Week 22

CMT: 31st March ‘08

PDE: 4th April ‘08

This was the first session we had soon after the Easter break. Dikshit started with Bob, Andy and I, though most of the other team mates came in as he progressed with the presentation on his idea of applying AR blocks towards client/Architect meetings. After a few minutes of some useful digression, David then went ahead with the lead user innovation in social media toolkit.

The session continued after the break with Madushani showing some developments on the drum sequencer she is working on for her project, she also applied augmented reality toolkit in the design. Halil discussed how he is getting on, and I finally showed some entity relationships based on my project design — web based technical service.

We all received useful feedback on our work so far, Andy also suggested that the project final report should have certain characteristics and pattern.

Week 20

CMT: 2nd March ‘08

Today’s Current Issues in Interaction session coordinator Paola urged the team members present today to engage more with the weekly tasks that she gives out.

Further to that, she complained about lack of attendance and cohesion amongst members in her sessions, she said such attitude will stunt classmates’ general progress, explaining the purpose of commitment and broader view learning to encompass complex domains

“How do you design a system that identifies problems, and then define the solutions”.

“Cognitive psychology is only limited to the individual.”

PDE: 7th March ‘08

We started today quite abruptly; David already started presentation about his lead user innovation/ social networking / application/ Toolkit project. At the end, it was suggested that he can make today’s advice more useful by concentrating his effort towards narrowing down his idea to a more time realistic one.

Although I was meant to show some stuff on “service ecology”, also called map of relationships between stakeholders’ and the product/ service, plus persona’s. I was rather focused on generating more design ideas and visiting similar websites to the one I am working on. I eventually ended up showing a presentation on service design plan, project vision, who what and why design, and activity list. Andy and Bob gave examples of persona’s, and what is service ecology, they requested me to produce some flow of values and persona’s relevant to my project by next session.

In the afternoon meeting after the break, Dik-AR in architectural building developments- had a discussion on measurements, space, distance and the possibility of moving the camera around the cubes (building blocks) to capture a richer view of the area.

Madu had a talk relating to her drum sequencer, Andy told her that she must identify who, what and why’s of her design project.

Halil also got a feedback based on the presentation he showed the class. Furthermore, he also experienced some practical methods for collating and processing ideas for his AR game project.

Week 19

CMT: 25th Feb ‘08

This session rolled off with talks on human factor in the paper: There Is More to Monitoring a Nuclear Power Plant than Meets the Eye. By Randall J. Mumaw, Emilie M. Roth, Kim J. Vicente, Catherine M. Burns. Attached below:there-is-more-to-monitoring-a-nuclear-power-plant-than-meets-the-eye.doc

Paola talked about the nature of monitoring practice and implications for modelling: Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) operators are engaged in a number of tasks “Monitoring is interweaved with other ongoing responsibilities of managing tasks to generate power” pg. 37
Paola comment: Hypothesis: knowing the structural relations among these other tasks might reveal possible integration patterns. But we do not hear about this.

“Cognitive” hypothesis focused on selected processes are inadequate

• primary challenge to monitoring is operator vigilance;

• the primary demands in monitoring relate to selective attention;

• major difficulty in monitoring is one of visual perception;

• None of these hypotheses does justice to the richness of the phenomena we observed.

She further observed that individual recognition in interacting with the device also affects the way they translate the alarms. She noted that the designers have assumed the efficiency and effectiveness of the system/plant without any major emphasis on managerial or historical factors.The paper challenges that devices can not be designed based on individual cognition.

The meaning of monitoring these values and understanding the interactions among states of the components, and other variables. Absolute values does exist in isolation, there should be an understanding in relation to others.

PDE: 29th Feb’08

Started as usual with a little natter before getting into the main business of the day, Andy and Bob was early trying to connect and steady the cameras, display unit the laptop ready to support/ enable project presentations.

Dikshit presented his progress on the augmented reality in architecture project; he talked about how to install multiple markers in one exe file, and how to change the colours, size and shape of the AR building blocks.

After the lunch break, Anoi briefly presented his EPG (electronic programme guide). Then I explained to the team that in order to extract some ideas, I have applied Jakob Nielsen’s ten heuristic principles in evaluating an exiting website similar to my service design idea, I also showed my storyboard. Furthermore, I prepared a hierarchical task analysis for my project. In my feedback they advised that through my research and requirement gathering, I should lay some emphasis on service ecology, service blue print and persona.

After me was David who illustrated his project progress with some graphic presentation and an article on lead user innovation in social media.

Finally, Halil got a feedback based on what he showed the team, same as Madushani who had already used the lunch break to get clarifications from Bob on the next line of action for her work.

Week 17

CMT: 11th Feb ‘08

In today’s Current issues in Interaction design class, Paola asked us to think of questions that best describe the topics we have covered so far.

One after the other, we all contributed to the list of questions. We subsequently examined and discussed the topics and questions.

After we have looked at the previous topics, she then moved on to talk about safety critical systems referring to the papers she emailed to us on designing alarm systems, and a review of the different roles played by such devices. Also, we touched up on ethnographic study on how operators interpret the information provided by the alarm in the Nuclear Power Plant industry.
We particularly looked into the following papers: An analysis of problems with auditory alarms: Defining the roles of Alarms in process monitoring tasks. By Yan Xiao and F Jacob Seagull of University of Maryland School of medicine and University of Illinois at Urban-Champion respectively.

PDE: 15th Feb ‘08

 

We started quite early today, David started the day rolling with what he called Lead user innovation strategy-Ecology?

Andy and Bob engaged Dean on his project plan, they suggested ways he can approach his intended field study with a group of youth at the ZSL, and he also showed the team the two piece of hand-held PDA (personal digital assistant) from Orange™, and some intended replica ideas and photos.

I then told the class about the (forums) websites I have visited in the last week, and the pattern of questions/ problems experienced by the forum members, this will be apart of my requirement gathering for my project. The information’s I collate from the forums will help me narrow down and sharpen my project plan, and objective to a more realistic design target as will be seen in the next couple of weeks. I have started working on the story board and HTA- hierarchical task analysis- to be presented on the next session.

Halil and Dikshit had a joint presentation on the AR application; they showed some new discoveries regarding their projects.

Madushani invigorated her digital drum sequencers, and subsequently Anoi presented a screen shot of his EPG -Electronic Programme Guide for HD DTV (High Definition Digital Television).

 

Week 13

 CMT: 14 Jan ‘08

This is the first week of the new semester, though Dr Paola Amaldi-Trillo was supposed to start this semester with us as the main tutor for the above module, I suppose she is still on her sabbatical. That simply means we still have Dr Fields for the week, I am quite sure to most of my team mates, It does not make much difference if it is Bob or Paola.

The topic for today is supposed to be ‘Ethics and Interaction Design’

However, the session did not hold. In it, we were meant to raise some practical issues that have bearing to several aspects of Interaction Design, and also discuss some of the ethical and moral problems that may arise in the practice of Interaction Design, some of the guidelines that can help to alleviate or avoid difficulties.

The following reading materials were recommended in order to understand more and share some ethical problems or dilemmas that we have faced or are aware of:

Chauncey E. Wilson (2007) Ethical dilemmas redux. Interactions.
Volume 14, Issue 4 (July + August 2007). Pages: 50 – 51.
(Available from the ACM Digital Library)

Wendy E. Mackay (1995) Ethics, lies and videotape…
Proceedings of CHI’95: Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems. Pages: 138 – 145.
(Available from the ACM Digital Library)

Toni Robertson (2006) Ethical issues in interaction design. Ethics
and Information Technology.
Volume 8 , Issue 2 (June 2006), Pages: 49 – 59
( from http://www.springerlink.com/ or http://research.it.uts.edu.au/
idwop/downloads/RobertsonEthics&IT.pdf)

PDE: 18th Jan ‘08

Today, we started as usual with a little bit of informal discussions at beginning of the session, after which we moved on to the issue of the day, which are presentations on individual draft projects. David started with his Lead users’ idea, and then Halil came up with the Augmented Reality Paradigm, Dikshit showed us his Augmented Reality from the Architectural perspective, Finally Dean discussed about a product like the GPS navigational systems free for kids entering the zoo, though it is an existing product, he talked about additional features to the hand-held systems.