CCS - Participation
Participation
The Web is evolving, from a simple two way channel for information where the content was provided by companies, via the web, for users to access to a more genuinely free and democratic space with worldwide social networking, reams of user generated content and software available as a service and not a product (SaaS – Software as a Service). Two of the internet’s biggest companies were also two of the first to engage with this Web 2.0 ideology. Amazon with its user reviews and Ebay with its user controlled advertisements and sales. The enormous success enjoyed by these companies seemed to open the floodgates and now many of the webs most famous brands rely heavily, if not solely on user participation. While it is never easy to coin an idea like YouTube which engages the imaginations of such vast numbers of internet users a successful Web 2.0 enterprise has several advantages over traditional websites. For example there is no need for the site owners to continually generate new content and promoting a site becomes a whole lot easier when a user who feels he ‘owns’ the site will be much more inclined to spread the word about that site into his/her own social network. Another offshoot of the increased capabilities of Web 2.0 applications have come with the emergence of ‘mashups’ where different software applications are combined for the benefit of the user. A good example of this is the enterprising Estate Agent search engine provided by Trulia (www.trulia.com) which ‘hijacks’ Google Maps to show search results that include satellite imagery and interactive aerial maps. Participation in this free flowing era of information technology is more then just web applications; the Lottery fund has invested £100,000,000 to create 30,000 public access internet terminals which 16% of the UK adult population now use. Web 2.0 has been described by some commentators as being “an attitude not a technology” (http://paulmiller.typepad.com/thinking_about_the_future/2005/08/thinking_about_.html) and this seems to hold true in a lot of respects. There has been a huge shift in user expectations recently and the successful companies have been the ones that have delivered what is now expected of them. People want programs that can find and assemble the information relevant to them and not feel restricted to paths laid down for them by commercial organisations i.e. I might expect to find information on all available trains to my destination and not just those of one company. Sharing is an important concept in the evolution of Web 2.0, code for example, not only are peers sharing code more then ever but giants like Microsoft have extended the use of open source code in their new web applications. Smart applications are another element of Web 2.0 that we can expect to see more and more of, Amazon’s Recommendation Engine is a good example of how websites can be made to feel more personal. The challenge for web designers is to incorporate all these elements successfully and handle tricky issues like the censoring of user added content. Creating communities and encouraging participation are very important; during last summer’s World Cup FIFA launched MatchCast (http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/t/matchcast/index.html), a step forward from the traditional one way info feed provided by sports websites it had forums, a fantasy football league, and encouraged users to upload their own videos, photos and stories.
The first article I found on user participation in web applications (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html) relates to the quite startling figures on ‘Participation Inequality’ and back up everything you might’ve suspected about internet geeks. There has been a ratio worked out for the average participation reliant sites biggest and smallest contributors, 90 – 9 -1; 90% of users are ‘lurkers’ who read or watch content but never contribute, 9% contribute a little occasionally and 1% of the users add all the rest. When we view these sites and imagine them being fairly representative of their user base they actually aren’t, they are largely the creation of people who have an unhealthy amount of time on their hands. For example one of Amazon’s users had contributed 12,423 reviews, and if you carry the logic of the 90-9-1 ratio over you come to regard the majority of book and music reviews as coming from a suspiciously overactive minority rather than a representative sample of fellow consumers. It isn’t that Lurkers don’t have the opportunity to contribute; they just don’t want to and when we can get something we want without having to give in return how many would? 100% participation will always be impossible for many sites, and even reducing the percentage of lurkers to 80 would be a major step forward for many sites.
The internet has the unique capability of giving people with very niche interests the opportunity to seek out like-minded people. This is called 'long tail theory' where the web connects such vast numbers of people that large communities can be formed around completely obscure fields of interest. Some sites in particular have successfully exploited the user participation trend and 'long tail theory' to create novel and ethically driven online communities. Unwant'd allows people to swap unwanted goods of any kind with others instead of throwing them away while swapaskill.com provides people with a means to share their own individual skills with others and recieve tuition in return without any money changing hands. Imagine how difficult it would be to recieve German lessons in return for teaching someone the basics of fly fishing or to swap a pair of antlers for a Rolling Stones CD without the internet. One of the largest of all participation led sites; ebay profits from 'long tail theory' too with its sheer size allowing people to find buyers for the most bizarre goods. www.bartercard.com has allowed New Zealanders to trade and supply services to each other acquiring 'Bartercard Trade Pounds' which they can then spend on goods and sevrices themselves, over $8.7 billion worth has been exchanged since 1995.
CCS Sustainability
Sustainability
Concerns about our society’s impact on the environment and especially our contribution to global warming are growing by the day and most people have accepted that we have a shared responsibility to minimize the worst effects of our carbon greedy lifestyles. Sustainability is a new concept, still in its infancy, but it will surely become an increasingly pressing issue at all levels from government policy making to how individuals conduct their lives including how we travel and where we get our energy from. The UN has a new Division for Sustainable Development (http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/) for whom Sustainability is “a form of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
A good deal of people certainly seem galvanized by the challenges facing us and it’s easy to find the websites of numerous organisations dedicated to tackling the issue. At this early stage in introducing the concept of sustainability the real boom seems to be in the promotion of its ideals and education and guidance on its implementation. Some of these websites belong to think tanks and profit making consultancy groups like Sustainability Ltd (http://www.sustainability.com/sa-services/index.asp) and many are non governmental and non profit like Columbia Universities Earth Institute whose goals are solely the raising of awareness and the influence of governmental decision making (http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/sus_dev/). At a local level there are increasing numbers of practical and educational community projects like Milton Keynes Council’s Sustainable Schools Project which is a trial at present but aims to spread to all the schools in the region. Children not only learn about the concept of sustainability but they also recycle, make compost and plant trees. People and businesses are eager to find out what they can do and the challenge seems to be in getting the information to them at present. The media seems to have picked up on this, the environment is now front page news, phrases like ‘Carbon Footprints’ have been forced into our everyday lives and on the whole we are all more conscious about our effect on the environment, for example we now recycle more than ever before. However, there are concerns about the way the media reports climate change, evoking apocalyptic visions of doom to sell papers or attract viewers and leaving people feeling overwhelmed and powerless (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5236482.stm). Is fear the best motivating factor to make us change how we live?
Carbon Offsetting is a new concept in which both carbon emissions and positive actions to reduce the amount of Co2 in the atmosphere are assigned values so that for example one long haul flight would be ‘worth’ the planting of several trees and the net effect would be zero impact on the amount of harmful gases in the environment (http://www.defra.gov.uk/ENVIRONMENT/climatechange/carboncost/carbon-offsetting/faqs.htm). It isn’t just governments that are buying into this idea however and now individuals and businesses can offset their impact on the environment through what is now being called Carbon Trading. The companies that conduct the Carbon Trading are doing very well and are increasingly popular; the market leader The CarbonNeutral Company (http://www.carbonneutral.com/) has an impressive list of clients including Volvo, Sky and Berkely Homes. Carbon Offsetting is popular with big business and governments because it allows them to continue running their business in a traditional way while seemingly having a zero net effect on the environment, very commendable but is it just an excuse to carry on polluting? I read an interesting editorial in The Independent last week challenging the benefit of this trend on three counts. Firstly that many of these companies aren’t properly policed and may not actually be offsetting the carbon emissions you paid them to, secondly that many of the trees they’ve planted to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere might actually die because of global warming or disease and release their own carbon again and thirdly that paying someone else to “absolve your carbon sins” neatly sidesteps the tough decisions that everyone concerned about the environment will have to start taking more and more.
Governments have a huge role to play in introducing true sustainability. The G8 recently met to set long term plans to deal with climate change and the decisions made at that meeting will likely have a massive effect on the environment in the coming decades (http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/05/world_banks_dirty_power_plan.php). The negotiations were conducted through The World Bank, an organisation that has 25 billion dollars invested in coal and gas and it’s probably no surprise that wind and solar power feature very little in our government’s future plans for energy generation. I don’t think people are suspicious enough of the motivations of these decision makers when you consider that we’re all going to get the effects of their decisions. For example the World Bank’s own Renewable Energy Task Force put forward a plan to provide 1 billion people with renewable energy by 2010 which was ‘killed’ by the US government.
As depressing reading as that makes there is at least a glimmer of hope, I was surprised to read of big corporations going beyond government targets for sustainable business practices and proactively seeking solutions themselves. I was especially surprised to read that Nike, hardly famed for ethical business practices, were one of these companies and that they had set themselves targets for cutting down on “eliminating waste and eliminating toxics” with sustainability a major issue for them (http://www.nike.com/nikebiz/nikebiz.jhtml?page=27&cat=strategy). In a design sense, product design is the first area to really go for what is now being called Sustainable Product Development and knowledge and expertise on sustainable design are being passed around at industry seminars and through short courses at locations such as Teeside University’s ‘Clean Environment Management Centre’ (http://www.tees.ac.uk/docs/docrepo/clemance/SustainableProductDev.pdf).
Many companies are capitalizing on our ever increasing interest in our own environmental impact in different ways. Straw Bale houses are vastly more energy efficient then stone and wooden ones and although I’ve never seen one are growing in popularity worldwide and with the promise of $10 a month heating/cooling bills who wouldn’t buy this how to DVD for just 67 dollars (http://www.strawbale.com/dvds/straw-bale-howto.html). You can even pay to be buried in a manner that will have as little negative effect on the land as possible, in an eco friendly coffin with natural wildflowers for a headstone in any one of 200 ‘natural burial’ sites across the UK (http://www.naturalmatters.net/content.asp?cat=13). The United Nations Environment Program now has awards for sustainability, a Roll Of Honour featuring 500 companies. One that consistently makes that list is the manufacturer of ecological detergents and cleansing agents Ecover (http://www.ecover.com/gb/en/About/) a company that is run with sustainability at its core, they even have 6000 square meters of grass on the roof of one of their factories. I feel I should be using Ecover products the more I find out about them, carbon generation is the headline grabber but its also very scary to think of all the chemicals in my shower gel, washing up liquid, toilet freshener and so on ending up in the environment. The first time I ever heard the phrase sustainability was in regards to ‘sustainable tourism’ where people no longer wanted to feel like their visit was inherently damaging to some area of great natural importance and these initiatives have been massively popular (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/).
Sustainability seems to be an umbrella term covering all our positive actions to decrease our impact on the environment and it seems to embrace a very positive movement towards a more motivated and responsible society. Kofi Annan stated that sustainable development “is the greatest challenge facing humankind today” so it’s not hard to see that facilitating this societal shift will involve a lot of work. In relation to my own career goals I see this vast and very important issue as something that I not only would love to be involved with but that I think there will be a call for people from a lot of different disciplines, not just design to think creatively really engage themselves with this.
Usability 17th October
Today we had a good look at the NHS Direct site in usability terms and I was quite surprised just how many issues we raised with it. I'd thought it would be comprehensively well designed as the NHS is a vast organisation and they can afford get the top people in. The home page should be contained within one screen without the need to scroll down as the user is presented with a confusingly large amount of text to sift through and most of the stuff you'd need to scroll to see just won't get seen. I would move the NHS logo, also serving as a Home button to the top left handside where you'd expect to find it. Some of the pictures used aren't directly relevant to what they are supposed to represent and I would lose them and have a lot more options in icon based lists. There are pictures on the top left hand side that are broken into squares so they almost look like options but they aren't and don't really serve any purpose so they shouldn't be there. There is only one part of the screen flashing which is a looping series of the word welcome in various languages. It is not clear that this is where you need to click in order to change the language and it would be very easy to miss your own language on it anyway. We all decided that you should be able to decide between the NHS sites for Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland right at the start rather then having the links to these sites in various places on the English site. It was an interesting lecture that reminded me how applying simple logic at every stage of the design process can create really usable products.
Brief Two - Device Usability Report
Canon Powershot A70 Digital CameraI have chosen to analyze my digital camera for this module as I have very few gadgets to choose from and it’s a nightmare to use. In this report I hope to describe the myriad ways this device frustrates and confuses me as I think the designers must have skipped their Usability lectures at university. It’s interesting that it does actually serve its function and I am reasonably satisfied with the photos and videos it takes but in terms of my experience as a user it does very little right.
The Canon Powershot A70 is a mid priced, hand held digital camera capable of taking videos with sound and it is operated by 9 buttons, two dials and a switch. It has a digital display about the same size as that you would find on a mobile phone which you normally use to arrange your shots although it has a traditional glass lens as well. The digital screen displays all the various menu screens and is your only real means of keeping track of what image capture options you currently have selected. It has a 3 X Zoom on the lens and it records images at 3.2 Mega Pixels which places it in the lower end of the mid range for modern camera capabilities. It is definitely intended for the amateur, casual use market as the lens and image quality would make it inadequate for professional photographers. I also reckon the price and level of technical expertise necessary to operate this device would make it unattractive to children and younger teenagers. It comes with software which allows you to transfer files from the camera to your PC via a USB cable. If you didn’t have a computer it would be possible to take the memory card out and get your images processed at a printers. The device isn’t waterproof and wouldn’t be robust enough to withstand being dropped on a hard surface but is otherwise suitable for sensible outdoor and indoor use. Its size and weight would prevent you carrying it in your pocket and it’s more likely you’d transport it in a bumbag or rucksack. I imagine the average owner of this camera would use it for recording family functions, acquiring images to use on their computers or taking shots of a tourist attraction while on holiday.
First impressions of the camera are quite good; it looks attractive and expensive with its shiny silver finish and rounded edges. The only slight concern at this stage would be the sheer number of controls which all look unclear as to their usage. Upon picking it up you realize it is actually a bit heavier then it looks like it might be and there is no way to comfortable hold it without placing the fingers of your left hand right across the lens. The silver finish which made the device look so hi-tech isn’t actually very pleasant to touch, I find it prone to feeling cold and a bit slippery in the fingers and it seems to encourage the vague fear that it will slide right through my fingers onto the ground every time I pick it up. The positioning of the controls suggests that you would hold the camera in both hands with the lens pointing away from yourself while you interact with it. The shape of the device doesn’t really make this a very pleasant method of control however with some of the actions requiring fiddly readjustments of the camera’s weight in your grip. There is a large lump on the right hand side of the device which makes your gripping method strangely uneven and I get an ache in my right wrist if I’ve been using the camera heavily from the awkward and unnatural position it forces my hand into.
One simple action illustrates how poorly designed this camera is for its purpose, and that is switching the device on. The kind of casual use that this camera is supposedly designed for will often see a user carrying the device in their bag, switched off to save battery power, when they notice something that takes their eye and feel like capturing, say a squirrel running out onto the path in front of them. After grabbing the camera from their bag they will next wish to turn it on. With the device in your usual two handed grip the back of the camera is facing you and you know from previous experience that the on button is on the top so you have to go through a very fiddly readjustment of your fingers to get in a position to press the button. Now, from the position you are holding the camera; so you can see where the little on/off button is and be sure you are actually pressing it because it is flush with the surface surrounding it you can’t see the digital display screen to know whether you have successfully managed to turn it on or not. You find yourself turning the camera upwards and downwards, making sure you are keeping pressure on the button while checking to see if the screen has come on yet. The camera can be switched off with the same button with one press but it needs to be held down for about 4 seconds to power up, something which might easily slip your mind and see you unsuccessfully attempting a quick press, wasting more time. Finally there is a bleep, the screen switches on and you have to conduct another nimble readjustment to get your fingers out of the way of the lens and display and your right index finger on the ‘take picture’ button which is also so smooth and undefined by colour or shape that it takes another glance to check you have actually got your finger in a position where you will be able to press it. By this time the squirrel is probably gone. This example assumes prior knowledge of where the on/off button is, a user who was new to the camera would find the operation even more difficult as the button is made to look so discreet and placed in such an unexpected spot (dead centre on the top of the camera) that you can’t use either your idea of how an on/off switch should look or any experience you might have with similar sized electronic devices in terms of the positioning.
Much of my interaction with the camera follows in a similar vein with the positioning of the controls and the organisation of the menu screens seeming unnecessarily awkward and convoluted. On an interesting point, I have lost the manual for this camera and now I have no idea what the majority of the options available to me actually do and I keep away from a good deal of it’s functionality because I have long since forgotten what it does. I also have a Nokia camera phone for which I don’t have a manual and which I find implicitly logical and largely satisfying to use. I feel one of the two main usability problems with my camera is the inconsistent and overly complicated menus, of which there are three that I know of, all in different formats, some text based, some with icons, all accessed and controlled in different ways. Imagine if a mobile phone used an equivalent system; so complicated that it defied any attempt to learn or remember how to perform tasks and in which trial and error button presses switched icons on for which there was no obvious meaning or took you into bewildering lists of very technical specifications you feel scared to change. No-one would buy it! Both devices have an equivalent number of options available to a user but one is straightforward and obviously designed for ease of use while I feel like I would need to have read the manual for this camera cover to cover several times to feel confident in its use.
The second major of usability issue I would raise is the sheer number of control methods and their poorly thought out placement on the device. It almost seems as if the designers wanted to add a button, dial or switch for nearly every major action you would perform while using the camera. There’s a dial which adjusts the basic picture type, a switch to flick the screen between a review mode to look at images you’ve already captured and a display of the current view through the lens, a button to turn the flash on or off, a button to switch the digital display on or off and so on. All this succeeds in doing is forcing a user to remember every buttons purpose or squint at the low contrast text to read what it does. Important buttons are also barely distinguishable from practically useless ones. The ‘display on/off’ button is prominently placed in the row of four buttons beneath the display itself, a prime position for finger pressing and yet, I have never wanted to turn the display off once in years of owning the camera, it’s simply too key a function. Similarly illogical is the arrangement of the main menu which gives equal importance to very useful functions like ‘Auto Power Down’ and fripperies like shutter volume and startup image. Add to that the fact that the usage of your controls will change in different menu screens, some being vital while in one menu and completely disabled in another and you end up with a very poor user experience. This device needs a ‘back to basics’ look at how the actual users will actually use it and I think I will take a good look at how the control methods and menu organisation methods so successful in mobile phones could be used to improve this device.
Free open wireless networks
Free open wireless networks
Wireless open networks allow computer users to access the web or other machines in the local area network without being physically connected to a transmission device, small packets of information called ‘Beacons’ are transmitted by radio waves between the transmitter and receiver. The wireless use frequencies determined by the 802.11 standards with most networks using either the 802.11 B or G protocols, standardized at around 2.4 G/H. The cheapness and easy availability of wireless routers and wireless modems have made wireless networks commonplace in our homes and offices. In terms of free wireless networks a few different kinds are available; free community networks, free access offered by companies and access to unsecured networks obtained without permission
Community networks are set up as non profit organisations looking to bring benefits of the internet to those who either would not be able to afford the subscription cost or who live in an area (usually rural areas) which the internet providers do not consider financially viable to run cables to. A small club, society or co-operative organisation can divide the cost between all the users and offer broadband connection for around 7% of the cost it would have been for them alone to subscribe through the proper channels. They establish these networks by illegally magnifying the signal, often with home made antennas. These groups, such as www.wlan.org.uk and http://www.netequality.org/ seek not only to bring the net to the economically disadvantaged or those living in remote areas but many are motivated by the belief that the original principals of the internet are being threatened by the greed of big businesses and that the net is something we should all be able to share in (http://www.tompaine.com/Archive/scontent/6600.html). People in rural areas are increasingly frustrated with the service providers overlooking them and the poor speed of connection makes many local businesses uncompetitive, they feel they have no choice but to take matters into their own hands and set up their own networks (http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,803023,00.html). Of course these guerilla networks are bad news for the providers but there is little they can do to stop them and you can see from the growing numbers of these non commercial organisations that this isn’t a trend which is going to disappear anytime soon.
Some businesses are leading the way in providing free access to wireless internet as a means of cashing in on the boom in sales of wi-fi enabled laptops. While companies like mobile phone giant O2 are offering a pay service across their growing network of WLAN stations across the UK high street names like MacDonald’s (http://www.mcdonalds.com/wireless.html) and Starbucks are leading the way in offering access to truly free internet and many independent restaurants and coffee shops are following suit (http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2003/0,4814,86149,00.html). Interestingly although free Wi-Fi is ever more widely seen and used in these establishments some are concerned by the proliferation of non-customers and or those who only make a token purchase to sit for hours browsing the web or working on their laptops (http://wifinetnews.com/archives/005325.html).
Free wireless networks are becoming ever more common in many hubs of human activity like airports, universities, hotels and train stations. We are still some way off city wide saturation coverage, largely down to the limited range of over the counter routers and even though people living in big cities will have no trouble locating Wi-Fi hotspots it remains a distant dream for people living in rural areas.
The other way people can now access wireless networks without handing over a penny of their cash is simply by taking bandwidth from nearby WLANs without the owner’s knowledge or consent. Activity of this kind may range from the harmless use of a next door neighbour’s connection to do some online shopping to potentially hacking into personal information stored on a computer within the network. With private networks it would be easy to turn your open network into a closed one but many people do not know how or simply leave their router with its default password which makes it easy to hack into. It is even easy to tap into private networks when you are outside the usual range for the access point with an inexpensive directional antenna. People can also use easily available software like ‘IStumbler’ and ‘NetStumbler’ allow a user to ‘sniff out’ unsecured networks and then they will often post their locations on websites like http://wigle.net/ .
The ‘killer application’ of wireless networks is the convenience and mobility it allows you but for security and speed traditional cable connections still come out on top. Surely we have to expect a future where cable connections are fazed out and unless the big internet providers get their own way and are able to effectively charge per byte of information you receive from the net we will only see greater and greater wireless coverage. One company is making bold steps in this direction and defying 7 out of the ten leading UK service providers in the process. www.fon.com is a Spanish company selling subsidized routers on the condition that customers share their connection with other Fon users for the first 12 months of their subscription in order to set up wireless hotspots across our cities. Although, even these forward thinking ventures might be blown out of the water by plans to install free to everyone city wide connections to metropolises like San Diego and San Francisco which would totally alter the way we pay for and think about receiving the internet.
CCS - Stars Of CCTV
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of PennsylvaniaI love that quote! I got this from the Surveillance Camera Players site (http://www.notbored.org) and it is a warning fromhistory perhaps far more relevant today then it was in Franklin’s time. The most interesting thing for me on their site was a MASSIVE list of visits they had received from various shadowy government organizations which is pretty worrying considering the harmless satire the site-makers promote. I am always interested in the ways technology seems to give with one hand what it takes away with the other when it comes to our personal freedoms. CCTV cameras are just one facet of this era of high tech, all pervasive surveillance, at the lunatic fringe the US government has been mooting plans to fit face recognition software into cameras in areas identified as key terrorist targets matching the features of every pedestrian in the area to their list of potential suicide bombers. Critics have pointed out that the terrorist masterminds the government have files on never actually take part in the bombings themselves and that someone could foil this multi-million dollar, cutting edge defence system by wearing a pair of large sunglasses and a fake beard.
Now you don't even need to be within view of a camera for your movements to be tracked, you just need to have your mobile phone switched on. The art collective Glowlab created a piece of art called 'The Transparent City' where a visualisation of an urban landscape without buildings and roads was created where only the movements of mobile phone users were visible. They highlight in a novel way the growing shift of power in our society between the watcher and the watched (http://www.glowlab.com/lab2/issue.php?project_id=150&issue_name=14). The War on Terror can almost be seen to have lead to a breakdown of trust between the government and the people in the UK, with the introduction of ID cards and detention without trial for terror suspects being just two facets of this. I believe projects like Glowlab’s are ever more important in raising the public awareness of the unprecedented levels of surveillance available to our own authorities.
While governments and businesses are rushing to find new ways to film and track our every movement we can now get our own broadcasts out there more easily then ever before and sometimes the two can even cross over. Artist Michelle Teran (www.ubermatic.org/life) took a TV set around cities broadcasting in real time images from the CCTV networks that surround us. The (In)Security Camera (www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/003396.php) is another interesting example of artists trying to make sense of the ever watching eyes of the CCTV cameras while http://observingsurveillance.org/ is a good example of one of the many sites set up to coordinate anti-surveillance movements in America. Meanwhile in Britain, the most watched country on Earth, we now have cameras fitted with loudspeakers with a direct line to a Police control centre so orders can be barked at lawbreaking citizens (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=405477&in_page_id=1770). Technology it seems is catching up with nightmare vision of Orwell’s 1984 and people aren’t missing out the chance to point out the parallels with a slew of sites like http://www.orwelltoday.com/surveillance.shtml. Privacy, surveillance technology and government motives are major issues of our times and you probably guessed by now that I am one of those feeling increasingly uneasy about it all while being fascinated by the social implications. America’s National Security Agency especially fires my imagination because of their undoubted prowess with all types of surveillance technology and their shadowy motives and lack of accountability. Do they have a Neurophone? A device which creates 3D holographic sound in a localized area of the earth . . . from a satellite (David Koresh was apparently primed in this way)? How about brain wave monitors that allow their agents to literally read your thoughts? The fact that these supernatural feats have been attributed to the NSA hint at its actual power and influence which is ever growing thanks to a new age of US paranoia. Definitely an area I would like to investigate further.
Final Project Proposal
E - TRAINER
Introduction to E-Trainer
My idea is essentially to turn a 3G phone into a personal weight trainer and stems from my personal experiences in gym environments and interest in finding ways to make new technology truly life enhancing. As a natural technophobe, I am often irritated by how new gadgets can easily complicate my life without giving enough in return. I am only really passionate about devices which can really justify themselves in terms of how they can simplify my life or offer me capabilities that would be impossible without them. This is a concept I think could really change the gym experience and help a lot of people achieve their physical goals a lot quicker and more safely.
The way we currently weight train
I have been in gyms regularly for about ten years and watched and spoken to fellow weightlifters a lot over that time. We all follow some form of routine, chest and triceps Thursday, legs on Fridays and so on. Within these routines we perform a range of exercises during each session that we have learnt over the time we have been attending the gym. Some of this we gain from more experienced friends, some from tutorials in books and magazines and some from watching other people do something and trying it ourselves without any proper instruction. If the aim, as it generally is, is for combined fat loss and muscle building then you will also need to research nutrition quite extensively. Personal trainers and nutrition experts are seen as expensive luxuries for rich people. What amazes me is that weight trainers, especially beginners, who have a far from expert level of knowledge, have to make up their own fitness and training regimes. Publications like Men’s Health have prospered from this exact market, but no-one ever takes a magazine into the gym never mind the suitably weighty ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding’. The reality is most people cobble together their routines with bits of advice they have picked up from a wide variety of sources, much of it hearsay and many novice weightlifters risk injury and joint damage with inappropriate weights and a lack of proper tuition. Gym instructors might be able to offer some advice but are hardly likely to make you their number one priority, most of the instructors I have seen over they years seem pretty distant figure, happy to let people get on with it. Imagine how much better it would be if all of us had a really knowledgeable personal trainer with us every session who could also offer expert level nutritional advice for our rest days.
How E-Trainer would work
Someone interested in starting a course of weightlifting would access our website where they would enter all their physical details, days available to train and their desired training outcomes. The system would create a unique training schedule for you before each session which would be accessible by 3G phone when in the gym. Before each exercise you could view an animation demonstrating the correct form and have a weight suggested based on the details you entered on the web. Help files and handy hints would also be made available. Unlike the inflexible routines offered by other sources the E-trainer could easily suggest alternatives when equipment you need is in use and suggest a weight for your next exercise based on how many repetitions you performed in your previous set, information you could easily send via your phone to the site. By logging in at home and updating your information regularly on the website your routine can be constantly changed to match your progress. If you appear to be lagging behind in a certain area your regime would be altered to bring it into line with the rest of your training.
As Arnie himself once said “bodybuilding is one third training and two thirds nutrition”. Nutrition is a complicated field and goes far beyond ‘eating loads’; it’s hard to tread a line between muscle gain and fat gain since both require an excess of calories in your system. Although I think it would be very irritating for the user and potentially might lead them towards an unhealthy obsession with food if their phone kept buzzing with ‘EAT AN EGG NOW’ messages from E-Trainer all day but they could receive emails with suggested recipes or texts with an appropriate calorie intake level for the day.
Benefits
The main benefit to the subscriber is that they will have meet their goals in the gym more quickly and safely and will no longer have to go to the time and effort of researching and organizing their own regimes. It would bring a lot of the benefits of a personal trainer without the prohibitive cost. People like to feel confident that they will see a return on the effort they put in but often over-train certain muscles or neglect others they know less exercises for. These people can be easily introduced to new exercises and will be happier when they no longer have to guess what the optimum number of reps is or how many sets hit the right note between under and over-training. A lot of guys I have met join gyms with a real desire to improve themselves but have no real idea how to go about starting and are so overwhelmed by the number of machines and possible exercises they never really get going and end up frustrated and out of pocket (gym memberships aren’t cheap!). I love the idea that this service could democratize weight-training, bringing it to the people.
Target Audience
I have always felt that there is a massive pool of guys who feel insecure about their bodies and would love to get in shape but are intimidated by gyms and their own lack of knowledge. I have seen so many young guys in university and college gyms lifting more weight than they can safely manage or training in a totally unstructured way that will only see them make little progress. I feel bad for them because they have the most important thing; desire, but are doing everything else wrong, and will probably get fed up of wasting their efforts and give up after a couple of months. E-Trainer is for everyone sick of forgetting how to do an exercise they read about in Muscle and Fitness magazine when they actually get to the gym or concerned whether they are getting as much out of their training as they should. Obsession, healthy and otherwise, with our physical appearance is one of the great social issues of our times and more people join gyms and purchase the related paraphernalia than ever before. There is a lot of money in the health and fitness market and I could see a huge market for this subscription service, for which a huge number of people already own the necessary device, their phone. Hell, I’d use it and I hate gadgets.
Hollywood Bowl Visit
Hollywood Bowl Arcade Trip
As soon as I laid eyes on this beast of a machine I knew I had to choose it to review! ‘The Hillbillies’ is about the strangest arcade shoot ‘em up game I’ve ever seen and seems much more what you’d expect to find in a fairground than a modern arcade, sat amongst increasingly sophisticated multimedia machines. It’s huge as well, about twice the size of any other shooting game there and made a huge commotion that attracted me from right across the floor. The machine takes the form of a roughly made shack full of animatronics in a pretty shoddily made Hillbilly themed set with 6 guns laid out at the front and small targets spread out and at various heights within the covered area.
You begin by looking for the coin slot which is quite confusingly placed about two foot off the ground rather than as part of the bright yellow panel the gun sits by, even a child would have to crouch down to insert their money. However the slots themselves are standard from every arcade I have ever visited though and no-one I observe has any serious difficulties with them. No real problems starting it up either. There’s only one button on the yellow panel, it’s big and chunky and has ‘START’ written underneath it; you press it and it flashes. The digital ‘Shots Remaining’ counter switches to 20 and the digital score counter changes to 0. Visually, the panel bears no relation to the Hillbillies theme and in my opinion shows a total lack of imagination and attention to detail in the design process. It is also remarkably poor that the makers don’t deem to give you any instructions or objectives to aim for while playing the game and you can’t help but feel unsure. You know it’s going to be a matter of shooting targets as accurately as possible; otherwise, you’re on your own. It’s also unusual for an arcade game in that there is no hope of progression or award for good shooting other than the satisfaction of achieving a higher score than other users. A couple of people from our class who wanted a go asked me “so, you just shoot the targets, yeah?” After tallying up your score at ten points a hit and using up your 20 shots… the games over. In game terms you feel flat, there is no incentive to try again thus failing the basic requirement of a good arcade game ‘keep ‘em coming back for more’. No-one I observed on this machine put any more money in after their initial credits were spent.
When you first pick up the gun, it’s another element of strangeness in an arcade as the gun feels like solid metal and weighs about as much as a real rifle. It felt especially good to me as I was using a 2kg plastic machine gun two minutes previously which always feels distinctly tacky. I would imagine that smaller children might find these guns a little unwieldy because of the weight however. The targets are visually familiar from target ranges so you know what to aim for although no-one was too sure what to do with the guns and seemed very cautious before attempting their first shot. I thought, because of the thick pipe attaching the gun to the stand and the distinctly un-arcade feel of the machine that it might actually be a water gun! I observed users in quite a state of confusion at this point in their interaction with the machine, which only increases when they take their first shot and…there’s just a little click. It takes a moment to realize it’s a light gun and you just missed. You might harbour the nagging doubt that maybe it was supposed to fire pellets or water (as the weight of the gun suggests) and you just picked a broken one. People then take more time over their second shot, click again and suddenly there’s feedback although it’s still disappointing there’s no BANG, the machine is so noisy I can imagine no reason other than cost and general lack of consideration for user experience that you would have near silent weapons. A successful shot on any of the 16 targets triggers a sound to play and a bit of movement from somewhere in the shack; many of which are corny little vocal samples “that’s good cookin’ ma” and a plastic chicken pops out of it’s plastic pot, but a few of them activate more interesting and fun responses from the machine. The best of these involve the users, and any spectators unlucky enough to be within a 6 foot radius of the front of the machine being sprayed with water by the animatronic characters. The first time Chief Spitting Bull or the moonshine distillery gives you a face full of water it’s a real shock to the system. From then on you’re on edge a bit, concentrating on your aim but wary that you may have to dodge out of the way after every shot. I felt that this was The HillBillies saving grace, it’s a really novel way to involve the user and raised a laugh in every group I observed playing it.
If I was to redesign this machine I would hard to make it into a money vacuum! With more successful machines you put more money in because you were either frustratingly close to achieving an objective on your last try or because your are on your way to achieving a goal this time around and need to buy more credits to continue progressing. If neither of those elements are there users have a go to see what’ll happen, finish and move on. There was a big dial on the Moonshine Distillery which looked tantalizingly like it might move, instigating some kind of overload if you hit that target enough but it was moulded into the machine! I might introduce a bit of totally crazy, over the top animatronic action if a user is hitting all their targets, bringing the distillery close to explosion for example and making them desperate to find out what’ll happen if they keep playing, keep hitting the targets and it does explode. It could loads of water out onto the players which would be in key with the style of play and a damn sight more fun than just finishing up your shots and watching the machine fall silent again. Apart from the glaring errors in gameplay the Hillbilly models and set look really poorly designed and very cheaply constructed which is a shame because the original concept is so strong. It needs both elements putting right to really compete with modern arcade games I think.
Techniquest Visit - 'Freeze Frame' Exhibit Review
I have chosen to look at was one of the more popular interactive exhibits in Techniquest and one which I feel shows how difficult it must be to effectively combine fun and practical learning within one piece of equipment. The exhibit was called ‘Freeze Frame’ and attracted a lot of attention primarily because it was a bit larger and took up a lot more floor space then most of the other exhibits. It intrigues a user because it is hard to see what it actually does from a distance and its steel frame construction makes it look a bit more serious then many of the smaller, more brightly coloured objects around it. The first thing you notice when you walk up to the machine are the four monitors showing a series of 16 photos of the last user taken at one instance in time but from all around them so it appears that they are frozen in time and the camera is rotating around them. This looks very impressive, especially if the guy before you was jumping in the air; we all remember how cool ‘bullet time’ effects were when we first saw them in films like The Matrix. You are inevitably keen to see yourself suspended in time so you step inside the rig to find a way to interact with it. The information panel and a big, red button are situated on the floor in the centre of the exhibit so you’d step up for a quick read of the instructions. The button is used on all similar exhibits at Techniquest and is a familiar inviting visual cue for our initial interaction with any new piece of technology. The instructions are simple enough and very straightforward, though I also observed trial and error to be equally effective because the interactivity is so limited. A user presses the button and instantly knows they have initiated the machine as a five second countdown appears with big numbers flashing up. The picture actually seems to take just before you expect it to and no-one I observed managed to get a mid air shot first time, people tended to keep trying until they got a mid air shot and then become more ambitious in the poses they tried to capture. The whole process took about a minute as people prepared for their jump had it taken and then watched themselves for a bit on the screens. Most people tended to go for about five attempts before they moved on although many seemed tempted back to have another go later. ‘Freeze Frame’ had a definite cool factor about it and many people would encourage their friends to have a go, passing the instructions on quickly to them. Some people had a go without even needing to read the instructions or be told what to do, the average Techniquest user (our class and the school kids) seemed to be press the red button or turn the big lever and see what happens, if you’re not sure you’re doing it right, read the instructions briefly, if you’re really not sure, read them properly. Only an exhibit that really excited a user would draw them to read the Science bit. In terms of usability it is hard to fault ‘Freeze Frame’ really, one button that both resets the monitors and takes the pictures placed in the ideal location for usage of the exhibit i.e. it could have been placed on the side of the apparatus itself but the user would then have to move back into the centre ready for their photo to be taken. It also removed any height issues as children and adults can just step onto the controls with their feet requiring little concentration so that they can focus more on the visual feedback from the monitors above them. I might however criticize it on the grounds of how little scientific knowledge can be gained from the machine and no-one who I observed using the machine actually read the ‘What’s Happening’ text. Perhaps it could’ve benefited from some scientific information coming up on the monitors which hold the user’s attention through most of their usage. In terms of a user experience you’d gain in meeting learning objectives but as most people are repeat users it might become a little tiresome to see the same information over and over again. Maybe a 'find out more button' next to the ‘action’ button might work.
Tuesday 3rd October, Digicam
I found this session very interesting, laying out a set of design principles that I really think need to be observed in creating a successful interface. The Neilsen principles of usability will obviously be a massive help in the redesign of my phone and I think I'll find it very useful to have a structure to work from. as I look more at my phone I realise just how user unfriendly it is and how ripe for a redesign it is. Its got the same display size as a phone and a similar space for controls but it has far too many buttons and dials and a mindboggling array of different menus accessed by totally different controls. It won't be easy to redesign because it isn't a simple piece of technology but what I took from today was that a Novice setting would allow adequate use of the device without all the unnnecessarily confusing options they have now which 90% of users wouldn't know how to use anyway.
Monday 2nd October
Today we looked at the '6 Degrees of Seperation' or 'Small World' theory in relation to networks and the internet. I was interested in the general promotion of an all encompassing network where anyone being able to access anything being a bit of a myth. I had thought of rare songs or videos I haven't been able to find through the most common search channels as just not being on the web but I realise they almost certainly would be within more specialised networks closed to the casual surfer. It makes more sense to me now to think of the net in terms of our social networks; where people enjoy the secrecy and sense of exclusivity as well as the practical benefits of dealing only with trusted, like minded peers. I hadn't properly understood the term 'hub' with relation to the net till today and I realise the power and importance of these hubs now.
Through our discussion on P2P I was thinking about how downloadable multimedia artefacts could represent a new era for legal downloads. I thought that customers could download a multimedia experience of an album with videos of live shows, desktops, screensavers for their phones, hidden special features, interviews, games etc so that the user could be more immersed in the brand then they could be with a simple track.
CCS - P2P networks
Peer to Peer Software
A peer to peer network allows the sharing of data files between internet users on an equal basis. There is no centralized server distributing information to client machines, instead all the users form nodes on the network and effectively contribute their own bandwidth and processing speed to the network and act as both clients and servers in their own right. With P2P networks the speed of downloads actually increases as more users connect themselves, a reverse of what would happen with the Client/Server Model. The foremost examples of peer to peer networks are also the most controversial and almost solely involve the illegal transferring of copyrighted music and video files. One of the largest of these and a good example of an ‘unstructured’ network where connections between nodes are created arbitrarily is Gnutella (www.Gnutella.com). The downside for users of Gnutella and other unstructured networks such as www.KaZaa.com is that they often have relatively poor search facilities and there is no guarantee that a user will be able to locate any given file on the network because there is little correlation between a peer and the content they manage. Structured P2P networks resolve this issue with a Global Protocol that assigns responsibility for a distinct zone of the overall network to certain peers and directing searches more efficiently straight to them. Good examples of these ‘next generation’ networks include the MIT developed Tapestry and Chimera models (http://p2p.cs.ucsb.edu/chimera/html/home.html). These P2P networks and the emergence of electronic data files like MP3s capable of storing high quality audio and video at relatively small file sizes has led to an unprecedented level of copyright violations involving millions of users across continents. People can more easily obtain and share content then ever despite premonitions of doom and numerous legal challenges (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios%2C_Inc.) from the recording companies. Although actual figures on the financial impact P2P software is actually having on sales of music in traditional form are hard to substantiate, what is certain is that the panic this huge wave of file sharing has caused is changing the way we expect music and films to be distributed. A good example of this trend is the site http://www.napster.com/ which began life as a flagrantly copyright breaching entity, closed down after a court injunction ruled that it had to act to prevent illegal file sharing. In due course Napster re-emerged as a market leader in the legal sale of MP3s and all the major recording studios now make their records available in electronic format for sale on the internet. The proliferation of home computers and I-pods means that people no longer expect or desire to physically own a CD to be able to play a piece of music and they certainly don’t want to pay £3 for a CD single when they can buy the same track for 99p from http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/ or accept the negligible legal consequences of free, illegal downloads.
I’m primarily interested in the P2P file sharing issue as an episode of mass lawbreaking on a scale that made singling out individual perpetrators essentially worthless. The file sharing software enabled a mass revolt against what was seen as an overpriced and awkward system of buying music and shook huge multinational companies to the core. In an age when we increasingly feel concern at the power that these big businesses seek to exert on us it is heartening to be reminded that people power is still a powerful force. Soon P2P networks will be impenetrable to legal investigators and those who still believe legal music to be overpriced can continue their protest. P2P networks probably won’t form part of my final project but I will remain interested to see how the music industry will react now Pandora’s Box is well and truly opened.
