UWIC DFIM - Nick Gerrard

E & PP - New Business support from the banks

2007-05-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

For our final Entrepreneurship and Professional Practice module we conducted a field trip in Cardiff city centre to find out how we might be received if we were genuinely looking for a new business account. We agreed to split up in groups to cover all the bank branches in the area. Lee and I decided to visit the Lloyds TSB Business branch and a branch of the Cooperative. We arrived at the special Business branch of Lloyds and I gave my spiel about a fledging design company we were planning to set up in Cardiff only to be told that the man we were looking for, the New Business Advisor had just left for the normal branch and we should take the short walk there to find him. The receptionist we met there seemed very pleased we were considering them and gave me the impression that they would welcome our business with open arms. She also told us that the man we needed to talk to was in a meeting but that we should come back later for a proper chat. She took our names and arranged a time which certainly made me feel that we were being taken seriously, even on the back of such a speculative enquiry. In the half an hour before we were due for our meeting we visited the Cooperative to see if they would be as helpful as Lloyds had been. In short, they didn’t. We would need to call their customer service centre as business banking was oddly enough not available from their high street branches. I was given a leaflet with the call centre number and scant information about their services and banking charges. We arrived back at Lloyds where the receptionist was very sorry but we wouldn’t be able to meet the New Business Advisor on that day after all. It turns out he had had to rush off for an emergency dental appointment. As much we were a little suspicious that he didn’t want to waste time meeting us when he had more important matters to attend to the receptionist seemed genuine. We were given an armful of leaflets pushing their competitive business banking rates and the elusive New Business Advisor’s business card so that we could call to arrange an appointment sometime soon. I understand from what the other DFIMers had to report after our excursion that they had all had mixed success in actually managing to speak to someone helpful. If our man at Lloyds really had chipped a denture chewing a pen or lost some teeth in a lunchtime bar brawl then Lloyds had still succeeded in giving us a personal contact who wanted to meet us in person. I feel that I would choose to bank with the branch who I felt would start and continue offering face to face support over one with slightly cheaper rates. A specialist’s knowledge and assistance through the inevitable mistakes made during a new business venture would likely be more valuable in the long run then a few percent differences in banking rates.

CCS - Locative Media

2007-04-02T14:46:00.000-07:00

Locative media is all derived from an American department of defense initiative, the Global Positioning System whereby you can use any three of the 24 GPS satellites orbiting the Earth to ‘triangulate’ your position based on your distance from each one, your position on the globe can then be placed to within 5 or 7 meters. The GPS devices necessary to locate you in this way are now little bigger than mobile phones. The technology we use everyday will shortly become ‘location aware’ and the potential implications to our understanding of the space around us will be profound. If your PC became location aware it might begin showing you banner ads for local shops and services. You may be able to receive updates to your phone or PDA giving you a realistic time of arrival for the location aware bus you’re waiting for. These developments will surely seem commonplace within years but at the cutting edge of digital expansion scientists, artists and communities of dedicated individuals are envisioning and exploring uses of this technology that will create a whole new level of reality for many of us.

GPS advancements along with the real possibility of ubiquitous wireless networks in our cities has paved the way for a second layer of reality, an invisible virtual reality to be overlaid on top of our physical world. In one sense another layer of reality exists anyhow, every place has a history and specific memories for all those who spent time there. A park bench might just be a point on a map, a construction of wood and metal but for some it will be a place where the met or split up with a lover, where they once made a life-changing decision or played when they were children. Now in the virtual world, people can attach information to a specific place that others can see and experience for themselves. People will be able to ‘read’ places and access layers of meaning that would never have been available to them before, humanizing seemingly impersonal and empty spaces. With this technology I could create a unique experience of a favourite space or journey of mine that others could share as they passed through where appropriate music would be triggered and images, feelings and memories I had of that place could be viewed. Layers of meaning could be embedded anywhere and everywhere.

The advent of ‘augmented reality’ where virtual objects can be placed in real space and viewed through special glasses or the screen of a laptop or PDA will further blur the line between the physical world and the world of information that increasingly surrounds us. Animated 3D characters could play with children in school playgrounds and the creatively minded could redecorate our cities with virtual graffiti, another vision of reality, open to all.

Already traditional past-times are being blended with locative media technology to create truly new game playing experiences. The city is turned into a playground by the creators of Cititag (http://cnm.open.ac.uk/projects/cititag/), as players dash around with pocket PCs tagging others or for the unlucky tagged player, rushing to find friends who can un-tag them and get them back in the game. Other players are visible on the map as are graphics displaying your current status. I was very interested in this as it is in essence a computer game but demonstrates how games of the future will break out of the home and into the outside world. The games can be played anywhere and we will need more than just our thumbs to play them.

Another use of locative media technology that impressed me was the Bristol based Futurelab’s learning project for 10-11 year olds, ‘Savannah’ (http://www.futurelab.org.uk/showcase/savannah/index.htm#projectarticle) where children learned about the world of Lions on the African plains by role playing as lions on a virtual environment laid on top of their own playing fields. With their PDAs displaying the virtual grassland the children have to make decisions and move around their territory as a lion would while chasing prey, finding watering holes and so on. This kind of experiential learning is not only very enjoyable for the kids but allows them a deeper level of understanding that books or the internet alone could not.

URLs of Interest

http://www.netzwissenschaft.de/mob.htm#mixed

A list of many of the cutting edge technologists, collectives and their locative media projects.

http://www.c5corp.com/projects/gpsmediaplayer/index.shtml

A GPS media player showing images and descriptions of hiking paths alongside a map which displays the hiker’s progress.

http://netpublics.annenberg.edu/locative_media/beyond_locative_media

A fascinating article on the social implications and future of fully networked public spaces.

E & PP - Networking

2007-03-04T15:35:00.001-08:00

Networking is essential to all industries and no successful company can exist in isolation but how does the design industry go about facilitating contact between people working in the sector? Design has the reputation of being an area where who you know is as important as what you know or what you can do but I learned last week that the doors of many Cardiff based companies are more closed then open where the ‘competition’ is concerned. There are social networking schemes of various sizes in most regions of the UK and a list of some of those with a web presence can be found on the Design Council’s Website (http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/Directory-Listings/Networks/?PageNum=1%26subjectarea%3dDesign+networks). I might have hoped for a more complete list; I searched for North East based networks and uncovered 0 results when I know for a fact there is at least one major network operating up there. Its called Codeworks and I’ll cover it in more detail later. The networks that are listed including the Somerset based ‘Design Enterprise Network’ (http://www.designenterprisenetwork.net/design_events.html) and the South West’s ‘West of England Design Forum’ (http://www.wedesignforum.co.uk/events_xmas_party.asp). Both organisations sound quite formal with events being centred around speeches at hotels or function halls followed by wine and nibbles. ‘The West of England Design Forum’ even has an annual meeting where the elect a new president, vice president and chancellor! Their most recent event was themed around the question ‘who is designing our future?’ and featured speeches from the founder of a successful local design company and John Savage, chief executive of Business West and the Bristol Initiative. The event seemed to have had a positive response and the soundbites provided on the website certainly sound enthusiastic; “It was an excellent event – good band, drinks, people... and conversation!” one managing director gushed while a Senior Communications Consultant was similarly pleased “great night – lots of heated debate which is always good!” she enthused. This is what I would term a very traditional networking model and it does seem to have a bias towards well established and larger businesses despite its stated objective of seeking to provide “a network for designers and other related professionals: employers, employees, self-employed, students”. The events themselves seem very formal; I imagine row upon row of suited MDs and CEOs intently listening to a fellow MD or civil servant discuss the finer points of service sector commerce in the region. It’s interesting to consider how a student attending a function might feel. Could they confidently approach the bigwigs milling around the cocktail sausages believing that they had something that would be of great value to them? I reckon the setup of these functions would be quite intimidating to a lot of people and entering a function as a ‘new face’ would require a good deal of nerve while the theme seems so vague that it’d hardly lend itself to conversation starters. But through the choice of a neutral venue and a definite nod towards the socially lubricating qualities of a few glasses of wine after the speeches they seem to have come up with a formula that’s a big hit with the powers that be in the West.

Although it’s not widely known England’s rejuvenated Newcastle area proudly regards itself as something of a mini Silicone Valley with a large body of new media companies prospering in the area. The majority of these are linked by membership of the Codeworks Connect scheme and I know from personal experience that it has had a remarkably positive effect on design in the region. They run a student placement scheme in which they match suitable companies and graduates for 10 week trials, paying half of their wages after which they are proud to report that 90% of the graduates are offered permanent positions, and several people who I studied with in Newcastle found good jobs through the scheme. The main site is located at http://www.codeworksconnect.net while the networking socials are arranged through http://www.thinkandadrink.com (very much like the Geordies to get the drinking element prominently in the title!). Both sites require members logins to access members only areas in which you can find out who’s planning to attend upcoming events and even identify someone who you’d like the event organizers to organize an introduction to. Alongside more formal events reminiscent of those run by The West of England Design Forum they have social meetings in a bar on Newcastle’s trendy Quayside where there is no agenda other then having fun and a varied program of creative workshops such as a recent ‘Innovation Lab’ where ten local companies were invited to work with the BBC on ideas for new programming. Many of the events would cost between 50 and 100 pounds to attend as a non member which is quite steep but Codeworks members go free so you wouldn’t need to attend too many to get your moneys worth out of the membership fee [£70.50 a year for graduates and new startups up to £1000 for North East based multinationals]. The scheme is very vibrant and has proved popular with Newcastle’s designers and I like how the website promotes a much more relaxed and inclusive feel then The West of England Design Forum. When I was a student and a member of Codeworks I never worked up the nerve to attend any of the events as I always had the suspicion that it was quite cliquey, rightly or wrongly I didn’t believe I could just waltz into one of their nights as a student that no-one knew but on the other hand they do a fine job of turning students into fellow designers. The website is quite vague on the point but I don’t believe they receive any government funding and I’m fairly sure that they employ at least two full time staff so the membership fees must generate a significant amount of money. It is a first class network but smaller companies and freelancers would have to weigh up whether the service is worth the cost.

My suggestion for a similar network run in Cardiff with no funding would be to take the meetings out of a formalized atmosphere and hold them in a fashionable city centre bar like Buffalo of Milgi. It’s no-one’s turf, and I believe people would feel more relaxed and open then they would wondering what to wear for an event at a posh hotel. Each gathering could be themed around an area of emerging technology, similar to those we covered in our CCS sessions so that the people who are important at the events are those with that specific knowledge and those who want it. The event would be more democratic and inclusive this way; a student might have cutting edge knowledge that a bigshot MD is dying to find out and by theming the nights in this way there is a far higher chance that people with similar interests have a chance to meet. I was also a fan of the suggestion for a showreel of work to be projected throughout the evening as an icebreaker and a constant talking point. Admiring and discussing fresh design work would keep the conversation flowing until everyone had a chance to get a few rounds in.

E & PP - Networking

2007-03-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

Progress Blog– Professional Practice Module Pt. 5

2007-02-22T12:56:00.003-08:00

20th Feb

I received the following email from Greg today and an automated email from the Dreamhost Installer Robot which detailed how I should go about establishing my Wordpress site.

Ok, I've set up the hosting for that domain. In your hosting
registration, set the nameservers to:

ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com

I have installed Wordpress there, and it should work in 24 hours.
I'll forward Dreamhost's instructions.

If you need, you can FTP files to:

ftp.csad-ssl.co.uk

Log in with:

gt_nickgerrard
pinecle3n

Would you like any email addresses @csad-ssl.co.uk?

I’m going to email Paul Wilgeroth tomorrow to update him on the progress of the site and check whether he wants any email addresses with that extension

19th Feb

I emailed Greg Turner to check whether the funds had been debited into his account today as I finally had a chance to check my internet banking today and saw that the money had come out of my account. Greg emailed me to say;

Yes, I recieved £50 on the 14th. I am still waiting for the domain
name you want to use, without which I can't set up the account. If
you want me to register a domain name for you it will cost extra, or
you can register it yourself, and tell me what it is.

Cheers,

Greg.

Spurred on by this bit of progress I immediately bought www.csad-ssl.co.uk from 123reg.com and emailed Greg to tell him that I had done so and the domain name would be usable 24 hours from the time of purchase.

Feb 11th -13th

Another frustrating time in this project, arranging the transfer of funds from my account, which I’ve had to wait until the 11th to do as I had even less money then I thought I did and ended up needing money from my parent’s account to be transferred over, hardly very professional! But that’s student life I suppose. Then Greg emailed my incomplete bank details and I’ve had to request the full ones, wasting a few more days.

Progress Blog– Professional Practice Module Pt. 5

2007-02-22T12:56:00.002-08:00

Progress Blog– Professional Practice Module Pt. 5

2007-02-22T12:56:00.001-08:00

20th Feb

I received the following email from Greg today and an automated email from the Dreamhost Installer Robot which detailed how I should go about establishing my Wordpress site.

Ok, I've set up the hosting for that domain. In your hosting
registration, set the nameservers to:

ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com

I have installed Wordpress there, and it should work in 24 hours.
I'll forward Dreamhost's instructions.

If you need, you can FTP files to:

ftp.csad-ssl.co.uk

Log in with:

gt_nickgerrard
pinecle3n

Would you like any email addresses @csad-ssl.co.uk?

I’m going to email Paul Wilgeroth tomorrow to update him on the progress of the site and check whether he wants any email addresses with that extension

19th Feb

I emailed Greg Turner to check whether the funds had been debited into his account today as I finally had a chance to check my internet banking today and saw that the money had come out of my account. Greg emailed me to say;

Yes, I recieved £50 on the 14th. I am still waiting for the domain
name you want to use, without which I can't set up the account. If
you want me to register a domain name for you it will cost extra, or
you can register it yourself, and tell me what it is.

Cheers,

Greg.

Spurred on by this bit of progress I immediately bought www.csad-ssl.co.uk from 123reg.com and emailed Greg to tell him that I had done so and the domain name would be usable 24 hours from the time of purchase.

Feb 11th -13th

Another frustrating time in this project, arranging the transfer of funds from my account, which I’ve had to wait until the 11th to do as I needed money from my parent’s account to be transferred over, hardly very professional! But that’s student life I suppose. Then Greg emailed my incomplete bank details and I’ve had to request the full ones, wasting a few more days.

Progress Blog– Professional Practice Module Pt. 4

2007-02-22T12:56:00.000-08:00

20th Feb

I received the following email from Greg today and an automated email from the Dreamhost Installer Robot which detailed how I should go about establishing my Wordpress site.

Ok, I've set up the hosting for that domain. In your hosting
registration, set the nameservers to:

ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com

I have installed Wordpress there, and it should work in 24 hours.
I'll forward Dreamhost's instructions.

If you need, you can FTP files to:

ftp.csad-ssl.co.uk

Log in with:

gt_nickgerrard
pinecle3n

Would you like any email addresses @csad-ssl.co.uk?

I’m going to email Paul Wilgeroth tomorrow to update him on the progress of the site and check whether he wants any email addresses with that extension

19th Feb

I emailed Greg Turner to check whether the funds had been debited into his account today as I finally had a chance to check my internet banking today and saw that the money had come out of my account. Greg emailed me to say;

Yes, I recieved £50 on the 14th. I am still waiting for the domain
name you want to use, without which I can't set up the account. If
you want me to register a domain name for you it will cost extra, or
you can register it yourself, and tell me what it is.

Cheers,

Greg.

Spurred on by this bit of progress I immediately bought www.csad-ssl.co.uk from 123reg.com and emailed Greg to tell him that I had done so and the domain name would be usable 24 hours from the time of purchase.

Feb 11th -13th

Another frustrating time in this project, arranging the transfer of funds from my account, which I’ve had to wait until the 11th to do as I needed money from my parent’s account to be transferred over, hardly very professional! But that’s student life I suppose. Then Greg emailed my incomplete bank details and I’ve had to request the full ones, wasting a few more days.

E&PP Motivation

2007-02-18T13:37:00.000-08:00

I was inspired to create my personal training software by the frustrations I had encountered in my many years weightlifting I had wondered for some time whether there was a way to solve some of the problems that I had encountered time and again. I was certain that it wasn’t just me who forgot that new exercise they had read about in a magazine back at home or struggled to remember which weight to use for each particular exercise and how many repetitions they did last week. My brainwave was realizing that these problems could be quite easily solved, the technology exists, but no-one else seemed to have spotted the gap in the market for a specialised application for the weightlifting/bodybuilding market. I am less motivated by dreams of massive sales and instant fame for my product and more excited by the idea of changing people’s lives. I want to empower all those insecure young guys who never get proper tuition and get fed spurious misinformation at every turn. They’ll waste their time and money and the unhappiness resulting from their misdirected efforts leads many to steroid use. If I could make a difference, it’d mean a lot to me.

Another business idea inspired by personal experience was recently awarded Startup Company of the Year 2006. Jennie Johnson had had enough of struggling to find reputable, good quality nurseries She had a clear vision of a better kind of nursery and the her business plan impressed the Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme so much that she secured the maximum £250,000 enabling her create the first branch of ‘Kids Allowed’. The nursery was built from scratch to accommodate all her innovative ideas; age specific rooms, a sensory theatre and a restaurant amongst others which required the backing of an equity part partner, a property developer who poured a further 4.5 million into the project. Her business was formed in 2003 but the ‘Kids Allowed’ didn’t open its doors to the public until 2005. A successful marketing strategy including hiring of a design company to produce a promotional DVD and brochure and a PR company to raise the companies profile paid off amazingly well and the nursery was fully booked from day one. Two more branches quickly followed and Jennie Johnson found herself at the head of a company employing 130 staff with an annual turnover of 1.8 million. Looking at the case of ‘Kids Allowed’ in relation to my own work I am interested by the arc of progression from initial concept to securing the money to realise your dream to finally employing outside expertise to manage its emergence into the world. Jennie Johnson had a background in marketing that must’ve helped in that crucial last stage but I imagine other good ideas trip at that last hurdle.

Progress Blog - Professional Practice Module Pt. 3

2007-02-07T08:58:00.000-08:00

9th Feb

Paul emailed me last night to ok the name www.csad-ssl.co.uk so I can buy that today. Still no reply from Greg Turner though so I've researched an alternative, www.swifthost.co.uk which have reasonable prices but I wouldn't be able to get the same level of personal support or as much space that I would've done with Greg. I also got paid today so I actually have money to use to buy the space which I think I should do asap, whoever I buy it from.

8th Feb

Recieved an email from Paul who was very impressed with my mockup of the site and has also secured the £50 I need for the site, which is great news. All I have to do is take a receipt to the School Office once I have bought it myself. I emailed Paul back suggesting www.csad-ssl.co.uk for the site name as its the shortest, most memorable one I could think of for it. No reply from Greg Turner yet however.

Hi Nick,

The mock up looks great, well done!

I understand what you mean about the name being unwieldy. However, it is difficult to think of a shorter name that is appropriate. Do you have any suggestions?

By the way I have secured funding for the £50 site registration fee. If you take the reciept to Mary Wiseman in the school office she will arrange for the cost to be reimbursed.

Paul

7th Feb

I emailed Greg Turner to arrange the purchase of the web space and Stuart Neil who I should have contacted days ago to discuss the funding problems I have had. If a project is going to run over, which it is in the fact that i am producing this work for Stuart as much as I am for my 'client' Paul maintaining good communications is of huge importance and I realise I haven't been tight enough on this.

6th Feb

Today I researched a couple of different ways to customise Wordpress sites. Customisation by coding was touted as being relatively simple compared to other blogging sites but having spent a couple of hours looking at it I realise it is beyond my capabilities. The code is similar to HTML, but acknowledged to be more complicated and I know very little about HTML. The other alternative was far more exciting, templates. I was able to browse about a hundred templates with grey backgrounds and found one called ‘Slined 1’ which fits perfectly with the contemporary feel of my identity design. I produced a mockup of the site with my header and more relevant imagery and emailed it to Paul for him to ok. I also asked for his opinion on the domain name as I am ready to buy it from 123reg.com which was the cheapest I could find on the net.

5th Feb

Received the following email back from Paul regarding my 3 scamps;

Hi Nick,

It looks like we all agree that scamp1 is the design to go for!

Keep up the good work,

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: Kavanagh, Gaynor
Sent: 05 February 2007 08:57
To: Wilgeroth, Paul
Subject: RE: Staff / Student Liaison Website

Paul

This is great. I prefer Scamp 1 too.....

Gaynor

I had expressed my belief that that was the best of the designs so I’m glad they liked it and now I can start assembling the site.

3rd Feb

I imagine this kind of frustration with projects on hold as funding issues are resolved must be common in industry so I suppose I should be glad of the experience! My parents have agreed to send me the money to host the site so I now have to wait for the money to clear before buying the host space from Greg Turner.

1st Feb

As I had expected getting the extra funding from the University wouldn’t arrive quickly, if at all. Paul has promised to look into funding for the site but reading between the lines, I’m not overly optimistic. He suggested a couple of alternatives including setting up a Myspace account for students to link to and gauge the popularity of a site of this nature before money is actually spent which is a good idea but I would be a lot happier achieving my initial aim of creating a standalone website. I didn’t see this coming, a sort of tension between the university wanting a free site and me wanting a particular result for my portfolio. The only sensible resolution I can think of is to buy the webspace myself, something I will need to do over the next few months as I am working on a self promotion website anyway. The problem of funding still remains though as I am living on a shoestring. The email from Paul was as follows;

Hi Nick,

Thanks for your continuing efforts in trying to get this web site set up.

I must admit that I'm not entirely surprised that the university servers are unable to support the necessary script as they have to be ultra secure.

I will of course investigate the availability of funds to support the alternative website that you propose.

In the mean time is it worth considering some alternatives?
One suggestion that I have received is that myspace.com might be a suitable means of getting the project started. I realise that this proposal isn't suitable for massive amounts of traffic but it might be a good way of testing the water to see if the web site is likely to be popular or not.
What do you think?

Paul

E&PP - Design Partners

2007-02-03T09:25:00.001-08:00

Of the UK design industry’s 4.6 billion pound turn over in 2005 0.5 billion was generated by overseas income. The statistics are quite startling but maybe, given Britain’s history of exporting innovations and ideas; from William Morris to the telephone today’s designers are just following in a proud tradition. The UK government is certainly aware of the success and huge potential for growth in this area. Through the UK Trade and Investment Department they set up ‘Design Partners’ in 1999, an organisation dedicated to coordinating efforts to sell British design abroad. Design Partners have a wide ranging set of plans to maximize export potential and provide as much assistance as they can to new and established exporters. They research foreign markets and share that information with UK industry, help to forge partnerships with relevant companies abroad, offer long and short term programmes of support and provide an opportunity for liaison between government and industry where new legislation or support may be required. They support two fields of UK design, described on their website as ‘Design Makers’ which covers product design in all its forms and ‘Design Consultants’ which includes print and new media. An example given of the a successful design export transaction was in Bionic Media’s winning of a contract to provide a complete branding strategy and range of graphics for ‘The Pepsi Chart Show’ which was intended to be shown across Latin America. They worked with the production team in Miami and the producer of the channel set to air the show.

Digging a little deeper I found a discussion on merits of Design Partners on the Design Council’s website as it had arisen during one of their meetings. The consensus was that the sheer breadth of the organisation was as much a strength as a weakness, in that while bringing together such a broad range of different companies has been very beneficial for the profile of UK design abroad there had been difficulties in reconciling the priorities of Design Partners and those of the actual design companies. For example some of the regions and markets identified by the organisation as important for British design to move into were unattractive to the companies who would actually have to work there. They also criticized Design Partners for being unrepresentative of the whole industry as ‘in-house’ design teams were not represented by the group. The point was raised that Design Partners is only one of fourty similar ‘UK Trade Partners’ and greater collaboration with these other organisations could reap rich rewards for all concerned.

Progress Blog - Professional Practice Module Pt. 2

2007-01-31T09:02:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 31st Jan

Recieved an email back from Greg who was Stuart's suggested contact for a webhost quoting a price of £50 per year for a massive amount of storage. I sent an email to Paul Wilgeroth in a bid to persuade him to ok the money so I really move forward with this. The email said;

Hi Paul,

I've looked into whether the university servers can support the
necessary script (PHP or mySQL) in order to produce the kind of site
we spoke about and unfortunately they definitively do not. Stuart
suggested a trusted web host that could host the site for us and he
has quoted me £50 for a years usage of very large amount of space.
2.5gb with a 20gb a day transfer capability. I realise that we would
ideally avoid this cost but without this kind of server I could only
deliver a static HTML site which would be very awkward to maintain and
update. Additionally free space on the external host could be shared
out amongst students for personal websites and so on. Please let me
know what you think as soon as you can and I'll do my best.

Thanks a lot

Nick Gerrard

I also finished the three scamps ready to send although I'm waiting for a reply back about the hosting first. They are all inspired in different ways about the nature of the art and design faculty. My favourite is the grey one with the brightly coloured letters as it has a certain gravitas and sophistication but is very visually interesting. The sketchbook style one is a bit wild but I really wanted to see how it would look as sketchbooks are a unifying factor of all our courses and are the birthplace of many of our ideas.

Greg Turners's reply to my enquiry;

Hi Nick,

Wordpress isn't forum software, it's blog software. Having said that,
it doesn't matter from the point of view of hosting which software
you use. I can install Wordpress or phpbb for you (unless it is a
course requirement to install it yourself!).

How much space you need depends on how many users you expect. You'll
easily be able to get started with 2Gb space and 20Gb monthly
transfer, which is £50/year, plus domain name fees (max £15/year for
yourdomain.com). If you regularly go over this, then we'll look at it
again.

Cheers,

Greg.

I had explained that the university servers wouldn't support forum software, which was a mistake he was quick to point out!

Progress Blog – Professional Practice Module

2007-01-25T12:29:00.000-08:00

Progress Blog – Professional Practice Module

Monday 11th December

I attended the Student Council meeting in December with no expectations of gaining the opportunity to work on a live brief. However the lack of good communications between the Faculty and the students was raised, especially with regards to a recent visit from the BBC production designers who had worked on ‘Torchwood’ as well as other exhibitions and events which most of us had missed because we weren’t made aware of them. Also they wanted to open channels of communication between students on different courses and generally give everyone more of a chance to find out about each other. I pitched the idea of a community website as it seemed the natural solution to their communication difficulties. My idea was for a site that staff and students could both contribute to; a ‘one stop shop’ for any information that would be of benefit to us. The Dean of the School of Art and Design and the other members of the Staff Council agreed that given my enthusiasm and the nature of my course that I’d be suitable for the task.

I gave my contact details to Michelle Brown, the Dean’s secretary and she agreed to try and contact me before the university broke up for Christmas to arrange a meeting as I had stressed that I would prefer to be clear on what they expected of the site so I could begin designing it over my month off. However, in a very hectic last week of term we weren’t able to schedule a meeting and I had to wait until January to get back in touch with the staff council members.

Wednesday 13th December

I told Stuart about what had happened at the meeting and suggested that I create the CSAD Student Council website for the Professional Practice module and he agreed it was a good idea. It would give me an experience of designing for a client that I felt would be more similar to real world practices than undertaking a competition brief. I was also excited by the prospect of developing a site that would be genuinely useful for hundreds of my peers and adding a web based project to my portfolio.

Wednesday 17th January

In my first week of term I arranged for a tutorial with Stuart so we could talk over some of my ideas and agree how I should progress with this project. We quickly dismissed the idea of creating a traditional HTML site as it would be awkward to maintain and timely to produce. Stuart suggested a number of Open Source authoring programs for me to research and I was persuaded to reschedule my meeting with members of the Staff Council which we had arranged for the nest day in order to be able to meet a BBC Television crew who were coming in to speak to us about our research.

Thursday 18th January

I had a good look at the ways in which I might quickly and easily create a community website and I soon discovered Wordpress (www.wordpress.org) which seemed both very powerful and very easy to use. Given my limited time and fairly lofty ambitions for this project this blogger-like software seemed the only viable method for me to accomplish the functionality that I saw as vital to the site’s success.

Monday 22nd January

Emailed Michelle Brown about the meeting, she called me to check whether I was available 2pm on Wednesday and we agreed a meeting at Howard Gardens for then. I prepared for the meeting by taking another look at the Wordpress website so I could talk with some authority about its suitability for the task. The positive points I listed and took to the meeting were;

- W3C compatibility for accessibility
- Ability to create a site combining static pages and an advanced forum/blogging area
- You can set different levels of users, with different privileges
- The site will allow users to post images and even videos very easily
- Users can set up RSS feeds to their home computers so they don’t miss anything
- Search function
- Automatically updating links to other blogs
- Blogs easily organised; recent/top posts, categories and monthly archives
- Largely customizable, both the web address and the design
- Intelligent text formatting

Wednesday 24th January

I had my first proper meeting on Wednesday, with a Paul Wilgeroth who told me he had been tasked by the Dean to oversee myself and the creation of the website. In industry terms I would equate this to a ‘Scoping’ meeting. I wanted to set out clearly what I understood was required and what I felt I could produce. I was well prepared for this meeting and feel that I carried it off in a very professional manner, I feel that it was an important step in my personal development as an experience quite new to me. I outlined the timescale I was working within, my confidence in Wordpress and gathered a lot of useful points about the kind of site the staff (as my clients) wanted. We agreed that other than the CSAD (Cardiff School of Art and Design) logo I was free to design the site as I thought best while remembering that as a CSAD site it had a certain responsibility to be visually appealing. I promised to produce three scamps for him to choose between. Paul expressed concerns about the accountability of comments left on the forum and was happy to learn that it would be easy to require member’s logins from posters. I was told that the name should be as straightforward as possible so the project is now called the ‘Staff / Student Liaison Website’. I explained that this whole project as I had explained it would only be feasible if the university server could support PHP 4.2 or a version of mySQL at level 4.0 or higher.

Thursday 25th January
I emailed Stuart today to ask for helping in solving our little PHP/MySQL issue which I feel is hanging over the whole project at the moment as I am concerned that a the site I wish to make may not be possible. I am beginning to consider worst case scenario alternatives in case the university servers really aren’t prepared to play ball. I have also been browsing other sites and blogs created with Wordpress so I can gain a better idea of the level of customization I will be able to carry out.

Monday 29th January
Stuart informed me that the university servers do not support PHP or mySQL so external hosting is now my only option for creating a Wordpress site as planned. Stuart gave me the email address of a trusted web host and I have emailed him to ask for an idea of how much space I will require and a quote for the cost.

CCS - Techno-Utopianism

2007-01-10T05:36:00.000-08:00

Techno-Utopianism

“Keep on flying says Blair – Science will save the planet”
The Guardian, Tuesday, 9th January 07

This headline caught my eye from the news-stand yesterday. Science and Technology are once again being asked to save us from ourselves and deliver us to a gleaming future, in this case one of super efficient planes allowing government ministers to fly round the globe just as much as they wish. I see this strand of Techno-Utopianism around in the world more and more, providing the easy answers to a world many of us feel increasingly uneasy living in.

I noticed two adverts in particular that have been everywhere recently. The TV adverts for Honda’s new ‘More Forwards Please’ campaign features an astounding little robot wandering gracefully around a technology museum while the accompanying posters show a progression of different versions of the final, toddler size robot, from an awkward looking contraption to the TV ad model, smooth and sophisticated, like an I-pod robot. Honda aren’t selling robots, they’re selling the dream of technological progress. By buying Honda you’re buying a bit of the dream; technology will deliver you ever cleaner, more beautiful, more efficient cars. Taking a very different line, AOLs ‘What do you think?’ campaign was one of the more thought-provoking and intelligent adverts of recent years. One TV advert argued that ‘The Internet is a good thing’ and another illustrated its potential for misuse, with the same question being asked at the end of both. So, one shows children researching their school projects online while the other gives us a glimpse of the filming of exploitative porn for the web. The advertisers realized they don’t need to actually ‘sell’ the internet; everyone has a fair idea how it can be used and misused, no-one holds AOL or any of the service providers responsible for Al-Qaeda’s online recruitment drives. These days the net just ‘is’, it’s as ubiquitous as the air. The answer to the question ‘what do you think [about the internet]?’ is of course ‘it’s as good or bad as the people who use it’. The adverts were so clever because they encouraged people to grasp a tricky concept with far reaching consequences for all of us. Technology won’t save us; anything created by man will mirror both the better and worse aspects of human nature.

“Each wave of major technological innovation in the twentieth century, from the automobile to TV to nuclear power "too cheap to meter" to the Internet, has been greeted with wild optimism, but each has brought a slew of unintended consequences. Let us remember our current collective behavior is not sustainable: global climatic integrity is imperiled, biodiversity is plummeting, fisheries are collapsing, etc. We are so far not handling it; our civilization is careening out of control, and a lot of our ills are technologically induced or exacerbated."
( http://www.garynull.com/Documents/LAPIS/genome.htm)

I found this piece from on an online technology magazine and it is very much the viewpoint I subscribe to; I just don’t believe in a future where science and technology have solved all our direst human and ecological problems. Utopian societies always fail, whether religious or secular they fail because they ignore the fact that you can’t change human nature. It was John Gray’s book Straw Dogs that first opened my eyes to these concepts;

“Those who ignore the destructive potential of new technologies can do so only because they ignore history. Pogroms are as old as Christendom; but without railways, the telegraph and poison gas there could have been no Holocaust. There have always been tyrannies; but without modern means of transport and communication, Stalin and Mao could not have built their gulags. Humanity's worst crimes were made possible only by modern technology.
There is a deeper reason why 'humanity' will never control technology. Technology is not something that humankind can control. It is an event that has befallen the world.”

We are ever more involved with technology, ever more reliant on it and much of its effects have been positive but I think Techno-Utopianism has entered the public consciousness very much over the last few years. Influential thinkers like Richard Dawkins have proposed that Science replace religion as the basis of our hopes for a better tomorrow, but I believe it’s a fatally flawed ideology that distracts us from finding practical solutions to our problems. Surveillance technology won’t mean an end to global terrorism any more then online communities have provided any meaningful substitute for the real communities we had sixty years ago.

rrr

2007-01-05T05:26:00.000-08:00

CCS - Locative Media

2007-01-04T13:18:00.000-08:00

Locative Media

Locative media is all derived from an American department of defense initiative, the Global Positioning System whereby you can use any three of the 24 GPS satellites orbiting the Earth to ‘triangulate’ your position based on your distance from each one, your position on the globe can then be placed to within 5 or 7 meters. The GPS devices necessary to locate you in this way are now little bigger than mobile phones. The technology we use everyday will shortly become ‘location aware’ and the potential implications to our understanding of the space around us will be profound. If your PC became location aware it might begin showing you banner ads for local shops and services. You may be able to receive updates to your phone or PDA giving you a realistic time of arrival for the location aware bus you’re waiting for. These developments will surely seem commonplace within years but at the cutting edge of digital expansion scientists, artists and communities of dedicated individuals are envisioning and exploring uses of this technology that will create a whole new level of reality for many of us.

GPS advancements along with the real possibility of ubiquitous wireless networks in our cities has paved the way for a second layer of reality, an invisible virtual reality to be overlaid on top of our physical world. In one sense another layer of reality exists anyhow, every place has a history and specific memories for all those who spent time there. A park bench might just be a point on a map, a construction of wood and metal but for some it will be a place where the met or split up with a lover, where they once made a life-changing decision or played when they were children. Now in the virtual world, people can attach information to a specific place that others can see and experience for themselves. People will be able to ‘read’ places and access layers of meaning that would never have been available to them before, humanizing seemingly impersonal and empty spaces. With this technology I could create a unique experience of a favourite space or journey of mine that others could share as they passed through where appropriate music would be triggered and images, feelings and memories I had of that place could be viewed. Layers of meaning could be embedded anywhere and everywhere.

The advent of ‘augmented reality’ where virtual objects can be placed in real space and viewed through special glasses or the screen of a laptop or PDA will further blur the line between the physical world and the world of information that increasingly surrounds us. Animated 3D characters could play with children in school playgrounds and the creatively minded could redecorate our cities with virtual graffiti, another vision of reality, open to all.

Already traditional past-times are being blended with locative media technology to create truly new game playing experiences. The city is turned into a playground by the creators of Cititag (http://cnm.open.ac.uk/projects/cititag/), as players dash around with pocket PCs tagging others or for the unlucky tagged player, rushing to find friends who can un-tag them and get them back in the game. Other players are visible on the map as are graphics displaying your current status. I was very interested in this as it is in essence a computer game but demonstrates how games of the future will break out of the home and into the outside world. The games can be played anywhere and we will need more than just our thumbs to play them.

Another use of locative media technology that impressed me was the Bristol based Futurelab’s learning project for 10-11 year olds, ‘Savannah’ (http://www.futurelab.org.uk/showcase/savannah/index.htm#projectarticle) where children learned about the world of Lions on the African plains by role playing as lions on a virtual environment laid on top of their own playing fields. With their PDAs displaying the virtual grassland the children have to make decisions and move around their territory as a lion would while chasing prey, finding watering holes and so on. This kind of experiential learning is not only very enjoyable for the kids but allows them a deeper level of understanding that books or the internet alone could not.

URLs of Interest

http://www.netzwissenschaft.de/mob.htm#mixed

A list of many of the cutting edge technologists, collectives and their locative media projects.

http://www.c5corp.com/projects/gpsmediaplayer/index.shtml

A GPS media player showing images and descriptions of hiking paths alongside a map which displays the hiker’s progress.

http://netpublics.annenberg.edu/locative_media/beyond_locative_media

A fascinating article on the social implications and future of fully networked public spaces.

Production Processes

2007-01-03T06:52:00.000-08:00

Production Processes

As part of this module exploring the working practices of design companies I visited ‘Sequence’, the largest new media house in South Wales where I spoke to Richard Shearman, one of the account managers. I pitched the same questions that I asked him to a friend of mine who is the lead designer at a small design company called ‘Firstline Media’ in the Newcastle area. The idea was to better understand how the size and structure of a company affects their working practices by comparing the feedback I received. I decided on five questions, covering a broad spread of the information I hoped to obtain.

1. Is the majority of your business client based or speculative work?

Both companies had business plans based on continually marketing the company, seeking out new clients and pitching for new work.

Sequence has a New Business Team and a Sales Team dedicated to making new contacts and winning work. I was surprised to learn that Sequence actually pitched ideas for work on an entirely speculative basis to large companies like the BBC; this is called ‘invitation to tender’ and often showcases the use of new technologies and software that might be of interest to the potential client. For briefs where they are competing with other companies the designers will prepare a visual pitch, normally three A3 boards which they will send to the client. The whole company operates on a dynamic business model and 50-60% of their work is gained by these business acquisition teams.

Firstline Media’s business is an equal mix of client based and speculative work although the emphasis has recently been increasingly on actively seeking new work by cold calling and pitching for briefs. They are too small a company to have a dedicated team for this so the designers must play a role in the new business acquisition side too. To help in maintaining repeat business from clients it is sometimes agreed in the contract that any follow up work will also be done by Firstline.

2. How is your team structured in terms of in house and freelance expertise?

The two companies have quite different attitudes towards buying in outside help and expertise when required.

Sequence stressed on their website that an important part of their ethos was to keep everything ‘in house’ as much as possible to maintain consistency in their output and avoid the complications and added cost of hiring freelancers. Sequence employ more then thirty people but there are still occasions when outside help is necessary to complete projects successfully and on time. Richard Shearman identified the two most common occasions when they need to do this as being when they are given much less time to complete a project then they have calculated they would need to do it and when they are called upon to produce very advanced or specialist coding, often for Flash applications.

Firstline Media have a much more compact team to draw on with just two designers, two developers and a Technical Author. However they very rarely use freelancers and will simply not take on work that the company cannot handle internally preferring a more modest business plan based on maximising their ‘in house’ resources.

3. Do you use a standardized project cycle model on each job?

There were major differences between Sequence and Firstline in the use of project cycles which seem to derive as much from the company’s ethos as the necessary differences in business models because of their different sizes.

Sequence use different models for different jobs as they prefer to adopt a project cycle that is a ‘good fit’ for the client. For example they prefer a Dynamic Systems Development Methods for most jobs where they feel that the expectation of changing needs and requirements suits their flexible working practices but they also employ a more formalised model like Prince 2 when a more controlled environment is needed. This will often be when they are working with government agencies or the BBC. They also have different models for print and web projects and will always try and agree and tailor the best working model for each client before a contract is signed.

Firstline produce a wide range of work from 3d visualisations to websites and print projects but use the same project cycle model for each one. This covers every aspect of the project design and development from initial visualisations to final deployment. The team there prefer the consistency of fitting every project to a working model that they are used to and are comfortable with where it seems that Sequence’s designers and developers must be more flexible in order to accommodate the client. I think this is partly down to Sequence dealing with larger and more demanding clients and partly a slight disparity in the levels of expertise at the two companies.

4. How do you encourage collaborative working and successful communications with your clients?

Both companies stressed the importance of good relations with clients as it makes the design process run more smoothly and increases the likelihood of repeat business.

Collaborative working with clients is central to Sequence’s ideology and this begins at the very earliest stage where employees are chosen for a job based on their perceived compatibility with the client. At Sequence the client is seen as an equal partner in the design process and this begins with design workshops which run at an early stage of the project and help the client feel an involved member of the team. It also helps the Sequence designers to gain a good idea of what the client really wants which might be different to what the brief asks for. They break the project into ‘would likes’, ‘should haves’ and ‘must haves’ based on the workshops and their own expertise, the client will be made aware how these levels of priority will fit within the constraints of the project. Communications channels are always open and Sequence employ several dedicated account handlers to ensure that anytime the client calls wishing to enquire about the project they will be able to speak to a well informed member of staff.

Good customer service is also key to Firstline Media’s business plan and a similarly high value is placed on the client’s views and opinions. At the earliest possible stage of their interaction with the client they present them with clear documentation detailing not only what they plan to deliver but also what they expect from the client, this has proved an effective way of pre-empting problems and establishing trust between the two parties. Throughout the project they regularly update the client with progress reports and ask for their feedback so they always feel included in the progress of the work. After a project is completed they stay in regular contact to maintain the relationship and demonstrate a level of care and attention that will hopefully result in repeat business.

5. How do you test your work before completion; I.e. User / Expert Testing?

By this point in the questioning I had learned that both companies were striving to be client-centred and I had heard a lot more about this then I had user-centred design. Whether it was assumed to be implicit in what they were saying that each project would be right for the end user or that as a business they have to put the effort in to please the people who pay their wages first and foremost I’m still not sure. Both companies didn’t usually conduct testing on the public but had ‘in house’ experts that would put each project through its paces before the handover. At Sequence this was a Quality Inspection team while at Firstline the Technical Author and Technical Director both gave finished work the final check over.

Sequence tests each part of a multimedia project in isolation before the design and development teams get together to make sure they have a fully working end product. They do conduct user testing when a piece intended for use by children or the disabled as it is hard for the designers to understand the exact needs of these groups. Often they just use ‘Profile Testing’; the designers will role play as the intended user, speaking aloud and using an interaction style that they feel is appropriate. While I’m sure that this will uncover most of the major usability issues it must be difficult to view a piece of work you have been involved with for weeks or months as a first time user who may be of a very different background or age then yourself. I wonder whether the time and effort of conducting thorough user testing has led to it being viewed as a luxury by the design industry.

The balance between designers, client and end user is a very interesting one and it was important for me to see how design companies are first and foremost businesses and I imagine that in some cases compromises are made to please clients that may well not result in the most appropriate product for the person on the street. I was very impressed by Sequence and I understand now how their business model has led to a fast rate of growth and financial success while I have also gained and insight into how a much smaller company can be successful while working with local clients and smaller jobs.

Thank you to Richard Shearman at Sequence (www.sequence.co.uk) and Kevin Myers at Firstline Media (www.firstlineinteractive.co.uk)

CCS - Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson

2006-12-07T07:32:00.000-08:00

Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson

Engelbart was a man driven by an intense personal philosophy that computing technology could provide people with the ability to increase their capability to deal with any given “complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems”. No-one could argue that the seminal work he conducted during his career hasn’t achieved this. Doug Engelbart led a small team of technicians and researchers from the Stamford University broke new ground and introduced revolutionary new technologies as part of the ‘Augment Project’ and many members of his team from the sixties are still powerful and influential figures in the computer world today. He envisioned or directly developed “the computer mouse, graphical user interface, display editing and integrated text and graphics, hyper-documents, and two-way video-conferencing with shared workspaces”, aspects of our modern day computer use we can hardly imagine being without. He is now involved in a foundation promoting the social and technological aspects of ‘Collective Intelligence’ whereby people can combine their intelligences to a greater goal and take the power of society into their own hands ( http://www.bootstrap.org/ ). He has held firm to his beliefs throughout his career; that the world is becoming an ever more complex and dangerous place to be and that both organisations and societies need to “boost their IQs” to meet all the challenges life will throw at them. He is a leading light in this new Utopianism, with plans to set up ‘Global Improvement Networks and the ongoing work on a new “open hyperdocument system”.

Ted Nelson always saw himself as an intellectual who could make a difference to the world believing at first he wanted to be a film-maker until he was exposed to the newly emerging field of computing while at College; “this was it - it was obvious, the human race would spend the rest of its career at computer screens”. His experiences with his own Attention Deficit Disorder where he found it very hard to recall events and important information in a logical order fired him with a life long desire to create a system “that would record all the connections and all the structures and all the thoughts that paper could not”. This was to be his Xanadu Project. A computing system whereby all the applications were linked and anyone could do whatever they wanted to a document; Nelson always hated the prescriptive and ‘One God’ approach to writing software. Along the way other, some might say cannier, inventors took aspects of his work and made them commercially successful, most famously Tim Berners-Lee and his appropriation of the HTML concept which has now become standard. Nelson still stands out today as a fiercely independent and original voice in the world of computing and still filled with an unshakeable belief in a new and more democratic way of computing.

CCS - Presentation - Directive: Fight the Net

2006-12-07T07:08:00.000-08:00

The US Military and the Age of Information Warfare

For my presentation I chose to move slightly off topic and shed some light on an area I had brought up several times in discussion after our seminars but lacked the background knowledge to go deeply into. I also believe that it is very important for everyone in new media to be aware of the powerful players on the international scene who view the internet and worldwide communications networks as a new battlefield in which they can win our hearts and minds, destroy the capabilities of their rivals to do so or as the ultimate veto, shut down large sections or even the entirety of our communications networks at will. Cyber-warfare is already a reality; videos of British and American hostages held by Islamic Militant groups in Iraq were released on the net with the express intention of horrifying the Western public and eroding support for the war. During the recent Israeli invasion of the Lebanon both sides were conducting new media Psyops (Psychological Operations) attacks on each other. The Israelis used high powered transmitters to send the Lebanese people hundreds of thousands of automated calls and text messages, ‘hijacked’ a Hezbollah satellite channel for 90 seconds to broadcast their own propaganda, set up a websites encouraging informants and gave thousands of students ‘megaphone’ software allowing them to detect and infiltrate anti-Semitic websites.

Against this background the US military has laid plans for “total domination of the entire electromagnetic spectrum” and the strongly stated desire to “disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems” (Pentagon Document – Information Operations Roadmap, 2003). Hundreds of millions have already been signed off by high ranking Pentagon officials like Donald Rumsfeld to put the USA at the forefront of what could almost be seen as an Information Era arms race both with terrorist agencies and their world rivals. Various world events including terrorist’s successful use of the net for propagandas and recruitment, the re-emergence of Communist China with its own advanced plans for Information Warfare, an estimated 70,000 attempts to hack US military networks last year alone as well as America’s increasing reliance on communications technology to conduct modern warfare have pushed Information Operations and Psyops right to the top of the US military’s list of priorities. You only need to imagine the chaos that would ensue if a terrorist organisation used hackers or viruses to take down the New York Stock Exchange to see why government agencies are taking this so seriously.

During the recent Gulf War the Americans made extensive use of satellite imagery to guide troop movements and a fully integrated ‘internet in the sky’ system is seen as the future of field warfare. From enemy positions to weather reports and requests for medical supplies the TSAT system would allow US troops to be in touch with each other and with central command all the time, anywhere. The TSAT (Transformational Communications Satellite) network in low Earth orbit would enable the military’s Global Information Grid (War-Net) to cover every inch of the globe so that commanders can see and know practically everything they could want to about a situation, make up to date and well informed decisions maximizing the worth of every man on the ground. This kind of truly ubiquitous wireless, super broadband internet may well be available to the general populous at some point in the future.

With satellites becoming such an important part of military operations and with the increasing reliance on these networks for maintaining a large countries economic and civil infrastructure the US is becoming increasingly concerned about their vulnerability. We are approaching an age in which America “intends to develop systems to deny adversary use of space and maintain US space superiority”. This might be the century when wars in space move off the pages of science fiction novels and into reality. America is so concerned with protecting their satellites that they have commissioned the development of space based weapons, after all China is already believed to have such devices. Plans have been laid for the creation of machines that could move at will through low earth orbit targeting and destroying enemy communications satellites with high powered lasers or explosives. Many scientists argue that the debris created by any kind of war in space could create a field of debris which could destroy most civilian communications satellites as well and render much of the space around Earth an effective no-go zone. There is also the possibility that the power of US space superiority during a conflict might force smaller countries to release the equivalent of grit; metal junk up into the atmosphere as an low-tech but very effective anti-satellite measure.

A variety of ‘Offensive Information Era Weaponry’ has also been put into production. A HERF (High Energy Radio Frequency) gun can be targeted at networks or individual systems temporarily paralyzing them by overloading their circuits with a babble of 0s and 1s. EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) bombs could bring a city to its knees while leaving every building standing. EMPs are 100 times more powerful than HERF guns and the damage is permanent. Every electronic device in the blast radius would be rendered useless, cities would be plunged into blackouts and modern communications networks would simply cease to exist. In an age when overseas civilian deaths are increasingly unpalatable to the US population and with an increasing concern about improving America’s image worldwide these weapons provide the military with an appealing alternative to traditional bombs and bullets.

All this and of course the hacking, counter-hacking and viruses that are part of what is now called Network Warfare for which the US is well prepared with a top sectret multi-million team of the most formidable hackers ever assembled. Any modern war will now be fought as much in the information realm as it is in the physical world.

CCS - voIP

2006-11-29T04:50:00.000-08:00

voIP

‘voIP’ is the term used to describe the protocols which allow the routing of voice messages over the internet with Skype being the largest and most well known of the providers. Users of Skype and other popular voIP programmes like ‘Google Talk’ and ‘Amiciphone’ can not only call other voIP users for free but they can also call landline and mobile numbers, conduct teleconferences, leave voicemails, and make video calls from some of the newer versions of these programs. Users must buy credits ahead of making charged calls and these are generally cheaper then any service provided by traditional telecommunications companies. An example of an exception to this might be a voIP call, always charged by the minute compared to a specially discounted evening or weekend rate from a telecommunications company like BT which might charge a nominal fee for 60 minutes off peak. One of the few downsides for the user of voIP technology is that it is entirely dependant on the internet so that a poor internet connection will result in poor quality calls. Another benefit of voIP is that it allows you to make and receive calls from the same number no matter where you are in the world provided you have access to the internet. Anyone who has experienced the hassle and cost of calling from abroad and having your mobile switch to foreign networks with unknown pricing structures will appreciate what an improvement that would be. Also the software allows you to see who is online or available for contact so you’ll make less wasted calls and can simply leave a voice message for someone who is unavailable. In a stroke voIP corrects one of the most basic issues of normal landline use; not knowing if the person on the other end of the line is anywhere near their phone at all and in a lot of cases (where the other person doesn’t have an answer phone) having to call back later to make contact. It is little wonder that the rapidly increasing proliferation of voIP software worldwide represents a major challenge to traditional telecommunications companies shackled to the landline network, which is both more expensive to maintain and expend then a peer to peer network.

Issues and Challenges

The 1994 law, called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) compelled the telecommunications companies of the day to rewire their networks so that the American Police Department and the FBI could freely tap calls. After extensive lobbying the FBI is close to forcing a similar acquiesce from the voIP providers though two major appeals have been launched. One on the grounds of the massive financial cost of reorganising the networks and another from those who fear this is a big step towards the widespread regulation of the internet.

Another move worrying the users and purveyors of voIP software is the emergence of an “carrier-grade applications filters" which could be used to prevent the use of P2P networks including Skype like applications (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=26255). This could be very appealing to the telecommunications industries who are often the providers of the broadband internet which enables the voIP network. Their argument is that P2P networks are bandwidth greedy (they estimate 30% of bandwidth usage is from P2P applications) while generating exactly zero revenue for the service providers who would certainly love to use this new filtering software although the power of Ebay backed Skype might be enough tokeep us voIPing.

Sequence Media – Website

2006-11-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

Sequence Media – Cardiff

The Sequence website has been primarily designed to attract potential clients to contact the company to produce work for them. The secondary aim is to provide a feel for the company for people who aren’t looking to commission work but want to find out more about the organisation, prospective employees for example. Its visual tone is both warm and inviting, with clarity of communication obviously being an important issue for the designers. The colours are vibrant and modern and it makes the site seem instantly visually stimulating. The obvious skill has been to create such a colourful site that doesn’t look at all garish or tacky. The content is somewhat unusually framed in the centre of the page taking up a little less than half the available space against a pink and grey background. This works really well in the context, allowing you to focus on the relevant information and take in the whole of each page at a glance. There is a universal navigation system at the top right of the page which means that once you’ve have accessed a few options you won’t have to return to the home page and branch out again which, for a relatively small site means it’d be near impossible to get lost.

The grey, sans serif font is understated and stylish with great legibility while the pink headers add a splash of colour and visual interest. Both the text and colour scheme are consistent throughout and the pictures always appear very glossy and colourful even though they don’t always relate directly to the content on each page. The site designers aren’t trying to assault the user’s senses with a bag of flashy tricks; it’s just very professional, very clear and displays a certain confidence in approach that I imagine would be very pleasing to the target audience. The only thing that moves on the site is a banner with two headlines and two high quality images advertising the fact that the company is to work on ‘Doctor Who’ which slides from side to side within its frame when you hold the mouse over it. This is a classy and well implemented piece of functionality as it allows the user to enjoy some interactivity but in an appropriate way which is not to the detriment of the core content. The home page is concise and neat; you don’t need to scroll down to see anything and everything you’d want to find on a home page is present and clear to find. The News section with its ‘NEW!’ tags next to the most recent items gives the impression of a constantly updated and always relevant website that is at the heart of the company’s self promotion strategy.

The only minor problems I had with this site were the coloured blocks on the home page by the Doctor Who banner and down at the bottom right hand side. These look as if they might be some form of buttons but they turn out to be nothing more than window dressing. Also, in the portfolio section the Featured Projects are always visually dominant so that when you click to look at work from a particular industry from the right hand text menu it’s not particularly clear whether it’s brought a new menu up. Otherwise this site is an excellent example of how sound design principles and a confident use of colour can create a site that is really clear in it’s meaning and satisfying to use. It’s a lesson to us as designers that we don’t have to wow someone in order to impress them.

Canon Powershot A70 - Redesign document

2006-11-09T05:57:00.000-08:00

My Approach

Although in my opinion this camera needs a complete redesign from the ground up I knew that I wouldn’t have enough time to look at every aspect of the device. I decided to focus on the ergonomics of the device, particularly the various input methods, as tackling the menu system would require a serious consideration of how a user would physically interact with it anyway. It struck me from an early stage that a mobile phone style interface would not only be very accessible to new users of the camera but feel instantly familiar and unthreatening given the widespread proliferation of phones. I wanted to do away with as much of the currently very confusing A70 interface as I could but I found that this kind of device does demand more different control inputs then I would’ve liked. I could’ve made an interface as paired down as that on an i-Pod but I would’ve forced the user to navigate so many steps to access certain functions that my redesign would’ve been slower to operate then the current model. From this frustrating starting point my paramount concern became making the device feel more natural to hold and operate. I kept referring back to the real device while sketching, gripping it and imagining where on the camera I could comfortably reach with my thumbs. I found this a fairly straightforward exercise, listing problems I’d raised in the previous module and thinking of logical solutions. However, with this being my first ever product design I had never encountered the extra dimension of creating something as pleasing in the hands as it is to the mind of the user. I believe my approach was sound and well informed by what I have learned from recent lectures but extensive user testing would be necessary to not only make the menus more logical but tie them to my new interface arrangement as efficiently as possible.

Environment

I began with considering the environment this camera would actually be used in. This device would be used both indoors and out, in a variety of environmental conditions, bar heavy rain. I put a rubber grip covered with gently embossed oval shapes around the sides of the camera so that even if your hands were wet or it was a cold day you would have a tactile grip that feels very secure. This has the added benefit of making the camera appear more robust, more waterproof and more inviting an object to hold against your skin. I’ve added a little battery power indicator graphic to the bottom right of the screen so that when users are planning to take the camera outside and away from their charger they will know if they need to pack extra batteries or charge the camera before they leave.

Basic Changes

To counteract the previous models awkwardly lopsided shape, which was prone to causing stress in a user’s hand after prolonged use, I ‘flattened out’ my device and moved the display screen to the centre, making it symmetrical. My new version is now slightly longer, still accommodating 4 AA batteries but it enables a user to carry the device in their pocket, the previous drawback to doing this being more about the ‘lump’ on the camera’s right side than it’s weight or length. Instantly you have a more natural grip position too, previously you would have your left fingers across the display screen when you initially picked up the device. I have decided on a heavy black plastic for the housing, a metallic camera may look more expensive but it also weighs more and is often cold to the touch whereas I wanted my camera to feel more friendly and practical. The ridged ‘thumb pads’ encourage and neatly accommodate a natural grip, making the device feel even more secure in a users hands. I have significantly raised and added gentle ridges to the ‘Take Picture / Begin Recording’ button, because you can’t directly see the it when you are concentrating on the display it is important that your finger can easily find it and that you can position yourself ready for a shot without worrying whether you actually adequate contact with it. I thought it’d be much more straightforward for the user to have the On/Off button on the back of the camera, just under the thumb pad so as soon as they pick up the device they can see how to switch it on and do it without any need for grip readjustment. A little red light switches on when the device is powered up which reinforces the fact that you have got the device on and would help to remind a user to switch it off after use. I left the Picture Mode dial as it was as I think it was an aspect of the original camera that worked satisfactorily.

Input Method Changes and Justification

I wanted the interface on my redesign to be easily thumb operated without ever demanding a serious change in grip position. I tried to keep the lower third of the camera as free from buttons and switches as possible as this is the most awkward part of the device for the thumbs to reach and keep the most used functions in the upper third which is the easiest to access. Replacing the A70’s fiddly Playback/Capture switch and separate Menu button with one sliding switch to enable a user to move between these three modes of use is more logical as the menu screen was the third function of the display and is now grouped appropriately. A chunkier button makes switching screen modes easier for the user in ergonomics terms and grouping the three modes into one means I can lose a button from the back of the device. The display on/off is now a sliding switch, chosen to be consistent with the main on/off switch and I positioned it closely under the screen, a position familiar from use of monitors and TV sets. Without going into the playback menu too deeply the directional pad will make it significantly easier to move through selections in the playback and menu screens. A directional pad takes far less of the users concentration away from the screen then the current method with its four separate buttons for each direction. I placed a two way button either side of the display screen and these will mostly be used for making selections or going back a step in the menu/playback screens and will allow for a more accessible, mobile phone style interaction as options can be easily mapped against the four possible button pushes. The icons I have used on these buttons are a direct reference from mobile phones with two neutral blue icons at the top which are multi-use and a green and a red icon at the bottom of either button which will always signify select/advance or back/deselect. Once again it is important that the user feels comfortable with their first interactions with my remodeled camera and referencing a device they use every day seems a very effective way to do this. In Capture mode these two buttons would be used to zoom in and out.

User Testing

A method of user testing was somewhat tricky to conceive in relation to my device because I didn’t have the resources to redesign the on-screen functionality, so my primary concern was the ergonomics; the comfort of use and the ease with which users could control the device with their thumbs. I also wanted to know if the icons I used were clear in their meanings. I asked seven people to hold first the original camera then my cardboard 1:1 prototype and simulate performing various actions. With regards to my reorganization of the interface the feedback was overwhelmingly positive with every test subject reporting that the layout felt more natural and pleasant to use. I wanted to see if my redesign had achieved my aim of reminding users of the interface style mobile phones and by asking how familiar the interface was and 3 people responded, unprompted that it reminded them of their phones and one other describing it as similar to his PSP. People really like the directional pad as well and felt it’d be much easier to use than the current system of four buttons. So overall I feel I have achieved my basic aims very well. There were matters arising from the testing which would feed back into a further redesign however. Several of the users didn’t feel that the On / Off button was clearly enough defined with one user confusing the Display On / Off with the main On / Off switch. I think I might need to have the words On and Off on or near the main switch even though I wanted to keep the amount of text on the back down to a minimum. I think moving the flash on the front of the camera may have been a mistake as it was out of the way of my preferred grip position but proved to be under the fingers of the average user, so I might try moving it back to it’s original position. The Menu icon, which I had introduced to replace the word Menu (an open book) didn’t clearly communicate its meaning to the users with none of them correctly guessing its meaning which is a concern although after a bit of initial trial and error I think it’d be very easy to learn. I placed the user experience at the heart of my redesign and I feel like I have learned a lot about HCI from this module.

CCS - Participation

2006-10-29T16:12:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-17T04:19:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

Canon Powershot A70 Digital Camera

I 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

2006-10-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-15T07:23:00.000-07:00

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania

I 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

2006-10-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-09T05:05:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-03T05:11:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-03T04:48:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Wednesday 26th September

2006-09-29T06:17:00.000-07:00