Interface design
won’t be coding unless it’s what you really want to do
teams with ppl of diff strengths
what ppl do when confronted with information
halfway through the quarter switch from seminar format to group team work
her class at uc Irvine in November she went trolling for advice
they have one of the best programs in the country
garnet hertz is a professor visiting who is awesome
she talked about her course
he’s visiting week 5
walking through the syllabus
what design contributions are
what makes for a good experience/interface
Learnit portal takes you to Lynda.com
HCI is a great book. she has a project she wants to do with this model
what influenced your practice and design? little essays
you will write a similar piece yourself on one of the ppl. choose it, read it, and write up your impressions on it
here’s what’s innovative and floats to the top.
famous names in HCI writing abt other famous names in HCI
quick tutoring on why some of these things are important in HCI
Katz, J. (2012).
Designing Information: Human Factos and Common Sense in Information Design
look for an information resource and analyze whether it works or not
begins on the nature of information. information design and visualization of info
V.
Kaptelinin and M. Czerwinski
Beyond the Desktop Metaphor
Xerox Alto – coined the desktop metaphor
allowed direct manipulation of data or information objects
recently mobile interfaces don’t have the desktop metaphor. no mouse, touchscreen stuff. very elaborate
last few weeks, developing ideas abt existing interfaces that attempt to go beyond the desktop metaphor
chapters written by some of the top names in HCI
sketchbook
choose a resource of one kind
what is this space/resource telling you from this point?
information-seek behavior class, she sends ppl to the supermarket and analyze its organization
Urban Sketchers groups around the world urbansketchers.org
Open Uniersity sketching tutorials are wonderful
simple techniques of design
(share this with storm!)
designed for engineers to start thinking about how to sketch
getting control of the pen
contribute once a week
if an info resource works well, why?
can share images of your sketchbook if you want, along with description
collage is good
post-it notes are really in the spirit of sketching
MT: storyboarding, magazine layout
summary of key work in HCI
Week 5 due
1500 words
get a copy of the material/piece. pick one, read through it, write up a piece. audience is the rest of the class. these will be posted on the wiki
can choose from the list of ppl, too
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum – she has it checked out
MT: like a virtual lit review, each of us does an abstract and posts on the wiki
two workshops and a design charette
TKTK is still a top thinker in AI, HCI
for workshop idea of critical technical practice is still hugely influential
this is the day the Garnet Hertz is visiting
What is a Charette?
A Charette is an intense effort to solve any architectural or design problem within a limited time. From a creative standpoint, a Charette can be divided into three portions:
- Listen. Listen to what the financial backers, owners, and other stakeholders have to suggest. Work together with them to come to an understanding about the project, what their goals and limitations are, and how these might fit with your ideas.
-
Envision. Imagine together all of these various considerations to come up with a realistic and creative proposal which will be interesting while at the same time financially, responsibly, and otherwise feasible.
-
Draw fast! The ability to work with creative team who can bring ideas to a tangible design sketch quickly, allows for instant communication.
A little history
The term "Charette" (little cart) appeared in the late 1800's. Architecture students at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris who needed to rush their designs to their instructors, placed their drawings on a cart which was called a charette. Later the word broadened in meaning and came to describe any intense, short-term design project. Today the word is used by the architectural and design community at large to describe any intense, on-the-spot design effort.
— From Masterplanning.com
Critical Making Garnet Hertz – really cool little booklets
last two weeks – design teams working on the desktop metaphor charette
brainstorming ideas and sharing with the group, coming up with team proposals for new designs
feb 19 and 26
on e will focus on information design & visualization. the other on personas or TKTK. you can choose which one of the latter pair.
MT: maybe I could look at flow (people, air, cars, animals, etc.) in different spaces and then use my weird squigglies to illustrate them. another idea is showing depth by cutting through pages. or something about organizing or categorizing everything in a space
we have to render sthg on what we tend to collect. MT: fortunes? shoes?
Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized: documentaries on design part of a trilogy
HCI versus user experience
user exp has evolved out of HCI
much more specialized field focuses on the user’s whole environment
HCI is going that way, anyway
Kolko piece on page 5 has the definitions
MT: information management as informed by HCI within businesses
MT: how much far-sighted thinking goes on when things are being designed? future use
What has happened in HCI over time
fluctuation, different disciplines contributing to the industry
sense of legitimacy with hard science, rather than soft
cognitive psych orientation early in the field
shift toward the soft methods
Carroll Plans in Situated Actions as pivit point in rethinking the way to study HCI
participatory design conferences
she looked at how ppl use a Xerox machine
rational, goal-directed plans specified up front don’t reflect how people actually do things
we shouldn’t be designing things as thought here are rules preordained stuff
Shifts
expertànon-expert
fluid debate among disciplines
hardà soft science
population of users changing
futurology/imagined futures
uneven resource allocation: “the future is here, it’s just uneven”
geography/space vs. virtuality (virtual world is still very much connected to the physical world.)
ubiquitous computing all of the physicality matters. not disembodied personas floating around
non-discretionaryàdiscretionary computing
- non-discretionary has to do with corporate research; non-elective computer use
- the people who did the computing, computing was the job
- discretionary—people can choose what they will use. design adapts to the human/behavior
- MT: the strip of commands to put above the function keys when the mouse came out
- tracy kidder the soul of a new machine. about the development of the skunkworks of a new workstation. he lived with the engineers for a year to figure out the life of those ppl
- we start w HCI in a period when the ppl who are doing the computing are the ones who build them. we expect human users to adapt to the machine. task was getting the humans to get on board and adapt themselves. basic information retrieval literature early work was trying to get the human to fit the machine.
- at the time of englebart (1968)
- the actual physical way to do the computing was a focus of intensive research
- now it’s software
- trackpads have a whole repertoire
- this demo is a watershed for the idea that we can make things simpler’
- it did inspire the ppl at Xerox for the Alto
- Xerox pumped a lot of money into the Rochester phd program so they all had Altos to play around with
- notion of computing begins to move into everyday life. the whole notion of who you’re designing for has to change
- other ways to think abt this:
- non-discretionary
- institutional
- human factors
- utility
- system-centered
- imposed
- task
- compliance
- transmission
- repository
- work
- supply-side
- discretionary
- personal
- human actors
- usability
- user-centered
- voluntary
- relational
- agency
- meaning
- festival
- leisure, play
- demand-side
- some work being done to move workàdiscretionary
- MT: creative/innovation culture in business
- still imposed
- more flexibility in how to do your work, but then bizs pull in the reigns
- resource determines whether the workplace has flexibility in culture
- resource dependency – depends on what you have (like in education) ‘to work with but there’s also the effort to create dependencies. path-driven dependencies (walled garden) apple used to be open, now they’ve closed down with that to create dependence (MT: high switching costs)
- we’re going backward into a media production and consumption mode which sets aside many of the strengths that make computing a mode of exression or creativity
- move toward having all of our stuff/files personally to having everything elsewhere
- tablets, etc. are consumption machines, not production machines (MT: apps are changing that – we can print, draw, etc.)
- these machines were bhuilt to be reconfigured, while tv was not built to be messed with. very threatening to supply side
John Carroll
in some respects, reiterates Grudin, but the fact that he’s responding to a talk after 20 years, he has come so far over to the social science, embeddedness that we take for granted in dourish’s work
he finally comes down to
craft models versus science
build it and they will come versus research abt how ppl work
they set up a strong man argument – preferred mode that hci should follow we’ve never seen it
he’s talking ab the notion of what knowledge TKTK
why look down on the craft ontology?
science is abt prediction and control to find generaliable knowledge so we can predict and control the next time we see these circumstances. prediction and explanation
shift toward an anthropological, situated worldview
this article is really interesting to leah because he shifts over time to this way of thinking
trial and error is a legitimate mode of knowing. for it to work, be ontologically sound, for ppl to agree that it works and for ppl to TKTKTK
contrasts grudin article because he’s explicitly bringing out a fight between kinds of knowledge
fig leaf of legitimacy
What are the vision abt computing that they’re talking about? Bell, Dourish, other recommended readings
the domain of the computer is that of science/data and the arts will never be in the computer realm
[Mark Hanson – data-driven art]the idea of quantification so closely associated with computation, so computing was about computation
Bush – links and trails
Xanadu is all abt visualizing links and trails
taskàrelational there is also this other notion of relationships embedded in the network idea
personal navigation through links and trails
menu driven interfaces was new in the englebart demo
telephone and telegraph is networked, not menu hierarchy
the introduction of switching is the important part to get the idea of what the relations should be
universal decimal system are ways to try to handle glut of information abstract presecification of categories we believe we can predict so the nect thing we come across will be placed
LickLider
decision support
man and machine cooperation
how will I know that I’ve made a good decision? how will I know that I’ve made best use of the information in making my decision
rule-based decisionmaking
routinizedàdatabase and decision rules
what goes into the making of choices
nelson – four conceptions of a omputer
they are imagining what and who computers are for
what the computer can and can’t do for you
we’re pushing more toward the computer—gathering more from us than we are gathering from them
do we rust google to anonymize
bracelet thing coming to Disneyland
next few weeks of readings
can choose one of the classics or choose one of these people and get into what their big headline items/contribution was in the style of HCI remixed
go for that
