Good and Bad Examples of Design

Bad Design

1.)  Door at Mugwalls

This is a door at Mugwalls, that from here, you pull to open. It has a bar which tapers out. This is culturally, a given symbol FOR PUSH. Studying outside this door for about two hours, at least 6 kids pushed this and hit the door. This is a example of bad mapping, and this door is the end all, be all of bad door design.

2.) Giant Mac

    The computer science department at TAMU has decided to replace the perfectly good cavalcade of windows computers in the Bright labs with a handful of gigantic macs. I hate these 22 inch monstrosities. The problem with them is that they're so aesthetically designed that they fail to meet the basic expectations I have in a desktop computer. For example, the power button is behind the monitor on the bottom right. It's black and blends in with everything else, there's no ridges or grooves to indicate where it is, and it's tiny, it's no bigger than the pad of my pinky finger. What good is a computer that you can't even turn on? This breaks the aesthetic over design rule.

3.)  Playstation 3

     I think the Playstation 3 is a good example of poor design. The problem with the ps3 is that it has some inherently bad design choices and that after 5-6 re releases they haven't changed any of them. /my least favorite design choice is it's shape. It's some weird ellipsoid. You can't lay it on it's side, and you can't rest your controllers on it. Also it has a power button hidden on the back, which has to be turned on seperatly from the rest of the system. It's unneccesary and inconvinient. 

4.)  Keyboard Remote

This is how I have to operate my TV. TV remotes have be one of the most standardized devices of all times but every now and then you get a bombshell which has to break all the rules. Half of the keys aren't even used. Devices like this only lead to frustration and a an example of bad design.

5.) My Corner Shelf

 

 My corner shelf sucks because if you put any weight on the edge of a shelf, the whole entire thing tips over. It's almost beyond usability! All they'd need to fix this is a fourth leg, such a obvious fix, such an obvious flaw.

Good Design

1.) Newspaper dispenser

I like the simple design choices here. It's shaped like a house so rain slides off. And the door only goes outward, so Wind cannot open it and mess everything up.

2.) Recycling Bins

I like the good example of physical constraints in this recycling bin. The bin on the left has a round hole, so only bottles fit in. The bin on the right is designed for paper, so it has a very thin and wide slot. The trash bin in the middle has a pull slot, so if your about to throw away a recyclable product, you have time to look at the bin and reconsider. By opening the lid, it breaks your actions.

3.) Coffee Bean Grinder

This has a nice physical constraint, the button that you press to use it is attached to the lid. So the only way you can use it is with the lid on, so it's impossible for someone to blend their fingers off.

4.) The Nintendo 64

 The design of the Nintendo 64 is awesome! All the ports are completely different size and shapes, there's no memorization involved in it's setup. And it's difficult to forget to turn off the machine before you take out the cartridge because the power switch is directly in front of the cartridge. This always is true because the Nintendo always faces a certain way towards you because of the controller ports.

5.) My Triax Fury Watch

All the buttons are labeled, the interface on this is fantastic! The watched has been designed such that it constantly gives me cues on how to use it. For example, when using the stopwatch mode, it'll flash at the start/stop button so that I know how to stop the count.

Design of Everyday Things: Chapters 4 - 7

Chapter 4 Reactions

    To me,  Chapter 4 is about how design and become knowledge for a user. It goes about explaining the concepts of Physical, Semantic, and Cultural constraints. And it explains them with a nice lego example, explaining that even without instructions, most people can assemble a lego police motorcycle because it's good design and how constraints lead us to building it correctly. It then moves on to doors. Not necessary about any concept involving doors, but just doors. He explains common mistakes found in door designs and how they should be fixed, and how they relate to what we have learned thus far. Afterwards he does the same thing with switches. I like this chapter, but mostly for the beginning, reading on just about doors is silly and is an example of how he goes on and on, which I explained in my overall reaction.

Chapter 5 Reactions

     Chapter 5 is probably my favorite chapter. I was actually laughing out loud as I was reading the list of slips. And this is because I've done almost every single one. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who makes mistakes. Or, in this books case, makes slips. He explains the difference between a slip and a mistake, one being automatic and unnoticeable. The other being something you manually have to correct. The latter half of the chapter describes how design can prevent mistakes. It was sometimes fun, sometimes boring, an average second half.

Chapter 6 Reactions

     Chapter 6 is more about the process of design. It goes and explains how generations of products can be released and how design can evolve or it can not progress at all. In this chapter he used several real world examples like the faucet or the typewriter. He explained why a design can go wrong or get worse, he explained how a designer can see something as good but actually take a step backwards in design. This chapter didn't hold me like some of the others, I think it's a very good point, and I would re read if I were to ever want to improve upon someone else's design.

Chapter 7 Reactions

     The final chapter! Chapter 7 revolves around the Seven Principles for transforming a difficult task into an everyday one. This final chapter brings everything to a full circle by teaching you the process of design and encouraging you to apply what you have learned in previous chapters to create good design. He really makes it to where you connect all his points and create an overall image of design in your head.

Design of Everyday Things: Chapters 1-3 reactions + overall reaction

My reaction to the Book in General

     After reading the entirety of Donald A. Normand's "Design of Everyday Things" I have a whole new perspective on design and just how much it influences my day to day activities. It's a great book because he constantly assaults the reader with relate-able examples such as the NES, phones, microwaves, doors, etcs. The book really entered my mind, it almost has a psychological approach to design. I'm afraid I won't be able to look at doors and phones the same way again.

     Another thing I really liked is the amount of personality Mr. Normand put into the book. He says his opinions, you can tell of his clear distaste for telephones. He also tells most of the stories in first person. I can't tell if they're all true but the way it's presented makes it a lot more relate-able.

     If I had any complaints about the book they would be that the examples are very outdated. I imagine that by now a lot of the inherent design flaws he mentions have been fixed. But the concepts ring very true, and the examples make his points very clear. I also think that sometimes he goes on and on. Sometimes I get bored of the point he's trying to make when he's explaining his third example of said point. Considering this can happen several times in a row, the book can become tedious to read. ]

     Overall it's a great book, I would recommend it.

Chapter 1 Reaction

     Chapter 1 begins the book by going through several examples of obvious bad design. The author doesn't describe things in detail, nor does he say what makes good design. What he does is show pictures and describes things we have all seen before. He explains why the design is bad and how it will cause troubles. He goes on to explain a conceptual model ( a mental of image of the parts and workings of a device ) and then later visibility which he describes using a very good refrigerator example. He then introduces Mapping and Feedback which are two of the takeaways in the book. If you remember anything, it's mapping and feedback. The chapter concludes with feedback.

     This is a great opening chapter mostly because it sets the tone for the rest of the book. By the end of the first chapter you realize the effect design has on us. You don't necessarily understand why yet or how, but it gives you enough to make you want more. The examples are really powerful and I'm glad he stresses the ideas of Mapping and Feedback earlier in the book because I notice it continuously for the rest of it.

Chapter 2 Reaction

     To understand the importance of design it's also important to understand the psychology behind people and how they interact with everyday things. He begins to explain and give examples of how bad design can lead to blame and helplessness and then goes on to explain how people do things. Mr. Norman gives 7 steps in which people go through when they act.

1. Forming the goal
2. Forming the intention
3. Specifying an action
4. Executing the action
5. Perceiving the state of the world
6. Interpreting the 

And he concludes with the Gulfs of Execution and Evaluation.

    I actually thought this was perhaps the weakest of all the chapters. I think it's because it's the least relate-able of them all.

Chapter 3 Reaction

    Chapter 3 is really cool because it explains how you use memory. It explains why we remember things and how we organize them. To me, this is the opposite of chapter 2, Everything I read in this chapter I could think of how I remember things and it makes sense to me. It's like I've always been aware of what goes on in my head, but it's never been put in words like this before. He explains how information can in the world or in our heads and how we try and put meaningful relationships together to help organize our memory. This chapter also explains how design needs to work with our brains to create a great product.

To be continued following blog post...

   

Homework 3 : The Chinese Room

    So, I just read the Chinese Room argument and several papers that argue/support/explain it and the concept it refers. The argument it implies is intriguing because it explains, using a very simple metaphor how a computer cannot function like the mind, but instead just convincingly mimic one at best. His argument ( according to Wikipedia and other articles ) rocked the Artificial Intelligence world and remains very controversial.
    To begin, I'd like to explain the metaphor, I find the metaphor poorly explained in alot of the papers and even though I'm fairly certain that the only people who will read this already understand it ( *ahem* Manoj *ahem* ), I'd like to explain for those who don't. Basically, Imagine that you're in a room with a few buckets of Chinese character symbols written on paper, you have a GIGANTIC rule book written in English, You don't understand Chinese, and in the room there's a slot where papers with various Chinese symbols come through. On the other side of the slot is a man who speaks fluent Chinese and is trying to have a written conversation with you. Now, he passes a slip through to you and it translates into "Hello, How are you?", you use the GIGANTIC rule book which says when they give you x y z, respond with a b c. You respond with a paper that reads " I'm fine, and yourself?" Now, to the fluent speaking man on the other side, you are responding intelligently, like a fluent speaking man would. But in reality, inside the room, you don't know what he said to you, nor what you responded with. You only followed the rules in the book. In this metaphor, the room is the Robot, and you with the rule book is the processor/programming. The man who speaks fluently is himself. And with this metaphor you realize that even though a robot can perfectly simulate intelligent conversation, it does so without actual intelligence, the man in the room does not know what he is saying.

        If you understand the metaphor then you can easily see what this implies about artificial intelligence. You cannot create the perfect rule book, insert it into a robot and think it's an actual mind. The robot has no actual understanding, it's just convincing you it does. I think this a really cool argument because it's so simple but yet so powerful. It's irrefutably similar to what goes on within a robot and it makes you wonder How could you make a mind? What would be the metaphorical equivalent to it? At face value this doesn't directly effect me but I'm glad I've read this, I'd strongly recommend this to others. There's a little more to it such as weak AI vs Strong AI or arguments against it, but once you've understood the metaphor you've gained what the paper has to really offer.

     Anyways, my reaction? good writing, good point! But bad attitude, and it could be more clearly written

    8/10

Paper #6: Talking in Circles: Selective Sharing in Google+

Summary

Sanjay Kairam, Michael J. Brozowski, and David Huffaker take a look at social networking, Google+ specifically, to analyze how users choose to share and organize information. They conducted studies using both computers and people and found that social networking actively engage in selective social networking and create and manage inter-personal relationships with varying levels of strength which have differing levels of social conduct.

Related Works Not Referenced Paper

• Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media
• Predicting tie strength with social media
• Community structure in social and biological networks
• Information flow through strong and weak ties in intraorganizational social networks
• Cognitive social structures
• Social Networks and Status Attainment
• Role-based access control models
• Role-Based Access Controls: Status, Dissemination, and Prospects for Generic Security Mechanisms
• logit models for social networks
• Centrality  in Social Networks:II. Experimental  Results*

I'd imagine that Social Networks are a trending topic right now, that being said, the studies and ideas in my paper have been done before and my paper therefore, isn't very novel. They do however study exclusivity and how people categorize their friends, which was unique.

Evaluation

The whole paper is basically a large evaluation, and they approach their studies from several different angles. To begin they gather a large set of data from Google ( users remain anonymous) and sort it ways to objectively and quantitatively look at organizational habits of social media users. The paper is covered in charts so I don't want to go into specifics, but they used this quantitative / objective data and analyzed. And from that they drew subject/Qualitative conclusions on peoples habits.

Discussion

So, I try to put a positive spin on all my blog entry's, even the one's i didn't like ( there's 3 total! ) but this was really uninteresting to me. I feel like they used math to reach a conclusion that can be considered common sense aka " People don't want their boss to have complete access to their personal life". So, I'm a little disappointed. I think the evaluation was appropriate though, it may be useful to have these numbers on hand for other studies.

Paper #5: Tales from the Front Lines of a Large-Scale Serious Game Project

Summary

    Dr. Khaled and Dr. Ingram have done research into the process of game design.  The report begins by explaining the history of game design and game success. It then goes on to briefly explain various types of experts and team compositions.

    They also explain the five active team perspectives : project organization, technology, domain knowledge, user research, and game design.  They had people whom are experts in said fields work together during the process in creating a video game. They observed the visible and invisible forces behind a successful video game. They determined that there's a certain hidden force behind all successful video games and using a rigid strategy isn't how you achieve it.

Related Works not Referenced in Paper

    

• Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform
• Serious Games for Language Learning: 
  How Much Game, How Much AI? 
• Serious Games – An Overview
• Game Design as 
  Narrative 
  Architecture
• Game Design : Theory and Practice
• MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research
• A Generic Model for Reflective Design
• Reflective Design Patterns to Implement Fault Tolerance
• What Video Games Have to Teach Us 
  About Learning and Literacy 
• Authentic Learning Experiences Through Play: Games, Simulations and the Construction of Knowledge

There's alot of new information relevant to video games, learning games, and reflective design. I think this paper is novel because of it's unique approach to learning about game design. 

Evaluation

   The paper rated it's success very subjectively and quanitatively. Basically they decided to create a video game and when it wasn't very successful, they didn't use measurements or numbers.

Discussion

    Honestly, after I read the article I didn't feel like they had accomplished much. It was a summary of a unsuccessful experience and we didn't really learn anything that wasn't already known.

Paper #4: Summarizing Sporting Events Using Twitter

Summary

    The Almaden IBM research group is researching into ways of using algorithms to track tweets during sports games so the collected tweets can be used to quickly create a news document faster than a reporter can by themselves.  They look at Twitter statistics and determine which tweets to mine by using Keywords and activity spikes.
 

        They use activity spikes to find appropriate tweets based on the logic that when something important happens people feel that they should comment on it. Afterwards they use Heuristics to filter out alot of the tweets, including tweets in other languages, tweets with URLS, and tweets that are replies to other tweets. The researchers used several heuristics and eventually created an algorithm which created game summaries based off tweets. Afterwards , They used People to read and evaluate said reports

Related Work Not Referenced in Paper

• Using  Lexical  Chains  for Text  Summarization 
• AUTOMATED  TEXT  SUMMARIZATION AND  THE SUMMARIST  SYSTEM 
• Generic Text Summarization Using Relevance Measure and 
  Latent Semantic Analysis
• Seeing the Whole in Parts: Text Summarization for 
  Web Browsing on Handheld Devices
• T h e   T I P S T E R   S U M M A C   T e x t   S u m m a r i z a t i o n   E v a l u a t i o n  
• What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?
• Social networks that matter: Twitter under 
  the microscope
• Twitter Power: Tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth
• Twitter and status updating
• Using Twitter to recommend real-time topical news

I looked up both Text generation and Twitter related articles on the internet. Twitter seems to be a hot topic, there was no shortage of reports of Twitter and how it can be used as a news source.    

Evaluation

    In the report they evaluate both the important moment detection and the summarized reports. They evaluated the moment detection subjectively and quantitatively by comparing the moments the twitter algorithm outputted with news articles from various news sources such as ABC.com, ESPN.com, etc. They found the certain events were less likely to be tweeted ( such as yellow cards ) meaning games that had alot of these events, we're summarized less accurately.
   They also evaluated the summarizes both objectively and subjectively by using software and humans to evaluate the summaries. The summaries did a good job recapping important events but didn't quite pack in small details like a human made news article does.
 
Discussion

I think this will be a cool technology which could really make news reporting for sports very fast and up to date. I think the evaluation is appropriate because news is something that is enjoyed by humans, and therefore needs to be evaluated objectively.

Paper #3 : Not Doing But Thinking: The Role of Challenge in the Gaming Experience

Summary
    In this paper, various doctorates from around England ( York and London ) study Gaming Experiences and what factors make them. They study Immersion which has several layers, but the one they are most interested in is "Total Immersion". They study challenge, in which they believe the most immersive games challenge a player both cognitively and physically. Expertise, trying to find the level of challenge appropriate for the players skill level.  When considering these factors the researchers divided a series of experiments with varying levels and types of challenge.

   They set up a tower defense game in which players either played a "High Effort" or "Low Effort" version of the game. They then measured several objective and subjective quantitative measures. They also then ran another experiment which measured the effect of time pressures on the player. 

Related Work not Referenced in Paper

For related works I found papers which focused on Video Games and Challenge or Immersion I got results such as

• Sex Differences in Video Game Play: A Communication-Based Explanation

• Mortal Kombat (tm): The Effects of Violent Videogame Play on Males’ Hostility and Cardiovascular Responding

• VIDEO GAME PLAYERS: PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS AND DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES

• Flow in Games (and Everything Else)

• Method of encouraging attention by correlating video game difficulty with attention level

• Immersion, Engagement, and Presence 

•  The development of the Game Engagement Questionnaire: A measure of engagement in video game-playing 

• VIDEO GAMES: PERSPECTIVE, POINT-OF-VIEW, AND IMMERSION

• A Motivational Model of Video Game Engagement

• Behaviour, Realism and Immersion in Games

For the most part I find alot of the video game studies revolve on the effect of the users in a non-video game related manner. For example The Mortal Kombat one focused on Male aggresion levels that result from Immersion within a video game. They don't seem to approach video games the same way this paper does.

Evaluation

    They took alot of quantitative data such as immersion levels, time survived, etc. The paper is loaded with graphs and numbers. Some of it was taken based on the players surveys and alot of it is recorded by the game. 

Discussion

    I think it's cool that they're studying what makes video games fun and immersive. It's a cool idea that there could be numerical guidelines that a game maker could follow to improve the quality of their game.

Paper #2 : The User as a Sensor : Navigating Users With Visual Impairments in Indoor Spaces Using Tactile Landmarks

Summary
    The Computer Science department at the University of Nevada have developed a system called Navatar for assisting the visually impaired in indoor spaces which focuses on being cheaper and more easier to install by using cheap technology such as the technology used in most phones. The technology guides the visually impaired by having the user confirm landmarks such as doors and hallways. For example, the user will hold their phone to their ears and it will tell them "follow the left wall until you find a hallway". The user confirms when they've reached the hallway and then it'll proceed to " Follow the right door of the hallway until you've reached the second door". Examples like this will help the visually impaired navigate indoor spaces which have a confining infrastructure and therefore makes this a very good system for the impaired.



Related Work Not Referenced in the Paper

• RFID in Robot-Assisted Indoor Navigation for the Visually Impaired
• Drishti: An Integrated Navigation System for Visually Impaired and Disabled 
• RoboCart: toward robot-assisted navigation of grocery stores by the visually impaired
• Text Detection from Natural Scene Images: Towards a System for Visually Impaired Persons
• Independent Living for the Visually Impaired
• HAPTIC REPRESENTATION OF SCIENTIFIC DATA FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED OR BLIND PERSONS
• Robot-assisted wayfinding for the visually impaired in structured indoor environments
• NavBelt and the Guide-Cane [obstacle-avoidance systems for the blind and visually impaired]
• Design and Implementation of Haptic Virtual Environments for the Training of the Visually Impaired
• The people sensor: a mobility aid for the visually impaired

All the papers listed are about assisting the visually impaired. I found that there was two completely different approaches that each of these ten papers are a variant of. Either they wanted to make robot and make sensors and robot vision work to guide the impaired around indoor spaces, or they'd use depth cameras and other specialized technologies to create interfaces which allow the inspired to use the sense of touch to see what was in front of them. They all seemed to revolve around expensive technologies

Evaluation

The researchers used Qualitative research. They had 11 subjects all of whom used the Navatar for 3 paths. If they could find the destination then it was written down as a pass, if they couldn't then it's a fail. It's objectively done. It's pretty systemic, They also looked at other variables and specific tests. So from the results they recorded they have created a myriad of data.

Discussion

I think this is a genuinely good idea. All the other Visual Impairment aids I've read about have been expensive and probably won't have the opportunity to be implemented in very many places. This system however uses lightweight sensors and is easy to install and is very accessible. All it requires is a smartphone from the user. If they can master the art, then this will be a very good technology indeed.