Theory and Research in HCI

2010-01-29T06:26:00.000-08:00

Children’s technology- where the wild things are

2009-11-17T21:51:00.000-08:00

Maurice Sendak’s critically acclaimed children’s picture book Where the Wild Things Are quickly become a classic and was widely popular as soon as it was published in 1963. It’s a story written with heart and a keen insight to the experience of childhood and, perhaps, what adults find uncomfortable about it. What’s so compelling about the story is that it seems to be written to challenge the way adults might prefer to imagine children and childhood. Similarly, this week’s readings in Children and Technology remind us that children think, act, and process very differently than we do as adults. More importantly, they act and think very different than we would like to believe they do. In The Role of Children in the Design of New Technology (Druin, 2002) Druin challenges designers not to discard incorrect or inappropriate assumptions about children:

In designing for children it is crucial to become aware of one’s own assumptions about the nature of childhood. Designers should be able to articulate their assumptions and be ready to revise them based on empirical evidence.

Druin argues that designers must study children and involve them in the design process, and outlines a number of methods to do so. Beyond understanding and including children we must challenge and our assumptions about how children should experience technology and study the impact of the technology we design on their development. [1]

Alyx’s hurt feelings
In Nathan Frier’s 2008 paper Children Distinguish Conventional from Moral Violations in Interactions with a Personified Agent he raises interesting questions about personified agents that children are spending more and more time with. Often these agents are designed to be helpful and subservient. If children view interactions with these technologies as social interactions that lack moral features this may diminish children’s understanding of “the relationship that exists between social reciprocity and morality”. [2]

Freier’s study involves 8 and 9 year old children observing a researcher play a game of tic tac toe with a personified agent. The agent was constructed from the source engine for a videogame character from Half-Life 2 named Alyx and displayed on a computer monitor. In the experiment, subjects witnessed the researcher committing two violations. One of the violations was against a rule of the game (cheating) and the other violation involved insulting Alyx (the agent).

In the experimental condition the subject witnessed Alyx expressing hurt feelings and advocating for the right to be treated with respect as a response to the insult. In the control condition Alyx appeared to be unaffected by the insult. The results suggested that when Alyx appeared to advocate for itself, children were much more likely to view the insult as a moral violation against the Alyx. In discussing design recommendations, Freier suggests that it may be better for children to interact with personified technologies that respond to possible harms and make claims to their own rights than those that do not. [2]

Carol’s temper
My five year old child, is a big fan of games on my iphone and has been playing them since he was . Recently we downloaded an application that was used to promote the October 2009 premiere of Spike Jonze’s film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.

The application is well designed and usable. In addition to featuring promotional material for the movie the movie, the game hosts a personified agent based on the main monster of the movie, Carol. There are a number of ways to interact with Carol. Tap Carol with a soft tickle and he will laugh, play music from your itunes collection and Carol will dance, you can select one of your personal pictures to give to Carol and he might point at the picture with a smile and laugh, throw it on the ground and stomp on it, or tilt his head back and chomp and swallow the picture. If you shake your phone, carol will fall down and look hurt and confused, poke him and he will grimace, you can even throw rocks at him… ouch. If you do any of these things Carol might throw a rock back or get right in your face and throw a punch that vibrates the phone violently and appears to crack the screen.

Here are some video demonstrations of the app:

My son had played similar games where, for example, you could stretch, squeeze, shake, and tickle sponge bob. With these games the response of the agent was clowny and cartoonish. What was different about this game was that when you hurt Carol he would respond with anger, frustration, a threatening glare, or a measured and moderately violent response. Showing him a picture could just as easily make him point at the picture & smile as throw the picture to the ground and stomp on it. It is rare in games to have agents advocate for themselves or communicate frustration or disappointment, it’s even more rare for a game like this to utilize an interface that a two year old can use.

The Where the Wild Things Are game has over 5,000 ratings on the iphone app store and many of the reviewers report that their children were highly interested in the game. I was surprised that my son was so interested in the game and went back to it time after time when I thought the novelty would have worn off. He shared with his friends and they were just as interested. It seems that an agent that advocates for itself and expresses is very compelling to young children and it would be interesting to study this further.

Many of the reviewers recommend the application as being great for 3 – 12 year olds. While others say things like “not for little ones… Fun app for adults but it scared my five-year-old when he saw Carol eat a picture of his little brother. Then he told me it’s not nice to throw rocks at people”

Personally, I felt a little uncomfortable that my son enjoyed this game so much. He was participating in an emotionally complicated relationship with the agent where they could play, laugh, and enjoy the interactions and just as easily be throwing rocks and hitting each other. In HCI for Kids, Bruckman et al site Carolyn Miller’s seven mistakes commonly made by people designing games for kids. Miller explains that designers assume children want their games to be sweet and safe (with no dramatic tension), wholesome characters, and a little preachy. It seems I have made many of those same assumptions about the kinds of games my child should be playing. So many of us must make similar assumptions about what children should have in games that may or may not be true. [3]

So, in thinking about my child and this application it’s interesting to consider Freier’s recommendation that personified agents be designed to respond to possible harms and make claims to their own rights. If so, should personified agents respond with the same diverse range of emotion and behavior (from looking hurt to throwing rocks) that people do? Do submissive and accommodating personified agents teach children to take advantage of others? Are we doing children a disservice by making these agents not human enough or is the problem that these agents are becoming too human? As young children who are beginning to develop morals and learn social behavior are being exposed to this technology, these are important questions to ask and could benefit from further research.

References

1. Freier, N. G. (2008). Children attribute moral standing to a personified agent. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI 2008). (pp. 343-352). Florence, Italy.

2. Druin, A. (2002). The role of children in the design of new technology. Behaviour and Information Technology, 21(1) 1-25.

3. Bruckman, A., Bandlow, A., & Forte, A. (2007). HCI for kids. In Sears, A. & Jacko, J. (Eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. (pp. 793-810). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Cereal Box as Interface
UPDATE: I discovered this video that I thought I'd add to my response paper.

In HCI for Kids by Bruckman et. al review specially designed interfaces that are suitable for children who cannot manipulate a mouse or keyboard [3]. Along those lines, I wanted to share this video to document the advances in inexpensive interfaces for children. In the video below... cereal box as interface:

Children of the internet

2009-11-17T19:42:00.000-08:00

Ben Casbon

Response paper covering material from:

Livingstone, S. (2003). Children’s use of the internet: Reflections on the emerging research agenda. New Media & Society, 5(2), 147-166.

A relevant question for any child nowadays is “Do you know your way around the internet?” As ambiguous a question as that is, the underlying meaning is unmistakable. The internet is practically inescapable in an adult’s life, with more and more organizations choosing to communicate through that medium. What is often overlooked, however, is that children have a much stronger connection with the internet. Sonia Livingstone quotes a UK survey amount 7-16 year olds. 75 percent of the children surveyed have used the internet, which is a stark contrast to adult statistic of 38 percent.

Children’s exposure to information and computer technology is almost inevitable, yet it has not been studied in any way commensurate with its level of adoption by the younger echelons of society. First among many questions that the author asks is ‘How to children use computers’? Computers are neither inherently serious nor are they frivolous, but they can become either in the hands of a child. A researcher cannot merely survey the content generated on the internet for children and assume that they are viewing it or interacting with it, nor do they have a ready stash of information about what children view online.

The internet can be a dangerous place, as the author acknowledges. Much of the research into how children use computers has been driven by policy imperatives, which attempt to prescribe a formula for ingesting the good parts of the web and passing over the bad.

“Do you use the internet to communicate with other people?” is another relevant question that researchers ask. Are technophobic fears of isolated pale-skinned social networking homebodies justified, or are they merely insisting on tin cans in the age of phones? Again, few researchers have illuminated this informational void. While little can be said authoritatively, it seems that children are adept at synthesizing their real life and their virtual existence. It seems that the children of the internet do use the internet to keep tabs on their local comrades more than establishing friendships with people at a distance.

An interesting consequence of this internet age is the ability for children to form their identity in an a-physical way. Little is known about the potential consequences of the ready available of anonymity of the internet or access to a wealth of inexpert enthusiasts.

Parents hook up the internet for their kids. The grand notion in many parents minds doubtless is, that their action of providing internet access to their kids will greatly further their education. Does it? Do children use the internet at home to self educate, or do they use it entertain themselves. It may be reasonably asked at some points if there is a difference. Should the free-form learning on the internet in a home environment spread to the school environment, or should the rigors and strict oversight flow from the school to the home? At this point, it is still a valid question if the internet actually DOES enhance a child’s education.

Because it is a ‘free’ environment, ICT access at home can often be inhibited by people with less than pure motives at heart. Parents may feel threatened and restrict access, or sisters and brothers may cut each other out. The effect of NOT being on the internet has not yet been quantified, yet it seems without doubt that such a thing would be harmful to a developing child. I

As previously mentioned, the internet can be a dangerous place. While this article explores many unknowns in the research, it is clear that children have access to pornography over the internet. While exposure to pornography at a young age is perhaps harmful, the potential for sexual harm is much greater. An alarming increase in the number of sexual predators online has led to even greater concern about who children contact and communicate with over the internet. But, the author questions if merely the potential for harm exist, or if these result in actual severe damage down the road.

How do you even begin to study children’s use of the internet? Do you ask their parents, or do you observe them directly? Do you do quantitative research or qualitative? The author cites three broad assumptions to guide further research:

1. Children set patterns on the internet. They figure out their own path and then follow it, thus it makes sense to make your study child-centric, as opposed to obsessing about the media itself.

2. Children interact with the internet “in day’s work.” Internet use occurs within the child’s everyday life and should be studied as such. If the researcher were to study the children’s interaction with the internet as a fascinating adventure in wonderland, that would neither do justice to the experience nor would it produce an accurate understanding.

3. Do not assume that new technology/media will replace old media. While old media may be replaced, often it will be transformed or integrated with the already existing world that the child lives in. Radio stations have web sites, and web sites have radio stations.

HCI for Kids (and My Daughter)

2009-11-17T10:47:00.000-08:00

The article presents the design challenges related to the development of software for children. The authors detail some of characteristics that differentiate a child user type and offer techniques for including children in the design process. The authors also examine the various child-focused technologies and the role technology plays in the learning process.

The article does a good job at providing a general overview of these challenges and offers many options for the inclusion of children in the design process. It also explores some of the pitfalls that a designer may encounter in dealing with children. They used a breakdown of children’s cognitive abilities by age, developed by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, to frame some of their research which I believe is a valuable takeaway from this article.

Throughout the program here at Rensselaer I often look to apply our topics to real world situations. As I reviewed this article I often placed my six-year old first grade daughter in the situations the authors discussed. Of course, my daughter is often the unwitting subject of observation from a dad who designs interfaces for a living. I’ve watched her interact with a computer, my iPhone™, TV remotes, her Leapster™ and our XBOX 360™. I’m always amazed at her ability to quickly learn something new in any of these mediums, but I suppose I shouldn’t it should come as no surprise since most were carefully designed, though not all were designed for children. For the purposes of this article, I thought I’d review some of the author’s discussion points and offer some perspective on how I’ve observed my daughters interactions within this context.

Lindsey *

My daughter is six and attends an all girls school in suburban Philadelphia. In first grade, computers are seldom used as part of her in-school curriculum, but their use will increase as she progresses through school. Each classroom is equipped with a SMART™ board that the teachers make use of for lessons, such as math games, that often include the children’s interaction. Moodle, a popular, open-source, course management system, is used as a portal for parents and students to get assignments and other school-related information. Students in later grades can use this site on their own to keep track of coursework and communicate with the teacher and other students. The Moodle page for my daughter’s class links to online tools for her reading and math homework. Lindsey typically spends 10-20 minutes a night working on the computer. Most of the applications are mouse-driven and require very little keyboard input.

Outside of the home, her first in-school experience with computers came when she was a three year old in pre-school. The computer was considered a play “station” and not used as part of the curriculum. The students did have a weekly visit from the “computer lady” who introduced the children to the computer and mouse through simplistic games.

Cognition at Lindsey’s Age

To this point, Lindsey’s exposure to computers has occurred wholly in the second stage of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, the preoperational stage (ages 2-7). Role playing, use of substitutes for real objects in play, and the inability to view a situation from another’s perspective (egocentrism) are hallmarks of this stage. Obviously, if you’ve spent any time around children in this age group, you see huge gains from year-to-year in their ability to interact with people and objects. The initial substage of the preoperational period is the symbolic function substage that typically occurs between the ages of 2 and 4. One of the examples Piaget labels as animism is where a child can view an inanimate object having human-like traits or emotions. Most television programming for children this age exploit this connection. Thomas the Train has a cast of characters that exhibit human-like emotions through facial expressions. Veggie Tales offered talking vegetables and Toy Story was complete with an entire cast of toys who only animate when people are not around. Much of the software that I observed Lindsey using at the time cast animated characters as narrator or actor. Even in cases where a person was the main character, such as a Disney Princess, the cast was rounded out with talking candlesticks, sewing mice or flying carpets. The software itself, though, tended to focus on equipping them for their next stage (letters, numbers, colors, shapes), as would be expected if the goal of the software is to educate. I think its safe to say that all software geared toward this age group is educational – most parents wouldn’t introduce a computer to a child in this stage of development for purely entertainment purposes.

The Intuitive Thought Substage typically occurs between the ages of 4-7 and involves a child exhibiting more curiosity in understanding the world around them. At this point they have a wealth of knowledge and are beginning to see how things interrelate. Some of the software that my daughter uses now tends utilize these new cognitions. Though not necessarily deemed an educational website, Disney’s Club Penguin is an introduction to the world of massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). In it, the player creates a penguin avatar that interacts and plays games with other penguin avatars. The games are not math or reading based, they are instead logic based and some are simply chance – the equivalent of rock-paper-scissors. Coins are earned as a result of taking on jobs (such as DJing or shoveling snow) that allows players to purchase “accessories” for their penguin.

Club Penguin gives children the opportunity to interact with others, teaches them the idea that work equals money, and allows them to use their developing reasoning cognitions to play the various games.

Lindsey and Me

While the cognitive abilities progress through the early stages of adolescence, by the age of eleven, Piaget believes they reach a formal operational stage where their thinking, while not the same, is similar to an adult. Cognitive abilities aside, other factors affect the use of technology and its design. The authors point out that speech, dexterity, reading, background knowledge and interaction style are all factors to consider when designing software for multiple age groups. Since Lindsey and I use very different software when we’re on the computer, it’s difficult to determine a true apple-to-apples comparison of the role these factors play in our use. In general terms we both use the operating system (MacOS X) and a browser (Firefox or Safari) and some differences can be seen there:

· Dexterity: Lindsey has progressively improved in her use of the mouse over the years. At one time it seemed huge in her hand. Apple’s MightyMouse and MagicMouse do not use buttons, instead depressing the mouse in the approximate location of a left or right button triggers the function. This was somewhat of an obstacle for her at first and often times the context-menu would pop up when she pressed down on the mouse – which occurs when you right-click. Tracking speed usually has to be set slower for her as well as it takes her longer to zero-in on her clickable target. Many software designers for children have always made targets much larger to accommodate this issue. Though I have seen many sites, Apple among them, who have moved to larger form elements and buttons during some functions to make it easier for everyone

· Reading and Speech: Communication issues are always a challenge and I always find myself explaining to her what she has to do in order to perform a certain task in her online homework assignments. I’ve observed that many of the educational software tools out there for her age group have little in the way of instructions and when they are provided, they are typically textual. Given that she is just learning to read, this can prove problematic. While its expected that an adult will supervise some of this work, they should really do a better job of providing brief tutorials to explain how the software works – this would make it easier for both the adults and children using the product.

· Background Knowledge: There are obvious gaps here, but in a general sense I’ve found that I usually have to only explain computer-use concepts once or twice and she’ll typically “get it”. The Doodle application on my iPhone has a limited functionality set that lets you select colors, pen types, etc. There’s also a new and save function. When she uses a similar flash-based drawing application in a browser, she understands the concepts of pen and background color. Seeing some of those cognitions develop is a lot of fun from a parent’s perspective, but it also points to knowledge transference between two mediums. In Club Penguin, the concepts of earning coins and being able to spend them in an online catalog was easier for her to understand with her having chores that earns her an allowance. Though, admittedly, I feel that Club Penguin may put a little too much emphasis on consumerism that may affect her thinking down the road.

· Interaction Style: Some efforts have been made in the past to create a kid-friendly version of operating system’s user interface, but I think this has led to some confusion – the kid-friendly operating system they use at home varies from the standard operating system interface they use at school. Simple things like decreasing the screen resolution to make buttons and type larger, but remaining true to the overall interface would probably serve children better. For Lindsey, if there are certain websites she likes to visit, I will add a shortcut to the desktop to make it easier for her. Once she becomes more literate, she will be able to type in the address of the sites she wishes to visit on her own.

Lindsey in a Lab

The authors devoted a good portion of the article on effective methods for testing software with children and some of the challenges involved. Much of their discussion centered on research performed in a lab environment with use of recording technologies. Emphasis was placed on making the environment as natural as possible for children using the product; hiding cameras and other distractions. For the development of some software, this would be great. But the realities of budgets and timelines, especially for some of the simple flash-based software that Lindsey and her classmates use would prove cost prohibitive.

I believe testing should be performed and I’d be interested in seeing some alternative, low cost ideas for testing with children. I think a loose framework for recording sessions in a home session followed up by some self-report by the parents would be helpful – though, self-report is risky if a parent perceives it as a test of their children’s (and not the software’s) abilities. I just feel that the lab setting, beyond the obvious cost implications, may not give you the kind of results you’d get from a more comfortable environment for a child such as home or a classroom. Any parent knows that their children act differently depending on their setting – whether it be a classroom, doctor’s office, barber or relative’s house.

* I didn’t want to use my daughter’s real name for this, so I let her pick one.

References

Bruckman, Amy, Alisa Bandlow, and Andrea Forte. "HCI for Kids." The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications, Second Edition (Human Factors and Ergonomics). Boca Raton: CRC, 2007. 793-810. Print.

"Theory of cognitive development - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2009. .

Children and the Internet

2009-11-17T05:55:00.000-08:00

Many of today’s young adults used the internet on a regular basis in their youth, I certainly did. The internet made its way into my home in the mid 1990’s, when my brother and I were in our mid-teens. By this time, the personal computer had become a standard appliance or entertainment device in households, and the internet was quickly becoming a standard utility much like cable TV. Interesting enough, my family subscribed to cable just one year before subscribing to AOL. Needless to say, the Secore household quickly flooded with media.

I feel that the early internet experiences of my brother and myself were much like what Sonia Livingstone describes in her article, we preferred online activities that were centered around media that we were already familiar [1] with, (from that new cable TV and radio) predominantly music. My brother and I felt these activities were normal, because most of our peers were online at home too. Just like Livingstone describes, we become the family computer and internet experts. Our parents were always looking for ways to police and limit our activity. This was the dynamic in play in my household over a decade ago, and according to Pew Internet about two-thirds of parents with teen internet users have rules regarding how long their children can use the internet today [2]. According to my parents, their parents treated TV much like they treated the internet- it was a privilege and not a right, and there were time limits and rules in place.

In many ways, the internet to my generation is what the TV was to theirs.

This statement has a great deal of truth to it if you are just look at the internet on the surface. But in so many ways, the internet is a much more powerful media than the TV was and is, because it is so very interactive and there is a greater variety and amount of content available. There is a large amount of objectionable content that children can see on the internet, and it is all available on demand. While sexual and violent content can be found on cable TV, it is more available and accessible to children online. It’s obvious that not just the visual content (such as pornographic images) that we must be aware of, it is the space of chat rooms, instant messaging and social networking that parents and those interested in protecting children must be aware of. That said, the internet has the potential to be more dangerous for children than TV. Children cannot have an interactive conversation with TV, while they can have dialogue with strangers via the internet. Livingstone points out that children are more likely to trust online information than adults are. This trust is what allows online pedophiles or predators to prey on children online. Pew informs us that nearly a third of teens on the internet (mostly girls) have been contacted by a complete stranger online [3]. Not all of these contacts result in behavior that is considered objectionable, but unfortunately some do. Some of these “relationships” go from internet space into “the real world” and children are hurt and exploited.

Children’s internet use also raises many questions about children’s privacy. Some of today’s teens are more willing to share very personal information on the internet such as some photographs, cell phone numbers and even addresses. From my own experience, I believe that this is because they have new mediums in which to share the info (ex. Facebook or MySpace) and because it is more socially acceptable/normal to do so. There are privacy features available on social networking sites, and according to a Pew report 59% of teens have their online profiles set to “friends only.” I also assumed that teens restricted access to their profiles because they did not want their parents to view them. I assume this because I was a teenager using the internet once, and I’m surrounded by teenage family members who use the internet. My assumption is a correct one, since the same Pew report says that nearly two-thirds of teens who know their parents are aware of their online profiles set them to “friends only.” [4] We’re also confronted with the question: how private can your information/images be when if your online community so large? In same cases teens (and other populations) partake in “Friend collecting” also known in online social networking communities as “friend whoring” - adding “friends” just for the sake of growing your network [5]. Maintaining a large network of “friends” my help a child feel more popular and accepted. Pew reports that most teens take steps to protect their privacy in the areas “most obvious areas of risk” [6] and “friend collecting” is not practiced by all teens. It should still be noted that sharing any information or personal images online does create a risk. Features like “tagging” on social networking helps create a large “web” in which undesirable parties may view photos or information. Furthermore, photos can also be saved to one’s hard drive, and distributed by unauthorized individuals via alternative means.

The internet is collection of spaces that children can find many opportunities within. Livingstone points out the children perform different types of tasks on the internet at home and at school [1]. There are educational websites that children can visit and gain a lot from. When children are outside of the walls of school, they’re more likely to partake in other activities online such as social networking and chatting. The internet can break down walls and allow children (and all people) to communicate with people to have similar interests whether it is a particular band, sports figure, type of art or video game. Livingstone also points out in her paper that children mostly use their online communication to supplement their real world social circles and suggests that most contacts that children make online are local [1]. In some respect, online communication is to today’s youth is what phone calls were to previous generation.

The way in which our culture obtains information has changed, and is still changing. A number of different literacies have emerged in recent years; it’s not just about reading text anymore. Livingstone points out on page 154 that literacy is a source of social power. More activities are being performed online, such as filling out unemployment forms and filing income taxes. Today’s children will have a substantial disadvantage if they are not allowed to develop essential technology-related skills.

Children’s internet use aids them in developing identity, allows them to participate in different forums and grow their communication skills [1]. I believe that these are all important skills in one’s development; I feel that internet use helped me as an individual develop these areas to some degree. While certain aspects of the internet are “dark,” (such as the potential of isolated children becoming more isolated [1], possible exploitation and contact by strangers) children’s use of the internet and internet literacy are vital to them growing and gaining power in our society. I feel that not every child who uses the internet will become an internet addict, pornography addict, or engage in illicit or illegal activities, but some may. It’s important to remember that children got into trouble long before the internet was created.

References:

[1] Livingstone, Sonia. Children’s use of the internet: reflections on the emerging research agenda.

[2] Parents also use non-tech solutions to protect children. http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2005/Protecting-Teens-Online/How-families-navigate-the-potential-challenges-of-being-online/06-Parents-also-use-non-tech-solutions-to-protect-children.aspx?r=1

[3] Friendship, Strangers and Safety in Online Social Networks. http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Teens-Privacy-and-Online-Social-Networks/6-Friendship-Strangers-and-Safety-in-Online-Social-Networks/02-32-percent-of-online-teens-have-been-contacted-online-by-a-complete-stranger.aspx?r=1

[4] Online Privacy: What Teens Share and Restrict in an Online Environment. http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Teens-Privacy-and-Online-Social-Networks/5-Online-Privacy--What-Teens-Share-and-Restrict-in-an-Online-Environment/05-Teens-walk-the-line-between-openness-and-privacy.aspx?r=1

[5] Community Portal Survey.
http://sw-portal.deri.org/papers/deliverables/Community%20Portal%20Survey.pdf

[6] Teens, Privacy and Social Networks. http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Teens-Privacy-and-Online-Social-Networks/1-Summary-of-Findings.aspx?r=1

Kids as Design Partners

2009-11-17T00:51:00.000-08:00

Being someone who, on many occasions, has been teased for her awkwardness around children, I was very intrigued by the concept of using "kids as design partners." I would keep a calm demeanor when asked to watch a child for ten minutes or so, but apparently not outwardly so as the request to have me watch them would be quickly followed by "You don't have to be afraid," or "Do you think you'll be okay?" So the idea of spending not just a single half-hour test session with them, but being engaged in a research project that will likely span many months is more than a bit daunting to me. Of course, others are much more skilled around children. And these are likely the researchers that would choose--and be chosen--to play the adult role in this design partnership.

In a research and design process that involves children as partners, they are considered "equal stakeholders in the design of new technologies throughout the entire experience," within an "Intergenerational Design Team" (Druin, 2002). Children are engaged from the outset of the project throughout, with the exception of more refined report writing. Together with the adults, they build upon ideas in a process called "Idea Elaboration," help to create and provide feedback on prototypes, serve as observers and notetakers throughout, and design the final product. It is the only one of the four roles that kids may have in designing new technologies in which they are elevated nearly to the status of adults and treated as equals. Although in each of the other roles in which children may assume (User, Tester, Informant) there exists a great deal of respect for the opinions of children, these other roles are only called in as needed. Furthermore, the power structure is very different, even for informants who may be summoned multiple times during a project.

There are many challenges in working with children in this capacity--not just for people who are afraid of kids. For one thing, these projects would require much lengthier timescales as bringing children into a design process slows everything down. With their limited availability and attention spans, they can only be engaged for short periods at a time. Scheduling often revolves around the children, such as accommodating them via an after-school program or incorporating the experience into a class curriculum. With children involved in everything from brainstorming to prototyping, observation, and analysis, there is an abundance of data to capture, which can easily lead to disarray. To combat this, multiple ways of capturing data are used, including videotaping. Children being videotaped are self-conscious in their own way, though this can be overcome by having other children do the videotaping.

Though children are invaluable for their insights and unique perspective, they lack the communication and cognitive skills to discuss their thoughts as adults would. Kid speech and adult speech differ, both in terms of vocabulary and conceptual framework. They might simply fabricate things. And even when they are earnest in what they say, perhaps they offer fanciful ideas that are simply outrageous. So there is a need for vetting of what is said, what is considered valid for impacting design decisions. Kids are encouraged to draw as well as write out their thoughts. They work on low-grade prototyping for conveying their thoughts, using this as a basis for discussions.

The primary challenge seems to be the cultivation of children and adult partnerships so that they are able to form a fruitful working alliance. A "power struggle" is negotiated so that adults do not dominate and thus avoid the usual parent vs. child or teacher vs. student relationships. To promote the sense of equality across generations, certain rules have to be followed: no hand-raising, everyone uses first names, informal dress is essential, and everyone gets paid. According to "contact theory," socializing leads to better working relationships. To encourage informal socializing, every session begins with 15 minutes of "snack time." During this time they can talk about anything that interests them, but at least relevant to the children. To minimize the effects of typical adult/child roles, there must be at least two adults and at least two kids present within each team. At the end of the day, "team reflections" sessions occur for synthesizing the day's learnings within and among the various subgroups.

Still, what is offered is only a vague sense of the actual ins and outs of the interactions between kids and adults. Also, there is little discussed about how children adapt from playing freely in standard roles as kids and students to their new roles as paid designers, usability specialists, and researchers. It is mentioned that 7 to 10 year olds are the most effective prototyping partners in that they are old enough to be verbally equipped and self-reflective while being young enough to avoid preconceived notions of how things should be (Bruckman, et al, 2008). Other than that, the effect of age is not addressed in these articles in regards to suitability as design partners.

The questions that come to my mind are: How are these children kept engaged? Is discipline ever necessary? The activities must be fun, but there is also the need to generate motivation that persists beyond a single day's work (or perceived play). With the proper motivation, one would imagine that the need for discipline would be kept to a minimum. But if necessary, what form would the discipline take? Or if children were to disengage in a disruptive manner, are there techniques for channeling their energies positively so that they can be brought back in when they are ready to do so? Druin states that it may take six months for adults and kids to develop a true partnership for optimal collaboration. How many of the kids initially invited to participate are ever asked to leave? Insofar as it occurs, it must be rather devastating. Or is the continuinty in participants less important than the fact that they have lost a member that they had already spent time developing camaraderie and a working relationship with? Mostly, what is discussed in these articles is the need for preventing and handling boredom, with a nod to feelings of frustration and disappointment.

With the aim towards producing more kid-centric designs that are high on enjoyment and usability, using kids as design partners is an unparalleled approach. As an offshoot of participatory design which believes in the importance of engaging the user throughout the design process, the adapted methodology of "Cooperative Inquiry" combines both contextual inquiry and technology immersion. It is a very time and energy-intensive approach, but with strong cross-generational working relationships formed, designs can result that are inconceivable otherwise. Kids have unlimited energy once they are engaged, and by default think outside of the box, more often asking "why not" than its reverse. "I found that the more I worked closely with children, the more I came to expect the unexpected when it came to ideas, technology directions and honest feedback from children." (Druin, 2002). For those who are unafraid, and given the proper environment, children can make great research and design partners.

~ Jenny Wang

References:

Bruckman, A., Bandlow A., Forte A. (2008) HCI For Kids. The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook, 793-809.

Druin A. (2002) The role of children in the design of new technology. Behaviour & Information Technology, 21(1), 1-25.

Ubiquitous Computing

2009-11-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

Ubiquitous computing has changed the way that we interact with computers, as they become an integral part of how we negotiate the world around us. This is a shift in the previous, more traditional, paradigm of our computer interaction. Computers are now embedded in most every aspect of our lives well beyond our use of desktop or laptop machines we use for work and recreation.

In Mark Weiser’s article, The Computer for the 21^st Century, he states, “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” As we move to smaller and more pervasive devices and integrated technologies, this statement has certainly been proven to be true, particularly where computers are concerned.

The Abowd-Mynatt article, Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in Ubiquitous Computing, references Weiser’s original project at Xerox PARC, and brings the ideas current and beyond. They note that Weiser’s vision included:

People and environments augmented with computational resources that provide information and services when and where desired, and that,

New applications would emerge and leverage off these devices and infrastructure.

They address three themes around ubiquitous computing: natural interfaces, contextual awareness, and the ability to automate the capture of live experiences and provide late access to those experiences. The dimensions of time and space play critical roles, as the goal of ubicomp must consider both environment and people. Time is another dimension that provides a challenge as the demand is for these systems to be available at all times.

Ubiquitous computing has become increasing more pervasive within the context of human daily life. It is no longer confined to the way we work, but is embedded in how we live, relate and communicate. The Internet provides a broad platform that is contextually rich in our current existence. It allows us to transcend time and space and connect and interact with one another in ways never possible before its inception. Information, even esoteric information, is available on demand via various search engines, which allows us to expand our knowledge base with immediacy. Social networking has changed the way we view human connections and made these connections more (or less) rich depending on one’s individual definition of “human connection.”

The desire for natural interfaces is becoming more of a reality as the use of metaphors is helping to drive design in that direction. The development of multi-touch devices, portability of technology, and on-demand computing also demonstrate the proliferation of computing technology that is designed to be integrated into daily life.

My concern, however, is at what cost to traditional, organic human development and cognition is this proliferation happening? What happens to us if the infrastructure fails? Is our reliance on technology dangerous to our ability to survive? At the very least, is our reliance on technology dangerous to our development?

Even in a time where much research is being conducted in the areas of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, they are both still artificial and have no organic basis as we do. In that sense, current technologies are still distinguishable from the fabric of our lives. Ubiquitous computing, therefore, in my mind, has value to us in terms of both simplifying and augmenting the human experience, but we should never become completely reliant on it because errors do occur. “In fact, it is endemic to the design of computer systems that attempt to mimic human abilities (Abowd-Mynatt, 34).”

References

Abowd, G. & Mynatt, E. (2000). Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in Ubiquitous Computing. ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 7(1), 29-58.

Weiser, M. (1991). The Computer for the 21st Century. Scientific American, 265(3), 94-104.

On Ubiquitous Computing

2009-11-08T11:11:00.000-08:00

by David F. Bello

Earlier in this semester, I researched augmented reality applications for the purpose of comparing their use to the Plato's Allegory of the Cave. I found that one of the crucial requirements in developing an AR system was to enable interaction in realtime (Azuma). Being context-aware implies that the user has the ability to change that context, and the system must react accordingly. If there is delay, the illusion that this system is actually "augmenting" reality fails. This would qualify as a breakdown, and the suspension of disbelief that what the computer is displaying is actually a part of the real world is gone. The implication of time in context-aware systems conflicts with the statement Abowd and Mynatt make about time in these context-aware systems:

With the exception of using time as an index into a captured record or summarizing how long a person has been at a particular location, most context-driven applications are unaware of the passage of time. Of particular interest is understanding relative changes in time as an aid for interpreting human activity. For example, brief visits at an exhibit could be indicative of a general lack of interest. Additionally, when a baseline of behavior can be established, action that violates a perceived pattern would be of particular interest. For example, a context- aware home might notice when an elderly person deviated from a typically active morning routine (abowd and Mynatt 37).

These examples consider Time to be that abstract construction of the human mind which chunks activity into seconds, minutes, and hours. In all practical considerations of time, it must be considered at a deeper level: the system must take time to process information and power on and off, and the user always takes an unpredictable amount of time to actually perform tasks. The idea that a context-aware system is not directly impacted by the realtime aspect of its circumstance and context is false. If an existing structure, perhaps an RFID-tagged piece of clothing, burns up in a fire, is torn to shreds by rabid dogs, or disappears for any reason, the context-aware system, if it is to be considered truly "context-aware," must recognize this and shift its internal information structure to reflect this reality. If there is delay, its use breaks down.

However, Ubiquity doesn't necessarily imply augmenting and representing the existing environment, but often by creating new environmental elements, such as the whiteboard, are "ubiquitous" systems created. Though the "whiteboard" is simply software which is projected (and therefore directly augmenting an existing technology and physical surface), the physical infrastructure to support this technology, whether that be the visually coded boards themselves, the immense prospect of precisely maneuvering projectors and/or mirrors, and even architecting rooms based on the implementation of a whiteboard system, is going to alter the foundation of the environment. Mobile phones, on the other hand, rely on the invisible infrastructure of the wireless network. They fit into the pockets of pants that can just as easily hold keys or money. The ubiquity of the mobile phone is fundamentally different from that of the whiteboard and other shared technologies.

This is not to say that the infrastructure of wireless networks is wholly intangible. As Wendy Chun argues throughout her work, the fiber optic networks which underly all communicative computing determine much of that computing in and of itself. The cell phone towers in the wilderness can be stumbled upon by the outdoorsman, and the radiation of carrier coverage could longitudinally manifest in congruently invisible, yet efficiently malignant, cancer cells. More bars in more places could metaphorically call to their incredible reliance on the notion of place.

The mobile phone is an actor in the invisible technology of wide networked space. The whiteboard becomes the space itself. It is important to consider this element of context when considering the scale of these ubiquitous devices. The whiteboard is, in effect, a small, centralized and immovable object which must be approached by users; a wireless network allows the mobile phone to be used in any physical location within a range. It is the portability that allows the phone to be studied with the function of time, and relegates the whiteboard to unified space.

The goal of the natural interface, according to Abowd and Mynatt, is to more "off the desktop" (32). If this is the case, why would it seem that much more different to replace the desktop with simply another fixed point? The static altars of the terminal, whiteboard, and wall-embedded appliance are ubiquitous if and only if the user has entered that specific physical space; ubiquity to a much smaller degree: tantamount to just creating a huge desk and a huge desktop PC that the user pretends fills his entire environment. Real ubicomp comes from the entrance of computing technology into everyday life unbound by any locality: ubiquity on a global/personal scale. All bars in all places.

Shouldn't this then be expanded to all bars in all places at all times? That would be truly ubiquitous at the personal scale. I believe that is what Abowd and Mynatt propose. Not necessarily to inundate the user with constant attention requests and immutable ringtones, but to provide constant availability and, I believe they do use the word, "companionship." The question then becomes, do we want more ubiquity in the design of our computing devices?

"We" can be considered in terms of scale to be any number of individual groups or populations. I've created a bulleted list to pose a series of questions that range along this variable of user population:

Would the medical community benefit from the constant availability to databases of treatment references?
Would the suicidal teenager be served better with a constant connection to loved ones and congenial authority figures?
Would the parents of children benefit from the perpetual surveillance of GPS tracked pedophiles?
Would the child like constant streaming of entertainment and/or educational material which may contain dubious amounts of advertising?
Would the traveler prefer to have his or her movement tracked across the planet in order to receive notifications of delayed airplanes and awareness of baggage?
Would the IRS benefit from RFID tagging of all purchased items?
Would a single government benefit from having its military coordinate attacks based on Twitter data?
Would society as a whole benefit from any of the situations mentioned?
Would large corporations be able to capitalize on them?
Would the individual business-owner suffer from the standardization of scaled applications such as these?

Cloud-based computing already offers the ubiquity of information. The capability of devices to be mobile and attain continuous access to that information is already in existence. This is the stuff of science fiction, yet we live in this world. The flying car and other crushed dreams of cyberpunk have been outmoded by true ubiquitous computing in the form of Google Docs, the iPhone, and 3G data plans.

WORKS CITED

Abowd, G. & Mynatt, E. (2000). Charting past, present, and future research in ubiquitous computing. ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 7(1), 29-58. (pdf)

Azuma, Ronald T. A Survey of Augmented Reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 6, 4 (August 1997), 355 - 385. pdf)

Chun, W., (2006). Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics. Cambridge: MIT Press. (book site)

Communication Breakdown: Activity Theory On the Road

2009-11-03T15:09:00.000-08:00

Groupware has had many definitions since its existence. The controversy of definitions is due to the multiple levels of networking in which it exists. My present research has been in the field of social software, specifically in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Popular CMC applications include social communities like Myspace, Facebook, Blogs, forums, and peer-peer applications like instant messaging. I am currently interested in how these social mediums can effect communication in travel with comparison to recent observations in the CMC field, and also what kinds of communities can be established through this new medium.

I would like to provide a brief overview of how social networking in travel would function. Projected design of such an application seems to be most easily imagined as an iPhone app. After successful retrieval of the app, one would be prompted to make a user profile (similar to Facebook). The object of the profile is to lure other users into a conversation with you. Users with similar profiles will be matched via connection server. Imagine each user with a data bubble around their vehicle projecting their profile to nearby users. When two profiles of similar interest are matched, both parties are notified with some kind of audio signal to avoid distraction from the road. By letting users know about surrounding “like interests,” possibilities are created for an ad-hoc communication environment. If the parties decide to connect, they are now free to chat through a voice call and discuss their similar interests.

The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook points out a list of issues that might occur when dealing with groupware applications. I would like to address a couple of them in context of a mobile-CMC (Andrew Sears & Julie A. Jacko, 2008).

2. Critical mass and Prisoner’s dilemma problems. Groupware may not enlist the “critical mass” of users required to be useful, or can fail because it is never in any one individual’s advantage to use it.

Critical mass would have direct correlation with whether or not a mobile-CMC is sustainable. For a social network to exist on the highway there would need to be a mass amount of users, or else not enough “similar interest matches” would be made to hold the user’s interest. Taking a look at Facebook in comparison, its online culture has changed dramatically since its creation. When Facebook was created it was limited to the culture of college students. Once it expanded to allow all sectors of society, online cultures started forming infinite new relations. Not only did new bonds form online, but through virtual activities real-world connection also are affected.

3. Disruption of social processes. Groupware can lead to activity that violates social taboos, threatens existing political structures, or otherwise de-motivates users crucial to its success.

I think this issue is related to similar issues in value sensitive design. With Facebook, the most common VSD issue is that of privacy. In the evolution of Facebook’s growing capabilities, multiple social taboos arose including privacy. The issue of privacy arose as an ethical issue and threatened the growth of Facebook’s culture. With people afraid to share content and develop deeper profiles, creations of new virtual subcultures seemed to come to a standstill. It is not hard to believe that comparable situations could arise in the mobile-CMC scenario. However, I think there is another value that has higher importance in mobile-CMC design. Human welfare is always the first topic brought up when discussing new entertainment for travel. Entertainment while travel provides a stimulus for the mind to keep alert while driving. It can also induce distractions that have negative effects on welfare. Obvious precautions can be designed to keep the mobile-CMC “hands free” or semi auto-mated, reducing distraction.

I would like to refer to a theory pulled from Kari Kuutti’s research on Activity Theory in response to welfare and distraction while driving. Kuutti explains that, “A good example of action-operation dynamics is learning to use a manual gearbox when driving a car.” Kuutti describes how actions like using the clutch, brake, gas, and shifter all require planning, sequencing and decisions. However, after a while the actions become part of a bigger equation, which is called an “operation” (Kuutti, 1995). I believe after a prolonged use of social networking applications in travel, users will acquire a more “operational view” to communication while driving. I believe communication while driving will become part of the operation of driving as is shifting, thereby eliminating communication from the list of distractions.

It is important to identify the type of social software exhibited by this system to properly predict issues it might have with information flow. I mostly imagine this system as a Peer-Peer application. However, most instant messaging applications are not necessarily designed for social networking. Facebook, on the other hand, is specifically used to provide friends or acquaintances with status information about you. Through this method, a chain reaction of finding users with similar interests can occur. Consequentially groups are formed, activities are scheduled and knowledge is traded. In essence, the traveling social network takes on the “hive mind” characteristics and abilities of Facebook, while harnessing the more privatized communication of instant messaging.

Judging from the progression of communities that have formed on Facebook, blogs, and forums, it seems that a mobile-CMC would develop a related social structure. Looking at the chart taken from Jonathan Grudin’s article one “Computer-Supported Cooperative Work,” I will compare today’s common Social applications to my theoretical mobile-CMC (Grudin, 1994).Facebook interactions occur generally in the middle time row. If a message is posted on Facebook, one can expect a person to receive it in an average amount of time. I believe this to be true for the mobile-CMC situation. If both users are aware of each other, a conversation should be expected to start within an average time. The two types of communication differ when it come to place. Since users are connected from distance through Facebook, it is appropriate to say that they are in different locations. It is also appropriate to say that it is predictable that the user being messaged will get on Facebook to receive said message. This would place Facebook somewhere in range of electronic mail. With the mobile-CMC situations, users are technically in the same location (the highway) since they have to be within short range of each other to communicate. This places the mobile-CMC more in range of tele/video conferences (real-time conferencing).

It has taken a good four years for Facebook to yield so many virtual subcultures. Building from that existent framework and placing social communication in a real-time medium could increase the rate for social development of mobile-CMC. Coherent and familiar interfaces will allow users to quickly adapt to the new form of entertainment/communication. Given that critical mass is met users will be able to new cultures specifically based on highway travel. For example, maybe “user 1” travels at the same time during rush hour as “user 2,” after multiple connections “user 1” is informed by “user 2” that there is a shortcut that cuts 20 minutes off the trip. In turn “user 1” shares this information with “user 3” which met on the way to the mall. Not only does this create opportunity for collective intelligence and problem solving, but it also creates superior chances for marketing.

Today “user 1” is traveling down the highway thinking about the broken toilet that sits at home. In the upcoming stretch he notices that “user 2” (a plumber/contractor). “User 1” is granted a connection and asks “user 2” if the company services his area. “User 2” regretfully replies no, but provides the suggestion that his mother company resides in “user 1’s” town. The first user efficiently got useful information (that was allocated out of a set schedule of time wasted driving) from the second user who just brought in a possible client for his company (on his way to another client). These real-time efficiencies make this social networking system a great benefit to the travel experience.

Computer-mediated communication has come a long way since the 1980’s. Building from past frameworks and HCI studies can prove to be very beneficial to design. Grudin and Kuutti have found logical ways to organize the data gathered about HCI statistics. Although at this point in time social networking while driving may seem to project negative effects on human welfare through distraction, I believe the product of social activity and collaboration weigh out positively.

Works Cited
Andrew Sears & Julie A. Jacko. (2008). The Human–Computer. New York: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.
Grudin, J. (1994). Computer-Supported CooperativeWork : History and Focus. Irvine: University of California.
Kuutti, K. (1995). Activity Theory as a potential framework for HCI Research. Boston: Cambridge: MIT Press.

Participatory Design

2009-11-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

As a usability/user experience professional working for the e-commerce team of a telecommunications company, I had heard of participatory design, but never knew much about it or worked with anyone who had experience in it. It sounded logical to me to involve end-users in the software design process. However, I had heard that it more specifically meant involving users in the design process directly, something that seemed problematic to me.

I guess it’s natural to me that involving end-users in the design process is essential. Doing so will help you to better define your requirements, to understand your end-users’ goals, needs and environmental contexts and to verify that what you are creating is on track. However, it was clearly noted in my mind that end-users (in our markets) are rarely software/website designers and thus do not have the training or advanced techniques/understanding that these professionals have.

For example, end-users may struggle with something and not have the words or knowledge to specify what the problem is exactly. However, a designer can observe their struggle and understand that a subtle fix can make a significant improvement. Still, it seems reasonable that obstacles like that can be challenged and domains can be bridged.

In fact, Michael Muller discussed the idea of a third space, a “hybrid of space between software professionals and end-users”. In this space where the two groups come together, assumptions can be questioned, knowledge can be exchanged, and a common language can be established to the betterment of both groups. He described Participatory Design as creating this third space which in turn can benefit the field of Human Computer Interaction. He then examined a variety of Participatory Design methods to see how well each contributed to the goals of hybridity.

Within his Participatory Design chapter, Muller summarizes the claims of third spaces, which include, among other attributes:

Questioning and challenging of assumptions
Mutual learning
Synthesis of new ideas
Negotiation and (co-)creation of Identities, working language, working assumptions and dynamics, understandings, relationships
Dialogue across and within differences

The elements of Participatory Design are intriguing – a dialogue between people from separate domains facilitated by hands-on activities. Issues that come to my mind as I consider how I might apply this to my work are practical ones such as, how many Participatory Design sessions in a design process, where in the lifecycle does this fit, how many end-users, how to recruit/screen, how to analyze results and turn them into actionable outcomes, how could I make a case for this at my company. Muller identifies a few as well, one of which is the concern for universal usability. He points out that nearly all of the Participatory Design methods that he examined are “highly visual and require hands-on manipulation of materials”, making them not accessible to many people with limited visual or motor skill abilities.

A recent paper by Loebbecke and Powell (2009) discusses Distributed Participatory Design and the need for it to evolve by learning from other collaborative design methods. They point out that Participatory Design was initially developed for groups of software professionals and end-users to meet physically in the same location, which was appropriate for the time. With the common practice today of virtual teams who may be in separate countries and time zones, Distributed Participatory Design has developed. The authors compared Distributed Participatory Design with other collaborative design methods (Distributed Action Research and Distributed Design Science) to discover similarities between approaches that might be beneficial to all.

They identified several issues that practitioners have with Distributed Participatory Design, physical distribution (separation of people and resources), organizational distribution (work structure, differences in skill levels, knowledge levels) and temporal distribution (limited time teams can meet virtually given differences in time zones).

Loebbecke and Powell describe the Action Research method as one in which some change is introduced to complex social processes followed by observation of those processes and any effect(s) of the change. The steps are part of an iterative process and involve (1) Understanding and diagnosis of the situation and its underlying dynamics, (2) action planning, (3) intervention, (4) evaluation, and (5) reflection.

The authors then describe the Design Science method as concerned with creating something new and innovative to enhance HCI often to solve a business problem/need. They present seven principles suggested by Hevner et al (2004): (1) ‘Design as an artifact’, i.e., producing a viable artifact (construct, model, method, instantiation), (2) ‘problem relevance’, i.e., searching for important solutions for the business world, (3) ‘design evaluation’, i.e. assuring quality and utility of an artifact, (4) ‘research contributions’, i.e., reflecting upon the design (how did she/he contribute to the body of knowledge he used?), (5) ‘research rigor’, i.e., rigorously applying methods along the process, (6) ‘design as a search process’, i.e. stressing the dual imperative between solutions and environmental constraints, and finally (7) ‘communication of the research’ underlining the double audience of stakeholders and research community.

After conducting a textual analysis of the three approaches looking at publications and projects, Loebbeck and Powell found many commonalities (research focus, outcomes, and research process) and differences (terminology, references, and audiences). They were concerned with the separation of these areas, referring to them as “walled gardens”.

They suggest that these approaches may be better considered as paradigms than methods. They also recommend that researchers of Distributed Participatory Design would benefit from looking to Distributed Action Research and Distributed Design Research for inspiration.

“This research suggests that there is a lack of cross-fertilization from approach to approach, and that walled gardens exist or are starting to emerge. Thus, there is a need for the walled gardens of different methods to at least have windows so that knowledge can be exchanged and ultimately the walls need to be removed. However, as demonstrated by this research, the walls are high at present and, though there is some evidence of cracks in the windows, distributed PD may miss potential sources of enrichment”.

Although I find that I still have many unanswered questions about this approach or paradigm, I am inspired by the potential that it and other collaborative methods have to offer.
_____

Muller, M. J. (2007). Participatory design: The third space in HCI. In Sears, A. & Jacko, J. (Eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. (pp. 1061-1082). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Loebbecke, C. & Powell, P. (2009). Furthering Distributed Participative Design. In Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 21:1 (pp. 77-106).

Virtual Environments for Computer-Supported Coopertive Work: Too Quickly Dismissed, or a Waste of Time? (and a little summary of Olson and Olson)

2009-11-02T10:57:00.000-08:00

This week’s reading included a chapter in The Human Computer Interaction Handbook, called “Groupware and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work,” written by Gary and Judith Olson from the University of Michigan. In this chapter, they recount the history of various computer-based tools designed to facilitate cooperative work. They refer to this technology as “groupware.” References are made to many of the HCI pioneers that we have already studied this semester, such as Vanever Bush and Doug Englebart. Email is pointed to as the first truly successful groupware application, and the increasing use of instant messaging in the workplace is discussed as being a big development in computer-supported cooperative work. I found these sections to be of interest, because I work in a corporate culture where even email is viewed as a new technology and is not widely accepted. Although reluctance by coworkers to accept such a basic technology as email can be extremely frustrating, it has also provided me with an opportunity to watch the shift in communication paradigms as those things are adopted in our office. It is interesting to watch people begin to map their very laborious communication tasks (like walking across the building to speak to someone, or hand-writing notes to people) to more efficient, computer-mediated media. Instant messaging was also introduced during the past year, and while I am still one of the few who use this tool, I have found the “status” feature to be extremely useful. Our internal IM tool automatically determines a person’s status, based on computer activity, unless the person manually changes their status. This means that I can generally tell if someone is in their office, before I attempt to contact them, which saves me a great deal of time. Our change control system is still entirely manual, which means that when I revise an instruction manual (which happens on a daily basis), I have to complete a multi-page form, and actually walk it around the building to get various people (10-15 people) to review the revisions and manually sign the approval form. This little activity constitutes the biggest waste of my time that I have ever experienced, and knowing whether people are in their office is a big time saver for me.

The authors of this paper go on to discuss various online meeting tools (we use Live Meeting at work), workflow tools (we have no such thing, unfortunately), and group calendars. I could relate and understand most of what they said, as we use many of these tools where I work. As with other tools, use of some of these tools is frustrated by hesitation by the aging population of the office to accept new technology. Group calendars and specifically the ability to schedule meetings and reserve conference rooms via Microsoft Outlook is a particularly neglected tool. I often schedule a meeting via Outlook, and arrive at the reserved conference room at the appointed time, to find another meeting taking place. When I inform the squatters that I have reserved the room, I have been told on more than one occasion they they had also reserved the the room…by posting a note on the door, or telling the receptionist that they would be using it. So, while these technologies are extremely useful, I’ve had the opportunity to see first hand the challenges faced during the transitional phases of technology adoption.

Of greater interest to me is the authors’ discussion of “integrated spaces” for computer-supported collaboration. The authors give us a brief description of “media spaces,” which are persistent, bi-directional audio/video streams between two geographically distant locations. It is suggested that research has shown these to be ineffective for distributed collaboration. The authors then touch very briefly on collaboration in virtual environments.

My primary research focus this semester (both in this class and in another) has been the use of 3-D immersive virtual environments to perform various communication tasks. The authors of this paper suggest that virtual environments are ineffective for distributed collaboration, because “in use, it is difficult to establish mutual awareness or orientation in such spaces” (Olson). However, I think this finding could be a bit outdated at this point. Having reviewed the sources indicated by the Olsons, I find that only Hindmarsh, et al. suggests that virtual environments are ineffective as distributed collaboration tools, and that study is quite old (11 years old), and was performed using technology that doesn’t even exist anymore (Hindmarsh, et al., 1998). I believe that modern virtual environments and the hardware used to interact within them are advanced far beyond what Hindmarsh et al. used in their study, and that the difficulties they experienced (primarily due to a limited field of view) have now been overcome. The other sources cited by the Olsons are nearly as old, use the CAVE virtual environment (which uses a vastly different interface than typical modern virtual environments), and fail to suggest that virtual environments are ineffective for distributed collaboration (Park, et al., 2000; Yang, 2002). My research indicates that virtual environments are more effective for distributed communication than other forms of electronic media (Bricken, 1992; Bronack, 2008; Franceschi, 2008; Martinez, 2008), primarily due to the enhanced set of communication tools that are available to users of virtual worlds. Studies have also suggested that one of the key benefits of collaboration in a virtual environment is the user’s sense of physical proximity to other users, which results in enhanced feelings of trust between users. In general, I believe that virtual environments have the potential to increase productivity in the workplace exponentially. In addition to the ease of collaboration between geographically distributed users, virtual environments can isolate users from the sensory distraction factors that exist in a typical open office environment, which will dramatically enhance focus and productivity (but that’s the topic of another paper…coming soon). The Olsons have given us a strong foundation in CSW technology, and while I believe they misjudged virtual environments (which I think have the potential to solve virtually all of the problems mentioned in their paper/chapter), they have definitely provided food for thought, and inspiration for future research and development.

References

Banbury, Simon P., et al. “Auditory Distraction and Short-Term Memory: Phenomena and Practical Implications.” Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 43.1 (2001): 12-29.

Bricken, Meredith. “Virtual worlds: No interface to design.” Ed. M. Benedikt. Cyberspace: First steps. Cambridge: MIT Press, (1992).

Bronack, Stephen C., et al. “Designing Virtual Worlds to Facilitate Meaningful Communication: Issues, Considerations, and Lessons Learned” Technical Communication 55.3 (2008): 261-267.

Bronack, Stephen C., et al. “Presence Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning in a 3D Virtual Immersive World” International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 20.1 (2008): 59-69.

Dickey, Michele D. “Three-dimensional virtual worlds and distance learning: two case studies of Active Worlds as a medium for distance eductation” British Journal of Educational Technology 36.3 (2005): 439-451.

Franceschi, Katherine G., and Ronald M. Lee. “Virtual Social Presence for Effective Collaborative E-Learning” Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Workshop on Presence. 2008.

Gabbard, Joseph L. A Taxonomy of Usability Characteristics in Virtual Environments. MS thesis Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1997.

Hindmarsh, Jon., et al. “Fragmented Interaction: Establishing Mutual Orientation in Virtual Environments” Proceedings of Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. 1998.

Kirschner, Paul A. “Why Unguided Learning Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Discovery Learning, Problem-Based Learning, Experiential Learning, and Inquiry-Based Learning” Educational Psychologist. 2004.

Martinez, Nicola. “Second Life: The Future of Communications?” Proceedings of the 55th Annual Conference of the Society for Technical Communication. 2008.

Padmanabhan, Poornima. “Exploring Human Factors in Virtual Worlds.” Technical Communication 55.3 (2008): 270-275.

Park, Kyoung S., et al. “Lessons learned from employing multiple perspective in a collaborative virtual environment for visualizing scientific data” Proceedings of ACM CVE 2000 Conference on Collaborative Virtual Environments. 2000.

Slater, Mel. “Measuring Presence: A Response to the Witmer and Singer Presence Questionnaire” Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 8.5 (1999): 560-565.

Witmer, Bob G., and Michael J. Singer. “Measuring Presence in Virtual Environments: A Presence Questionnaire” Presence 7.3 (1998): 225-240.

Yang, Huahai, and Gary M. Olson. “Exploring collaborative navigation: the effect of perspectives on group performance” Proceedings of CVE ’02. 2002.

Distributed Cognition, Red Balloons, & Bioluminecent Squids (oh my)

2009-11-01T10:17:00.000-08:00

Hutchins et al originally developed the theory of distributed cognition studying the workings of a Navy ship crew. In Distributed Cognition in an Airline Cockpit (1996) Hutchins & Klausen update this work by exploring cognitive theories about the workings of an airline cockpit by taking the unit of analysis to be the functional group and their organized processes and interactions rather than their individual minds. [1]

The ideas of distributed cognition have philosophical implications that bring to mind far-out science fiction ideas and visions of a future with a technology-mediated hive minded consciousness. Since cognition generally refers an information processing model, the actual approach of the theory is much more utilitarian than philosophical. Hutchins’ early work in shaping disturbed cognition theory arouse out of the need to apply cognitive theory to the workings of a ship crew and an airplane cockpit, and other highly organized distributed groups.

So, despite the interesting philosophical implications that challenge traditional models of the mind, distributed cognition is a surprisingly simple and elegant theory that works very well as a model.

Distributed cognition theory simply extends the level of analysis beyond the individual. The difference between someone who remembers something by writing it down and someone who relies on their short term memory is simply the difference between a cognitive system using an external process (pen, paper, and written language) or an internal process (short term memory). This idea of embodied cognition has many implications for HCI particularly with recent advances in ubiquitous mobile computing and emerging augmented reality technology making the separation between the individual and the “computer” thinner and thinner.

In Distributed Cognition: Towards a New Foundation for Human-Computer Interaction Research, Hollan, Hutchins, & Kirsh list three tenets of distributed cognition:

1. Distributed cognition is social
Hollan et al. present social organization as form of cognitive architecture. They argue that cognitive processes involve trajectories of information and the patterns of these information trajectories reflect some underlying cognitive architecture. Social aspects of distributed cognition have been widely studied and examples include the behavior of juries and the stock market.

2. Distributed cognition is embodied
In the embodied view of distributed cognition, minds are more than passive engines that render internal models of external phenomena. The organization of mind in development and in operation is an emergent property of interactions among internal and external resources.

In this view, work materials are more than mere stimuli for a disembodied cognitive system. From time to time they become elements of the cognitive system itself. Other examples such as a blind person’s cane or corrective eye glasses become a central part of the way some individuals perceive the world. Well designed work materials, such as a calendar alert system on a mobile device, become integrated into the way people think, see, and control activities, part of the distributed system of cognitive control.

3. Distributed cognition is culturally embodied
This view, includes the complex cultural environments in which we all live and work. Culture shapes the cognitive process of systems that transcend the boundaries of individuals. [2]

The environment is viewed as a reservoir of resources for learning, problem solving, and reasoning. Culture is a process that accumulates partial solutions to frequently encountered problems. Culture can be viewed as a residue of previous activity, that individuals can utilize to solve problems and build on the success of others.

Recent examples of distributed cognition

As technological innovations create new opportunities for distributed individuals to work together with others on a common task, distributed cognition may be becoming more and more useful as a model.

In 2008, Clay Shirky documented many of these new developments in Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations [3]. Shirky, like many others, argues that our culture of media consumption is transitioning to include participation and interactivity. In one of Shirky’s most powerful arguments considers the potential “cognitive surplus” of individuals who begin to use social computing to create and organize. Shirky sees a trend of Americans spending less time passively engaging with media and more time actively participating and interacting with media. He calculates that if Americans applied just 1% of the time they currently passively participating in media (i.e. watching television) and used that time to engage & interact more actively with media this shift would represent the time and effort required to create and maintain 1,000 wikipedia sized projects each year. Clay Shirky’s talk can be viewed here:

a written transcript is here: http://bit.ly/3vYPt9

Just last week DARPA launched a contest to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the internet. This challenge indicates an interest in exploring the workings and emergent capacities of social-computational systems of people and computers. The Darpa Network Challenge places 10 red weather balloons in prominent locations across the country for four hours on a single day. The first individual or team to provide the exact latitude and longitude of all of the 10 balloons wins a $40,000 prize. Darpa describes the challenge as follows:

“To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways.”

The nature of the task seems to require a complicated series of interactions with thousands of others, yet according to the rules of the contest only one individual may win the prize. Because of this element of competition and the relatively short time to organize, it’s likely groups will organize a number of different, complex coordinated and competing processes. These processes will likely emerge from the behavior and ideas of many, competing individuals and groups and will not be as engineered or planned from the top as Hutchins’ airplane cockpit.

It seems likely that many of the individuals who first happen upon the balloons in this four hour period will not be aware of the contest. Therefore, the information will need to travel through a complex path via communications using social computing tools like facebook and twitter, until it reaches an informed agent or group. This example is analagous to the perception of individual photons by an single first order neurons that are communicated to higher level visual processing structures of the brain. There are other complex neural processes such as those that enhance the signal to noise ratio. Similarly, it’s easy to imagine the contest will have many false positives and bits of misinformation winding their way through twitter, facebook, and other networks during the four hour period that contribute to a signal to noise problem. It may become necessary to send individuals to verify rumored locations or develop an algorithm to estimate the reliability of each report or otherwise attenuate the signals from the chatter.

By dangling a $40,000 carrot, it seems DARPA is pushing social networks and other web platforms to discover what structures of distributed cognition emerge. This problem space is very different from Hutchins’ early work in distributed cognition theory. Hutchin et al needed a model to represent the processes involved in the workings of a ship crew and an airplane cockpit. These processes were engineered, improvised, evaluated, and tested. In the DARPA experiment the scale will be to large to be engineered and determined from the top, many of the structures of distributed cognition will emerge in unpredictable ways.

Flipping the Script - The mind of an individual as a distributed system

Hollan et al introduce the idea that concepts and models of social groups can be used to describe what is happening within an individual’s mind. They site Minsky’s Society of Mind in suggest that cognition of an individual may also be distributed.

This idea of distributed components of an individual is similar to a talk that outlined new research in molecular biology that, like distributed cognition theory, shifts the level of analysis beyond the individual bacteria to study the complex processes of highly coordinated groups of bacteria. Biologist’s Bonnie Bassler April 2009 Ted Talk: Discovering Bacteria’s amazing communication system is a summary of ideas that outline cognitive-like processes carried out by well-coordinated bacteria. Further extending the level of analysis, she discusses a species of squid that utilize a highly organized community of bioluminescent bacteria to precisely control an anti-predation behavior and outlines new research in bacteria quorum sensing and other group processes.

This 15 minute talk is definitely worth a look:

Implications of Distributed Cognition of founding assumptions of HCI

These readings on distributed cognition advocated for a new foundation of Human Computer Interaction Research, nearly 10 years ago. Since then, there have been incredible instances of distributed individuals using innovations in technology to work together in new and powerful ways.

Is distributed cognition theory as it now stands, useful in explaining new ways people are using technology to work together? Does the theory need to be updated and re-evaluate? Does the theory need to be combined with other theories of group behavior such as activity or game theory? Do we need a more developed theoretical frame to better understand and conceptualize the many new ways people are working together?

As people are becoming more comfortable working as a group via technology they are utilizing and repurposing powerful technology for diverse uses. Apparent social computing has advanced to the point that DARPA needs to study security implications. As designers how can we stay ahead of things and design software that allows for flexible and emergent use, so that people can work together in new and expected ways.

Human Computer Interaction as a field has typically focused on a single user interacting with a computer to complete tasks. These days, computing is becoming more and more about rapid advances in complex systems of humans and computers working together in new and interesting ways. Human Computer Interaction must develop new theories to be useful and relevant. Rather than using theory to drive innovations in social computing, it may become increasingly important for the field of HCI to study new and interesting uses of existing technology and develop new theories to understand and shape these advances.

References

1. Hutchins, E. & Klausen, T. (1996). Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit. In Engestrom, Y. and Middleton, D. (eds). Cognition and Communication at Work. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

2. Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., & Kirsh, D. (2000). Distributed cognition: Toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research. ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 7(2), 174-196. [pdf]

3. Shirky, Clay (2008) Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations The Penguin Press HC

Links to Video of talks

Clay Shirky's April 2008 talk at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco
http://blip.tv/file/855937/

Bonnie Bassler April 2009 Ted Talk: Discovering Bacteria’s amazing communication system
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/509

Wifi Liberator and Property

2009-10-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

Problem

Last summer, when I came back from my home, Korea, I had to stop by the Atlanta Airport to take a connecting flight. I was little bit anxious because I hadn’t checked my email box for about 15 hours. However, when I opened my web browser, I was very surprised to know that I had to pay about 8 dollars to 10 dollars to check my email. The wireless service was being provided by 5 network companies (Boingo, Concourse, SprintPCS, Access, Opti-fi) from $7.95 to $9.99 in daily fares (travelpostby.com).

The internet has become essential to our lives. In some countries, especially economically developed countries like the U.S., governments acknowledge that broadband Internet service is crucial to their people (ftc.gov). We, especially younger generation, can do nothing without a network. A network is more than just commercial goods. However, the internet is ruled by several providers. For home users and business users, the network is provided with a relatively reasonable price. However, it is true that users have to pay high cost in a public place for just a short time of usage.

So, individual users seek ways to access internet without cost or with low cost. There are several technologies to use/share a network without permission from a corporate network provider. Wifi Liberator, the tool to make an open private wireless node, selected by Ars Electronica 2008, is one of them. Wifi Liberator is “an open-source toolkit for a laptop computer that enables its users to liberate pay-per-use wireless networks and creates an open node that anyone can connect to for internet access”(Gerfried & Christine, 2008). According to Jonah Brucker-Cohen, the developer says that this toolkit is for free access to the internet in a public space.

This open private wireless network by this free-access technology would be very useful for individual internet users who want to share a network with other people and to get free access in a public space. For the whole society’s communication, sharing information among community members, having more chance for using a network is very important. However, this belief for openness of network and free access conflicts with ownership and property matter, because, in most countries, a network is considered as commercial goods.

So, in this paper I will talk about the ownership and property issue for sharing a network among individual users through consideration of Wifi Liberator. Considering this technology could be one case of thinking about values behind network sharing technologies, especially when they are used in a public space.

Value definition - Ownership and property

Ownership is a general right to property. It “entails a group of specific rights, including the right to possess an object, use it, manage it, derive income from it, and bequeath it”(Friedman & Kahn, 2007, p. 1252). According to Friedman and Kahn, the basic concept of a property right about a tangible object is simple. The owner of an object can keep it, use it, let others use it. and give it away (Friedman & Kahn, 2007). However, it becomes complicated when the property right is applied to intangible things like service and technology. Especially, in IT industry, the concept of property is very complicated because the limitation and boundary of the product is blurred. Let’s think about e-mail service. I use Hotmail. The service provider gave me an account with 2GB of capacity on the provider’s server. I can send and receive mails freely and modify the environment as I want. I can make folders and a contact list. The service provider cannot delete or modify my information and settings because they are mine. However, they can change the layout and design of “My” email box even though I don’t want to change it. So, at some point, “My” email box can look strange. The reason that this happens is because I get the right of partial use of the service/technology. The right of possessing technology and the right of using technology is different, and the boundary between the two is also blurred. So we have to be careful to consider the property rights of IT technology.

Usually, when we buy a physical product, we possess everything about the product. However, when we buy a technology, in some cases, we just buy the right of use of the technology but not the technology itself. In this case, the provider of the technology is still the owner. In his article “Toward a Theory of Property Rights”, Harold Demsetz says that “an owner of property right possesses the consent of fellow men to allow him to act in particular ways” (Demsetz, 1967). So, the owner can decide how to split and sell of the product , usage of the product, or right for the product. The buyer or consumer of the technology have rights to use the technology in limitation prescribed by the technology provider. However, the selling practice of the owner should be to the extent that a consumer can consent.

In the case of Wifi Liberator, Individual users and corporate wireless network providers violate each other’s property right according to who owns the network and the extent of property rights for the network usage. Does the use of the technology violate the network provider’s property rights? Can the network provider control everything for the consumer’s use of the network?

Stakeholders

Corporate Wireless Network Providers: For using the network, basically, the network providers expect only the user who paid for the service to use the network. They don’t want their paid-user to “make available to anyone outside the premises the ability to use the service”(Boingo.com). So, using network sharing technology is considered to violate terms and conditions of the contract between a user and a network provider.

Usually, network providers invest many resources to make the network. They have to develop, buy, and install hardware and software for providing the service. So they would expect to make a profit from the service and have the right to protect their products. Also they expect others in a community not to interfere with their actions for their products (Demsetz, 1967). Using Wifi Liberator has a possibility to interfere with providers’ exercising their property rights by blocking the possible users who would use the network service paying money if they don’t have the technology.

Individual Users: Once paying money for the network and getting an account, a user gets the right to use a certain amount of network. The amount is limited by the service provider. So, in a user’s stance, how to use the network should be up to each user. Sharing their property using Wifi Liberator is not something to violate network provider’s property rights. The technology is just for a small group of people around the paid-user. Also if the user decides to share the network, his/her network quality would be decreased, so using the technology doesn’t mean unlimited sharing for the majority of people.

The ownership of the provider doesn’t mean controlling everything for how to use the network. For this matter, if we only rely on the corporate network providers and their practice, individual users have to spend a lot of money for using networks. In many cases, a user has several devices that need to be connected to the internet. However, the network providers require to be paid for each device (Boingo.com). For example, if you play an online game with an iPhone and check email with a laptop, you have to pay for two lines just for a few clicks and a small amount of packets. So, where are consumers’ rights?

Government: Government has to make regulations for the development and use of certain technology and judge terms and conditions of a certain product and contract to protect each social member’s property rights and for the whole community’s benefit. If the two, corporate network providers and individual internet users, are direct stakeholders, a government would be an indirect stakeholder.

A government has to solve the conflict between the two direct stakeholders’ property rights. It might have to judge where one or both of the two stakeholders violate the other’s property rights. Also, it has to consider whether the wireless network in public space should be considered commercial goods that can assign property rights to certain companies or whether the network should be considered a kind of public utility, sometimes partially. In making regulations, if it is commercial or private goods, it has to more focus on protecting properties of corporate network providers, and if the network has characteristics of public utility, it should be more generous for using technologies to help individuals’ free access.

Works Cited

- Demsetz, H. D.(1967). Toward a Theory of Property Rights. The American Economic Review, Vol. 57, No. 2. 347-359.

- Stocker. G & Schopf. C, (Eds.). (2008). Ars Electronica 2008, Hatje Cantz,

- Friedman, B., & Kahn, P. H., Jr. (2007). Human values, ethics, and design. In Sears, A. & Jacko, J. (Eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. (pp. 1241-1266). Lawrence Erlbaum.

- travelpostby.com

- http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/10/muniwireless.shtm

- http://pda.boingo.com/termsofuse.html

The Cockpit to Computer Consequences...

2009-10-27T07:03:00.000-07:00

Distributed Cognition in an Airline Cockpit takes an unusual standpoint towards understanding the principles of cognition themselves. Situating the research in the flight cabin of a commercial jet (or at least a simulated flight cabin) seems almost too esoteric for many to understand the intricacies of the interactions. However, because distributed cognition relies heavily on representations and how interactions manipulate, control, and process these representations, the cockpit itself is actually an ideal stage.

Both Hutchins and Klausen find that even though they only extract a very small portion of the interactions in the cockpit, they are able to derive a wealth of information about interactions and distributed cognition. They emphasize repeatedly that the cockpit is not a collection of separate entities; rather than considering it a Captain, First Officer, and Second Officer sitting in a control room, they note that it is in fact a complete system. Both the crew and cabin constitute a complex series of interactions within this system that functionally represent the ideas of distributed cognition.

Consider the fact that the crew is required to communicate to get their job done. This, according to Hutchins and Klausen, shows a transmission of representational media through space. The idea that when we talk to one another, especially in a system, we are verbally representing ideas, is not new. The researchers refer to locutionary aspects (as well as the derived illocutionary force and the perlocutionary ideas) of speech that carry us from one idea to another without explicitly demanding or demonstrating our intentions. However, the importance of the verbal aspects to distributed cognition is paramount because it is indeed a means by which information is moved around the system from one participant to another.

Interestingly, verbal communication is not the only way in which information is moved within the system. Non-verbal cues and pauses in communication all suggest what the researchers call "expectations." Expectations occur when we anticipate information coming from some representational medium and we act accordingly, allowing us to act efficiently within the system. For example, when the pilots are responsible for changing the altimeter alert mechanism after being cleared by the ground based air traffic controller (ATC), they follow a set of expectations that draws their hands towards the alert mechanism just as they ask the question of the ATC.

More importantly, regarding expectations, is the fact that when we follow a set of expectations in a system, we are able to coordinate our abilities within the same system. Once we are calibrated in a familiar area (such as how the pilots calibrated their positions in the cockpit), we can almost immediately begin to accomplish our set tasks. Interestingly, the study notes many consequences of this coordination, but also recognizes that it is restricted to a limited domain, especially one in which familiarity is key. Still, Hutchins and Klausen are able to effectively demonstrate that the system itself follows many ideas of interaction that they had set forth.

How does distributed cognition apply to HCI? How can we use distributed cognition to better interact with machines? The first thing that caught my attention with regards to this dilemma is expectation. As the researchers demonstrate, cues from certain media will allow us to form expectations about how we perform. I consider this to be a critical element of HCI, especially an efficient HCI. If we can follow a machine in front of us through a set of expectations, I think we can not only use it effectively, but efficiently. However, one of the things we must always consider when designing an interface with a machine is how these expectations are formed. Are they derived from previous experiences with different, but similar machines? Do they emerge from trial and error with the machine in question? It is difficult to say which is the best launch pad for these answers, but I would venture to guess that a hybrid of the two circumstances would best attain the desired results. After all, the pilots in the essay had never worked together before, but were able to complete a system of interaction because of previously known expectations from several different representational media.

Moving information between a human and an interface is also an interesting question, because generally we lack verbal cues. In my experience, there is a general silence observed when interacting with a computer, and aside from a few expletives that may come forth when things aren't going according to plan, most of my interaction within the HCI medium is silent. However, I do wonder if this is the case for everyone. Do most people interact quietly with their computers or do we create our own verbal cues and "redundancies" (back-ups or reiterations of the ideas we wish to describe)?

When we consider the system of HCI, we are not always looking at a one-to-one relationship between the human and the computer. In fact, with the advent of the internet, we have become reliant on taking that one-to-one interaction and exponentially increasing it. We no longer communicate with the computer alone, but use the computer as an avenue to communicate with others from all around the world. This creates a vast network, an immense system of users trying to coordinate their ideas on an almost global level. Interestingly, this does not always rely on a sort of co-temporality. Look at the popular website wikipedia.org. Using wikipedia, one can modify information (and consequently expectations) with authority. However, because this does not always occur at the same time, the system does not need people working simultaneously for it to be successful. However, the system does not close there. Rather, through a vigilant system of notification (reinforced by denied expectations when the information is wrong), the greater system of distributed cognition allows the information to generally maintain its integrity.

Hive Minded?

2009-10-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

Intro – Musings on Distributed Cognition

I must admit when I first glanced at the information on Distributed Cognition, I immediately thought of the “hive mind" concept of the Borg from Star Trek fame. I found it fascinating to contemplate that cognition might be thought about not necessarily as a function that takes place in one brain, but among brains and (sometimes unspoken) collaborations between them, between the objects and systems in the environment.

Morality of the big bad Borg aside, that social group is a distributed cognitive system, made of thoughts, objects and of course, ultimate human-machine integration. It also represents a rebellion to traditional theory that asserts that we are not just individuals perceiving, transforming representations internally and storing for later use – that we are unconsciously part of a more complex system. In this system, the beings continuously receive and interact with information and objects in our environment, transmitting thought and memories to objects around them, which in turn is ‘picked up’ as useful information by others as well.

An example in present day is suggested in the use of tags and tag clouds in a social network. Tags link thought together as a group – and while many contribute, no one individual holds the key to understanding them – they are semantically collective and understood within one’s context and also in a group context.

If the tenets of Distributed Cognition are correct, we are much more complex in our processing as a species than previously thought. We may be each and every day in a process of complex interchange and transmission of thought, memory and action across domains of understanding – and to a large degree, without knowledge of it or at the least how it occurs.

For me, the question grows bigger – how do we transmit pertinent information to other beings “in the wild” and across a domain? Can it all be explained through physical interactions, gestures or cultural generational messaging such as storytelling or reporting - or can some kind of unseen energy, such as telepathy, for instance, have any place here? I bring it up in this context because it cognition seems to occur quickly and often spontaneously, which makes me wonder just how fast species can possibly communicate without such phenomenon. Where for instance, do the archetypes come from that seem to be shared among cultures who have had no contact, such as the mystery of the pyramids found in two distinct places on earth?

The thrust of this paper is not to go in any depth into those questions, rather to review the theoretical premise and fundamental components of Distributed Cognition and its application to design. However, I do offer some closing thoughts on these ideas at the end – for the “unspoken” communication lightly touched on, is some of the most thought-provoking of all claims about human understanding.

What is Distributed Cognition?
Distributed Cognition is scientific framework which at its core, asserts that “human knowledge and cognition are not confined to the individual” [1]. Distributed Cognition extends the reach of “what is considered cognitive beyond the individual as a “unit of analysis” to encompass interactions between people and with resources and materials in the environment [2]. The old metaphor of the computer as applied to humans, is no longer appropriate nor complete – (i.e., the notion that like a computer, the individual perceives and then transforms symbolically the input from the world into internal representations, which are always remembered, and finally responds in output according to these internalized memories) – requiring all memory to be placed “inside’ our brain. A process is not cognitive simply because it happens in the brain, or even between many brains. [2] Rather, the totality of cognition occurs in a broader system of interactions with others and with external objects as they are representative of themselves, without internalization.

Distributed Cognition implies a more system in which the living body mediates internal and external representations to interpret, understand and interact with the world. The concept of “embodiment” simply means our skills, capabilities and thoughts are embodied in us. Our bodies are the mediary between our consciousness and the world, and our being “situated” in the world and all its objects with their own representations (not just our internal ones) is how we can interact [4]. These concepts differ from the traditional thinking in that all the cognitive processing goes on inside the skin and skull.

Additionally, a basic tenet is that the study of cognition must be done within the context of culture; that while traditional views do say that culture merges from the activity of humans, in Distributed Cognition there exist the notion that that the activity of humans - which interacts with material artifacts and practices - also shapes cognitive processes, particularly those distributed over ‘agent” / people, artifacts and environments. It is worth noting that Edwin Hutchins devoted a whole book to this called “Cognition in the Wild” [3].

Distributed Cognition looks for cognitive processes, wherever they may occur, on the basis of the functional relationships of elements that participate together in the process. [2] The classic example is Hutchins’ study of the airplane cockpit, where the system dynamically operates to perform specific operations, using humans, artifacts and objects in the environment for it to work. [3]. It presupposes that living beings coordinate their individual perceptions and actions (consciously and unconsciously) with the artifacts surrounding them.

Pasquinelli, in her paper “New Wave theories of Cognition” says that the concepts of Distributed Cognition are well-suited to the study of “robotics, biology, infant psychology, even the neurosciences, as these disciplines must take into account the relationships and interactions between the brain, body and the external world” [4]. These disciplines can use this framework to study how the individual coordinates and interacts with the representations in their surroundings to come to understanding of the world.

Relationship to Activity Theory
Distributed Cognition draws from aspects of activity theory, which theorizes that “when individuals engage and interact with their environment, production of tools results.” [1] The tools become objects of use by others, and therefore become useful in shared activities. Tagging is a perfect example of this.

Examples of Distributed cognition
WIKI also provides a great example, which I copy in its entirety because I believe it is very helpful in understanding the context:
“Distributed cognition is seen when using paper and pencil to do a complicated arithmetic problem. The person doing the problem may talk with a friend to clarify the problem, and then must write the partial answers on the paper in order to be able to keep track of all the steps in the calculation. In this example, the parts of distributed cognition are seen in:
· setting up the problem, in collaboration with another person,
· performing manipulation/arithmetic procedures, both in one's head and by writing down resulting partial answers.
The process of working out the answer requires not only the perception and thought of two people, it also requires the use of a tool (paper) to extend an individual's memory. So the intelligence is distributed, both between people, and a person and an object.”

Edwin Hutchins who formulated Distributed Cognition, provides the classic example of the cockpit, the plane is flown not by individuals and their single memory systems, and not just by autopilot either, but through a complex cognitive system where individuals rely on external representations (such as controls and devices) and others gestures (unspoken) that serve to jog memory and initiate important actions that must take place when flying an airplane [3].

How it works
The ‘distribution’ of cognition occurs by placing memories, facts, or knowledge on the objects, individuals, and tools in our environment. Representations can be either in the mental space of the participants or externally within the environment; further, “cognition occurs through time, process and among systems …” [1]. Thoughts are not isolated processes, and complete understanding or cognition comes from a collective of inputs and perceptions from others, and from objects and artifacts in one’s surroundings.

WIKI suggests Distributed Cognition breaks down into three distinct types of processes.
1) Cognitive processes may be distributed across the members of a social group
2) Cognitive processes may be distributed in the sense that the operation of the cognitive system involves coordination between internal and external (material or environmental) structure.
3) Processes may be distributed through time in such a way that the products of earlier events can transform the nature of related events. [1]

Fundamental components

Some of the fundamental components and concepts that help us frame understanding are listed here:

1) Humans will typically “offload” memories onto objects, individuals and interactions/communications in our world – to help us reduce internal load, and aid recall. Offloading might occur by using a calculator or writing down a grocery list. (Design implications in other examples are reviewed in the Implications for Design section below).

2) Objects with historical data attached give us clues upon which to make decisions (such as the “well worn door handle”) which provides clues not only to the individual, but to others in the environment that “this must be the door!” This supports the notion that we are “coupled” with our environment, in that we act/react not just through taking information in and processing it, but utilizing tools and objects and their representations external to our own minds.

3) We coordinate the representations with others in the system (i.e., our thoughts are a result of the influence of the perception others in the system, not just our own – again, I cite tagging).

4) Finally, our perceptions are not fixed, but continuously draw from the world as we interact with it – we continuously adapt. One might say traditionally we also say this, but the subtlety is that in traditional cognitive theory, we perceive once and internalize a representation of the world to be used again. Not so in the concept of Distributed Cognition - ongoing “activity seems to be the common denominator” [4] in that the “embodied, situated natural organisms (and artificial ones as well) continuously perceive and interact to form representations, and representations are not just internal but external.

Implications for ethnography and design

Hollan, Hutchins and Kirsch [2] propose Distributed Cognition as a new foundation for HCI research and design of digital work materials. Specifically, we can take a look at how they discuss the process by which digital objects can be designed and arranged to “cue recall, speed up identification and generate mental images faster – making changes to the external world to save costly and potentially error-prone computations” [2].

One example is to “encode historical information” which helps us to remember the meaning or significance of an object, for example depict copy history in source code so that a particular section of code was based on copy of other code and perhaps be led to correct but in the code, not just in current code but the previous code. One could also apply history of use to remember a work stream, such as highlighting menus that were most recently used.

Other examples of helping recall include users having the ability to rearrange their own spaces, which is based on the tenet that bodies are situated in space and interact with the external objects to suit their cognitive needs. The authors cite studies on the game Tetris, where players physically were able to manipulate forms (moved the elements around) to suit their recall needs, and save computational effort. Another example and rich with possibilities for design, was that users would create “piles” of files to be acted on later, presumably for actions such as potential deletion, or conversely, covering affordances that they did not want to use like deletion affordances – essentially constraining their view to save time and prevent errors. So, the takeaway is that providing users a method for constraining views is a recall optimization technique we can use.

As far as cognitive ethnographic studies, the significance to me was that we need to look more closely at the ways people do their work beyond the tasking, to how they utilize their environment to optimize cognitive load – something that might be easily overlooked in traditional studies where artifacts are not considered as important as they should be.

Application to Social network design
Distributed cognition is a useful approach for (re)designing social aspects of cognition by putting emphasis on the individual and his/her environment. What I found particularly interesting were the applications, such as distance learning application, where individuals and technologies are interacting cognitively, distributing knowledge through complicated sets of interactions and technologies and those for social organization, where distributed cognition can be thought of as the community. There are many opportunities to test and study these through a framework like Distributed Cognition.

Challenges to the theory
Critics might argue that regardless of what we think about how cognition is explicated in the world, the precepts are not that different from what it is currently practiced in observing and designing for humans in their environment. In HCI we are trained that we are constantly being influenced by and interacting with objects in interfaces; artifacts of history are used in persona making, and understanding the cultural and lingual contexts are also important to design.

So, in terms of the nature of the knowledge getting out and growing, on one hand we might say do we need yet another new approach that explicitly says now “it’s a whole (new) cognitive system?”

Having asked the question, still, promoting the concept of “distributed cognition” as a framework of study does seem to warrant further use since we are beginning to see applications in which we cannot completely explain cognition in terms of only one individual.

Epilogue – The Hive Mind maybe not just for the Borg or the Bees

We obviously have no such tightly integrated man-machine culture on earth such as the Borg, but there are overtones of collective thought as possible in Distributed Cognition. Of course, we are moving towards technological/social systems that integrate the body, mind and machine/objects, but also we have unanswered riddles that indicate we might be more tightly integrated as a species like even the bees than we might think. There are times when our connections with others are simply not consciously understood; Hutchins acknowledged that the pilots had an “unspoken” communication, and also cites how people “feel” a specific bearing in navigating a ship. [2]. There are times when we seem to experience this unspoken communication across time and space - like those calls from Mom which happen an instant after you are ready to call, and says she was “just thinking” about you, or those clairvoyants who say they “feel” what happened in a crime and are often right .. Could there be any validity to thoughts being ‘picked up’ over time and space without physical contact?

Let's look at two anecdotal ideas purported in the “The Hundreth Monkey" and the notion of “morphic resonance.”

“The Hundredth Monkey” was a book by New Age positivist Ken Keys, who asserted that once a critical mass of thought is developed, energy is basically transmitted and posited in other’s minds. It’s unscientific origins comes from a study of macaques in which Dr. Lyall Watson (1938-2008) in his book Lifetide[5] asserted that it only takes 100 or so monkeys to reach a threshold of new tool use, after which monkeys from far away will understand and start using the same tool (in this case, supposedly monkeys starting washing sweet potatoes, and it was reported that groups hundreds of miles away started doing the same thing almost spontaneously). Watson himself admitted no proof and was in fact, afraid to print his results. He had been working with these animals in the wild for quite some time, and indicated he relied “largely on memory and intuition” but felt strongly that this is what happened….

In Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphic resonance” theory, “morphogenic fields” resonate from bodies in a way that thoughts and memories become learned and imprinted - paranormal “tools” if you will, that form the “the basis of memory in nature … the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species“[5]. Despite the oft-described "magical thinking," is there something here to explore?

The point is, not whether to believe such nonscientific studies, but to look at the questions they raise. If telepathy is too far-fetched, at least Distributed Cognition can be a reasonable framework in which to study how the transmission of human thought might occur on a more granular level and find plausible explanations. We found out that the world was not flat nor the center of the universe, and we did this through discoveries in new tools, mathematical formulas and the sharing of great thinking across cultures and groups. Distributed Cognition may be a great lens through which to ultimately understand the connections between us, as humans, machines and environments which sometimes provide only silent cues.

At the very least, as we approach a more obvious mind-machine system - we should not focus on worrying that the human element be trivialized, but rather on understanding how we can shape, extend and enhance technology, tools and objects to improve our lives individually and collectively. Applying the frameword of Distributed Cognition may be a fitting exercise not just for design, but for improving the state of the planet in general.

References

[1] Wikipedia on Distributed Cognition - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_cognition
[2] Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., & Kirsh, D. (2000). Distributed cognition: Toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research. ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 7(2), 174-196.
[3] Hutchins, E. & Klausen, T. (1996). Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit. In Engestrom, Y. and Middleton, D. (eds). Cognition and Communication at Work. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
[4] Pasquinelli, E, “New Wave Theories of Cognition: The advocating of the embodied, situated, enactive characters of cognition”, institute jean Nicod – EHESS Paris
[5] Carroll, Robert T, The Skeptics Dictionary, 1994-2009, online link to
5.1 Hundredth Monkey – http://www.skepdic.com/monkey.html
5.2 Morphic fields - http://www.skepdic.com/morphicres.html

Adobe Connect For Distributed Cognitionists

2009-10-25T16:07:00.000-07:00

Article summary

Edwin Hutchins explores, in his paper “Distributed Cognition in an Airline Cockpit,” the ideas of information flow in an environment, how the information is represented and utilized, and performance structures in a given environment. I believe one key point is that any kind of interaction can be analyzed with distributed cognition for HCI purposes, as long as there is some kind of language or information being transferred between two or more mediums. A lot of complex tasks today require more than just one person (or control device) to succeed. Another point is that “trajectories of information” play a key role in “expectations of action.” The trajectory of information will have multiple paths and the expectation of which path is chosen will not always be upheld. That paper also mentions how “intersubjectivity” can help initiate and control and information flow. When the expected trajectory is not met, intersubjectivity can quickly solve the miscommunication. One other important point is that “redundant feedback” creates checks and fail-safes. Redundant feedback creates multiple representations of information and allows for crosschecking of mediums (Hutchins, 2000).

Adobe Connect

I would like to apply these ideas and key concepts of distributed cognition to my experiences with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Learning Management System. However, doing a full analysis on RPI’s LMS would be like doing a full analysis on a Flight transcript (a bit hefty for the requirements of this blog). Alternatively, I have chosen to do an analysis of Adobe Connect, a segment of this LMS. Adobe Connect allows for an online solution to distance learning. User are given the experience of classroom learning by means of chatroom, visual webcam feeds, live audio, and shared computer screens. Through these means of communication, distance students are connected digitally to local students and staff.

Who and what is interacting?

Hutchins mentions in his paper how the pilots of large jets today not only communicate with each other, but they also communicate with the control devices of the plane and information being sent from control towers (Hutchins, 2000). What kinds of interactions and between what objects occur on Adobe Connect? The chat room is the primary form of communication with the distance students to the classroom and professor. The chat room also connects students to each other. The chat in Connect is particularly interesting because distance students are required to be in the chatroom to connect to the digital class. However, it is optional for local student to enter the chatroom during class. The main effect of locals not being in the chatroom is an absence of locals directly talking to distance students. Consequentially, a lot of distance questions are not answered or misunderstood as the Professor is preoccupied teaching the class. Similar to Hutchins example of the cockpit, there are three participants interacting with Adobe Connect (the cockpit). The Professor is the Captain; he manages the environment and tries to mediate the paths of information that are happening simultaneously. The local students are the first officers. They fly the plane (the conference room) and communicate with the control tower when necessary. The distance students are the control towel and ask questions that are confirmed by the first officer or captain.

Trajectories of Information

In Adobe Connect, the tools of communication are kind of like gauges and parameters in an airplanes cockpit. With all of these communication devices to control, there are multiple possible paths that the information can be channeled through. Hutchens says, “Given the content of the Captain’s plan, we attribute to him an expectation concerning the reply from Oakland Center. His radio call is the opening turn in a conversation with a highly predictable structure. The expectation is that ATC will answer, saying something like, ‘Nasa nine hundred, climb and maintain flight level three three zero.’ If the F/O was attending to the Captain’s request, he may also have formed this expectation (Hutchins, 2000).” If we turn the situation to a class about to start with the intention of having audio/video broadcast to the distance students the expectation might turn into, “Given the content of the Professor’s plan, we attribute to him an expectation concerning the reply from distance students. His introduction to the class verbally and video initiation of video and PowerPoint is the opening turn in a conversation with a highly predictable structure. The expectation is that Distance students will answer, saying something like, ‘Hello Professor, we can here you loud and clear.’ If the Local students were attending to the Captain’s request, he may also have formed this expectation.” What happens when the expectations are not met? How do we deal with the problem to quickly revise the plan?

Intersubjection

Intersubjection is a communication form explained by Hutchens to be, “An interaction in terms of speech act theory. What a speaker actually says is called the locutionary act. The force of what is said is the illocutionary act, and the intended effect is the perlocutionary act (Hutchins, 2000).” Intersubjection can naturally occur when expectations are not met. For example, the Professor’s plan is to start the class with an audio video greeting, but the video freezes and the audio cuts out. This is an unexpected experience for the distance students. Their immediate reaction would be to wait a few seconds, weeding out the idea that it might be a temporary glitch. The next step would be for the distance students to enter the problem into the chatroom. The locutionary act would be the distance students asking something like “audio?” If any of the local students are in the chatroom or looking at the projection of the chatroom behind the Professor, then they will get the illocutionary force that a request to fix the audio is occurring. Without answering the question the local students will perform the prelocutionary act of asking the Professor to fix the audio connection. After, the Professor might say something like “Oh, excuse while I re-establish my connection.” So even though the distance students are directly connected to the Professor through the chat, they had to communicate to him indirectly through the local students. The reason that this worked is because the local students naturally understood that the question “Audio?” would infer the connection has difficulties. Then the Professor noticing someone with a raised hand and distressed looked, realized something might be wrong with the presentation. This is why it could be helpful to have redundant information and safeguards.

Redundant Feedback

Now I will stick with the same situation of audio and video dying during the Professor’s presentation. Referring back to having many possible paths for information I will list a few way that the distance students could have communicated with the room or Professor. The chat capabilities of Connect involve a public or private chat to anyone in the room. Say that maybe the distances students try to publicly type “Audio?” again, but this time no one locally notices. The distance students will realize by the continuation of the Professor’s lecture that their input is lost. This time the local students try to private message the professor and local students that are in the chat. The local lecture still continues, so the distance students resort to a last method of input. In Adobe Connect anyone in the Chartroom can raise a digital hand to imply that they have a question about what was said. When a few of the distances students carry out this action, a few of the local students notice. Now as the local students see that the professor is still lecturing, they might physically raise their hand. This signals to the teacher non-verbally that an issue had occured. Through the variety of way that attention could be brought to the local class the information got passed on to “The Captain.” Hutchins mentions the “control yolks” and “side-stick controllers.” Adobe Connect Definitely has more of a “control yolk” system where what the Professor see’s is what the students (or Co-pilots) see. This redundancy allows for intersubjection in a lot of case because when a student raises his or her hand and is looking at the projection of the chatroom, the Professor can immediately look at his screen and see the issue at play non-verbally.

Conclusion

The parallels that can be drawn, between Hutchins’ examples of the flight simulation and examples of the Adobe Connect Learning Tool, are endless. Clearly there are interactions between more than just people in this system. Distributed Cognition analysis has shown that the technology of Adobe Connect is appropriately implemented to allow such distance communication. Whether it be through expectation, intersubjection, or redundant information, the messages still get through and the Captain’s plan continues.

Works Cited
Hutchins, E. (2000). Distributed Cognition in an Airline Cockpit. La Jolla: University of California.

The facade of Facebook privacy

2009-10-21T20:14:00.000-07:00

Value Sensitive Design Conceptual Investigation Essay
Jami Cotler

Problem Space/Context

With over 500 million registered users, Facebook has quickly emerged as the virtual place to be. (Gaspary, 2008) People from around the world are flocking to the social networking website from multiple demographics. With this attention comes a social compromise many of us aren’t aware we are making, while other less obvious stakeholders benefit. As the 6^th most trafficked website in the US (Gaspary, 2008) this famous website is attracting attention from other groups, such as potential employers, stalkers and parents.

Value(s) implicated

Three central human values are implicated in the system design of Facebook. The value of visibility often is harmful and conflicting with the pursuit of privacy. (Cohen, Winter 2008) Why hasn’t awareness of our privacy or lack of, been brought to the forefront of our consciousness? (Cotler, Class Blog) As a society of automatic opt-ins where is the informed consent?

As a default Facebook profiles are open to everyone in the Facebook users designated network. While we “voluntarily” post our profile, pictures, and personal information on Facebook, many users do not comprehend the social significance and potential implications of this. In a survey of 75 college students, 37% had profiles open to their home network (survey conducted by author and research student). Of this group, 11 were seniors currently looking for post graduation employment. Out of 75 students, over 73% displayed a list of all their friends. The average number of friends was 501.59 with the maximum being 1120. In the pursuit of visibility; namely displaying how many friends a users has, privacy is substantially compromised perhaps without the knowledge or informed consent of the Facebook user. Several students were asked about privacy and some were not aware of the availability of privacy settings.

Privacy can be easily be compromised by a person with some knowledge of web design and a few spare minutes. (Colleague, 2009) Often when Facebook users make their profiles private they will maintain public friend lists in order to promote their visibility. In the survey of 75 college aged students, over 73% displayed their friend lists. While maintaining public friend lists offers visibility it also opens potential vulnerabilities of the Facebook privacy facade. If a user on the friend list has an open profile it can be used as a direct link to the original user. This can be accomplished with basic knowledge of the Facebook URL structures. Even without web design knowledge one can find any postings or images tagged by the person of interest in the open profile of a friend.

Direct Stakeholders

The direct stakeholders are the Facebook users. The Facebook users may use the social network to keep in touch with friends and family. Facebook has become the social “meeting place” for people of all ages, especially teenagers. (Boyd, 2007). Navigating a social network is quickly becoming a necessary and important social skill. (Boyd, 2007). Businesses are quickly becoming another direct stakeholder as they use Facebook for marketing and customer outreach.

Indirect Stakeholders

In a study conducted by Rosen and Kluemper they demonstrated that employers, while not actively using the social network in the same way as the direct stakeholders, are lurking and are often using Facebook to research potential employees (Kleumper, 2009). They found that many employers don’t look at actual Facebook profiles but find a much more revealing disclosure of information from the job candidate’s friends. They will analyze the comments and tagged pictures posted by the candidate’s friends. According to their study, employers also relate the number of Facebook friends to the popularity and extraversion of the candidate. Other employers look for revealing signs of speaking ill of former employers, evidence of drinking too much, or revealing too much confidential information (Sridharan, 2008).

The Internet in general and Facebook specifically can be rapture for a stalker. Where else can you find a list of hundreds of friends of your victim? The amount of information one can gather in minutes would have taken days, if not weeks to gather without Facebook. With an alarmingly high rate of users displaying full friend lists, the potential for a stalker to quickly find this information is quite real.

Parents are rarely invited to their children’s teenage or college parties (personal experience). With Facebook, parents now have an insider view into their children’s private lives. They can monitor and view who their friends are; see firsthand what happens at their parties and even become privy to private conversations. Social networks such as Facebook have been shown to cause tension between parents and children and have also been linked to loss of parental control (Subrahmanyam, Spring 2008).

Value and stakeholder conflict

Value	Facebook Users	Employers/Stalkers/Parents
Privacy	Privacy settings are available but implications of not using them are not clear. As a follow up to the survey, several interviews were conducted. The overwhelming response to the issues was notable. All students interviewed were very concerned with the false perception of Facebook security. Many of them weren’t aware of the privacy settings and search settings.	This indirect stakeholder appreciates profiles using default or open privacy settings as it allows them to view and learn more.
Visibility	Facebook users often want visibility and achieve this through large friend lists and multiple tagged photos. This is in conflict and often compromises privacy.	This indirect stakeholder appreciates highly visible profiles as it compromises security settings.
Informed consent	Consent is the default and a social compromise not comprehended by many.	The ethical issue can be raised that a job candidate generally does not provide informed consent to a potential employer to look at their Facebook profile or related Internet postings. Employers who view this information often do so without the knowledge and certainly the consent of the candidate they are interested in hiring. Some potential employees never get a chance to be interviewed or hired because of information found in Facebook about them. Future employers can also learn of gender, age, sexual orientation, etc. which cannot be legally asked on a job application or interview. This information is all obtained without (informed) consent of the future employee.

Recommendations/Proposed technical solution to value conflicts

In the privacy setting Facebook offers a way to view profiles as a friend would. (See below)

I propose that options to view the profile as someone who is not a friend (either in or out of your network) is also offered. This will provide a clear way of seeing how the “world” sees your digital Facebook footprint.

Social networks have amazing potential to change and enhance the way we connect and socialize as humans. While embracing the capabilities, it’s important to maintain awareness and preempt potential value compromises. Awareness is the key to understanding how to best protect yourself while navigating the social networking highway.

Works Cited

Boyd, D. (2007). "Why Youth (Heart) Social Networks Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.". In D. Buckingham, MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning (pp. Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume). Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.

Cohen, J. (Winter 2008). Visibility, Transparency, and Exposure. The University of Chicago Law Review , Vol. 75, No. 1 pp 181-201.

Colleague. (2009, October 15). Associate Professor of Computer Science. (J. Cotler, Interviewer)

Friedman, B. K. (2006). Value Sensitive Design and information systems. In P. Z. (eds), Human-Conmputer Interaction in Management Information Systems: Foundations (pp. 348-372). Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe.

Gaspary, S. (2008, May 28). Social Technologies and Recruiting - How to extend the reach of your employment brand. Retrieved October 19, 2009, from Career Builder Community: http://thehiringsite.careerbuilder.com/2008/05/28/social-technologies-and-recruiting/

Kleumper, D. &. (2009). Future employment selection methods: Evaluating social networking websites. Journal of managerial Psychology, 24 , 567-580.

Sridharan, V. (2008, Sept. 14). 22% of Employers Check your facebook profile when they're looking to hire you. Retrieved Oct. 19, 2009, from Business Insider: www.buisnessinsider.com/2008/9/22-of-employers-check-your-facebook-profile

Subrahmanyam, K. a. (Spring 2008, Vol. 18 No. 1). Online Communication and Adolescent Relationships. www.futureofchildren.org , pp. 119-140.

Social Network Systems and Identity:

2009-10-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

From managing identity to managing fair use

Introduction: Online Identities and Social Consequences

As social networking systems (SNS’s) become ubiquitous, our engagement with these systems increasingly impacts significant aspects of our lives in unexpected ways. In 2007, an American banking intern was terminated after a photo posted to the social networking system revealed he missed work to attend a Halloween party (Owen, 2007). Public officials have been compelled to resign after expressing personal views on social networking platforms, in July of 2009 an aid to a city official in Manhattan resigned over posting controversial views to facebook (Chan, 2009). In October of 2009, MIT researchers created a program that analyzes public information about a Facebook user’s friends to accurately predict their sexual orientation. The shocking implication of this particular study is that a social network activity such as the friends one chooses, a fundamental and requisite form of engagement, could be used to effectively “out” a users sexual orientation against his will (Jernigan & Mistree, 2009).

Do privacy controls limit expression of identity?
SNS’s have been quick to identify emerging problems with managing our online identities and self-published content. Early interventions by engineers & designers focused on developing robust privacy controls to offer high-level management of access to personal information. Facebook, for example, now allows you to assign custom levels of privacy for individuals and groups of friends. Individuals can be assigned to custom groups like co-worker, family, or friend with each group having a pre-determined privacy setting.

Clearly, these identity management tools are valuable for those who use SNS’s. Over the last few years, a mini industry has risen to instruct users on sculpting their presentation and cultivating their identities to leverage social networking systems personal PR opportunities to maximize professional opportunities and hirability.

Beyond identity management for personal PR purposes, some have argued that sophisticated identity management affordances are necessary to authentically represent construction of identity. In 2005, Alice Marwick criticized the strictly representational model of early SNS’s as a “problem of authentiticity”. She writes, “Social networking sites overall presume that each user has a single ‘authentic’ identity that can be presented accurately.” Marwick views this singular construction of identity as a direct contradiction to the way in which we perform identity in everyday life; we present ourselves in various ways depending on the audience and context (Marwick, 2005).

Looking forward at emerging technology, it’s easy to imagine a rise in active identity management. A November 2009, Atlantic Monthly essay by Jamais Cascio imagines ubiquitous augmented reality systems that when coupled with advances in facial-recognition technology push self-published social information to unprecedented prominence. Personal beliefs, views, and values become visually inseparable from the face of each person you meet and become a fundamental component of the visual landscape. Cascio goes on to imagine a rising demand for “reality filters” that eliminate unwanted information and opposing viewpoints. The real problem with identity management, as Cascio sees it, is less about technology and more about our society’s inability to tolerate diverse viewpoints (Cascio, 2009).

Unequal power dynamics and leveling the identity field
One aspect of this problem space involves power dynamics. Individuals in positions of power can use self-published information on SNS’s against others. Because of this, users of SNS’s are pressured to manage, stifle, and censor authentic expression of identity in order to protect themselves from those who would exercise power informed by prejudice and intolerance to discriminate against and oppress them. Though there is a clear ethical value in designing SNS’s systems that allow marginalized peoples to protect themselves and their identity from these forces, designers also have an ethical obligation to develop this technology in such a way that maximizes opportunities for individuals to authentically express themselves and aims to transcend these oppressive structures. By simply transcribing real life self-limiting identity management techniques into social network technology we miss the opportunity to ethically reform these interactions and level power dynamics.

New expectations of personal identity management can create new set of pressures and demands on stakeholders. As we present many different optimized versions of ourselves to diverse and demanding audiences our understanding of who we are can become diminished and becomes more and more linked with how others want us to be. Presently, the burden is on the user to predict aspects of their identity that may be uncomfortable for others and manage, filter, and hide those aspects. By focusing on identity control and management, SNS’s risk perpetuating restrictive and oppressive limitations on authentic expression. Like Bill Clinton’s well known “don’t ask don’t tell” compromise, are designers of SNS’s contributing to a climate that encourages marginalized groups and populations to suppress themselves, while allowing people in positions of power to maintain intolerant and oppressive prejudices and judgments?

A June 2009 article by Caryn Brooks chronicles the benefits of coming out on facebook.

Coming out used to be an exhausting process. You had to come out again and again and again to all your friends at different times. Nowadays, even with social networking, gays still have to come out, but one of the key differences between our pre-profile selves and our new online presentations is that now (finally!) the burden is also on our friends to discover and digest our identities. For the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, Facebook et al have finally leveled the identity field, and it's kinda nice.

SNS’s and other social technological innovations have tremendous opportunity to shape new trends in social engagement and contribute to new achievements in stakeholders ability to understand themselves and articulate their identity.

The implicated value

Identity as understanding ourselves
Leaders in Value Sensitive Design, such as Batya Friedman have researched and presented key ethical values that should be considered in this problem space. This value of identity is most directly implicated in this socio-technological problem space. Friedman’s value of identity refers to “people’s understanding of who they are over time”. (Friedman, 2007).

This definition of identity has been researched extensively across analogous sociotechnological problem spaces. The rise of virtual simulations like second life and semi-anonyms social games have been widely studied as systems that implicate identity and people’s understanding of who they are over time. These systems allow individuals new opportunities and freedoms to project multiple constructions and liberating simulations of their identity. Sherry Turkles has written extensively on the importance of viewing construction of identity not as a calculation, but more of a simulation, where the self is conceived as a “multiple, distributed system”. Turkle writes:

Without a deep understanding of the many selves that we express in the virtual, we cannot use our experiences there to enrich the real. If we cultivate our awareness of what stands behind our screen personae, we are more likely to succeed in using virtual experience for personal transformation. (Turkle, 1996)

Identity management in virtual “games” versus social network systems
Turkles and others who have studied how multiple projections and simulations of identity contribute to an enhanced understanding of the self over time were writing exclusively about social games and virtual simulations. These virtual simulations are still widely used and these new ideas of identity issues are still relevant. However, unlike games and virtual playgrounds where users explore and experiment with the construction of their identities, managing and controlling multiple identities in SNS’s may undermine users positive formation of identity. Key figures from user’s daily life, including authority figures such co-workers, teachers, supervisors, parents, and others are highly aware of their every thought and move and poised to judge and discriminate. So it may be that when stakeholders in SNS’s are encouraged to project and simulate their identities to conform to the expectations of people in position of power they are diminishing their ability to understand who they are. Another way of thinking about it, is that new privacy controls in SNSs may be designed in such a way that stakeholders are pressured to cede control of their understanding of who they are to oppressive figures.

Identity as a dynamic integrated process
Defining Identity as the understanding of who we are over time is an important ethical value in this problem space, but this definition is not enough. Stakeholders have ethical rights that extend beyond understanding their identity. For SNS’s we need an expansive view of identity includes utilizing technology to both understand who we are and to freely express this authentic identity to others and thereby integrate this authentic identity into everyday life.

For this reason it is useful to apply Abraham Maslow’s humanist concept of self-actualization. Maslow conceived of 5 stages of human needs with the peak need being self-actualization. “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization”. (Maslow, 1943).

Vivian Cass presents an identity model that outlines six stages of gay and lesbian identity development. The stages include confusion, comparison, self-tolerance, self-acceptance, pride, and finally identity synthesis. Identity syntheis is achieved when the individual can “integrate gay and lesbian identity so that instead of being the identity, it is an aspect of self.” (Cass, 1979)

So for this paper we define our value not only as people’s understanding of who they are. We also incorporate the dynamic interactions involved in expressing, understanding, constructing, and integrating our identity with and through others as formulated by applying the models developed by Maslow and Cass.

Key Stakeholders

Direct Stakeholders
All current users of SNS’s and anyone who self-publishes personal information about themselves via the web can benefit and derive value from an authentic and dynamic expression of identity and are therefore direct stakeholders in this problem space.

Of particular ethical interest are individuals of marginalized groups and populations or people with minority beliefs and values. These stakeholders have legitimate concerns that fully engaging in social network systems could make them vulnerable to judgments, inequity, and discrimination. While advanced privacy filters can be utilized to protect these individuals from judgment, there is a value in these individuals utilizing social networks as a tool to more effectively express themselves and more authentically integrate and communicate all aspects of their identity.

Indirect Stakeholders
1. Investigators - Security professionals, prosecutors, government agents, and other individuals who’s professional duties include identifying potential threats to national security or domestic criminal activity. These individuals create judgments and inferences on behaviors of groups and individuals on SNSs and have an interest in this information being widely available.

2. Informants - Individuals who’s professional activity include leveraging SNS’s to unethically and perhaps illegally discriminate against others. For example, consulting firms that research SNS’s and attempt to predict and identify characteristics of job candidates such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, political views, pregnancy, psychological profiles, medical conditions and other characteristics that can be used to illegally discriminate against hiring them.

In both of the above cases, it’s important to note that the interests of these indirect stakeholders is in opposition to the interests of the direct stakeholders. For this reason it is of high ethical value to allow the direct stakeholders to establish expectations and guidelines over the use of such information and for lawmakers to make sure the activity of the indirect stakeholders in fair and in line with universal human rights, core constitutional protections, and all relevant civic laws.

3. Intolerants - Individuals who engage in SNSs and are intolerant, uncomfortable, and threatened by thoughts, ideas, and activities that are not consistent with their beliefs. These individuals have a stake in privacy controls that pressure individuals with marginalized views and behavior to censor themselves and at the same time have a stake in being able to freely express their own views that are backed by historical institutions of oppression.

4. Designers - Programmers and employees of SNSs who have an interest in protecting the corporations from privacy concerns and other perceived limitations by users. This individuals also have an interest in conceptualizing social identity in terms of profit and commoditizing social information over a concept of liberating ethical rights of their constituents.

Implications for Design

From broadcast to eavesdrop – reconsidering models of information sharing
Another aspect of this problem space is that many use inappropriate models to apply norms and expectations. For SNS’s the metaphor of broadcasting their views or identity may not be entirely appropriate. This is the same metaphor we use for radio, television, and newspapers. Comparing a user updating their profile on a SNS to the dedicated actions of a large media conglomerate or corporation may place unfair and inappropriate limitations on how people should express their identity. Instead, we could think of users contributions of personal information as a creative act of producing and contributing social intelligence to the SNS system. Likewise, it may be useful to extend the metaphor to the experience of receiving updates about others via a social network. Instead of the view that we are being bombarded with unwanted and uncomfortable information, we could take accountability for constructing and integrating information and judgments about others. It may be more accurate to say we are collecting, digesting, and synthesizing information about others in our selected network. The concept of eavesdropping versus broadcasting changes key assumptions that are involved in the actionable legal aspects of this information including terminating, prosecuting, or discriminating against others based on this information. These new metaphors, arguably more representative of the true functionalities and interactions of SNS’s, allow for new possibilities in imagining a shifting of the burden of increasingly complex management and filtering of authentic identity from the individual, to an issue of context and expectations, lawmaking, human rights, and fair use of this potentially valuable information. How can HCI professionals and academics shape the perception of SNSs with respect to these models in a way that is equitable and promotes the ethical value of identity?

From managing identity to managing fair use
In an analogous problem space, the photo sharing site Flickr address users interests in protecting the ownership of their self-published pictures and goes further by empowering users to transgress traditional views of access, use, and ownership by granting specific permissions for reuse, remixing, and derivative works. By utilizing the creative commons licensing standard, Flickr encourages its users to explore new ways to derive value from sharing (in addition to selling) their work. Similarly SNS’s could imagine new ways for users to articulate expectations of privacy and permissions on the rights and reuse of their information.

Currently in SNS’s users can communicate to a particular individual and this information is available to all with that contextual information. Expressing a political view to my mother that others hear is very different than me expressing a political view to the world. This contextual information shapes how others view this information and ultimately, whether or not I can get fired for it. Intelligent processing systems can be used to make the contextual information and expectations for use just as prominent as the information itself. There is potential for creative and transformative ideas from HCI professionals and academics. It is ethically important and consistent with free flow of information that these systems depend on to prioritize developments in these technologies over technologies that block, filter, and hide. Personal information about others identity and beliefs only becomes unwanted “spam” when we are overwhelmed and don’t have adequate processing tools. With the right tools, this information can increase our tolerance and understanding of each other and contribute to shaping a fair, ethical, and humanistic social landscape.

Works Sited

Brooks, Caryn (June 02, 2009). “How to Come Out on Facebook” Time Magazine
Link: www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1901909,00.html

Chan, Sewell. Aide Resigns Over Facebook Posts on Harvard Arrest. July 28, 2009 in The New York Times
Link: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/aide-resigns-over-facebook-posts-on-harvard-arrest/

Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Jr., & Borning, A. “Value Sensitive Design and information systems.” In P. Zhang & D. Galletta (eds.), Human-Computer Interaction in Management Information Systems: Foundations, (348-372). Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2006.

Jernigan, Carter and Mistree, Behram. Gaydar: Facebook friendships expose sexual orientation in First Monday, Peer Reviewed Journal on the Internet. Volume 14, Number 10 - 5 October 2009.
Link: www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2611/2302

Marwick, A. (2005). “I’m More Than Just a Friendster Profile: Identity, Authenticity, and Power in Social Networking Services.” Association for Internet Researchers, Chicago, IL.

A. H. Maslow A Theory of Human Motivation(1943) Originally Published in Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.

Thomas, Owen. Bank intern busted by Facebook in Valleywag. October 2007. Link: http://valleywag.gawker.com/321802/bank-intern-busted-by-facebook

Turkle, S. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. (1996)

Values Engendered by Revision Control

2009-10-21T14:45:00.003-07:00

Introduction
This paper presents a Value-Sensitive-Design (VSD) conceptual investigation of revision control. It focuses on revision control as it is employed when constructing software applications. Firstly, the sociotechnical problem space is explicated by 1) defining revision control and 2) explaining how organizations can implement revision control through the use of specialized tools. Next, implicated values are identified and defined in terms of interactions with version control tools. Finally, stakeholders are identified and the effect of implicated values on stakeholders is analyzed

Sociotechnical Problem Space
Revision control (also known as version control) is used to manage changes in documents, source code, or any other type of file stored on a computer. Revision control is typically used in software engineering when many developers are making contributions/changes to source code files. As changes to a source code file are committed, a new version of the file is created. Versions of a file are identified either by date or by a sequence number (i.e. – “version 1”, version 2”, etc.). Each version of the file is stored for accountability and stored revisions can be restored, compared, and merged.

The fundamental issue that version control sidesteps is the race condition of multiple developers reading and writing to the same files. For instance, Developer A and Developer B download a copy of a source code file from a server to their local PC. Both developers begin editing their copies of the file. Developer A completes his/her edits and publishes his/her copy of the file to the server. Developer B then completes his/her edits and publishes his/her copy of the file, thereby overwriting Developer A’s file and ultimately erasing all of Developer A’s work.

There are two paradigms that can be used to solve the race condition issue: file locking and copy-modify-merge (Collins-Sussman).

File locking is a simple concept that permits only one developer to modify a file at any given time. To work on a file, Developer A must “check out” the file from the repository and store a copy of the file to his/her local PC. While the file is checked out, Developer B (or any developer for that matter) cannot make edits to the file. Developer B may begin to make edits only after Developer A has “checked in” the file back into the file repository. File locking works but has its drawbacks. File locking can cause administrative problems. For example: a developer may forget to check in a file effectively locking the file out and preventing any other developer from doing work. File locking also causes unnecessary serialization. For example: two developers may want to make edits to different parts of a file that don’t overlap. No problems would arise if both developers could modify the file, and then merge the changes together. File-locking prevents concurrent updates by multiple developers so work has to be done in-turn.

In the copy-modify-merge paradigm, each developer makes a local “mirror copy” of the entire project repository. Developers can work simultaneously and independently from one another on their local copies. Once updates are complete, the developers can push their local copies to the project repository where all changes are merged together into a final version. For example: Developer A and Developer B make changes to the same file within their own copies of the project repository. Developer A saves his/her changes to the global repository first. When Developer B attempts to save his/her changes, the developer is informed that their copy is out of date (i.e. – other changes were committed while he/she was working on the file). Developer B can then request that Developer A’s changes be merged into his/her copy. Once the changes are merged, and if there are no conflicts (i.e. – no changes overlap), Developer B’s copy is then saved into the repository. If there are conflicts, Developer B must resolve them before saving the final copy to the project repository.

A development organization may implement revision control through the use of specialized tools dedicated to source code management. There are several open-source and commercial tools available, each with their advantages and drawbacks. Subversion, an open-source software package, is a well-known and widely used tool (Tigris). Subversion (“SVN”) uses a client-server model. Source code files are stored on the SVN server (aka “repository”) and can be accessed by any PC’s running the SVN client. This allows many developers to work on source code files from different locations/PC’s. Some key features of SVN are: utilization of copy-modify-merge (and file-locking if needed), full directory versioning, atomic commits to the repository, and versioned metadata for each file/directory.

Values Defined
The use of a good revision control methodology engenders several values within a development organization. This section identifies and defines some of these values.

By leveraging revision control, an organization fosters collaboration between its developers. Gray defines collaboration as “a process of joint decision making among key stakeholders of a problem domain about the future of that domain” (Gray, p.11). Source control permits developers to work in teams where each individual can contribute to the overall goal of delivering a quality software product. Each individual makes decisions on which piece of code will work best to reach that goal. The future of the domain, or software release, is defined by the collaborative effort of developers within the workspace.

Revision control usage also engenders accountability. In their book, Friedman et al write: “accountability refers to the properties that ensure the actions of a person, people, or institution may be traced uniquely to the person, people, or institution” (Friedman). Upon change commit (i.e. - submitting a change to the repository), revision control tools record the responsible developer and place a timestamp on the new version of the file. Moreover, the developer can enter comments to describe changes that he/she has made. For these reasons, revision control tools provide a good mechanism for accountability as a complete audit trail of change is recorded.

Another value brought about by revision control is work efficiency. This is especially true when the copy-modify-merge paradigm is utilized. The major advantage of this paradigm is that it allows developers to work individually and concurrently, thereby maximizing available development time. Compare this to the file-lock paradigm where developers can be locked out a file at any given time. Additionally, copy-modify-merge minimizes the coordination effort and expense between developers.

Along with the values stated above, revision control also: enhances communication between developers, prevents loss of work through backups, enables better coordination of efforts, manages code merges, and provides code stability by allowing organizations to rollback to previous versions of the code (O'Sullivan).

Stakeholders
The most apparent direct stakeholders are the software developers. Revision control benefits developers by providing them with a more stable work environment. Without revision control, it is very easy to experience loss of work. Race conditions can occur if multiple developers are sharing the same copy of files. The danger of overwriting updates is real, and it increases exponentially as the project size and organization size increase. Moreover, a complete loss of data can be avoided as copies of code files are constantly being generated and backed-up.

Another benefit for developers is comprehensibility of the system code lifecycle. Developers can review the ancestry of files and by reading other developer’s comments they can elicit the reasoning behind code changes. This information helps ensure that they stay the course of the current branch of development.

In a hierarchical organization, the indirect stakeholders are members of management (ex. - IT Team Leaders). IT Team Leaders are rated on how well their teams meet project timeline and budgetary expectations. Development teams have a better chance at hitting targets with a revision control strategy, as pitfalls that cause delays and unexpected costs can be avoided. Consequently, benefits of meeting targets get cascaded up to higher levels of management within the organization.

End users of the constructed software product are also indirect stakeholders. All of the benefits garnered from revision control are ultimately parlayed into building a more usable and functionally accurate software product that is intended for end user consumption.

References
Collins-Sussman, Ben. "Version Control with Subversion". Tigris.org. 10/20/2009 <http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/index.html>.

Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Jr., & Borning, A. (2006). Value Sensitive Design and information systems. In P. Zhang & D. Galletta (eds.), Human-Computer Interaction in Management Information Systems: Foundations, (pp. 348-372). Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe.

Gray, Barbara. Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for Multiparty Problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1989.

O'Sullivan, Bryan. "Making Sense of Revision-control Systems". ACM. 10/20/2009 <http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1595636>.

Tigris. "Subversion Home Page". Tigris.org. 10/19/2009 <http://subversion.tigris.org/>.

Privacy in Social Computing

2009-10-21T14:45:00.002-07:00

The computer has evolved tremendously over the last half century, to the point that today’s handheld devices are many times more powerful than the original mainframes. Today’s devices are also infinitely more interconnected, with both the internet and other devices around us. This means that information is flying, so to speak, everywhere at an amazing rate. Combined with humans’ social nature, it is no surprise that this all led to the sprouting and rapid growth of social networking sites. Due to underlying idea behind social networking being constantly updating personal information, privacy in the field is an ever present concern. With today’s networked applications, there is risk of some personal information being shared. This notion should, to a degree, be accepted by users, but the real value sensitive challenge is to determine the degree of acceptability this tradeoff creates for the user and their sense of privacy. The entire realm of privacy is a touchy subject, and will continue to be so as our online information base grows.

The social networking swell started several years ago and has grown remarkably to its current state; the big three networking sites, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter recorded 124.5 million, 50.2 million, and 23.5 million unique visitors, respectively, in September 2009 (1). With this many unique users, many of whom come back frequently (Facebook had 2.3 billion visits in Sept (1)), it clear to see the immense popularity of the networking trend. This networking movement plays on the natural human tendency to crave social interaction: while we are individualistic, the greater draw is to interact with others. Networking sites allow you to make your profile your own to varying degrees; on one extreme, MySpace, with virtually no limit to what can be done to your page, contrasted with the more professional based networks that have stricter limitations, thus catering to our individualistic desires. At the same time, they allow interaction between you and your ‘friends’ by sharing all sorts of personal information: text, pictures, audio, as well as video. With the amount of users frequenting social networking sites, it is easy to imagine the amount of data being created.

Each user profile on a social network (I will specifically be looking at Facebook, as I am most familiar with it) contains all sorts of information about the user: demographic data, interests, hobbies, organizations, jobs and so on. The powerful thing about this data is that it is largely accurate, according to Sree Nagarajan, founder of Colligent, a company that provides our data to marketers (2). This accuracy of data, combined with its abundance is a dream come true for advertisers. It allows for targeted advertising to happen on a page by page basis: the ads that each user sees can be tailored specifically to his or her interests and demographics as well as the actual content on the page they are on. This is all made possible by Facebook’s (and other networks’) very uniform and consistent presentation of data, along with the fact that it is largely public (though the definition of what is truly public is constantly being refined). Facebook makes matters even easier by offering an API that allows for scraping of data from users’ news feeds on the fly. All these factors add up to a platform that is a data-mining wonder.

Of course, privacy is a huge concern when so much personal information is so widely available. Wikipedia defines privacy as “the ability of an individual…to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively” (3). This definition works very well with the social network users’ needs to have their information visible and easily accessible to their social contacts and out of the hands of strangers. Like any other web application, networks assure users that “of course your privacy is very important to us” (4). But how true is this statement?

While investigating privacy in location-enhanced computing, Freier et al. developed a set of features that had direct impacts on user privacy, some of which are applicable to social networks as well: interpretability, awareness, control, scope of disclosure and risk and recourse (5). As stated earlier, social network data is very standardized, and is very easily interpreted. This makes it extremely easy for both legal and illegal searching of the data, both reducing privacy. The question to ask here is if this extent of standardization and interpretability is really necessary for the operation of the social network. On the one hand, the networks could make the data harder to mine and less accessible, but they would then be biting the hand that feeds them; advertisers would surely be displeased. A case could surely be made for both sides, though unfortunately, the side with the most money, the advertisers, would surely win.

Awareness of what information is being shared with whom is an important part protecting your privacy and goes hand in hand with the ability to control the flow of information. Freier et al. classify systems into two categories: invisible and transparent. In other words, invisible systems do not bother users with notifications for their awareness, whereas transparent systems disclose all information regarding privacy. On the surface, it would seem as though transparent systems are the correct design choice in terms of value sensitive design and that users would embrace them; systems designed to be invisible to the user would surely fail. However, studies show otherwise. For example, the User Account Control feature introduced in Microsoft Vista was supposed to address user awareness of when system settings were being modified and provide control to allow the change or deny it. The aim was to preserve the security and privacy of users’ computers, both very important values in most users’ minds. However, after launch, many users wound up turning the feature off, despite the fact that it tried to inform the user of an issue and provide control over how to proceed. Perhaps this was due to a poor implementation, but there may be other reasons. Bonneau and Preibusch conducted an extensive study of privacy features in the social networking landscape and found trends that one would not otherwise expect (6). First they split the population into three groups, what they called the marginally concerned, pragmatic majority and the privacy fundamentalists. They discovered that the majority of users, the pragmatic majority, claimed to be concerned with privacy, but given an attractive service or monetary rewards, quickly forgot about it. In addition, it was shown that the more assurance of privacy a social site provided, the less comfortable non-fundamentalists became. In other words, minimizing the sense of privacy in a site, while actually providing it was the best approach to appease all three user groups. In addition, the study found that social network sites (especially Facebook, it was the worst offender) tend to bury privacy settings deep in the site settings. This makes it difficult for users to opt in or out, depending on the situation, and only the dedicated fundamentalist group described above bothers to look at and modify them. All this contradicts the seemingly common sense idea that transparent systems would be more welcomed by users and points to the fact that people are content with invisible systems.

The scope of disclosure is very important in analyzing privacy in social networks. Because of the different classes of people that a user interacts with (direct friends, friends of friends, strangers, etc.) there need to be definitions of what different user groups can see. The different classes defined by Freier et al. applied well to the location-enhanced devices they discussed, but the classes Priebusch et al. defined are much more appropriate. They suggest the data classes that are private, used only internally, group, seen by friends, community, seen by users of the social network regardless of friend status, and public, that can be seen by anyone, regardless of social network status (4). In addition to these definitions, I think we can expand the group definition to reflect the fact that users can have actual friends and people in their network (i.e. RPI), two groups with whom users can have different types of interactions. Within the context of social networks, these classes are the bread and butter of privacy settings: the nature of the sites requires information to be shared and users need power over who sees what parts of their profile. Tied to scope and disclosure is the risk and recourse metric of measuring privacy. This feature deals with the sensitivity of information versus the ability of users to hold accountable those who use their information inappropriately. Unfortunately for social network users, their data is often very sensitive and their potions for recourse very limited. For example, a study found that many users on social network sites accept ‘friend’ requests without any checks (13% on Facebook, 92% on Twitter) and post their address information, as well as their vacation plans (7). The combination of these three factors makes social networks a great new place for burglars to look for homes to hit. Granted, these events are much more severe and rare than most other inappropriate uses of users’ information, but regardless, users have very little recourse against abusers of the system as they are often unknown. However, it brings up an interesting point: how much of the users’ privacy concerns are brought on by uninformed or foolish behavior, and how much should and can social networks do to prevent them? Common sense (and our mothers) tells us not to accept candy from strangers. The same principles apply to social networks, and if users ignore them, then they are asking for trouble. As for the social networks, it would perhaps be possible to create algorithms to analyze suspicious user friend requesting patterns, though the effectiveness and ethics (privacy included) of this would be questionable.

There are several major stakeholders in the system, both direct and indirect. First, the most obvious direct stakeholder is the user base that uses social networks. They are the group around whom the entire system is designed and built, and to whom the advertisers push products. The advertisers and marketers are another large stakeholder, though indirectly. They communicate with the companies that mine the users’ data and sell it to them to provide targeted advertising. The data mining companies are also direct stakeholders. These three stakeholders are on opposite ends of the privacy issue; the users desire more privacy whereas the miners and advertisers want more lax privacy policies. Which side is right is debatable. While user privacy is an important value that designers should embrace in all applications, as the study above showed, most users forgot about their privacy concerns once given a reason, usually an attractive service. The advertisers, on the other hand, stand to benefit greatly from looser restrictions, allowing them to receive more information and allow them to better server targeted advertising. The ethical question is whether they should receive these looser restrictions, given that users would likely still use the services. It would greatly tread on users’ value of privacy, for sure, but would superior ad targeting serve the users’ needs better? Would these ads slowly move from being looked at annoyances to being useful and actually see higher click through rates? These are definite questions to consider and incorporate into future privacy decisions.

Works Cited

1. Facebook vs Myspace vs Twitter. Compete.com. [Online] [Cited: 10 12, 2009.] http://siteanalytics.compete.com/facebook.com+myspace.com+twitter.com/.

2. Buskirk, Eliot Van. Your Facebook Profile Makes Marketers' Dreams Come True. WIRED. [Online] 4 28, 2009. [Cited: 10 12, 2009.] http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/04/your-facebook-profile-makes-marketers-dreams-come-true/.

3. Privacy. Wikipedia. [Online] [Cited: 10 14, 2009.] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy.

4. Preibusch, Soren, et al. Ubiquitous Social Networks - Opporotunities and challanges for privacy-aware user modelling. Corfu : s.n., 2007.

5. Freier, Nathan G., et al. A Value Sensative Design Investigation of Privacy for Location-Enhanced Computing. Seattle : s.n.

6. Bonneau, Joseph and Preibusch, Soren. The Privacy Jungle: On the Market for Data protection in Social Netowrks. Cambridge : s.n.

7. Gonsalves, Antone. Social Networkers Risk More Than Privacy. Information Week. [Online] 8 27, 2009. [Cited: 10 13, 2009.] http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/social_network/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219500360.

Power to the People

2009-10-21T14:45:00.001-07:00

The mindset for designing software has evolved considerably over the last several decades from being developer centered to a much more user centered approach. This evolution was, perhaps, partially driven by the successes of ethnographic research that was being conducted in other industries when designing products. The transition to the computing realm seemed only natural as the ubiquity of consumer computing grew, and was moved along even quicker given the incredible uptake of internet applications. Due to the high reliance of users on various applications in different parts of their lives, the need for more usable interfaces became an urgent concern. However, developers were ill trained in usability practices and thus were unable to create interfaces very well. Having a team of designers work on the GUI seemed like the answer, but even then there were inadequacies with the resulting product. The contextual design (CD) methodology was formed to address all these issues and come out with products that were designed specifically around user concerns. The results from projects designed with CD in mind are often very positive, and embrace many aspects of user and participatory design.

As Blomberg & Burrell pointed out, ethnography was brought into the spotlight when the internet boom made creating software for home consumption a big business (1). This brings up an interesting point: why was ethnography and contextual design not as utilized when software was created mostly for business use? Are business users more prone to accept bad UI? The argument could be made that since business users are locked into whatever software the company is providing (be it internal or external) they have no other options or anything to compare it to, no matter how frustrated they are. The company may have chosen the software because of cost, compatibility or any other business reason. In addition, after a certain amount of time, the users likely adjust to the unintuitive interface and system structure, and are forced to accept the strategies and workflow as they are (2). Another argument is that the business user is easier to design for due to the fact that they are more predictable than the wide array of different home users. The tasks and different ways home users use a given program may be much more diverse than the comparatively rigid structure of a company. In most companies many processes are very defined, allowing for much easier analysis, and not necessarily requiring an entire ethnographical study.

Ethnography, in the context of HCI, is a study aimed at identifying opportunities for enhancing experiences (1). Contextual design, on the other hand, can be summed up as the approach to designing software based on an understanding of how the customer works (2). Combining these two practices in designing software has one colossal effect on the project: users are involved at nearly every point. The concept is simple: if you don’t understand what the user does, it doesn’t matter how visually appealing the interface is, the end result will fail to meet the user’s needs. To that end, contextual design a major theme: you need to understand what users do. In this regard, the user is the expert. However, an interesting contradiction appears when one attempts to put this idea to use. It turns out the user is actually often unable to convey exactly what it is they do (3). They give an impression, which in many cases is inaccurate. Because of this, the best way to understand exactly what a user does, is observation. There are different schools of thought on how this should be done: one observer, multiple observers, camera, audio or a combination of several of methods. There are certainly pros and cons to each method, but an interesting rift appears between in person observation, and more passive methods such as video recording. Are user responses and behaviors going to be different if they are observed in person or on film? If so, the passive method would produce a more pure representation of the tasks the user performed, even more so if the user wasn’t informed of exactly when the recording was occurring (ethics concerns naturally surface with such a scenario). The same concept applies to when speaking with people in follow up interviews/debriefs. When in person interviews are involved, users tend to not always tell the entire truth due to being uncomfortable or overly privacy conscious (1). Would a phone interview relieve the pressure and increase the comfort of the interviewee? Would not personally knowing the interviewer put the user at ease and allow them to open up more? If this were the case indirect interviews would seem to be more useful, though the visual element present in face to face interviews would be eliminated, so the best method would need to be evaluated on a case by case basis, perhaps with input from the user.

In interacting with the users through the design process, the goal is to get a grasp of what they do and if there already is a current system, what inadequacies they face with it. When this information is gathered through observations and follow-up interviews, the design team needs to analyze it, and then develop some conclusions. With these, the team can proceed to what Holtzblatt refers to as ‘visioning’ (4). Visioning refers to inventing solutions given the context of the larger practice. With all the information gathered through the observation phase, the design team should have a grip on what the user does. At the visioning stage, the team comes up with a way to modify the way the user goes about their task to incorporate new ideas. Holtzblatt stresses that this stage does not include interface choices (4). This is meant to separate the interface from the actual functionality of the application, allowing the team to perfect the actual functionality before moving onto the GUI that will drive the application.

As the popularity of home computing grew, so did the need for the software presented to consumers to be well thought out and implemented. As Hugh et al. point out, developers are not good at understanding how people work; they write code and design system implementations (3). As such, having them be the only ones responsible for the usability aspect of software made very little to no sense. The users are the ones who know exactly what they do, what workflows they follow, and what problems they encounter. Because of this, involving them at every point in a software project is vital for the end result to represent something a consumer would find useful. Only with user involvement can design teams take workflows and feedback and turn it into software that makes sense for the user. In hindsight, it is unclear why the ethnography and contextual design movements didn’t grab hold earlier. One thing is certain, however: after years of bad software design, it is good to see companies finally recognizing their customer base for the invaluable resource that they are.

Works Cited

1. Blomberg, Jeanette and Burrell, Mark. An Ethnographic Approach to Design. [book auth.] A Sears and J Jacko. The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundementals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications. New York : Taylor & Francis Group, 2008, pp. 965-988.

2. Contextual Design. Beyer, Hugh and Holtzblatt, Karen. 1997, ACM Interactions, pp. 32-42.

3. Beyer, Hugh, Holtzblatt, Karen and Baker, Lisa. An Agile User-Centered Method: Rapid Contextual Design.

4. Holtzblatt, Karen. Contextual Design. [book auth.] J. Jacko and A. Sears. The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications. New York : Taylor & Francis Group, 2007.

Contact At the Expense of Privacy or: How Google Asked Me to Stop Worrying and Ride the Wave

2009-10-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

Brian R Zaik

Problem Space: Synchronous connected communications systems (Google Wave)

Value Implicated: Personal privacy

Direct Stakeholders: Current testers of Google Wave preview, future users of Google Wave, Google Inc., non-Google developers of Wave apps

Indirect Stakeholders: Enterprises and other organizations of people, friends, family, and colleagues of Wave users who are not themselves ‘catching the Wave’

Introduction to the Problem Space

On May 27, 2009, Google introduced what they promised would become the next generation of Internet communications – Wave. This technology was introduced as “equal parts conversation and document,” a merging of email, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking (2). It is a synchronous communications system, initially based on the Web, which focuses on strong collaborative and real-time conversation threads built into “Waves.” These Waves are server-hosted XML documents that allow seamless and low-latency concurrent modifications (5). What that means is by default, users will be able to see the current status of all of their Wave contacts – online, offline, or away – and even engage in synchronous conversations on the Web. I will be able to see my friends as they type out messages, make changes, misspell words, add maps and other widgets, and even play Sudoku with me. This is fundamentally different from email, which is based on the chronological ordering of discrete messages or message threads, built largely as a response to the perceived deficiencies of email and other traditional communications media.

As MC Siegler points out in his recent article on Techcrunch, Google wants to turn Wave into a dominant messaging protocol that would be shared between many different contexts (4). That means that Wave may start on the Web, but may grow to encompass a whole host of “connected” desktop widgets, messaging clients, and other programs – all of which would be at least partially based on the concepts behind Wave.

Why Privacy?

In talking about how privacy as a value is implicated by the design philosophies behind Google Wave, it’s appropriate first to define what I mean by privacy. The formal definition within the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines privacy as “the quality or state of being apart from company or observation” (3). This definition also includes the concept of “unauthorized” access. Recent concerns raised with changes to Facebook have sparked debate about how much end-user control must be designed into systems in order to let users tell the system what they consider to be unauthorized access. Thus it becomes the responsibility of the product designers to ensure that user privacy can be both identified within the context of the product and protected.

How Does Google Wave Implicate Privacy?

It is a cloud service that is based on Google’s central servers, rather than individuals’ own machines.

First, there are the overtly high-level issues with allowing companies like Google to have access to all conversation data. The white paper overview of the synchronous technologies behind Google Wave clearly states that the complete thread of multimedia messages (blips) are located on a central server owned by Google (5). This is already the case with IMAP and Web-based email provided by Google (Gmail) and other vendors, yet now Google will have access to not just the messages being generated by users and the interactions of users within the Wave application. Every move in a Sudoku game will be tracked by Google’s servers, as well as every map marker added by users wanting to share geographical points of interest. Google does not plan on retaining this information outside of communicating it in real-time to other users, but the very nature of the data the company is tracking has changed with the advent of the Wave protocol.

It encourages “always-on” communication by eliminating once intentional barriers.

Second, and more important, are the low-level issues that are harder to realize: that in essence, the Wave paradigm encourages such immediate communications that users enter the personal spaces of other contacts with each Wave-based interaction. Users can see when their acquaintances are online, and they can even see when others type. Email was created in part as a response to the telephone and its sense of immediacy; email intentionally erected a barrier to immediate communication by promoting a design that encouraged users to respond to messages at their own schedules (1). It’s almost like users of email are posting to a newsgroup – who knows when people will read it, if at all? Privacy is bolstered by the deliberate or unintentional barriers to synchronous communication within the medium: message delivery failures, slow networks, “I’m away from my computer,” and others.

What we see here with Wave that was never quite the case with existing forms of communication is the removal of most barriers to communication. Google Wave is a technology built to encourage people to be in sync with one another (4). This sounds on the surface to be a magnificent improvement, yet the design of the system must be sensitive to how users are likely to use (and abuse) Waves. The vision of synchronous communication that Wave promotes can become a threat to personal privacy if appropriate safeguards are left out of the overarching design.

My interest in Wave as a communications medium was born on May 27, 2009, when the Google I/O conference talk and demo spread through the tubes to nearly every major news outlet on the Web (2). But only recently has it peaked with the invitation I received from a friend to enter the closed preview for Google’s Web-based Wave tool. I was included in a big Wave with lots of other people, many of whom I do not myself know (and probably didn’t want to know). While this may have happened with mass emails, with emails I would never have been able to see when people are online and when they are typing a message to which I am attached. While I can’t see their other messages in Wave, the implications of a technology like this are somewhat concerning from a privacy standpoint. The software is designed in such a way as to encourage users to open the door to strangers, even on behalf of others. And when someone else opens my door to strangers without my permission, it starts to feel as if they too are in the room when I am communicating within that Wave. If they demand an urgent response from me, there are few ways to mask whether or not I am online or available (or interested) to respond to them. With asynchronous email, this is not the case.

Though Google has promised to give the user an ability to turn off the software’s transmission of letter-by-letter messaging and online status, these changes have not yet been implemented in the software. Even so, Wave’s default behavior will probably force users to opt out of these features. Given that historically the majority of users are unlikely to change default settings, it seems likely that these potential invasions of personal privacy will remain for many Wave users.

It is designed to act as a ubiquitous, context-merging communications protocol.

Why is Google Wave different from instant messaging and wireless email on mobile devices? Instant messaging clients can be turned off or changed to make it seem as though the user is “away” and unable to communicate, but Google Wave is meant to address general communication, rather than casual, friendly conversation or work communications limited to the office. It is, as Techcrunch author Siegler puts it, “not just a service…[but] perhaps the most complete example yet of a desire to shift the way we communicate once again” (4). In the past, class discussions in the Theory & Research in HCI course have focused on how the contexts of work, play, and casual communication could be merged within a single technology and thus create the expectation that a user will always be within reach for communication. It wouldn’t matter if she is located in the office, at home, or on the road, in work mode or up for casual conversation. The paradigm pushed by Google Wave seems to have the strongest chance of becoming this all-encompassing, merged-contexts communications standard. And that, of course, has privacy implications for the end user.

In many cases, users will create different identities and expectations pertaining to how they communicate with others online. A gaming chat account will belong to a different context and thus follow different rules and expectations from work email. Google Wave is built to merge all of these media: to play games together, talk about work issues, brainstorm collaboratively, and connect to each other casually. It remains to be seen exactly how people will use the Wave platform, but this merging of activities could impact the abilities of users to effectively separate purposes between different contexts in the future, thus impacting their personal privacies.

Direct Stakeholders

Current Testers of Google Wave Preview: These are the front-line fighters in the battle to defend user privacy with Google Wave. These people were invited either by Google or other Wave users to join the exclusive, closed test program for Wave. Many of the features that have been promised by Google have not yet been implemented within the preview, and thus it is the responsibility of these users to ensure that Google remains true to its word. In fact, I believe it is necessary for preview testers to vocalize their concerns with how the design of Wave is progressing. There must be active communication between these people and the Google Wave team. Google, in order to create a product that is more responsive to users and the personal privacies they represent, should implement online town hall meetings or actively seek out feedback to ensure that the final version of Wave limits their abilities to limit what is shown to whom (such as live typing). And these stakeholders should also continue to act as stewards for the much larger group of future users, posting analyses such as these and thought-provoking commentaries to blogs and other online communities.

Future Users of Google Wave (employees, casual users): These are the people who will actively use the final release version of Google Wave; they are the ones who will choose to use the communications protocol within their daily lives. These users may belong to organizations or remain individual users, and thus they will be able to decide how often they rely on the Wave paradigm to work together and communicate. Though Google will hopefully offer extensive feedback mechanisms once the full product is rolled out, these stakeholders will not be able to voice their concerns about Wave and its implications on privacy until then, though they most certainly collectively influence the view society will have of Wave when it’s finally out of beta.

Google Inc.: Google is the company behind Wave, as well as the core developers of the first Wave-based applications within the protocol. Google is most certainly a key stakeholder in this problem space, especially since the public image of the company and future profits will both be impacted by how favorably the public receives Wave and the ideas it represents. Google is promoting the philosophical paradigm for communication behind Wave, and developers must ensure that they keep well in mind the desires and interests of users all across the board, from industry, casual communities, and specific contexts (such as gamers or interest-based groups).

Non-Google Developers of Wave Apps: These developers are springing up here and there, and will be the future of Wave as Google envisions it (2). Wave is meant not just as a Google-initiated project, but as a federated protocol for communication in the future. These developers will steer users in ways that may be different from Google’s interests, and they too must carefully pay attention to the privacy ramifications of the new types of interactions they enable between people.

Indirect Stakeholders

Enterprises and Other Organizations of People: Blackberry introduced “email at your hip” years ago, and the iPhone and other “always connected” devices have changed email to become more of a must-have tool than ever before. These devices have had an impact on how much freedom a person has to stay off the grid and outside of the observation of others, but they’re still depending on email with all of its barriers to communication. Google Wave holds the promise to connect people within organizations more effectively than other forms of communication, and it also could set a strong expectation within groups that users must make themselves available to respond at once. Based on how people respond to the philosophies espoused by Google Wave, company culture will be impacted indirectly.

Friends, Family, and Colleagues of Wave Users Who Are Not Themselves ‘Riding the Wave’: The kind of “communication immediacy” that Wave promotes is a paradigm shift that could easily transcend into the rest of society. Despite the fact that email was created to remove the immediacy of phone calls and intentionally erect a barrier, allowing people to respond to communication at their own schedule, Wave seems to embody the worst of what email has become: it will become immediate and demand presence. As we have seen with mobile phones, texting, Twitter, and Facebook, social networking has permeated into most civilized culture, and more traditional interactions such as letter-writing and face-to-face communication have been shortened, quickened, or otherwise diminished as a result of the new types of ways in which people communicate. With this trend, it’s more than likely that the synchronous, collaborative “me-too” communication at the heart of Wave could affect everyone who interacts with Wave users outside of Wave itself.

Footnotes:

Cubrilovic, Nik. "Relevance Over Time." Techcrunch. Techcrunch Inc., 12 Oct. 2009. Web. 21 Oct. 2009.

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O. Perf. Lars Rasmussen. YouTube. Google Inc., 28 May 2009. Web. 20 Oct. 2009.

"privacy." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009.
Merriam-Webster Online. 21 October 2009.

Siegler, MC. "Google Wave And The Dawn Of Passive-Aggressive Communication." Web log post. Techcrunch. Techcrunch Inc., 12 Oct. 2009. Web. 19 Oct. 2009.

Wang, David, and Alex Mah. "Google Wave Operational Transformation." (2009). Google Wave Federation Protocol. Google Inc., 28 May 2009. Web. 21 Oct. 2009.

Value Sensitive Design

2009-10-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

Daria Robbins

COMM 6480

Value Sensitive Design

Overview of the socio-technical problem space:

The dangerous conditions created by drivers who use a cellular phone while driving is the problem space for the purposes of this paper. The syndrome is called “distracted driving” and is attributed to, according to the Harvard Center of Risk Analysis, 636,000 crashes 330,000 injuries, 12,000 serious injuries and 2,600 deaths each year (Harvard Center of Risk Analysis). This distracted state of mind includes both using the cellular phone to talk and/or text while driving.

Nearly 80 percent of crashes and 65 percent of near-crashes involved some form of driver inattention within three seconds before the event. Primary causes of driver inattention are distracting activities, such as cell phone use, and drowsiness (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration).

Though the connection between cellular phone use while driving and an accident may not be directly related, using a cell phone can degrade driver performance, attention and reaction time because of a cognitive distraction. This documented risky behavior has the potential to result in serious consequences, not only to the driver, but to those within the vicinity of the driver and his/her vehicle.

The Stakeholders:

The driving using the cellular phone

Other drivers

Pedestrians

Passengers in the cell phone user’s vehicle are potential victims as are passengers in other vehicles

Families of the resulting victims

Law enforcement officers and other first responders who respond to the resulting accidents

Insurance companies that pay out for personal injury and property damage from resulting accidents

The value of import in this problem space is that of personal and public safety. As citizens, we have a responsibility to one another to “not do harm.” This position goes beyond simply physical harm or property damage, but also encompasses the collateral harm done to individuals, families and communities when distracted driving results in physical harm and damage. Furthermore, the human interaction with technology should not result in harm to the user or others.

It is not clear from current research if hands-free use of a cell phone is “safer” than hand-held use, but some research suggests that there is similar cognitive distraction. Additionally, the driver may miss audio or visual cues necessary to avoid having an accident because they are attending to a conversation rather than the task at hand – the operation of a motor vehicle.

The conflict between the stakeholders is a matter of personal freedom. However, it is clear that the personal freedom of the reckless driver using the cell phone while driving infringes upon the rights of all other stakeholders to be safe.

A solution? There really isn’t one.

We have crossed that bridge and there is no turning back. Ultimately, the technology will have to advance to a kind of “smart” hands-free system that can adjust the volume based on the traffic conditions.

There is currently legislation in many states that address the use of hand-held cell phone use (talking and/or texting) that has made the practice illegal. However, enforcing the new law puts an added burden on law-enforcement and is difficult to prove.

VSD: Near Field Privacy

2009-10-21T13:10:00.001-07:00

In his book, "Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy," author ferdinand Schoeman describes privacy as a claim, entitlement or right of an individual to determine what information about himself or herself can be communicate to others. Privacy is considered a houshold term (not to be a pun- the household is often riddled with privacy issues), however there are nuances in how people think about it. Some classify privacy as an issue of security and control (Parent, 1983), while others simply project it as a materialization of human dignity- the mere fact that there is a want for some things to be private and some things not is a cornerstone of many facets of humanity (Bloustein, 1964). In either case, privacy has undeniable value to many and there have been painstaking steps take towards protecting it in continually developing areas of advancing civilization. Three common approaches have been identified in terms of preserving and protecting privacy in value-sensitive design methodology (Friedman, 2007):

Inform people when and what information about them is being captured and to whom the information is being made available
Allow people to stipulate what information they project and who can get hold of it
Apply privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) that prevent sensitive data from being tagged to a specific individual in the first place

With the breakdown of technological barriers, a network of available information has begun to flourish- some authorized and acknowledged by owners, and some not. One particular technological area of concern is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), a technology whereby modest amounts of data can be stored on a tiny tag- usually integrated within or attached to owned objects of interest- so as to be read by active radio fields (readers), and in some cases written to. RFID and privacy have had a tumultuous relationship especially due to the fact that information can be accessed and exchanged without a line-of-sight. Both readers and tags can be completely hidden from view, making it difficult, if not impossible for the owners of the scanned objects to even be aware that such a process is taking place (Langheinrich, 2008). Additionally, the range at which unautorized tag readout (t"tag-sniffing") can occur is fairly large, with the help of wireless communications. In April of 2008, a search for scholarly articles on RFID privacy and security yielded over 700 titles. As of October of 2009, over 17,000 articles are returned.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is an extension of RFID Technology. It differs from traditional RFID communication protocols in that is only occurs over a very short distance (under 4 inches). Notable current instantiations of NFC include the Oyster card public transport system in the United Kingdom, and the payWave credit card augmentation in American banking and processing interactions. While RFID may be seen to uphold values of convenience, openness, and process efficiency ( e.g. government issued passports with RFID tags as well as retail chains that use RFID tags in products for inventory tracking are able to cut costs, reduce time between entities, and generally streamline the flow of information), NFC and the protocols that can be scribed to it (Paci, 2009) can be seen as an attempt to uphold privacy. Near fields inherently require that an interaction take place very close to one's object of choice (which has become the mobile phone. ABI Research has concluded that at least 20% of mobile phones will be NFC-enabled by the year 2012. Currrently, only a small number of models from manufactures such as Nokia are enabled for near field communication (Gallen, 2008)). Mobile exchanges of information that one may want to keep private such as mobile contactless payments must take place very close to one's mobile device. In this way, a sense of private space is being projected upon the transfer of information. Further, because near field communication can be tied to powerful processing technologies within a mobile device, the first two preservation attempts for privacy can be seen whereby the the user is informed when and what information is being captured and to whom it is being made available, and the user can be allowed to stipulate what information, if any, they can broadcast and who is allowed to get a hold of it. The NFC extension of RFID technology and the technological ecosystem that embodies and executes the private exchange of information is what allows privacy to be maintained, even in the chaos and paranoia that radio friency identification in general imbues.

In the terms of value sensitive design, we can attempt to identify the stakeholders involved. Those stakeholders that directly interact with the technology would be users of NFC-enabled mobile phones. Instead of considering their phone as a long-range communication device, they will come to see their phone as the gatekeeper to much of their identity- much of which they would like to keep private. Those whom we may consider to be indirect stakeholder would be those who may benefit from the fact that these users can use their mobile device to communication and transmit information. An example would be a restaurant owner, who allows his customers to pay their bills without requiring card swipes, paper receipts, or signatures. This would present him with feinite cost sacings. Further, he may allow people to touch their mobile devices over an advertisement poster to collect coupons. Only those direct stakeholder who feel so inclined to received a coupon would do so, but the owner would still be (positively?) affected by his endorsement adn encouragement of the use of NFC.

This example shows a somewhat clear delineation between direct and indirect stakeholder of NFC with respect to the value of privacy. However, stakeholder identification itself sheds light on the very issue that NFC addresses within the realm of privacy. When radio frequency is the primary vehicle of information transmission, and due to a lack of line-of-sight as well as unauthorized tag-sniffing, the typical stakeholder is an average consumer, and is both direct and indirect. For example, a consumer may make a purchase at a gas station using their payWave credit card- directly using the RFID functionality that the card permits. However, they are highly susceptible to unknown and unwanted tag sniffing, whereby a reader may be able to receive purchase records or banking account information. NFC aims to make it so that it is always clear to the user whether they are a direct stakeholder or an indirect one.

The value of privacy embedded in NFC comes at the cost of openness and conflicts with location-independence. Since NFC holds privacy so high and forces interactions to occur within people's personal space, it makes it difficult for people/systems to share information who aren't situated near each other. In fact, in cultures where personal space is very small, privacy may still be a concern. However, in cultures where openness and convenience are much more important than privacy, a technology like NFC would seem tedious and unintelligent compared to ones like WiFi. With regards to location-independence, and precisely because NFC requires a 4-inch proximity in order to exchange information, it can be used to ensure attendance for various activities. For example, it is conceivable that a school may use NFC to allow children/teens to "touch" in for attendance and that all a teacher must do to take classroom attendance is to check records. However, the value imposed here is that attendance is important in the first place. How does this play out against education infrastructures where attendance at a specific location isn't important, but rather online presence and respected assignment deadlines.

In summary, through the lenses of value sensitive design we can see how privacy is imbued and preserved within the usage and interactions of near field communication- especially within the common vehicle which is growing to be the mobile cellular device. It serves to use much of the benefits and intelligence that RFID provides, but attempts to apply a much more thorough materialization that respects the ability to which people can transmit information and to control how and to whom that information is shared.

Sources:

Bloustein, E. (1964). Privacy as an Aspect of Human Dignity: An Answer to Dean Prosser. New York University Law Review, 39, 962-1007.

Friedman, B., & Kahn, P. H., Jr. (2007). Human values, ethics, and design. In Sears, A. & Jacko, J. (Eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. (pp. 1241-1266). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Langheinrich, M. (2007). A Survey of RFID Privacy Approaches. Springer-Verlag London Limited

Paci, F. (2009). Privacy-Preserving Management of Transactions' Receipts for Mobile Environments. Proceedings fo the 8th Symposim on Identity and Trust on the Internet. Gaithersburg, Maryland, 73-84.

Parent, W. (1983). Privacy, Morality and the Law. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 12, 269-288.

A Value Sensitive Design Approach to Airport Screening Systems

2009-10-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

A brief overview of how to improve the airport screening process

Airport security has served as the forefront to operating the traveling process for travelers entering and exiting the airport. Long lines, along with passenger and baggage checkpoints are core elements that affect the traveler’s experience. Aside from my personal issues with specific screening process’, most of the people that I know have experienced similar airport screening issues at some point in their lives, in which they were either harassed, had failed the security checkpoint test or in most cases lost their ticket or identification card. Especially after the 9/11 attacks, TSA (Transportation Security Administration) had been mandated by law to appropriately screen air travelers to ensure that certain items and persons prohibited from flying could not board commercial airlines (Security Screening, 2009). This federalizing of airport security was built on two assumptions: first one being that all passengers are equally suspicious and should receive the same scrutiny and secondly that the principal purpose of airport security is to keep dangerous objects (e.g., knives, guns and bottles) off airplanes (Poole, Carafano, 2006). In addition to the increase to the federalized process of security, technical security screening improvements also increased as well.

Socio-technical Problem Space

In a published article by Mathew L. Wald of the New York Times, screening technology in airports has been of discussion amongst TSA and government officials, in regards to the “reshaping” of airport screening technology in the U.S. Wald points out that the U.S. has moved towards reshaping airport screening technology by implementing new computer systems that rely primarily on the governments database system, in which the personal information of passengers would be prescreened along with the traditional screening process. Wald points out that their goal is to try to select about 4 percent of all passengers for more intense security, compared with the 14 percent identified by older systems. However, even with these improved technical changes, many subjective issues still remain through this increase of trying to protect passengers.

Cases of random or biased selection are still apparent in the screening process, however it seems that passengers are still “wrongfully” identified as “terrorist” depending on if their name is similar to a name on the “F.B.I. Terrorist” watch list, if they make last minute flight changes, or if they’re physical representation or ID raises suspicion to the TSA administrator (Security Training). That is why my solution to this problem would be a design approach to a “finger-printing” screening process. In which people would no longer have to show forms of identification and boarding pass’ when going through the security checkpoint or when entering the plane, just their thumbs.

Questions that could arise:

1. How much would these systems cost?

2. Who would design and issue out the new systems to airports?

3. How is the government going to issue everyone a fingerprint?

4. What type of fingerprinting would airports take?

1. How much would these systems cost?

According to Poole and Carafano’s “Time to Rethink Airport Security” article, Government investments, along with taxpayers and airline travelers’ funds have been used to support the TSA’s annual budget, which in 2005 was primarily devoted to new baggage and passenger screening systems. My solution would be for the government to revise the new budget based upon systems that are supported already in law enforcement budgets, because law enforcement agencies already use this new type of screening method.

2. Who would design and issue out the new systems to airports?

SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) is a company that specializes in solving critical problems with innovative applications of technology and expertise (Airport Security, 2009). In addition, SAIC has been recognized as a leader within the Airport and Cargo security field. In particular, SAIC has experience in Airport Security Systems Integration Design and Installation, Smart Cards and Biometrics and Information Security (INFOSEC). Airport Security Systems Integration Design and Installation could be applied to the design of the new screening system, because SAIC project managers are supported by Professional Engineers, who are up to date on the latest technologies and their deployments with varying environmental conditions (Airport Security). Smart Cards and Biometrics could also be applied to the development of the new screening process, because they deal with the storage of personal data for access. Lastly, SAIC’s Information Security (INFOSEC) could be applied to the design concept of the new screening system, because it deals with information security and offers a detailed pragmatic approach of process analysis and implementation (Airport Security).

3. How is the government going to issue everyone a fingerprint?

A possible solution would be for the government to require individuals receiving identification cards to have their fingerprint taken. In addition, anyone who already has forms of identification, but without the new fingerprint label, would then be required to make the update by a specific date. This would allow the government to access everyone’s fingerprints and identification information from the database system, that would connect individuals’ information to their fingerprints at any given time.

4. What type of fingerprinting would airports take?

There are three distinct types of fingerprint impressions that can be recovered for identification purposes, which are: patent prints, plastic prints and latent prints (Fingerprints, 2009). Patent prints are visible prints that occur when a foreign substance on the skin of a finger comes into contact with the smooth surface of another object (Fingerprints). The foreign substances contain dust particles, which stick to the ridges of the fingers and are easily identifiable when left on an object. Plastic prints are visible, impressed prints that occur when a finger touches a soft, malleable surface resulting in an indentation (Fingerprints). These prints are easily observable and require no enhancement in order to be viewed. Lastly, latent prints, are fingerprint impressions secreted in a surface or an object and are usually invisible to the naked eye (Fingerprints). These fingerprints require enhancement in order to be viewed because they serve as a means of identifying the source of the print.

Latent prints have been proven to be extremely valuable when applied to the identification of their sources. Therefore, because latent prints seem to be highly affective and also are harder to for people to visually see or change, this form of finger printing would best fit with the proposed screening process. Only issue with this type of fingerprinting would be that airports would have to add to their annual security budget for enhancement devices that can scan such prints. Otherwise, if the budget becomes an issue, plastic prints would be an alternative option, because they are easily visible and easy to scan for, yet they might arise more security issues in regards to people being able to alter their prints. The decision for which type of prints would be of primary use, would be based upon government and TSA annual budget availability.

Implicated Human Value: Freedom from Bias

An implicated human value to the new fingerprinting screening process would be “Freedom from Bias”. According to Freidman and Kahns’ “Human Values, Ethics and Design” article, Blas refers to systematic unfairness for individuals in three forms of bias, which are: preexisting social bias, technical bias and emergent social bias. For the new screening process, travelers will be able to be free from the present airport security biases that Blas points out within the article.

Direct Stakeholders

Passengers/ Travelers:

The people who travel are the most directly involved, because they are the ones that would need to go through the new security screening process and have their fingerprints taken.

Benefits:

It would help decrease long lines at security checkpoints for travelers
There would be a decrease in harassment from TSA administrators
Travelers would not have to worry about losing boarding passes once they are cleared from the security checkpoint.

Airport worker/ Airline ticket agents/ TSA employees:

The people who work at the airport would also be directly involved, because they would have to be trained to issue and identify scanned fingerprints. In some cases the airport employees could also be considered as indirect stakeholders.

Benefits:

Each of these groups would be able to still keep their jobs but would not have to deal with having to stress or be intense during the security and ticketing processes.
Overall it would be a decrease in workload and worry for them.

Indirect Stakeholders

Government:

The government would be indirectly affected because they would have to keep the database updated and make the information available to airports, but would not have to be apart of the actual screening process. The government also would have to issue out fingerprints to be taken by individuals when receiving an Identification card. In some cases, the government could also be a direct stakeholder.

Works Cited

Airport Security. SAIC. 20, October 2009.

“Fingerprints”. 20, October 2009

<http://www.fingerprinting.com/types-of-fingerprints.php>

Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Jr., & Borning, A. “Value Sensitive Design and information systems.” In P. Zhang & D. Galletta (eds.), Human-Computer Interaction in Management Information Systems: Foundations, (348-372). Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2006.

Poole Jr., Robert W. and Carafano, James. Time to Rethink Airport Security. 26, July 2006.

<http://www.heritage.org/Research/HomelandSecurity/bg1955.cfm>

“Security Screening”. Transportation Security Administration. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 20, October 2009.

<http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/screening/index.shtm>

U.S. Government Accountability Office, Aviation Security: Screener Training and Performance Measurement Strengthened, But More Work Remains, GAO–05–457, May 2005.

<http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05457.pdf >

Wald, Mathew L., “U.S. ‘Reshaping’ Airport Screening System”. The New York Times. 16, July 2004.

Synths and Accessibilty

2009-10-21T12:03:00.001-07:00

INTRODUCTION

Though popular synthesizers, like the Minimoog, had been around since the early 1970s, the advent of standardizations such as MIDI, synthesizer polyphony, and digital interfaces and oscillators (DCOs) allowed for greater flexibility within the field of sound synthesis. These developments also allowed synthesists to store data digitally, eliminating the need for complicated charts that tracked every single parameter change on the knob-laden synthesizers that had been the standard only a decade before. The days of the Rock and Roll keyboardist deftly navigating an array of eight keyboards to acquire a different sound during one song were over.

PROBLEMS

While new technology often allows for new flexibility and greater opportunities to experiment, it inadvertently crafts a problem space in its wake. The new technological breakthroughs in the realm of sound synthesis brought wonderful results, but they also brought about dialogue regarding the way in which the electronic musician could better communicate with his or her peers. One such discussion surrounded the use of "presets," defined as "out of the box" sounds that come programmed into the synthesizer. In an article written by David Wessel for the University of California at Berkeley, "The sad truth is, many musicians never go beyond the factory presets." (Wessel) He continues"

"there are many [synthesizer] programmers who strive for new sounds with more expressive control. These programmers must struggle with various idiosyncratic and awkward front-panel programming systems. Patch editors help, but the whole enterprise lacks coherency, consistency, and expressive power. The time has come for a common programming language to describe the behavior of our synths" (Wessel)

What Wessel realized was that musicians are faced with difficulties just getting their machines to make their desired sounds. He argued for a standardized language, just like computers themselves follow. (Wessel)
It is easy for some to get a grasp of basic synthesis concepts. Oscillators, amplifiers, and filters - all elements of synthesis - require no special electrical knowledge nor do they require advanced music theory. Rather, they often come in the forms of knobs that can be freely tinkered with. Nonetheless, as one progresses up the synthesizer learning curve, things grow more and more complicated. This is especially true when you look at the great diversity of hardware and software synthesizers available. Add on DAWs (digital audio workstations) like Digidesign's Pro Tools, with over 900 pages of reference and how-to's in its manual, and the learning curve becomes staggering. How can we truly get all this wealth of information to users, especially non-professional users who still deserve to be afforded the same opportunities to create and express themselves as professionals?

VALUES IMPLICATED

Ultimately, the question at hand follows one of accessibility. However, the question immediately arise regarding "what is accessibility?" The answer takes on many forms. According to the United States' Rehabilitation Act of 1973, all federal agencies must make their computer and electronic resources accessible to people with disabilities. This amendment, Section 508, has served as the common template for all government agencies, and helps to ensure the rights of the disabled (Section). Most designers, when facing the task of designing for disability accessibility, are confronted with many shortcomings, mainly based on "past experiences and best practice" with little experimental evidence (Stephanidis 1) These techniques also tend to address the issues that very specific users (such as those with visual or motor impairments) (3).
More relevant to a study of synthesizers is the principle of "Universal Usability." According to Batya Friedman and Peter H. Kahn Jr., "universal usability refers to making all people successful users of information technology (Friedman 1253). It is, according to Friedman and Kahn, a sort of freedom from biases that designers may or may not take into consideration when creating a new product. They identify three major areas of research and design that face challenges with respect to universal usability:
1. Technological Variety
2. User Diversity
3. Gaps in User Knowledge (1253)
Through these challenges, Friedman and Kahn assert that universal usability is not always a moral issue -- some things simply do not need to be made accessible. They consider the example of the famed television program "I Love Lucy;" it is not a "moral good" that we make reruns accessible (1254). However, moral imperatives suggest that many things should definitively fall under the domain of universal usability. In conjunction with Section 508, they use the example of federal statistics being available only online; it would be obviously immoral to restrict this information to those who can access a standard computer without special modifications.
Universal accessibility, too, falls into the category of universal usability. Stephandis et. al. find the principles to be much broader than designing for people with "special needs," such as the disabled or the elderly. Rather, they feel that the design implications of new technology have grown to bring together a wider range of users with an even wider range of needs, extending accessibility problems beyond just the traditional views (Stephanidis 3). As designers, when we fail to express these expanding needs, we fail in our moral obligations to recognize users with different "abilities, requirements, and preferences" (3).
Why is this a moral need? As mentioned above, sometimes moral obligations are not part of the creative process or the product itself. However, as Friedman and Kahn stress, it is not only a moral idea, but a good idea to follow. " Moreover, universal access with ethical import often provides increased value to a company" (Friedman 1254). They use examples from a study of a communications company to show how an expanded take on accessibility creates a circumstance in which both the user and designer benefit.
Likewise, Stephandis et. al. apply the principle of universal design or "design for all." They write that universal design "promotes a design perspective that eliminates the need for 'special features'" (Stephanidis 3). Additionally, the researchers do go on to recognize that while one broad solution to encompass everyone is an attractive prospect for designers, this will undoubtedly include "different solutions for different contexts of use" (3).
One thing to remember and acknowledge, especially when dealing with synthesizers (which often have fixed interfaces with few options for customization), is that, as Stephandis et. al. note, "no single interface implementation is likely to suffice for all different users" (6).
Another thing to acknowledge is that users of synthesizers differ greatly. Some are very adept with circuitry while others are more skilled as pianists. Some will tinker with a sound until they have dissected every parameter a dozen times over while still others will rely on the "out of the box" sounds. In fact, "out of the box" presets are a factor that follows the "design for all" concept. When coming to grips with something as subjective as a sound, it becomes difficult to identify which is the best available. However, so long as a user is satisfied with a sound, preset or not, then it is the correct sound for his or her project.

DIRECT STAKEHOLDERS

When we examine direct stakeholders with regards to synthesis, we often look at the producers and musicians themselves. Producers, those who listen to the music as a whole and function for a recording, in many ways, as the conductor of a symphony might during rehearsals and performance, often double their role; they often assume the role of programmers as well - those who construct new sounds with the synthesizer itself. They are hands on people who have a direct interaction with the product. And, if relegated to preset sounds, they run the risk of having their creativity challenged. Thus, it becomes essential for the producer to understand the complex functions of the machines they work with.
Musicians often use different elements of the synthesizer, elements that carry a different learning curve. Most synthesizers use a piano-keyboard interface, so it often requires many years of practice to become adept at the instrument itself. Adding in "expression" tools, such as mod wheels and pitch bends, forces one to use additional practice time mastering these non-pianist skills. Ultimately, if the synthesizer is well designed, the tools for expression will find themselves in logically situated places on the interface, but in actuality, this is not always the case, again forcing the user to adapt to the limits of his or her hardware.

INDIRECT STAKEHOLDERS

The clearest indirect stakeholder with regards to the synthesizer, is the listener. Electronic music has grown in popularity across the 20th century and into the 21st century. Once the domain of classical musicians, it has become an element of popular music. And when users are unable to perform or program their synthesizers with ease, the listener's experience suffers.

CONCLUSION

In the end, using a broadest user approach to synthesizers may feel like it mitigates the skills required to use the machines, but as we can see with the direct stakeholders, the opposite is true. Because of the generally high learning curve for complex synthesis, designing a more usable interface that promotes broad accessibility will satisfy the needs of all the stakeholders and solve many of the accessibility problems that arise.

WORKS CITED

Friedman, Batya, and Peter H. Kahn Jr. "Human Values, Ethics, and Design." The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook, Second Edition. Ed. Andrew Sears and Julie A. Jacko. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: New York/London. 2008. 1241- 1266.

"Section 508." Section 508. 30 Apr 2008. United States Government, Web. 21 Oct 2009. .

Stephanidis, C, D Akoumianakis, M Sfyrakis, and A Paramythis. "Universal Accessibility in HCI: Process-Oriented Design Guidelines and Tool Requirements." (1998): 1-15. Web. 19 Oct 2009. UI4ALL-98/stephanidis1.pdf>.

Wessel, David. "Let's Develop a Common Language for Synth Programming." Center for New Music and Audio Technologies 01 Aug 1991: n. pag. Web. 20 Oct 2009. programming>

Autonomous Browsing

2009-10-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

Firefox, Greasemonkey, and Autonomy

by David F. Bello

Autonomy, as a value of which designers must be sensitive, is set in opposition to usability and security. The latter is threatened by the user, who with greater autonomy within a system, would be afforded opportunities to undermine the system and access private data. If the user may, because of excess autonomy, gain access to private data, then privacy, one of the most important and already-considered values of technology, would also be threatened by a lack of security, thereby losing trust of the system's user base and complicating the notion of informed consent (Friedman, Kahn, and Borning 5), if the given technology previously held high confidence for their own secure processes.

The implication that autonomy threatens usability, however, is a more complicated problem. If the user is afforded "too much" control over their system, not only are security, privacy, and trust elements at risk, but also the user will be faced with far too many options and required decision-making steps in the way of completing any task. "Most users of a word processor have little interest, say, in controlling how the editor executes a search-and-replace operation or embeds formatting commands" (Friedman and Kahn 1254). The second example given here, that of a user's concern with methods of formatting in text documents, reflects the move away from word-processing complex software (such as LaTeX, which requires the use of heavy mark-up in order to perform visual operations on text data) toward more simple, "user-friendly" options such as Microsoft Word, which can apply mark-up using a strictly GUI-based approach for the end-user. This trend toward more abstract software programs is fairly common. The common user would prefer to use currently traditional operating systems, like Windows and OSX, rather than something like GNU/Linux, which requires the user to take more control over software processes. Simplicity, then, becomes a factor of usability; where the tasks being completed on a machine are intended to be done with as small a learning curve as possible. However, users are sacrificing autonomy at the same time.

This writing examines how the balance of autonomy and usability plays out in the use of the Firefox extension, Greasemonkey. How is the Firefox user granted additional autonomy by the use of the Greasemonkey extension? In what ways does the design of Greasemonkey allow for user autonomy at the level of code, while effectively allowing for the non-programming user to possess similar autonomy?

AUTONOMY: IN GREASEMONKEY; IN FIREFOX

"Autonomy is centrally concerned with self-determination - making one's own decisions, even if those decisions are sometimes wrong" (Friedman and Nissenbaum 467)

At the time of writing, the Firefox homepage reflects an emphasis on user autonomy: "There are literally thousands of totally free ways to customize your Firefox to fit exactly what you like to do online" ("Firefox Browser..."). The browser is open-source, meaning that users are provided source-code to analyze and modify within the Mozilla development community. However, this raises the question of how many users actually have the technical ability to modify code to fit their specific needs? It is safe to assume that most users of the browser do not make use of the Firefox source in order to take advantage of the autonomy that they are provided. One does, however, have the potential for autonomy, which is as much as may be reasonably asked from Mozilla at this point. Users are often willing to forego the education of an entire system which would provide them with autonomy at the level of any other user/programmer/developer/etc. in exchange for ease of use that comes with not necessarily needing to possess that information.

This is where Greasemonkey comes in. Those who install the extension are not immediately provided with capabilities to alter the functionality of the browser, but are, in effect, capable of doing so at this point. Greasemonkey works by providing a framework for users to "install" scripts, which act as a sort of filter between the user and the aesthetic and function of websites which they are designed to manipulate. This is best illustrated with an example:

The first image is of a plain Gmail inbox. The second is what Gmail looks like with Josef Richter's Helvetimail user script applied. The script is based on a popular series of user scripts that redesigns Google web applications to incorporate a minimalist aesthetic and the font, Helvetica. What occurs is that the browser applies the code, in this case a script written by Josef Richter, to the browser function of opening the webpage. Within the script, there is a call to this particular domain, so that the script is not applied to every single page opened in Firefox, and the code within the script contains specific instructions for the web browser to apply when opening the page. In this case, all that is modified are the aesthetics of the page. Functionality to the original Gmail Inbox page is identical in the application of this script.

This is not always the case for user scripts in Greasemonkey. Skipscreen, now a full-on extension, but based on user-scripting and able to be implemented in Greasemonkey, skips the imposed wait-times on hosting sites which require the user to input a captcha and retains the download link until a set number of seconds have passed. With Skipscreen, the linnk is automatically generated, providing instant access to the requested download. Pirates of Amazon, which now is considered a new media art project about censorship and economics, added links to filesharing sites directly onto the pages of Amazon.com for specific items. For example, if one were to have this script installed and visit the purchasing page for the latest Kanye West CD, a link would also appear to a torrent site offering an illegal download of that same audio. The project encountered legal difficulties and removed the script from their webpages, Amazon made changes to their code so that older versions of the script would not work, and the developers claimed that the project was merely meant to provoke thought and discussion on issues of piracy and filesharing.

FACTORS OF AUTONOMY

Friedman and Nissenbaum outline five aspects of software agents which can either promote or undermine autonomy for the user:

Agent Capability

Agent Complexity

Knowledge About the Agent

Misrepresentation of the Agent

Agent Fluidity

What follows is an examination of each in the context of the Greasemonkey Firefox extension:

Agent Capability - "User autonomy can be undermined when there are states the user desires to reach but no path exists through the use of the software agent to reach those states" (Friedman and Nissenbaum 467).

Greasemonkey extends the available end-states available to the user in Firefox to include those which may be determined by individual user scripts. In this way, Greasemonkey extends user autonomy in Firefox. Autonomy in the use of Greasemonkey can be seen to exist in two separate states of autonomy for two different categories of user. For the user comfortable with script writing, autonomy is relatively unlimited. On the other hand, users who do not know how to write scripts are limited to use those which have already been created and those which are available online. In this way, Greasemonkey's provision of autonomy can be seen as balanced atop the peak of a user's knowledge of coding. Capability of the agent (Greasemonkey), however, is relatively unlimited, as per this particular criteria for measuring autonomy.

Agent Complexity - "A path exists to the state the user desires to reach but negotiating that path is too difficult for the user" (Friedman and Nissenbaum 467).

Again, this element of autonomy is strictly limited by the user's own capability of script-writing. Depending on the individual desires for manipulating the browsing experience, a given state may be out of that user's range. However, it is not unreasonable to assume that if one were to request a given script be written, someone in the Greasemonkey script development community may be willing and capable of providing that script, which negotiates the path for the user, without them having to learn to code themselves.

Knowledge about the Agent - "When the designer of a software agent does not make information [regarding the particular processes taking place in the completion of a task] accessible to the user, then the user's autonomy can be undermined" (Friedman and Nissenbaum 467).

Here, Greasemonkey provides explicit readability of the scripts that it allows to be used within. Understanding of those scripts, however, depends again on the user's knowledge of code. Just as Firefox's source is openly available to the public, any Greasemonkey script can be opened and read in a text reader/editor. Greasemonkey further allows for these to be immediately modified and implemented by the user, as well.

Misrepresentation of the Agent - "Users can also experience a loss of autonomy when provided with false of inaccurate information about the agent" (Friedman and Nissenbaum 467).

While Greasemonkey itself is simply a vessel for user generated scripts, the extension does not pose this risk. However, since scripts are user-generated, there is the risk of deception and inaccuracy when using user scripts. This is something that the analysis of individual scripts must take into account. Greasemonkey allows scripts and scriptwriters great autonomy in modifying the way that users encounter and provide information online. In this way, Greasemonkey can be seen as enabling the autonomy of a script developer to limit the autonomy of users who may enact that script within Greasemonkey. So, while Greasemonkey itself is not (as far as is publicly known) misrepresented, deception may be element of some user generated content for use within the extension.

Agent Fluidity - "Software agents need to take such evolution [of user goals] into account and provide ready mechanisms for users to review and fine-tune their agents as their goals change" (Friedman and Nissenbaum 467).

Greasemonkey actually provides a stable mechanism for making ensuring the continuity of user goals. There is an element which provides notification when scripts are updated, and a small icon in the lower-right corner of the Firefox browser is highlighted when the Greasemonkey extension is enabled. Also, at any point of viewing a web page, users are able to see and modify which scripts are currently operating within the browser's view of that page, and allowed to switch them off one by one, as the circumstance may determine.

CONCLUSION

The unique aspect of the Greasemonkey developer community is not simply that their code is open-source, but that the scripts created for use with Greasemonkey are made available to users in a central location: Userscripts.org. At this page, users can search by the site which they decide that they want to modify their viewing of, function and aesthetic, or other tags which show up on the site. So, in addition to being able to write their own code which would define the action of Greasemonkey in altering the viewing of a page, Greasemonkey users are also afforded the opportunity to download scripts written by others. This means that they both possess the potential autonomy to create and modify scripts to fit their own needs and cultural values, but also to take advantage of the application of this autonomy by others. Therefore, autonomy in Firefox is independent of autonomy in Greasemonkey. One does not need to possess the technical prowess needed to modify scripts in order to use them in Firefox. Of course, users are limited by their inability to create their own user scripts.

What Greasemonkey demonstrates is the flexibility of the web browser to determine how web pages are recreated for the end user. While some pages are displayed very differently across the market of Firefox, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc., there is an even greater opportunity, with Greasemonkey, for the user's autonomy to be increased to the point of creating an entirely unique user experience.

WORKS CITED

"Firefox Browser | Free ways to customize your Internet." Mozilla. 21 Oct. 2009. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html

Friedman, Batya and Peter H. Kahn, Jr. "Human Values, Ethics, and Design." The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. Eds. Jacko, Julie and Andrew Sears. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. 1241-1266.

Friedman, Batya and Helen Nissenbaum. "Software Agents and User Autonomy." Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 1997. 466-469.

Friedman, Batya, Peter H. Kahn, and Alan Borning. "Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems." Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations. Eds. Ping Zhang & D. Galletta. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2006. 348-372.

Richter, Josef. "Helvetimail." 10 Oct. 2009. http://www.josefrichter.com/helvetimail/

Will You Be My Mobile Neighbor?

2009-10-21T11:12:00.000-07:00

The Problem

One sociotechnical problem that I see in today’s world is the enormous amount of time wasted while traveling. It is thought of as a common task to get in your car, or a form of public transportation, and just sit for multiple hours. Why do we subject ourselves to this monotonous task and what makes this trip bearable? There are two main variables when talking about the duration of a trip; the distance to travel and the vehicle providing the transportation. When talking about cost efficiency, most people opt for a longer cheaper trip. Since there have not been any major changes to the speed or automation of vehicular travel, people must find entertainment to keep the mind active. Most people enjoy music from mp3 player/radio, movies, audio books, driving games, and conversation with other riders as forms of entertainment while traveling. It is important to note the space where all of these Medias originated… the home. It is not hard to believe that humans would resort to using the same media to entertain themselves in travel as they to do excite themselves when bored at home. I believe that as new forms of entertainment conjure up in the home, they gradually mobilize and make their way into travel. However, it is evident that increasing the Medias brought from our homes to cars also increase distraction levels on the road. Not only are there more devices to distract you on the road over the years, but they also require increasing amounts of attention to use them.

Human Welfare On The Road

A very important value to consider while mobilizing entertainment for travel is human welfare. The value of human welfare should be one of the first values that every designer considers no matter what field they are in. Throughout history it has been proven that human welfare can be at stake even when a design is working acceptably. For example, The Chernobyl disaster, where workers ignored safety functions that seemingly had no short term effect causing a massive nuclear explosion. In The Human Computer Interaction Handbook it describes that not only can a person’s identity be stolen or manipulated, but so can their digital information. Furthermore, there is “Physical welfare, appealing to the wellbeing of individuals’ biological selves, which is harmed by injury, sickness, and death.” There is also, “Material welfare appealing to physical objects that humans value and human economic interests” (Andrew Sears & Julie A. Jacko, 2008). In terms of travel entertainment, physical welfare is what most products are designed for. There is a fine line between distraction and entertainment while driving. In most cases distraction and entertainment can cause negative physical welfare together. It is important to find a proper ratio of entertainment to distraction.

Solving Negative Welfare

Why not get rid of all entertainment in the car that can cause distraction, this should get rid of negative physical welfare while traveling right? Well, if the mind is not entertained in some way, it will want to go into standby mode (or sleep). Therefore, a lack of entertainment could also have the same negative effects on physical welfare as distraction can. Consequentially, devices are designed to be hands free, voice activated and automatic while they provide service to the user. For example, GPS, mp3 players, and cell phones all feature some kind of audio or wireless feature that decreases interaction with the device providing an increase in human welfare. In contrast, there are also many products that are not specifically design for travel, yet daily accident reports reveal their use. For example, fast food, some mp3 players, and cosmetic appliances are technologies that are taken out of their intended environment into mobile one. This causes negative human welfare. A good theory would be that, if designing in a travel environment, you want to create a product that the consumer give the least amount of attention to and gets the most entertainment value. When the user is less distracted they pay more attention to the complex environment of driving and yield higher human welfare for direct and indirect stakeholders.

When Social Networking Strikes

Social networking is a media that can have positive and negative effects on physical welfare while driving. Social networking is a widely used media that has equally as good a chance to evolve from the home to travel. In a paper by Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfeld, and Cliff Lampe they reference the definition of social capitol as, “the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition". The students also reference studies that prove “Social capital has been linked to a variety of positive social outcomes, such as better public health, lower crime rates, and more efficient financial markets” (Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfeld, Cliff Lampe, 2007). Social capitol has the power to increase human welfare for direct and indirect stakeholders by keeping the driver entertained and by creating community bonding. Equivalent to cell phones, it also has a great ability to distract the driver and cause negative welfare.

Variable Stakeholders

On the road it seems like everyone is a direct stakeholder for some kind of technology. The issues then become: Was the product entertaining to much causing distraction? Was the product not entertaining enough causing boredom? Was the product not design for the complex environment of driving? A direct stakeholder in the use of cell phones while driving would obviously be a driver talking on their cell phone. The driver is creating positive human welfare for themselves by being entertained, but negative welfare for the indirect stakeholder that the cell phoned driver will crash into by getting distracted. The entertainment to distraction ratio is solved by the indirect stakeholder, in this case being the company creating Bluetooth headsets. The company gains material welfare (money) for every increase of physical welfare (not being distracted, hospitalized, or arrested) that the direct stakeholder receives. Social networking in the car has similar prospects to cell phones in terms of distraction and it product of negative welfare. However, it has a much bigger potential to yield positive welfare for indirect stakeholders through social capitol. People being able to communicate with multiple sources of information at once could decrease accidents, increase awareness, and create an entertaining environment. If there was a way to apply the hands free idea to a social networking system (maybe some kind of voice activation), then I think that social networking could increase direct and indirect stakeholder’s welfare, and make a new safe culture of driving.

Works Cited
Andrew Sears & Julie A. Jacko. (2008). The Human–Computer Interaction Handbook. New York: Lawrance Erlbaum Associates.
Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfeld, Cliff Lampe. (2007). The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ellison.html: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
Rogers, M. (2007). How social can we get? What evolutionary psychology says about social networking. MSNBC , http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20642550/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/.

Private Browsing

2009-10-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

Ben Casbon

Socio-Technical System: The Web

Problem Space: User Tracking

Direct stakeholders: Internet browsers

Indirect stakeholders: Insurance and financial institutions.

Socio-Technical System: The Web

The World Wide Web is an immense system with billions of publicly available systems that not only serve-up information to users, but also allows remote users to interact with the system, or even other users of the same system. In general , most of the users will see the same information on the same impartial system.

Problem Space: User Tracking

Browsing the internet is made smoother by the use of ‘cookies’. Cookies are minute pieces of code that are lodged on the browser’s computer by their browser at the request of a web site. Since the World Wide Web is stateless, some mechanism is needed to ‘personalize’ a users interaction and make the site they are visiting ‘theirs’ for the time that they are visiting.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with cookies, they are a technology that can be, and frequently has been abused. Verifying personal information such as usernames and passwords can be an annoyance to users, so cookies have been developed that allow a user to stay ‘logged in’ to sites that they have visited. This can prove hazardous if the user is operating on a computer that may at some time be operated by another user, such as a library or campus computer, or if they lack adequate physical protection to their data.

Example: Facebook Beacon

On November 6th 2007, Facebook began a ‘service’ called ‘Beacon’ (http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=9166). Beacon was billed as a “… core element of the Facebook Ads system for connecting business with users and targeting advertising to the audiences they want.” In an ambiguous press release, Facebook hailed the benefits of ‘sharing’ information between itself and 44 other online companies.

According to Facebook, “Facebook Beacon is a way for you to bring actions you take online into Facebook. Beacon works by allowing affiliate websites to send stories about actions you take to Facebook.” (http://www.facebook.com/beacon/faq.php) The Beacon Participating web-site would detect a user’s Facebook identity whether they were logged on to Facebook or not, by detecting the latent Facebook cookie on the user’s machine. One prominent example of the Beacon system was the Blockbuster online integration with Facebook, which would update a user’s Facebook wall with the movies that they added to their ‘queue’ while they were on the Blockbuster site.

Almost immediately after the launch of the Beacon service, MoveOn.org (http://www.moveon.org) created a Facebook group and online petition demanding that Facebook cease violating users privacy without receiving users informed consent. In December of 2007, Facebook issed a ‘mea culpa’ to the privacy activists about the Beacon service and stated on the Facebook blog: (http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7584397130)
“At first we tried to make it (Beacon) very lightweight so people wouldn't have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends.”

Facebook changed Beacon from an opt-out system to an opt-in system in December 2007, but they were too late. Dallas County resident Cathryn Elain Harris filed a class-action lawsuit against Blockbuster Inc. over the company’s participation in the Facebook Beacon system in April 2008. (Computerworld) (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9078938/Blockbuster_sued_over_Facebook_Beacon_information_sharing?taxonomyId=146&taxonomyName=standards_and_legal_issues)

Value: Privacy

Facebook and their cohorts had violated user’s privacy by exploiting the already-available architecture of cookies to track a user’s movements online without the user’s expressed consent. While Facebook and their partner companies were certainly to blame for the bulk of the violation of the user’s privacy, the current web-browsing architecture was also partly to blame.

Current architecture not only allows web sites to leave cookies on a user’s computer, it does so without informing the user by default. Without clearly understanding the implications of the ‘keep me logged in’ checkbox, users leave their information available to sometimes unscrupulous advertisers.

A solution: Incognito mode

In a surprise move in September of 2008, Google released a brand-new web browser. The new browser, dubbed “Chrome” featured many innovations in the interface and behind the scenes. Chrome had the benefit of being developed from the ground up for a more mature web. The designers of Chrome paid special attention to user’s desire for speed, flexibility and privacy.

Google’s chief concession to the users privacy was the incorporation of the ‘Incognito’ mode in Chrome. Incognito mode allowed the user to easily start a browsing session that exists in a temporary space. Instead of relying on the users to manage their privacy by periodically deleting their cookies, Incognito mode allowed the users to merely launch an ‘off the record’ session.

Incognito mode radically changes the web-browsing privacy equation. Whenever a knowledgeable user browses sensitive information, they experience the nagging doubt about whether or not traces of their personal information are being left behind them like inadvertent versions of Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs. Incognito mode allows users to launch a browsing session that is blissfully temporary. Having a browsing session persist past the termination of the browser is an essentially unnatural mapping for the user to comprehend. Why would you still be virtually ‘logged in’ to a site, if you no longer have the window open?

Chrome’s Incognito mode is in keeping with one of the general methodologies to preserve privacy that Friedman mentions in the Handbook of Human Computer Interaction (Friedman et al, 2006) Incognito mode empowers the user to control what information remote sites are able to lodge on a user’s computer.

Chrome is not the first browser to offer the option of private browsing, but it was the most initially accessible version of the feature. Safari offered a version of the Private Browsing feature, but it has been fraught with embarrassing bugs where the user’s private information has been found to be stored on their system despite explicitly entering privacy mode.

The success of Incognito mode lit the fire under the other major browser producers, the Mozilla Corporation and Microsoft. Internet Explorer 8, released earlier this year has an ‘InPrivate’ mode and Firefox 3.5 incorporated a private browsing mode at its release in July of 2009. Once a feature has been added to a browser, it tends to remain in the feature set in future versions of the software. At this point, it is likely that all future versions of internet browsers will have some form of private browsing available to users.

Direct stakeholders: Internet browsers

Millions of people use the internet across the globe, and there are as many uses for the information online as there are users of the information. Each individual’s need for privacy makes them a direct stakeholder. The user’s financial well-being as well as their reputation is at stake on the internet. In February 2007, Javelin Strategy & Research conducted a survey which determined that privacy violation in the form of identity theft (http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/idtheftsurveys.htm) compromised the identity of 8.4 million people in 2007, with the mean resolution time to resolve the identity theft situation was 25 hours per victim. Victims reported a $5 billion out-of-pocket loss in 2003 (http://www.ftc.gov/os/2003/09/synovatereport.pdf ).

Indirect stakeholders: Insurance and financial institutions

According to the same study by the Federal Trade Commission, identity theft in 2003 accounted for $47.6 billion worth of losses. A shocking 11.6% of all identity theft occurred online. Companies who fail to protect their customer’s privacy through negligence or deliberate exploitation stand to lose business, and potentially face prosecution in civil court as in the Facebook Beacon case.

Lack of respect of user’s privacy almost is almost inextricably linked to the user’s loss of trust in that organization. Customers universally hate being treated as a commodity, and the relationship between provider and consumer is easily soured by the provider by expanding that relationship to another company without the consumer’s explicit permission.

Works Cited

Mass Collaboration and trust

2009-10-21T06:38:00.000-07:00

Sociotechnical Problem Space

The sociotechnical problem space I chose is mass collaboration via the internet. Mass collaboration is the phenomenon in which a problem, challenge or idea is proposed and an undetermined number of people attempt to solve it or contribute to it. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, (an example of mass collaboration itself) defines mass collaboration as “a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project. The collaborative process is mediated by the content being created as opposed to being mediated by direct social interaction as in other forms of collaboration.”

Two examples of mass collaboration are Linux and the “Goldcorp Challenge”. Linux, the idea of Linus Torvalds, posted the kernel of the code on the internet for volunteers to make contributions to, thus creating and constantly recreating the operating system known as Linux. The “Goldcorp Challenge”, sparked by the success of Linux, involved Goldcorp Inc. posting all of their proprietary information regarding gold mining on their property for volunteers to give their best guess where the next large amounts of gold could be found. The prize money was substantial, but the results were astounding. People from all different professions entered the challenge and, in the end, located more than 8 million ounces of gold. Half of the targets identified by the participants had not been previously identified by Goldcorp (Tapscott & Williams, 2006).

Mass collaboration is seen by some as the end of profitability since no company can reap the benefits of something created by and available to the masses for free. However, it may also be seen as an opportunity to garner the experience and knowledge of a wide base of people that may have otherwise been impossible. Companies just need to find a way to combine their business model with this new way of creating.

Values Implicated

Many values are implicated in this problem space including, but not limited to, ownership and property, trust, autonomy, informed consent, and accountability. The value I want to focus on, however, is trust. Trust is defined by Friedman et al. as the “expectations that exist between people who can experience goodwill, extend goodwill toward others, feel vulnerable, and experience betrayal “(Friedman et al, 2006). Merriam-Webster defines trust as the assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.

The human value of trust is implicated in mass collaboration in many ways. People who contribute their ideas or information must trust that it will be used for its intended purpose. They will have to take the chance, or not, that the proposed project is what it appears to be and they may even feel it necessary to do some additional research on the company and the project to determine its trustworthiness. Another way that trust is implicated is when collaborating on a mass scale, how will you know whether or not the other contributors are trustworthy? How will you know whether or not their contributions are helpful or correct? You will either have to trust, do research, or hope that, if there is a company involved, they will be checking. Trust is also implicated in that contributors must trust that no one person will take all of the credit and/or profit for the resulting product or information unless, as in the case of Goldcorp, it is understood from the beginning.

There also always lays the possibility that if people can collaborate in this way to find gold, create an operating system or create Wikipedia, they can also collaborate to create things that are harmful as well.

Stakeholders

Direct Stakeholders include:

Contributors/creators – The people who contribute to a work are the usually the most directly involved. They usually have the most say in how something will be created and sometimes how it will be used. They may not, however, stand to gain from the resulting work, which may also make them indirect stakeholders.

Producers/manufacturers – These include companies who may produce resulting work such as new drug therapies or, as in the case of Goldcorp., the company that will be mining for the gold the challengers found.

Consumers – the people who consume the work that has been created are sometimes as effected by the work as the contributors/creators. For in the case of drug therapies, it may save their life.

Indirect stakeholders include:

People close to the consumers – Friends and family surrounding a person who may have been given a second chance at life because a new drug was created as a result of mass collaboration would be considered indirect stakeholders.

Employers of the contributors – It is possible as a result of contributing to something in this way the work the person does at their full-time job may suffer. They may focus more on the collaboration than they do on their work.

Other products – Other commercially produced products whose value may change as a result of the work that has been created should also be considered as indirect stakeholders. For example, Linux may have taken away users/consumers from Microsoft.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_collaboration

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trust

Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Jr., & Borning, A. (2006). Value Sensitive Design and information systems. In P. Zhang & D. Galletta (eds.), Human-Computer Interaction in Management Information Systems: Foundations, (pp. 348-372). Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe.

Tapscott, Don, and Anthony D. Williams. "Wikinomics: The Art and Science of Peer Production." Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything, (pp. 7-33). New York, NY: Portfolio, 2006.

A Self-Service Health Kiosk and Empowerment

2009-10-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

I selected as the subject of my conceptual investigation an existing technology, so perhaps this is in part a kind of retrospective analysis. About eight months ago, a self-service health kiosk was installed in our office. It is a booth format with a seat and occupies a footprint of about 2.5 feet by 3.5 feet. The kiosk is positioned just inside one set of main entrance doors in a roomy space with high foot traffic but also somewhat private in that there is little loitering in that area. There was no fanfare accompanying the installation of the kiosk. It was simply placed there, and a couple of months later we received company correspondence stating that health kiosks were available in the major WebMD offices--in New York, Atlanta, and Portland--and that employees were encouraged to use them. The kiosk is for employees only, and requires the user to login using their existing employee ID and set up a personal password during their first visit. The interface takes the user through a series of questions and exercises, collecting data on weight, body mass index, body fat, blood pressure, and pulse, that is then passed onto our online health record.

Sociotechnical Space

This self-service health kiosk offers a straightforward benefit. It makes available to employees a fast and easy way to assess their health via a set of primary health measurements--anytime they wish to. Taking a step back, the aim is to increase health among all employees. Instead of relying on ownership of weight scales and more expensive equipment such as body fat analyzers and blood pressure cuffs, this one-stop shop enables users to gather key health measurements in one sitting during a few minutes break away from their desk. The presence of the kiosk should have the added benefit of increasing overall health awareness and supports the idea that the company cares about our health. Also, it provides a golden opportunity to impart immediate and highly relevant health information based on data just collected.

It is also a case of practicing what we preach. As a part of WebMD, WebMD Health Services develops private portal websites that are used by employees, members, and patients of corporations, health plans, and hospitals. The websites provide tools and resources for managing, monitoring, and improving one's own health. The end benefit, especially to employers, is of course a healthier (and happier) workforce that is therefore more productive and has higher retention rates. Data that is captured in the health kiosk is available for viewing and tracking when we log onto our own personal health monitoring website. It is a kind of self-referential experience, especially for those of us involved in the design and development of the personal health monitoring site's tools.

There exists a body of research on effectiveness of kiosks in general and health kiosks in particular. Issues for consideration include location of the kiosk and how it pertains to visibility and use, accessibility to users, the interplay between the kiosk and associated websites as a source of information, the 'push' versus 'pull' of information provided, kiosk maintenance, whether or not to offer printouts, and how to attract repeat-use. Health kiosks are typically categorized as either integrated or opportunistic (Jones, 2009). Integrated refers to kiosks that are used as part of a service, for example during the check-in process in a clinical setting. Opportunistic kiosk use tends to be optional and complementary, and stands on its own in attracting users, as does our self-service health kiosk.

Value Implicated: Empowerment

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "empower" as: "1. to give official authority or legal power to, 2. enable, 3. to promote the self-actualization or influence of." Wiktionary.com fleshes out the third definition with "to give the confidence to do something (inspire)." The emphasis here is on what one is empowered to do.

The most pragmatic definition is the idea of enabling, or giving permission to. This self-service kiosk enables employees to assess their health at anytime. We are freed from office visits and co-pays and freed from having to own any of the scales and analyzers that are incorporated in the kiosk. We are also essentially permitted to use it all the time if so desired, or never at all.

Perhaps just as important is that by the kiosk's mere presence and availability, we should be inspired to improve our health. It serves as a constant reminder of the importance of health, promoting health awareness throughout the office. Since the barriers to health assessment are so low, we can easily track our measurements, seeing what changes in behavior and diet lead to improved results. For example, is my daily dark chocolate consumption lowering my blood pressure? The data is intercepted by our personal health monitor website, thus enabling an integrated experience. There are myriad ways for motivating employees--particularly through data analysis and information push--to continue to make health a priority.

With empowerment--or authority--comes responsibility. Given the power to check up on our own health, it is up to us to make use of it, and to use it for good. This is mediated of course by the experience of using the machine. The easier and more enjoyable it is to use, the lower the barriers to use. Those accustomed to using it derive a sense of reassurance and satisfaction that is likely self-reinforcing. It is also our responsibility not to rely on these statistics alone when monitoring our health, and to use it in conjunction with other health resources including regular and preventive visits to our primary care physician.

Stakeholders

The primary direct stakeholders are the intended audience, in this case, WebMD employees in the Portland office. We are a largely health-conscious, fairly young, computer-literate, and active group. With such a homogenous audience, there are fewer accessibility concerns. The poster in front of the kiosk with detailed and somewhat confusing instructions for logging in can be waded through by anyone willing to take the effort. Once in, the screens are crowded with text and the navigational options not completely transparent. Still, it should not be too challenging for this intended audience. The benefits of using the health kiosk should be apparent to all, and yet, in the eight months that the kiosk has been there, I have witnessed in total only a few people using it.

Directly benefiting from our better health is, as noted earlier, our employer. Also as the entity responsible for placing--and paying for--the kiosk, it can also be considered a direct stakeholder. If the kiosk achieves the intended aim of improving our health, the company should see reductions in sick leave, hence greater productivity. Also, fewer doctor visits and treatments should lower the costs of company-sponsored health insurance. Many public kiosks that have been studied appear to have a fairly brief shelf-life (Jones, 2009). This is often attributed to either poor or difficult maintenance or perceived low ROI by key stakeholders, taking into consideration costs versus actual use. Even harder to trace are lifestyle and behavioral improvements as an outcome of extended use. I would be interested to see the statistics on use--how many times per day, how many employees have ever/never used, patterns of use. I am also curious to see if there will be a greater marketing efforts--and possibly incentives--to increase use of the kiosk.

Indirect stakeholders include those situated near the kiosk and others passing by while it is being used. Although I find the location of the kiosk somewhat questionable (in terms of privacy, comfort, and freedom from intrusion), alternative locations must have been considered and abandoned--possibly because of its impact on its environs. At the same time, this is a fairly non-intrusive kiosk: there is no audio that accompanies the interface.

As with any technical endeavor, the indirect stakeholders also include the designers and engineers responsible for building the interactive kiosk. I would argue that those of us who build the personal health monitoring website where the collected data is fed into are also indirect stakeholders, as the entire experience is meant to be an integrated one. And unfortunately, the whole user experience would have been more successfully integrated had we been given the opportunity to work in partnership.

Conclusion

In 2007, Microsoft in a visionary move, organized 'HCI 2020,' a conference with the aim of investigating HCI practitioners' responsibilities relative to the increasing pervasiveness of computers in society. "For the HCI practitioner, its purpose is to map out the terrain and suggest new approaches while keeping an eye on the main prize: the embodiment of human values at the heart of computing" (Harper, et al., 2008, p. 5). In practical terms, one of the concrete steps forward proposed is to add an initial stage to the design process, called "Understand," where more conceptual and reflective thinking occurs. This is the stage where stakeholders are interviewed, ties to other disciplines considered, and values implicated explored in detail. The results of this Stage 1 should then feed into Stage 2 ("Study"), pointing to areas requiring further research and and more in-depth investigation. In the case of our self-service health kiosk, there are obvious usability hurdles for anyone attempting to use it. Aside from that, had an attempt been made to investigate the sociotechnical space from the outset and how it would fit into and augment the intended user's life and daily activities in regards to the implicated value of empowerment, I think the resulting kiosk experience would be quite different. Fortunately, we are in an industry where the next release is always on the horizon.

~Jenny Wang

References:

Dobson, R. (2003). Study reports on use of "touch screen" health kiosks. Retrieved October 20, 2009 from BMJ website: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7382/184/d

empower. (2009). In wiktionary.org. Retrieved October 20, 2009 from http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/empower

empowerment. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved October 20, 2009 from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empowerment

Fintor, L. (1998). The Michigan Health Kiosk: Cancer Info on the Go. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 90(11), 809-810. doi:10.1093/jnci/90.11.809. Retrieved from:
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/90/11/809

Friedman, B., Kahn, P.H., & Boring, A. (2006). Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems. Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations, 348-372. Retrieved from http://docs.google.com/View?id=ajgxg77jdtk8_245rp6pszfs

Harper, R., Rodden, T., Rogers, Y., Sellen, A. (Eds.). (2008). Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 2020. Cambridge: Microsoft Research Ltd. Retrieved from http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/hci2020/download.html

Jones, R. (2009). The Role of Health Kiosks in 2009: Literature and Informant Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 6(6), 1818-1855. Retrieved from http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/6/6/1818

Shneiderman, B. (1990). Human Values and the Future of Technology: A Declaration of Empowerment. Keynote address for ACM SIGCAS Conference of Computers and the Quality of Life. Retrieved from http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/90-07/90-07.ps

Opt-In, Opt-Out and Informed Consent

2009-10-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

By Leah Downey

Value-Sensitive Design Conceptual Investigation

One of the services my employer provides is Internet service to residential and business customers. Within my company, there is a directive to encourage our internet customers to switch to electronic billing, as this will save the company money and reduce paper waste. An issue came up recently in regards to the process customers follow when signing up for e-billing service that I would like to explore in this conceptual investigation.

Problem Space: Marketing checkbox on sign-up page for e-billing service

Customers interested in signing up for e-billing must submit their username and password on the enrollment page. This online form also includes a checkbox that offers customers the ability to receive product and service information and special offers from my company via email.

At issue is whether the checkbox on that page should be pre-checked for the customer or whether customers should have to deliberately check the box to indicate their interest in email marketing. The company recently decided to pre-check this box, which means that customers who sign-up for e-billing will also be consenting to future marketing from my company unless they take the time to uncheck that box.

Here’s an example from Overstock.com’s registration page:

Specifically, the checkbox comes pre-checked – “click here to receive exclusive email savings".

Value: Informed Consent

This choice, between unchecked and pre-checked indication of permission for email marketing, is referred to as opt-in vs. opt-out. An unchecked checkbox next to the phrase “Sign me up for product news and special offers” would be an opt-in scenario, because in order to get the email marketing, the end-user must opt to check the box. Opt-out means that the box comes pre-checked and the end-user must choose to deselect the checkbox to avoid (opt-out of) the email marketing. In my opinion, the value that underpins this is informed consent.

There are some regulatory guidelines in place designed to protect consumers in these situations. For example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has outlined a set of Fair Information Practice Principles. The principle of Choice/Consent states “Opt-in regimes require affirmative steps by the consumer to allow the collection and/or use of information; opt-out regimes require affirmative steps to prevent the collection and/or use of such information… In order to be effective, any choice regime should provide a simple and easily-accessible way for consumers to exercise their choice.” The FTC doesn’t take a position on which choice system is appropriate, but the issue is debated by many.

Friedman et al explored the concept of informed consent. They broke down the characteristics of informed consent into the following five components:

Disclosure (about benefits and risks for participation)
Comprehension (language can be understood by the end-user)
Voluntariness (in the absence of coercion)
Competence (having the physical and mental abilities to give consent)
Agreement (accessible ongoing means to accept or decline participation)

The first two components speak to an understanding of ‘being informed’ and the last three speak to ‘giving consent’. A sixth component was incorporated into their overall model of informed consent later:

Minimal Distraction, i.e. users are not distracted from their primary task or are not overwhelmed with intolerable nuisance

In the specific context of the online sign-up form with the checkbox option to allow additional marketing, we can take a closer look at how Friedman et al. further described the component Voluntariness. The authors pointed out that certain types of manipulation can undermine voluntariness and affect a person’s perception of choices. One way to achieve this, they argue, is to manipulate the “options presented to the individual such that the presentation encourages certain choices or behaviors”. I suspect that many companies believe that people are less likely to take the time to uncheck a box that is already checked – and prescribe the design of these interfaces accordingly. Further research can explore whether the presentation of choices has an effect.

In addition, it would be worth exploring whether the addition of the marketing checkbox on the sign-up form constitutes a significant distraction from the users’ primary task, and thus not conform to the Minimal Distraction requirement of the informed consent model.

Direct and Indirect Stakeholders

The two direct stakeholders that I envision in this scenario:
1) Customers interested in receiving electronic bills instead of paper ones
2) Corporate Marketing will receive the names of customers who agree to marketing

The two indirect stakeholders:
3) Customer’s family members who share email inbox
4) Corporate shareholders

Benefits and Harms for each Stakeholder Group

Following are benefits and harms listed for each direct and indirect stakeholder in regards to the opt-out choice.

1) Direct Stakeholder: Customers interested in receiving electronic bills instead of paper ones

Benefit: May be informed about special offers that could save them time or money
Benefit: May learn of product or service pricing or availability for products/services that they want or need
Harm: May receive unwanted marketing emails that contribute to information overload, may miss important and/or desired communications in inbox
Harm: May miss important information about their products and services because they ignore all emails from the company

2) Direct Stakeholder: Corporate Marketing

Benefit: Increased size distribution list (i.e. more members) – this is often a success metric in itself – growth in member sign-up
Benefit: More email recipients means more emails being opened, more “click-throughs” from email to website or landing page marketing, which may lead (someday) to more sales.
Harm: Customers form negative impression of company, less likely to buy and more likely to spread negative opinion via word-of-mouth
Harm: Customers request to be removed from distribution lists, removing the company’s ability to influence them
Harm: Customer complains to FCC about company’s email marketing
Harm: Customer flags company emails as spam, leads to negative consequences for company’s reputation – being blacklisted means your company’s email marketing is blocked from corporate mail servers, inhibiting your ability to market to even explicitly willing customers

3) Indirect stakeholder: Customer’s family members who share email inbox

Benefit: If family saves money as a result of special offer via email, can contribute to overall family member’s well-being (financial health can mean more opportunities for family members)
Harm: May receive unwanted marketing emails that contribute to information overload, may miss important and/or desired communications in inbox

4) Indirect stakeholder: Corporate shareholders

Benefit: If email marketing translates to positive reputation and increased sales, this can positively impact shareholder value, contributing to financial well-being
Harm: If email marketing translates to company being blacklisted can result in decreased sales which negatively impacts company performance and shareholder value

Conclusion

This is an important issue because more and more companies are taking advantage of the channel of email marketing. Many companies view this as a low-cost method to get their message to existing and potential customers. The risks, however, to the relationship between the customer and the corporation as well as corporate shareholders are great and should not be taken lightly.

=======

Friedman, B., Lin, P., and Miller, J. K. Informed consent by design. In Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems That People Can Use. O'Reilly, Cambridge, 2005, 495-521.

Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Jr., and Borning, A. Value Sensitive Design and information systems. In Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations. M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, N.Y., 2006, 348-372.

Friedman, B., Felten, E., and Millett, L. I. Informed Consent Online: A Conceptual Model and Design Principles. UW-CSE Technical Report Number 2000-12-2, 2000.

Care2.calm

2009-10-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Once upon a time I designed for a little portal called Care2.com, an online community whose members generally “Care2 make a difference” (Care2’s byline). I still receive email newsletters and click through occasionally to see what’s new.

On my visits, I’ve come to expect fairly regular changes in the visual design - but this time, WOW! - the “ahh factor” just swept over me. Despite my long day at the computer, I was rejuvenated and stuck around to explore the site more than usual. The new Care2 just oozed calmness, and profoundly affected my psyche (so much that even the pesky interstitials seemed acceptable). I found myself exploring more, and clicking to support my favorite causes (“free clicks” to save animals for instance).

Simply put – this new interface just made me feel good. New colors and shapes, and even the gentle words, gave me a sense of well-being, informing a place where I wanted to sit for a while… there was “breathing” room, finally, in not presenting every single link and navigational menu possible - navigation was folded up, and very logically I must say, in a way that allowed me to easily pick and choose where I wanted to go, giving me a sense of control. I immediately knew that this was great fodder for a contextual investigation into the value of calmness.

As Friedman put it, designing for calmness helps the “user to stay, maintain calm and control, and access information as needed.” [1]. in conjunction with new colors, shapes and a cleaner, simpler landscape, the new site seemed not only calming, but easier to use. Friedman identifies four “pair-wise” aspects of balance between designing for ethics and designing for usability – it struck me that Care2 had done both.

Calmness as a value: Reducing the noise in an increasingly noisy technological world

Supporting ethically a calm state of mind at Care2 addressed a growing concern about the ubiquitous nature of computing. Wieser and Brown as quoted in Friedman [1] say that if computers are everywhere, they had better "stay out of the way.” Friedman says the value of calmness should be applied in applications/sites where there is “strong potential for information overload" - which was certainly true for Care 2.

Contents
This conceptual review provides some background on Care2, its stakeholders, definitions of calmness, especially as it relates to a healthy state and well-being, how calmness is designed into the look and feel and intrinsically part of designing contextually, how it supports both users and business goals, how emotional and persuasive design fit in, and an example of a page on Care2. Included at the end are some future considerations about how ethnographic research on the various vertical subgroups of members might improve Care2 even more.

Care2 content, membership and stakeholders

Now at 16 million members strong, Care2 provides many activities of special interest. There are ways to take action to save species, children and ecosystems, to name a few, and the portal includes typical functionality like email, social networking, eCards, petitions, photo sharing.

Care2 is supported by a combination of angel investors, and nonprofit member organization and retailers interested in capturing the hearts and minds of the Care2 member. Both direct and indirect stakeholders have a vested interest in making the site easy on the psyche and easy to use, whether in shopping for organic bedding or clicking ‘free’ to save species, or opting into newsletters from nonprofit organizations to support important causes.

Stakeholders
Direct Stakeholders are:
1) Site members or visitors - typically interested in environmental sustainability, animals, healthy living and progressive social politics, members range from medium- to-hard-core activists who want to support the planet and also find sustainable goods and news and information.
2) Business owner(s) – same as above, but interested in a profit model that also supports the interests of its members
3) Designers and staffers – a motivated, tight-knit group who are generally members themselves and behind the brand from both an ethical and financial perspective, dedicated personally and professionally.

Indirect stakeholders are:
1) Retailers – those who advertise products and services that fall into the interests of this population
2) Non profits – groups that want to maintain a presence and way to tap into this natural population to opt in for membership in their organizations and to receive newsletters (these groups pay for members' “free clicks” to provide a path to that end)

Direct stakeholders have a vested interest in providing a calm experience. They want a place to explore, relax and browse. Feeling calm and good about where they are is extremely important. For the business owners and investors, this state is desirable because it keeps the site "sticky" as members participate in the activities, supporting the business model and Care2’s growth.

Indirect stakeholders have a vested interest for the same reasons as investors, to keep visitors there and actively participating. However, there could be potential conflict in constancy of calm, because at times it conflicts with a desire to call attention to a product or opportunity to join an organization. This balance is a very real issue and one that the designers and owners grapple with as personal values sometimes conflict with profit goals of the site.

Calmness: Definitions and associations

Lexis.us defines calmness as “steadiness of mind under stress” [4]. Merriam-Webster associates calmness with a state peacefulness and serenity [5]. Wikpedia defines calmness as the mental state of being free from agitation, excitement, or disturbance [6].

Well-being is associated with calmness and is commonly believed that calming the thoughts, through various practices, results in a higher state of well-being. The Mayo Clinic discusses the connection of the practice of meditation to help clear away “the information overload that builds up everyday ...” [7]. The practice of mindfulness includes visualizations to reduce the noise of our thoughts on a daily basis. By extension, other practices and visual stimuli are said to reduce stress and induce calm; Friedman suggests that psychological literature shows that “direct experiences with nature have beneficial effects on people’s physical, cognitive and emotional well-being” [1]. It has been shown that the use of color can also contribute to various moods [8]. Familiar human-like shapes can make us feel more comfortable.

Calmness explicated in the Look and Feel

Calmness in natural (or abstracted) views of nature
Studies have shown that even “minimal connection with nature” can reduce recovery time, by lowering stress levels, calm patients before surgery, etc. [1]. One can see the notion of calmness and well-being explicated in natural scenes in its general look and feel, and in ads from retailers and environmental nonprofits which typically depict animals, flowers, or other natural objects into their brands. However, nature scenes have their limits, which are many times noisy collages and conflicted with each other. Too much of a good thing makes one not notice or take in the effect.

Today’s version shows an evolution and a shift in the representations from:

- Heaviness to lightness
- Darker to lighter
- Clustered collages and busy images to one image
- From bright primary colors to subtler muted colors

Care2 has taken the design for calmness and well-being a step further by combining a minimalist approach, also associated with stress reduction, with abstractions of nature through the use of color, shape and appropriate white space. (An interesting study topic might be how abstractions may even work better than nature itself, due to some more primal reactions that enhancements in color and light are able to make in digital manipulation.)

Calmness in colors and shapes
Colors have a great affect on mood [8]. While blues and greens are typically associated with nature and calming effects, they have to be used carefully as these calming colors can also have the effect of depression or negative moods, so use of them in conjunction with warmer colors can work as well, as long as the warmer colors are more muted. Care2 achieved this – while green is still central, there isn’t as much blue in the greens and definitely not as many primary blues. The green has a slight yellow tint, and the calls to action are a muted orange, a light-inducing color which may counteract the potential negativity of cold blues or greens. The orange is a little more energizing to invoke attention to call actions to attention, in a complimentary contrast with the other colors.

Shapes are rounded and more 3D the way humans expect in the world. This more human-oriented aspect was introduced by Apple, who understood the connections that needed to be made between computers and humans, and a staple of their look and feel.

White space, or the creation of the 'negative' space that allows the objects to ‘breathe’ is balanced as a framework for accentuating the colors and shapes, while also reducing the load created by stuffing any possible object into any space with ‘nothing’ – an undesirable place to be in graphic design anyway.

Additionally, abstractions of natural states are favored over photorealism, which as discussed is sometimes noisier to the eye. This results in a look and feel that supports calmness because it is less complex to the eye.

Care2 has found a nice balance between the calming effects of real and abstract representations of the natural world.

Calmness through use of the periphery – (pros and cons)
The ‘periphery’ is our vision is outside the main focal area of vision. Wieser and Brown put forth that you can design for calmness by putting less relevant information in the periphery until it is needed (I define periphery as top, bottom, right, left – areas that are just outside the central focal vision).

This works in some cases but not all. Care2 reduced their top level of navigation to just 4-5 tabs which reduces the load, and when you click on a tab, you get the subnav underneath; and you also have the common technique of opening the main tab and the left nav appears with sub-categories.

But there are cases where the periphery is overloaded, which Friedman acknowledges as a danger. Further, it depends on what is in the periphery. Cognitive studies show that people notice and become more attentive (and hence more distracted) to the larger images, especially animated ones, in their periphery [10]. (This is why banner ads and ads with large images often found in the right column are so distracting and reduce calmness). As Reeves & Nash put it, “the processing of motion shuts down other thinking; … it is even more distracting when it occurs in peripheral vision; try to keep characters and icons still on the boundaries of attention.”

Peripheral distraction may conflict with the desire for retailers to have their ads noticed, but this also sacrifices the experience of the user and the potential for staying on the site longer.

Ads could be limited and balanced with more studies; at the very least animated objects on the left and right could be reduced on pages where content is very important. Further ethnographic research as suggested later in this review, could point out, too, which subgroups would tolerate better certain types and placements of these ads.

Calmness by proxy – living within contextual design principles
Designing for calmness is actually at the core of designing in context – which is creating interactions that allow users perform tasks that are within the same context as a larger task. This is simply because the approach reduces the load on the memory that occurs when users are taken out of context and have to remember the next step, or how to get back to where they were. The point is, good designers at some level understand that designing for context is all about staying ‘in control’ and ‘having access’ as Friedman mentions, and by inference, they ARE designing to support a calmer, more enjoyable experience.

Calm and gentle words - positivity
Words and labels can affect calmness as well. When I was designing the interstitials for Care2, I wanted users to feel like they were not being pressured by high-powered verbiage in taking actions, often the opposite of what generally we are told about calls to action. It was my evaluation as a user myself that I would prefer to be presented with an opportunity to make a difference, as opposed to being hit over the head to take some action on a cause or petition. So I created the moniker “Quick Click Opportunity” as a feel-better approach, with the intent to induce control and more calm when taking actions.

Design example: Petition creation form on Care2

Forms are particularly tedious in general. At one time, the process of creating a petition involves steps that used to be multi-paged and long. Here is the current rendition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/create-online-petition, which is lighter and provides an example of Care2 has incorporated calmness into the site.

Here we see a form where “less is more” - text is sparse, white space ample. The page is very simple, fonts are large, and interestingly, you see instructions inside where you type, not hanging outside of the text boxes adding to clutter and noise. While this observation might seem somewhat sophomoric, most do not recognize the subtlety. The form doesn’t ‘feel’ like a form so it doesn’t automatically conjure up the learned dread of the form object; rather than an increase in stress, there is more of an ahhhhh factor. The design allows you to focus your attention on the important details to complete the task. Also, the system prefills out forms for you and if a member, does not present a certain amount of metadata already gathered – so in some states, no form fields are shown at all. In other words, the system only displays what’s needed.

Further, if you’re not logged in and you click to do so, one cool example of good contextual design is that rather than being taken to a separate page, you conveniently get a small login box in the upper left of your screen, that allows you to retain focus and not lose context, again reducing overload and tasks.

A word about emotional and persuasive design: Supporting business and ethics
Designing for the ethical value of calmness assumes a more user-oriented focus, providing a more “moral” experience for users. It should be noted that there are differences in the use of a value in emotional and persuasive design, but there are also interesting relationships (and perhaps a fine line) between emotional and/or persuasive design, when alongside Value Sensitive Design (VSD).
Emotional and persuasive design however, are typically applied to a business perspective, but in some cases, do not necessarily detract and may reinforce, the more moral value we are designing for. (In other words, business and user goals and values do not have to always be at odds).

1) As applied to emotional design, Bolchini says that any value, such as calmness, pleasure and trust, can be used to emotionally “create value for the user” [2] which is a fancy way of using the mapping of product to emotions a great marketing tool. I actually think, though that in the case of Care2, emotional design may reinforce both supporting members and business goals, because the message even in ads, if not too “in your face”, remains constant and reinforced – keep me calm.

A good example of calming value in an ad appears on the label for the natural supplement “Berry calm kids ™” which says: "Support mental focus, calmness of the mind, and instill emotional well-being" [3]. Clearly this ad is meant to tap into the population’s propensity for such concepts. The interesting thought here is, however, irrespective of the marketing motive, the label also reinforces the positive thoughts and feelings that members are already experiencing – so an interesting question is posed: is the gain purely a business gain, or does it support the user personally as well?

2) According to Bolchini, persuasive design actually “instills human values” such as reliance, trust and credibility,” [2] which is similar to emotional design except that it carries that purchase part a bit further. In any case, businesses use persuasive design, and can be used to persuade for any value such as calmness, which in this case of Care2, can alter the usage of the site, thus providing more potential for reaching the monetary goals of the site.

Future Considerations

Care2 is a wonderfully rich provider of cultural and socially progressive information, with opportunities to take action on one's favorite causes. The site includes products and services that support the environment and sustainable, healthy living. I recommend anyone visit and get connected. I would like to see it grow to its fullest capacity and continue to touch lives and truly “make a difference” in the world.

To that end, I would suggest further research to enhance the site’s usability even more. Ethnographic research could be done specifically on the subpopulations that visit care2, to obtain a more granular look at subgroup’s needs. Observational techniques could be used to find the “happy paths” these groups prefer. Personas could be developed. One could begin to see patterns about the reaction times, feelings, sensations that one feels in different parts of the site based on their subgroup identification. Findings might include how or where to balance the calming state of the interface with the more attention-getting calls to action on subjects that appeal to them.

Combined with surveys (now being performed), site statistics and other quantitative research, general patterns can lead to models – such as the order people do things in, or why certain pages are visited more frequently by certain groups – which could be invaluable in further informing both content and design. The next logical step would be to present or display content and the primary tasks selectively mapped to those groups.

References

[1] Friedman, B., & Kahn, P. H., Jr. (2007). Human values, ethics, and design. In Sears, A. & Jacko, J. (Eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. (pp. 1241-1266). Lawrence Erlbaum.
[2] Bolchini, D, Grazonotto, F, Paolini, P, “Value-Driven Design for Infosuasive Web Applications,” (2008), presented at Web Applications WWW 2008, Beijing, China
[3] Product ad for “Berry Calm Kids ™” at http://www.europharmausa.com/20116.htm
[4] Lexis.us – definition of calmness - http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/calmness
[5]Merriam-Webster online – definition of calmness - http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/calmness
[6] Wikipedia – definition of calmness - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calmness
[7] “Meditation: Take a stress-reduction break wherever you are,” Mayo clinic staff - http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/meditation/HQ01070
[8] “The calming effects of Stress Relief through Color Therapy” - http://www.stressreductionbasics.com/stressreliefthroughcolortherapy.html
[9] B Reeves, C Nass, “Perceptual Bandwidth,” Communications of the ACM, March 2000, Vol. 43, p. 68. No. 3 (portal.acm.org)

Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems in medical practices & patient privacy

2009-10-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

An Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system is a paperless charting system in which patient Personal Health Information (PHI) is inputted (“charted”) into a device such as a desktop computer, laptop or tablet PC. The details of the patients’ PHI is stored on a server, so that the physician (or other provider) in the practice can access the records at a future time. After the hurdle of implementation, an EMR system can streamline a practice’s workflow. Office staffs no longer have to search for paper charts that too often end up misfiled or left on a physician’s desk. There are times when privacy rights are violated when charts are left in areas in pubic areas of medical practices (such as the checkout desk.) Since computers take up less space than thousands of paper charts, it is seemingly easier to keep them secure and private. Offices will no longer have to store seven years worth of paper charts, thus saving money spent on off-site storage facilities. Practices will also have the flexibility to use their in-practice office space for other purposes, such as adding more exam rooms. Furthermore, practices will not have to pay shredding companies to destroy their charts anymore; this means fewer eyes will see patient charts.

Implementing EMR technology will also help health care providers treat illnesses, diseases and injuries better. For example, if a patient with a drug allergy becomes unconscious in an automobile accident and is rushed to a hospital emergency room, the staff at the hospital will know not to treat the patient with the particular drug when and if EMR databases are linked and become accessible to other healthcare providers and facilities. Patient medication lists can be accessed by multiple healthcare providers and pharmacies thus reducing the risk of drug interactions. This will lead to a reduction of errors and hopefully improve physicians’ ability to practice medicine. The increased flow of health information should be a benefit to patients, but when information is passed via computer networks there is always the risk of it being intercepted. While EMR system vendors speak of all the benefits of EMR systems, and practices look forward to great efficiency, many critics bring up the risks regarding patient records and privacy.

Implementing an EMR system is no longer a choice for most practices, it is mandatory. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) will begin to decrease health care providers’ reimbursements in the year 2015 by up to 3 percent if they have not adopted a Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) Certified EMR system by the year 2014. Healthcare providers also have an incentive to implement EMR systems early. The federal government has provisioned financial incentives to healthcare providers in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to adopt EMR systems. A provider can receive $44,000 dispersed over five years starting in 2011 for implementing the “meaningful use” of a CCHIT certified EMR system (Zieger.) Between the three percent penalty and the financial incentive medical practices have good reason to roll out this new technology. But with this requirement to implement EMR systems, medical practices are still also required to protect patients’ PHI, which comes at a financial cost to practices. Practices need to set up hardware and software (VPN’s, firewalls etc.) to ensure that PHI is protected. Smaller practices do not have internal IT support staff, and they will have spend financial resources outsourcing consultants to implement this security, or hire on-staff IT support.

A value largely at play in the center of the implementation of EMR technology is the value of (patient) privacy. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines privacy as “the quality or state of being apart from company or observation.” When it comes to patients and their PHI, most patients want and are guaranteed the right to privacy by laws and medical standards. A more contextualized definition of privacy as it relates to computer information is “the ability of an individual to control the terms under which their personal information is acquired and used” (Ackerman.) Patients would expect that their PHI is used to treat their diseases and illness, but many may have issues with such information being used to market products to them, such as pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, patients would universally oppose to their information being used to embarrass them or be the cause of discrimination against them in the case that their information was leaked or intercepted.

There are different varieties of privacy, such as physical privacy (being apart from company) and the type of privacy that is relevant in the domain of EMR’s, informational or data privacy. People want and need to protect personal information about themselves, everything from their financial information to information about their family history. In the United States, patients are accustomed to their privacy about medical conditions and lifestyles being protected by the doctor-patient privilege. Patients expect that the information they disclose to their healthcare provider will be kept private for a variety of reasons. It may range from a patient not wanting the community to know their sexual orientation to a patient worrying about an “embarrassing” condition that may damage their reputation or bar them from being hired. Humans desire to control their personal information, including PHI. The guarantee of privacy also plays a large factor in practicing medicine, due to the fact that if a patient’s information is not protected, the patient would be less likely to be honest with their healthcare provider which could lead to the patient being misdiagnosed or mistreated for a disease or condition.

In their chapter in The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook, Batya Friedman and Peter H. Kahn, Jr. state that as computer technology grows and continues to collect data about people and store it in databases our privacy is decreasing (1253.) EMR systems are doing exactly what Friedman and Kahn describe; EMR’s collect data about patients and store them on databases. Guidelines do exist to protect such databases in medical practices, but they are often vague. Too often we hear stories in the media about large cooperation’s databases being compromised by computer hackers. In 2007, TJX, the parent company of TJMaxx had over 45 million credit card numbers stolen from its computer systems (Greenemeier.) If large corporations are vulnerable to attack, then it is clear that medical practices are vulnerable also. Small and rural practices are being mandated to implement the same costly EMR systems that large practices with more resources are. They are mandated to provide the same security that is necessary to protect their patients’ privacy, which is expensive. As some EMR implementations happen on aggressive timelines, it can be expected that some security measures may be overlooked or not implemented correctly.

Privacy is just not a concern in the area of databases and servers, but it also needs to be protected in the physicians’ offices and exam rooms. PHI should not only be protected from would-be hackers and unsavory individuals attacking EMR databases, but PHI should also be shielded from other parties physically present in medical practices. This could be anyone from a nosy family member to a vendor the medical practice has hired to clean the office carpets. Much like how paper medical records need to be kept in a locked area, a patient’s EMR needs to be protected behind a locked computer. Guidelines exist for this example too; computers must be locked when not in use.

There are a variety of parties who are affected my EMR technology. Both the direct and indirect stakeholders have a lot to gain, and in turn lose (in the area of privacy) from the implementation of EMR systems. The direct stakeholders are the parties that actively use the systems, which are physicians, nurses, technicians and medical practice/hospital office staff including reception, clerical and billing personnel.

Direct Stakeholders:

Physicians (also Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners): This group of stakeholders has to be confident that their selected EMR technology can effectively chart their patient’s ailments and progress. A physician has to have a lot of “faith” that a particular system will not only accurately record patient data, but it also needs to be done in a way that insurance payers will accept and give the medical provider reimbursement for services rendered. Doctors swear by the Hippocratic Oath to respect privacy, and a medical record, in whatever form in is in should be protected as well.

Other medical staff (Nurses/Technicians/Scribes): Physicians often rely on the work of nurses and technicians. This can range from the documenting of patient history, to performing diagnostic tests for the physician to interpret. Also, there are physicians who rely on medical scribes to input the data into the EMR system’s interface for them. These staff members are often in and out of exam and testing rooms and need to be aware that any information left appearing on a computer screen on an unattended terminal may be seen my a party who is unauthorized to see it.

Clerical/office/billing staff: This group represents another set of direct users/stakeholders of EMR systems. These parties do not document PHI, but they spend time setting appointments, sending letters to referring physicians and entering/inspecting charges that will be submitted to insurance companies. These parties often control when and who PHI is sent to outside of the confines of the particular medical facility. This is an area where privacy can be violated, since there is still a chance that a medical record or report can be sent to the wrong place, much as it could be faxed to the wrong number in “the old way” of doing things.

Indirect stakeholders:

Patients: According to Friedman et al., many EMR systems have been designed without considering patient privacy (Friedman 361.) Giving this group the label of an “indirect stakeholder” should not take away the fact that this group of people is probably the most important group when it comes to EMR systems and PHI. In the past, patient records were stored in a paper chart inside a secured building. Now and going into the future, records are being stored on servers that could be accessed or violated by someone in a remote location 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This raises a red flag for many individuals as well as privacy advocates. But according to a study released in the spring of 2009, most patients are willing to make some concessions when it comes to their privacy in order to make their PHI more accessible with the goal of better healthcare due to greater transparency (Merrill.) As computing becomes more ubiquitous, it seems that most patients are accepting of allowing technology into this very private part of their lives. Health and money are two guarded facets of peoples’ lives. For some time people have been managing their bank accounts, investments and often trade on financial markets via computing systems.

Insurance companies: The final indirect stakeholder discussed here is the insurance company. Insurance companies do not have the ability to work in or make changes to a patient’s record in a practice’s EMR, but they will view records from such a system, and receive claims for reimbursement. Medical practices look forward to the possibility of a more efficient work cycle after the adjustment to an EMR system. After all, this is a large marketing point EMR sales teams make. Insurance companies have the same feelings that the workflow will be more efficient. An EMR patient visit does not need to be scanned and faxed or snail mailed to an insurance carrier if they request to see a patient’s record. Insurance companies will have quicker access to patent records, thus being able to pay or decline a claim quicker than ever. EMR charts are also “signed & sealed” by a healthcare provider. This means that a provider or other individual cannot make changes to a particular office visit on a later date and this can help decrease fraudulent health insurance claims.

Works Cited:
Ackerman, M., & Mainwaring, S. (2005). “Privacy Issues in Human-Computer Interaction.” In Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems That People Can Use. L. Cranor & S. Garfinkel Eds. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 381-400.

Friedman, B., & Kahn, P. H., Jr. (2007). “Human values, ethics, and design.” In The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. Sears, A. & Jacko, J. Eds. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007, 1241-1266.

Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Jr., & Borning, A. (2006). “Value Sensitive Design and information systems.” In Human-Computer Interaction in Management Information Systems: Foundations. P. Zhang & D. Galletta Eds. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe. 348-372.

Greenemeier, Larry. “T.J. Maxx Parent Company Data Theft Is The Worst Ever.” Internet (2007)
Available: http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198701100. Oct 2009.

Merrill, Molly. “Study Reveals Patients' Attitudes Toward EMR Conversion.” Internet.
Available:
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/study-reveals-patients-attitudes-toward-emr-conversion. Oct. 2009

Zieger, Anne. “Health IT stimulus Includes Medicare EMR Incentives.” Internet. (2009)
Available: http://www.fiercehealthit.com/story/health-it-stimulus-includes-medicare-emr-incentives/2009-02-23?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss&cmp-id=OTC-RSS-FHI0. Oct. 2009.