to reach our goal. One of my teacher told me that it is a good result that if you can prove that one mothod is not proper to do certain thing.

Here is an very interesting paper about success makes people happy, and happy people get more success: http://www.apa.org/releases/success1205.html

Some quotes about failure and success

2006-11-01T10:48:00.000-08:00

Faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction--faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.

Hell, there are no rules here-- we're trying to accomplish something.

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration

Do we really need to find failure from success?

2006-11-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

There is an old Chinese saying: Failure is the mother of success. It means what we learn from failure(S) makes us success.

However, it depends on how we evaluate the certain failure and the degree of the failure. Sometimes, even we learn a lot from a failure, maybe suddenly we know everything and more than what we can learn in ten years, but we never get a chance to correct the big mistake or turn the tables. And sometimes, a big mistake or a wrong decision can change a person's whole life-- the philosophy of the world or of human life, and even affect the whole family lives and next generations'. This is big failure. Or maybe it's not a failure, but a decision. Both a good decision and a bad decision can have the same big effects.

I know that what I think is not what Kurzweil is talking about. He advocates that find out disadvantage as well as the remedy of the failure and avoid be wrong at next time. When people get success, maybe they more tend to enjoy the success feeling than summary their experience. Why don’t we use a more optimistic attitude—look for success in failures instead of look for the failure in success? I believe that we can learn from both failure and success. How much we can learn depends on people’s motivation: how much do you want to learn from something. The right way of learning should be never blind in front of both failure and success.

I would like to use another sentence instead: Everyday is a new ladder, follow in the proper sequence and learn something in everyday, and you will go to the success.

Compare two humidifiers

2006-11-01T10:43:00.000-08:00

From their functional aspect, the first one is noisier than the second one. The second one is quiet and you can see the cold vapor out of it. As a humidifier for a bed room, be quiet is the most important feature. From the looking aspect, the second one looks like a big vase or a piece of orchid flower petal, and this is why I bought this one. So before I went to bed last night, I thought I got the humidifier I really need and like. But after I went to bed, I found that the blue light radiate from the blue lines made me can not fell asleep, although the humidifier looks very cool and more beautiful in dark.

From my experience, the good looking attracts more users, broaden its market maybe, but the fatal feature is its functionality. A user-centered design (a quiet humidifier) becomes not very user- centered because of aesthetic feature. As a designer, how to balance the two aspects: functionality and aesthetic issue?

Treat tiny ideas as our big "inventions"

2006-11-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

Sometimes we meet certain situations, look something, a people, a game or whatever, and we say to ourselves:"If this thing could look like that, or work on the way in your mind, it would be better". And after this certain situations change, we just forget what the change we would like to make. How about write down these detailed or maybe tiny changes. Treat these kind tiny ideas as our big "inventions", and feel the happy feeling from them. Maybe days later or years later, we can make some improvement on them, and we get more when we think more. Maybe fantasy idea becomes to be true someday. A casual thought becomes a seed, and it grow up after we trun over it again and again in our mind, maybe it just dies someday, but that doesn't matter.

Ray Kurzweil's seven point program for creating intellectual property

2006-11-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

1. Write the advertising brochure: who is this for and why you are doing it? Features, benefits, and beneficiaries?

2. Allow the beneficiaries to invent the product for you. Include the intended users in the design.

3. Understand dynamics of the group process. It’s an interdisciplinary process; understand each other’s terminology. Invent a new terminology from this mix.

4. Encourage thinking outside of the box by assigning problems to persons from opposite perspectives. (Example: linguists work on engineering problems; engineers work on linguistic problems)

5. You can learn more from failure than success. Turn your successes into failures (success has a way of covering up your failures): look for the failure in success.

6. Design for marketability. Identify the unique characteristics of your invention and why this is a well-leveraged fit for your target application. Rethinking the purpose of the invention.

7. Imagine if it existed and how it would work. Create a fantasy in your mind of how your invention will play out.

Is AI (artificial intelligence) science or not?

2006-10-30T20:04:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-24T18:43:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-10-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-18T18:57:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-18T06:26:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-16T19:07:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

"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

2006-10-03T19:10:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-30T13:28:00.001-07:00