Rich Robinson, of Skookum Digital Works, gave a presentation at a recent Charlotte User Experience Meet-up. The title of the presentation, "Crafting Gorgeous User Interfaces" is slightly misleading. It's not just about making things pretty. It's about ideas, problem-solving, and understanding the people who will be interacting with dynamic interfaces, across devices, screens, and contexts. At the end of the presentation, Rich suggests that you take the time to watch the "Connecting" video, a video I featured on one of my recent posts.
Thanks, Rich, for sharing your thoughts and ideas!
Luke Wroblewski is a digital product/interaction/interface designer who has written about mobile computing and web design. His presentations provide a good summary of how smartphones are functioning in today's world, how they might be used in the very near future, and what designers/developers need to consider. "The tools are in our hands to really design experiences in a different way."
Presentation: First Person User Interfaces (pdf) "The design challenges and opportunities of interfaces that allow people to interact with the real world as they are currently experiencing "
The following video is a presentation by Dale Herigstad, Chief Interaction Officer at Possible Worldwide, from the 2012 TV of Tomorrow Show. If you are interested in interactivity and UX across screens and spaces, it is worth taking the time to watch! WHO OWNS THE NEW SCREEN EXPERIENCES?
The "new world" combines TV and the internet, and poses new opportunities for design. Dale encourages flexibility and fearlessness, and setting goals for the long term. This means that organizations must move away from the "silo" approach, and create teams that can integrate across screens, platforms, content, and input methods, moving from flat-space to interactive, dynamic,layered, 3D, and augmented space. BTW, Dale Herigstad was one of the people commissioned by Steven Spielberg to work on the interface design for Minority Report.
Joshua Mauldin, founder of Invisible Interface & Awesome Gifs, and app creator/manager for The Business Journals, gave a talk about best practices in touchable mobile design at a recent Charlotte User Experience meet-up. I especially liked his use of clips from Arrested Development to remind us of the wide range of emotional responses people get when they use technology, good or bad. (Take a moment and look over the slides for the meat of Joshua's talk.)
(Photo by Brad E.)
Slide-share of Joshua Mauldin's Mobile Design Best Practices talk:
The event was hosted by MyJive, located at the NC Music Factory. I was fortunate to grab a comfy spot to sit - there were about 85 in attendance.At the end of the meetup, I won a ticket to Web Afternoon!
Le Chal is a haptic/vibrational feedback shoe designed for the blind and visually impaired, on of the projects of Anirudh Sharma, a member of the NUI Group (Natural User Interface). Le Chal was conceptualized at the 2011 MIT Media Lab Design and Innovation Workshop at COEP. Take me there Shoe/ Le Chal
If you'd like to learn more about social media, take a look at the following presentation from the recent SoCon11 conference, "How social can news get?", by Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet Project:
"Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet Project, discusses the Project’s latest findings at the SoCon11 conference. He goes through trends in social media use in the last five years of the Project’s data. He explores how the turn to pervasive, participatory, personal, and portable news changes the way news consumers and producers behave and think about the role of news in their lives." - Pew Internet and American Life Project
Quite a few topics were covered at the conference, which can be found on the SoCon11 Agenda site.
Brief background: I've been following developments in intelligent tutoring systems for a while, and find it interesting to see how researchers are combining artificial intelligence, learning theory, affective computing, and sensor networks to create applications that might prove to be useful and effective.
The advantage of using intelligent tutoring applications in some cases is that it provides students with additional support and feedback the moment it is needed, something that is difficult for teachers to provide to students in large classrooms. With the increase in use of smartphones and other mobile devices such as the iPad, there is a good chance that this sort of technology will be used to support learning anywhere, anytime.
Although most intelligent tutoring systems are geared for 1-1 computing, I think there are some components that could be tweaked and then transfered to create intelligent "tutoring" systems for collaborative learning. Students like game-based learning, and what could be more fun than playing AND learning with a partner or group of peers? (I plan to revisit the research in this area in an upcoming post.)
Some thoughts:I envision a system could support learning as well as important skills useful to students in life beyond the school walls, such as positive social interaction, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. The path of least resistance? Most likely applications that support the learning of pairs or small groups of students working at one display. However, in this era of the "21st Century Learner", there is a growing need for applications that can support small groups of students for collaborative groups and project-based learning activities.
There are a few applications developed for collaborative learning activities around a multi-touch table, such as the SMARTTable or the Surface, and more are needed. Also needed are intelligent systems that can support video conferencing and collaborative learning between students who are not physically co-located.
There are some problems that have yet to be solved. For example, the use of multiple sensors for an application designed for young people might be too intrusive. There are serious issues related to privacy/security. Who would have access to data regarding a student's emotional or physiological state? How would this data be utilized? How would this information be protected? Many school districts have security vulnerabilities, so it is possible that this information could be misused, if in the wrong hands.
Below I've highlighted two "intelligent" tutoring systems that incorporate the use of sensors in one form or another to generate information about student learning in a way that simulates what good teachers do every day. The ClassroomAssist application was developed by researchers at Intel, in collaboration with several universities. The Wayang Outpost application was developed by researchers at UMASS, and is aligned with the principles of Universal Design for Learning.
CLASSROOM ASSIST
ClassmateAssist is an application developed by Intel's Everyday Sensing and Perception team. Here is the description of the application from Intel Research:"The advent of 1:1 computing in the classroom opens the door for teachers to set up individualized learning for their students who have a wide spectrum of interests and skills. ClasmateAssist technology uses computer vision and image projection to assist and guide students in a 1:1 learning environment, helping them to independently accomplish tasks at their own pace, while at the same time allowing teachers to be apprised of student progress."
In the following video, Richard Beckwith, a developmental psychologist at Intel, demonstrates a prototype of an application that uses video-sensing to track student's hand movements during a coin sorting lesson. The application provides feedback to the student, and also tracks data about the student's progress that can be transformed into a report for the teacher. The system can also monitor student's facial expression, note attention levels, and provide feedback.
Theocharous, G., Beckwith, R., Butko, N., Philipose, M. Tractable POMDP Planning Algorithms for Optimal Teaching in "SPAIS".International Joint Conferene on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) workshop on Plan Activity, and Intent Recognition (PAIR), Pasadena, California, July 2009.
Wayang Outpost: Web-based Interactive Math/Intelligent Tutoring System, with Sensors.
I've followed the work of Beverly P. Woolf and her colleagues for some time. Much of their research has centered around a web-based application, Wayang Outpost, an intelligent electronic tutoring system that incorporates multimedia and animated adventures while providing activities designed to prepare teens for standardized math tests, such as the SAT and state-mandated end-of-course exams.
In recent years, the team has been using non-invasive sensors in their research, including a camera that views facial expressions, a posture-sensing device located in the seat of the student's chair, and a pressure-sensitive mouse, and a wireless skin conductance wristband. Data collected through all of these sensors can provide useful information about student learning. The system can also note when students try to "game" the system.
Related Publications
Woolf, B.P., Arroyo, I., Muldner, K., Burleson, W., Cooper, D., Dolan, R., Christopherson, R.M (2010)The Effect of Motivational Learning Companions on Low Achieving Students and Students with Disabilties (pdf) International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Pittsburgh.
Abstract "We report the results of a randomized controlled evaluation of the effectiveness of pedagogical agents as providers of affective feedback. These digital learning companion were embedded in an intelligent tutoring system for mathematics, and were used by approximately one hundred students in two public high schools. Students in the control group did not receive the learning companions. Results indicate that low-achieving students—one third of whom have learning disabilities—had higher affective needs than their higher achieving peers; they initially considered math problem-solving more frustrating, less exciting, and felt more anxious when solving math problems. However, after they interacted with affective pedagogical agents, low-achieving students improved their affective outcomes, e.g., reported reduced frustration and anxiety."
Arroyo, I., Cooper, D.G., Burleson, W., Woolf, B.P., Muldner, K., Christopherson, R. (2009)
Emotion Sensors Go To School. AIED 2009. Pp. 17-24. IOS Press. Low-tech description of Wayang Outpost, the math application used in the above publication:
Paul Franz, Recoder.Com 5/16/09 Cooper, D.G., Arroyo, I., Woolf, B.P., Muldner, K., Burleson, W., Christoperson, R. Sensors Model Student Self-Concept in the Classroom (pdf) UMass Amherst, June 22, 2009/UMAP 2009
The following video is an "Animate" of a talk by creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson at the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce). How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century, given that we can't anticipate what the economy will look like at the end of next week?
FYI: An Animate is a video in which a talented illustrator draws images related to the content of a speaker's presentation. (It is a great way to engage visual thinkers, in my opinion.)
The video explains it all.
RELATED
The following video is the longer original presentation by Sir Ken Robinson, responding to the question about how change can happen in education, and what we might do to make it last:
"For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action.
- Our projects generate new models for tackling the social challenges of today.
- Our work is supported by a 27,000 strong Fellowship - achievers and influencers from every field with a real commitment to progressive social change."
If you are interested in ubiquitous & pervasive computing - and creating seamless user experiences across locations and devices, it is well worth the 90-minute watch.
In the video below, Van Jacobson talks about ubiquitous computing, wireless, networking, research, and the challenges of making everything synced and seamlessly inter-operative in the future. In this video, Van Jacobson provides a good overview of the history of the communications/ networking industry, and much, much more. Although the presentation was given in 2006, it is well worth the time to watch:
A NEW WAY TO LOOK AT NETWORKING
Here's info about Van Johnson and abstract of the talk from the Google Tech Talks website:
"Google Tech Talks August 30, 2006 Van Jacobson is a Research Fellow at PARC. Prior to that he was Chief Scientist and co-founder of Packet Design. Prior to that he was Chief Scientist at Cisco. Prior to that he was head of the Network Research group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He's been studying networking since 1969. He still hopes that someday something will start to make sense."
ABSTRACT
"Today's research community congratulates itself for the success of the internet and passionately argues whether circuits or datagrams are the One True Way. Meanwhile the list of unsolved problems grows. Security, mobility, ubiquitous computing, wireless, autonomous sensors, content distribution, digital divide, third world infrastructure, etc., are all poorly served by what's available from either the research community or the marketplace. I'll use various strained analogies and contrived examples to argue that network research is moribund because the only thing it knows how to do is fill in the details of a conversation between two applications. Today as in the 60s problems go unsolved due to our tunnel vision and not because of their intrinsic difficulty. And now, like then, simply changing our point of view may make many hard things easy."
A similar post can be found on The World Is My Interactive Interface blog.
I am always inspired by Bill Buxton's words of wisdom. If you haven't heard of him, know that he's been around for a very long time, coming to the world of computer science and IT through his passion for music. According to his on-line biography, "Bill Buxton is a relentless advocate for innovation, design, and - especially - the appropriate consideration of human values, capacity, and culture in the conception, implementation, and use of new products and technologies. This is reflected in his research, teaching, talks, and writing - including his column on design and innovation for BusinessWeek.com, and his 2007 book, Sketching User Experiences."
A Little Tale about Touch"It's about the physical and the social context where it is happening" (Bill Buxton)
RELATED “The only true voyage of discovery is not to go to new places, but to see the world through different eyes”. - Bill Buxton, quoting Proust (1913, Remembrance of Things Past)
Bill Buxton: After the Show (Interviewed by Caroline Goles, Worldwide Partner Group Business Manager)
"The thesis of this chapter is that we should consider technology in terms of the fidelity with which it reflects human capabilities on three levels:
* physical: how we are built and what motor/sensory skills we possess;
* cognitive: how we think, learn, solve problems and what cognitive skills we possess;
* social: how we relate to our social milieu, including group structure and dynamics, power, politics, and what social skills we possess.
Our metaphor is one of three separate mirrors, each reflecting one of these levels. In order to be judged acceptable, designs must provide an acceptable degree of fidelity in how they reflect each of these three aspects of human makeup and activity. The benefit is in how the model can provide a simple but valuable test that can be used during the design process. We now look at each of these mirrors in turn."
Trevor van Gorp works at Affective Design. He presented at the iA Summit 2010, a conference sponsored and run by ASIS&T, the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
In this presentation, Trevor discusses concepts such as emotion, attention, and arousal, the differences between novice and experienced users, differences in goals, such as experiential, goal-directed, how stress affects arousal and performance, and other topics, accompanied by clear examples, of ways to incorporate "emotion and flow" principles into web and information design.
It should be noted that "emotion and flow" strategies have been consciously implemented in video games by designers/developers for a long time, and these concept most likely have value across various digital domains, such as multimedia journalism, interactive television, and interactive surface or large display applications.
Below are the references from the presentation, as posted on SlideShare:
References
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1990). Flow - the Psychology of Optimal Experience . New York: Harper Perennial.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1990). Flow – the Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial.
Desmet, Pieter, R. (2002). Designing Emotions . Pieter Desmet. Delft.
Russell, J.A. (1980). “A circumplex model of affect”. In Journal of Personality and Social
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Creativity, Fulfillment and Flow, TED talk. 2008
Fehrman, Kenneth R. and Cherie Fehrman. (2000). Color - The Secret Influence . New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.
King, Andrew B. “Chapter 2 – Flow in Web Design.” 2003. http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/2/ accessed on January 21/2007.
Hoffman, D.L, Novak, T (1996), “Marketing in hypermedia computer-mediated environments: conceptual foundations’”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 60 pp. 50-68.
Novak, T.P, Hoffman, D.L (1997), “Measuring the flow experience among Web users,” Interval Research Corporation.
Novak, T, Hoffman, D, Young, Y (1998), “Measuring the flow construct in online environments: a structural modeling approach”, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, working paper.
Novak, T. P., Hoffman, D. L., and Yung, Y. 2000. Measuring the Customer Experience in Online Environments: A Structural Modeling Approach. Marketing Science 19, 1 (Jan. 2000), 22-42
Rettie, R., (2001), An Exploration of Flow during Internet Use, Internet Research, 11(2), 103 – 113.
Simon, H. A. (1971), “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World”, in Martin Greenberger, Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, ISBN 0-8018-1135-X. pp. 40-41.
van Gorp, Trevor, J. (2006). Emotion, Arousal, Attention and Flow: Chaining Emotional States to Improve Human-Computer Interaction. University of Calgary, Faculty of Environmental Design, Master’s Degree Project
Cindy Chastain is a Creative Director, Experience Architecture at Rapp, a global, full-service agency in NYC. Her background is in screen-writing. She also is a film-maker and technology consultant. The video below is of her presentation at IXDA 2010. It is well worth the 47 minute watch!
Here is a quote from Nasir Barday's post on the IXDA blog about Cindy Chastain's presentation:
"Designing with a narrative in mind can make a difference between a product that merely functions well and a product that engages the minds, emotions and imaginations of users." Nasir Barday, IXDA 2/26/10
Here are a few quotes from the presentation: "How can we, as designers, provide cues that will deepen that narrative connection?"
"What can we learn from the discipline of storytelling that will help us design for more meaningful and engaging product experiences?"
"If we can move away from thinking of products in terms of interfaces and start thinking of them as representations or environments, in which agents perform actions, we will get us to a place where we can design more fluid and engaging dialogues/experiences."
Near the beginning of this video, Cindy discusses the concept of the user's narrative, described as a stream of self-talk occurs when someone interacts with a design product. Two types of narratives are likely to occur. According to Cindy, this phenomenon was noted by cognitive scientists. One is narrative of use, and involves the person's self-talk about the products features and affordances. The other is a personal narrative, which focuses on what the product means, how it might fit into one's life, and how it might be used.
I came across the video of the following "5 Rules" presentation on Long Zheng's "I Started Something" blog. This presentation created by Duarte, a company that focuses on visual stories and corporate branding. The presentation can be found embedded in the public beta version of Microsoft Office 2010 Microsoft Office 2010. The new version of PowerPoint features a DirectX-powered graphics engine, which supports smooth animations.
The concepts shared in the presentation are useful for students, teachers, and anyone else who has the challenge of creating an engaging and meaningful presentation. At the end of the video, the last slides provide more specific "how-to" information regarding the nuts and bolts of putting together a quality presentation. You'll probably need to view the presentation Office 2010 Beta in the PowerPoint format if you have the urge to dig deeper. You can find it in the Sample Templates section.
Duarte's Five Rules for Creating World-Changing Presentations
During the opening night community session at the recent AIGA Make/Think conference, twenty AIGA chapter leaders from around the country took the stage. Jeremy Perez-Cruz,of AIGA Orlando, was one of them. This was his 60 seconds:
Make Think from Tea&Letter on Vimeo. Quote from Jeremy's Vimeo channel: "My one minute video presentation for the AIGA design conference's 20/20. 20 designers in 20 minutes. October 8, 2009 Memphis, TN. Shot and edited with the patient assistance of deebstudios.com Music: "Joy" by Four Tet (Make Think remix by me)."
Jeremy's design:related page
Jeremy's AIGA Profile
The first version Did You Know? (Shift Happens) started out as a PowerPoint presentation by Karl Fisch, an instructional technology specialist at Arapahoe High School as part of his staff development program. The goal was to convey information about the speed of change in our world through the use of a variety of statistical facts - on a global scale, and ultimately spark a conversation about the meaning of technology and the future among the educators in the room.
As you probably know, the conversation went well beyond the walls of Arapahoe High School!
In 2007, Did You Know? was updated by some of the designers at Xplane as a volunteer effort, and as of today, 3/25/09, had been viewed by 3,026,101 times on YouTube.
I first ran into Antoine at a coffee shop about a year ago. We both happened to be checking our email's on the same device, the beloved Nokia n800 Internet tablet. n800's are a rarity in the Charlotte area.
We soon learned that we shared a fascination for touch screen interaction and UI, but Antoine focuses primarily on mobile devices, and is a deep thinker on this topic. He showed me some of work he was doing with interface design on the n800 and I was impressed. Much of what he does could be transformed to the large screen with only a few tweaks, in my opinion.
Antoine runs Nokia's Mobile Web Server on his cell phone, which enables the phone to be accessible on the Internet and provides a personal "mobsite".
FYI: Antoine will be speaking at BibleTech '09 in Seatle, Washington soon on the topic of "Mobile Technology and Connecting Communities". If you have never given a thought about the intersection of technology and religion, you might be surprised at what is going on.
Harry van der Veen from Natural User Interface Europe AB, was one of the keynote speakers at the Business to Buttons: Designing for Effect conference, held in June 2008. In this presentation video, Harry discusses the past, present, and future of multi-touch technology, and reviews the importance of multi-touch over single touch displays. He also provides a good overview of gesture interaction, something that he researched when he was a student. This presentation includes several video examples of multi-touch applications in action.
The presentation is well worth the 30-minute view!
"Harry van der Veen is a Bachelor of Multimedia, derived from the Dutch education Communication, Multimedia and Design, focused on Interaction Design and Project Management. He is CEO, co-founder and co-owner of the Sweden based commercial company Natural User Interface Europe AB, which focuses on delivering standardized and customized multi-touch hardware / software solutions and services to the global market. In addition to that, he co-founded the NUIGroup community, which is the worlds largest online platform where a global network of people share their ideas and information in an open source community, focused on multi-touch hardware and software solutions."
NUIGroup Wiki: This wiki includes tutorials for developing multi-touch applications, building your own low-cost multi-touch table, and information about current projects that are in progress.
Related Information:
The Business to Buttons: Designing for Effectconference was held on June 12-12 in Malmo, Sweden, organized by Malmo University and inUse, a user experience consultancy. Partners in this conference included Adaptive Path, a product experience strategy and design company, Patrick W. Jordan, a design, marketing, and brand strategist, the cocktail, a user experience and interaction design studio, cooper, a product design company, and OresundIT, a non-profit network. Don Norman, the author of books such as "Design of Everyday Things" and "The Design of Future Things", presented at this conference. Don Norman is one of the founding fathers of the Human-Computer Interaction and related fields, and is the co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, a consultant firm that helps company create human-centered products.
I posted a video of Hans Rosling's TED 2006 presentation using data visualizations, and Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod's "Do You Know: Shift Happens" revision of a presentation originally designed for a high school faculty that "went viral" after it was uploaded to the Internet.
If you have not yet seen these two videos, you'll need to set aside about 30 minutes to view them, and more, if you want to stop the video and reflect for a moment or two.
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