Digital Photography - off topic

This picture was taken in the mountains of Norway, not too far from Flam and the nearby fjords with my digital camera. Peaceful.

I've been observing people of all ages using technology durng my trip, within the context of wayfinding, communication, usability, and user experience, and I'll be posting more when I return.

Touch Screen Interaction in Public Spaces: Room for Improvement, if "Every Surface is to be a Computer"

Via Technology Supported Human-World Interaction

With Win7's "multi-touch" capabilities, Bill Gate's statement that every surface will be a computer might come true, but from what I can see, we have a long way to go before we get it right!

One of the concerns I have about "touch" screen interaction in public spaces is that not much thought is given to the environmental factors surrounding the system. The system that is tested for the first time after installation might work just fine, but not when it is put to use under a variety of conditions or situations.

EXAMPLES (I've recycled a few of these from previous posts.)

Touch Screen Kiosk/Display in Upscale Shopping Area, St. Thomas(?)

I came across this system when I was walking around in St. Thomas with my husband. I wasn't sure what to make of it. There wasn't anything on the large display, and I couldn't tell from a short distance if the two smaller displays were active. I noticed that the display had an awning of sorts, so the fact that the display would be used in a sunny location had been considered. Unfortunately, the awning didn't solve this problem, as you can see from the pictures below:

CLOSER UP

As we approached the display, it was almost impossible to see what was on the screen. In fact, we weren't sure what the display was all about. It looked like something you'd see at an airport check-in, not in a lush tropical setting.

Below is a shot of my husband, trying to see what is on the screen. This photo shows exactly what the screen looked like at the time:

The next picture tells it all. You can see that there is some sort of alphabet on the right side of the screen, but the reflection of my husband is easier to see. We couldn't figure this one out.

The following clip demonstrates how environmental concerns, such as wind and "sideways" rain, can make an interactive display at a shopping center difficult to use. During this clip, you can hear me muttering about the difficulties I had interacting with the information on the touch-screen display. It is possible that the system wasn't working well because of the exposure to the elements.

WIND AND SIDEWAYS RAIN

You can see that the navigation system was confusing. At the end, the entire screen turned red, and I gave up.

The next video-clip is of a touch-screen map at the Cleveland Clinic hospital. I was with my elderly aunt and my sister, and we were trying to figure out how to get to a restaurant. We never found it.

Although the screen was easy to see, the application was... crazy!

In my opinion, an interactive wayfinding application should run on a larger display and support two or more people, since many hospital visitors often run in pairs or small groups.

Usability, Accessibility, and User Experience in a Win7 Environment

Microsoft's newest operating system, Win7 (beta), allows for multi-touch interaction and application development. From what I can tell from the news from the Consumer Electronic Show (CES 2009), touch and gesture interaction holds quite a bit of interest among consumers and application developers alike.

Hopefully people will think carefully about user experience and usability factors when developing the applications we'll be using in the not too distant future!

Because of my background as a school psychologist, I’m interested how touch/gesture applications can address accessibility and universal usability issues.

I wasn't able to locate user experience or usability information for Win7. Here are a few links from the Microsoft website that I think are worth reading:

Touch Interaction Guidelines

How to Design a Great User Experience

Designing with Windows Presentation Foundation

Accessibility

According to the research from Microsoft, ”more than half of all computer users experience difficulties or impairments related to accessibility, and are likely to benefit from the use of accessible technology. Moreover, approaching software design with the flexibility and inclusiveness that are the hallmarks of accessibility often results in overall improved usability and customer satisfaction.”

Regarding touch/gesture interaction, know that “19% (24.4 million) of computer users have a mild dexterity difficulty or impairment, and 5% (6.8 million) of computer users have a severe dexterity difficulty or impairment.”

Christian Moore, from the NUI-Group, shared this nice graphic that depicts the various fields that intersect or converge with interface design, which I think is useful when thinking about how we will design, develop, and use emerging technologies:



Concepts such as accessibility and universal usability can fit into this design!

For more information regarding multi-touch, see my previous post, "For Techies and the Tech-Curious: Multi-touch/Gesture from the NUI Group"

An Example of Convergence: Interactive TV : uxTV 2008

I missed this one!



Jeremy Vaught, the administrator of the New Media Facebook group, posted about the the First International Conference on Designing Interactive User Experiences for TV and Video, held October 22-24, 2008 in Silicon Valley, California. The conference was sponsored by Microsoft Mediaroom, and ifip (International Federation for Information Processing).

According to the conference website, the papers from the conference can be found in the ACM digital library, AICPS: UZTV'08.

Featured speakers included Jakob Nielson (usability guru), Elissa Lee (Sr. Director of Research, TiVo), Gunthar Hartwig (User Experience, YouTube), and Dale Herigstad (Chief Creative Officer, Schematic).

Here is a sample of the topics covered during the conference:

Designing for User Experience: What to Expect from Mobile 3D TV and Video?
(Satu Jumisko-Pyykko, Mandy Weitzel, & Dominik Strohmeier)

The Concept of Interactivity - revisited: Four new typologies for a new media landscape
(Jens F. Jensen)

The Interactive Television User Experience So Far
(William Cooper)

Absolute Pointing and Tracking based Remote Control for Interactive User Experience
(John Sweetser, Anders Grunnet-Jepsen, and Gopal Panchanathan, ThinkOptics Inc.)

Network Analysis of Massively Collaborative Creation of Multimedia Contents: Case Study of Hatsune Miku videos on Nico Nico Duoga (Masahiro Hamasaki, Hideaki Takeda, Takuichi Nishimura)

The uxtv08 website has links to information about the various demos that were presented at the conference. To save you time, I've linked them below:

Demos

Data Driven Interactive 'Lower Third' - Vikram Singh

Dynamic TV: a New Inter-tainment Paradigm for Television - Marina Geymonat, Rossana Simeoni, Monica Perrero, Elena Guercio, Maurizio Belluati, Agnese Vellar and Roberto Montanari

Interactive advertising on n-tv plus - Kathrin Damian, Christian Bopp, Lars-Eric Mann

Interactive Live Demo of Fraunhofer FOKUS Media Interoperability Lab - Oliver Friedrich, Robert Seeliger, Benjamin Zachey, Christian Riede and Stefan Arbanowski

Microsoft Windows Media Center - Linda Chan

Microsoft Mediaroom - Linda Chan and David Giusti

Multi-dimensional Direct Pointing Remote Control for Interactive User Experience - John Sweetser, Anders Grunnet-Jepsen and Gopal Panchanathan

Tarae: Prototype of new interface design for digital TV browsing and navigation system - Hyun Suk Kim, Joung Young Lee and Sang Pil Hwang

Cross post: Technology Supported Human World Interaction

Here is a link to two recent posts on the TSHWI blog:

Why not adopt the Google User Experience Team's principles for off-the-desktop digital interactions?

Off-the-desktop musings about future interactions: User experience, user-driven design, Universal Usability, Airports, and the "Internet of Things"

Touch Screen Interaction and Usability in Public Spaces: Link

If you are interested in what is happening with interactive displays in public spaces, you can find a description of the technology used at the Ballantyne Village center in Charlotte, N.C., along with video clips and my critique, on the Technology Supported Human-World Interaction blog.

Its a great concept, but as you can see from the unedited video clips of my frustrating interactions with large touch screen displays, there is much more work to be done in this arena.

About: Interaction Design (off the desktop)

Interaction design is a relatively new field that combines concepts related to human-computer interaction (HCI), mobile, pervasive, and ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), interface design, service design, user-experience design, interactive media design, and more.

According to Dan Saffer, an interaction designer at Adaptive Path, and author of Interaction Design: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, interaction design is "about people: how people connect with other people through the products and services they use." If you are interested in learning more about designing for interaction, Saffer's book is a great starting point.

Saffer has recently established a wikki about interactive gestures, a site for the "dissemination of gestural interface information such as found on the iPhone and Wii." This is an important resource for those of us who are interested in developing useful interactive applications for emerging technologies.

(Related information can also be found on this blog.)

More touch screen "surface" display musings...

I had my first chance to use an interactive touch-screen SmartBoard, by Smart Technologies in 2002-03. Since I work mostly with kids and teens, I wondered why large-display touch screen technology wasn't more widespread, since there are so many free, interactive websites that provide pretty engaging activities for users.

One of the things I learned was that large-display touch-screen technology is in the preschool stage. There are problems with screen responsiveness, screen resolution, durability, and input.

In recent years, the idea of a touch screen has evolved to table-tops and drafting boards, embedded within wireless systems that allow for interoperability with mobile devices and remote applications.

Great technology exists, but no-one has pulled all the components together in a way that can easily scale for the people who would benefit from this sort of technology the most - people who spend most of day time teaching, learning, or both. I had a great experience using a NextWindow Human Touch large-screen display for some of my projects last semester. It was difficult for me to track one down, but once I got my hands on it, I liked it, even though it did not have multi-touch capabilities.

One laptop for each child? That was a good idea for the late 1990's and early 2000's. One high-quality, affordable, large touch-screen display or table for each classroom would be more effective.

One touch-screen display/table for every 4-6 students would be better. Is there anyone out there who is up for the challenge?

Next Post: Updated links to interactive multimedia websites appropriate for large touch screen surfaces.

Interesting discussion about interactive multi-touch displays and surfaces

The above link is to an interesting discussion about scenarios for multi-touch displays.

IxDA is an organization of people involved in interactive design. Although this group's focus is not primarily on interaction design for technology used in education or psychology/counseling, many of the ideas shared by the groups membership are worth some thought.

This is from the Interactive Design Association's website:

What is Interaction Design?

"Interaction design (IxD) is the branch of user experience design that defines the structure and behavior of interactive products and services. Interaction designers strive to create useful, usable and desirable products and services that satisfy specific user needs, business goals, and technical constraints."

Novint Falcon Haptic Controller video -

My Novint Falcon haptic controller arrived the other day! What is a haptic controller? Watch the video...

( I purchased the controller to work on games for young people who are visually impaired.)

Preschool Playroom - teaching play skills through video modeling for preschoolers with autism

Have you heard of the NECC (New England Center for Children)?

NECC offers a video modeling program to help teach play skills to preschoolers with autism. The videos come with progress monitoring charts. Please post me a comment if you have worked with the NECC Preschool Playroom as a teacher, parent, or related service provider.

Usabililty guidelines for touch screen or surface applications from SAP

Here is a link to usability design guidelines for touch-screen applications on the SAP design guild website, posted by Gerd Waloszek, of the Product Design Center.

Although these guidelines were written in 2000, they still hold true in 2007, especially now that larger touch-screen applications such as Microsoft Surface (Madrid) have recently been unveiled.


Touch Screen Design Guide

Microsoft Surface multi touch screen table - I wish I had one for my projects last semester!

Microsoft Research recently unveiled Microsoft Surface: http://microsoft.com/surface

This multi - touch table can be used for a variety of applications, as outlined in the video from CNET and YouTube below:



I'd like to work on applications for use on a touch-table to support students with special needs, especially those who have autism spectrum disorders.

Last semester, I worked on prototype applications for use on a touch-screen surface -here is a photo. We used a NextWindow Human Touch large-screen display, which provided great screen resolution and touch-response.






This application was part of a travel-planning prototype developed for a course in Human-Computer Interaction. The application was demonstrated on a NextWindow Human Touch large screen display. Would it work on the iPhone?





Update: Examples from some of my other posts:


Here is another demo videoclip of a globe created in GoogleEarth using photo-overlays, with links to video clips uploaded to YouTube and embedded in individual posts on a blog. The above photo and the video clip show the application on a NextWindow Human Touch large-screen display.

This application would be great on a touch-table or touch-table set up on a drafting board. Although it was designed for a travel-planning application, it would work well in educational settings in subjects such as geography.


Poetry Picture Share



This was my first attempt at a "poetry picture share" application. It was designed for use on a multi-touch table and can be accessed remotely so people in different places can move things around on the screen. The video shows how the application works on a NextWindow Human Touch interactive large-screen display.

I am planning on adapting this application for use with students with special needs, such as those who have autism or other communication disorders.

First attempt at a touch-screen "Poetry Picture Share" application

This was my first attempt at a "poetry picture share" application. It was designed for use on a multi-touch table and can be accessed remotely so people in different places can move things around on the screen.   The video shows how the application works on a NextWindow Human Touch interactive large-screen display.

Version 2 will be posted soon. I am planning on adapting this application for use with students with special needs, such as those who have autism or other communication disorders.

Google Earth with photo overlays on a touch screen 2

Here is another demo videoclip of a globe created in GoogleEarth using photo-overlays, with links to video clips uploaded to YouTube and embedded in individual posts on a blog. The above photo and the video clip show the application on a NextWindow Human Touch large-screen display.

This application would be great on a touch-table or touch-table set up on a drafting board. Although it was designed for a travel-planning application, it would work well in educational settings in subjects such as geography.

NextWindow Human Touch Interactive display using photo overlays on Google Earth

This application was part of a travel-planning prototype developed for a course in Human-Computer Interaction.   The application was demonstrated on a NextWindow Human Touch large screen display.

Would it work on the iPhone?

Multimedia: Interactive touch-tables and large displays

This semester I'm taking a class in Human Computer Interaction and another class called "Ubiquitous Computing". I'm working on two projects that involve the use of interactive touch-screen displays. One is for travel-planning, and the other is for games that are located in social gathering places.

I've come across lots of interesting applications during the course of my research that I'd like to share on this blog. (Check back for more information!)

Right now, my dream is to get my hands on an interactive touch table that has multi-touch capability. The table needs to be wi-fi enabled, with an adjustable surface so that it can function horizantally, vertically, or in any position in between, like a drafting table.

Here is the "Multi-Touch Interaction Experiments" video demo of Jeff Han's work with a multi-touch interactive table/screen. I know this was included in an earlier post, but if you haven't seen it, you have to take a look!




Here is a link to Jeff Han's multi-touch wall, his latest work.

Stefano Baraldi's blog, "onthetabletop" is a good resource for people interested in interactive tables. He has a link to the recent Classroom of the Future conference, which focuses on collaborative learning spaces.

Here is one of Stefano Baraldi's demo videos:

Concept Matching



Working with photographs:



Here are more links about the use of interactive tables:

Interactive Tables: Supporting Collaborative Casual Learning

SIDES: A Cooperative Tabletop Computer Game for Social Skills Development


SIDES is a game that was designed for use on a MERL DiamondTouch tabletop. The researchers studied the use of social skills games for middle school students who have Asperger Syndrome.

Take a look at the posts on the Tech Psych blog!

I've posted a few links to good articles and websites related to multimedia and educational technology on the TechPsych blog. Take a look!

-Lynn Marentette

Game Accessibility: Universal Design and Access for Gaming (and Interactive Applications)

A growing number of educators are incorporating the use of interactive multimedia applications, including games, in learning settings. More educators are aware of the principles of Universal Design for Learning, developed by the great people at CAST.

Unfortunately, many multimedia applications, as well as computer and console games, are not designed to facilitate access for a significant number of people. People with vision, hearing, or motor disabilities have few options available to them for playing games. People who have color-blindness, attention/memory problems, auditory processing difficulties, and/or slower visual-motor responses also face barriers when they use multimedia applications and games.

There are people who are working hard to make game technology more accessible.

The International Game Developers Association has a Game Accessibility SIG has a wiki that contains links to a variety of game access projects.

The following is a partial list of links related to game accessibility:

IDGA Game Accessibility SIG

Game Accessibility.Com

Game Accessibility Games (links to information categorized by visual, auditory, physical, and learning disabilities)

Game Access Resources and Research

Audio Games

OneSwitch

Switch Gaming

SymbolWorld

David Rose, from CAST, addressed the NCLB Commission on the importance of Universal Design for Learning(UDL). Here is the link!

CAST to NCLB Commission: There's a Way to 'Leave No Child Behind'

Chief Scientist David Rose makes case for universally designed approaches

Wakefield, Mass., August 2, 2006 --Today CAST Chief Scientist and Co-Founding Director David Rose told the bipartisan Commission on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) that applying Universal Design for Learning principles is the best way to ensure that all children, including those with disabilities, have equal opportunities to a high-quality education...........