Paper Reading # 20

Comments
Comment1
Comment2

Reference
Lowering the barriers to website testing with CoTester
Jalal Mahmud, Tessa Lau
IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary
In this paper, Mahmud and Lau introduce a system called CoTester which primary goal is to decrease the difficulty of web applications testing. The authors express that the current tools for web testing require programming knowledge and maintenance which tends to be time-consuming. Their system CoTester is built on CoScripter platfrom and its main goal is web applications testing. CoScripter is a scripting language which supports assertions and does not require advanced programming skills to use. CoTester uses subroutines within a testing unit to improve test management and also tries to provide the tester a visual structure of the changes being made. With the use of these subroutines a change can be automatically made to similar instances of a certain process, for example changing the log in process of an application. In order to make testing easier, this system relies on a machine algorithm that identifies subroutines in testing scripts. Mahmud and Lau claim that their algorithm is capable of recognizing subroutines with 91% accuracy in a subset of seven subroutines. The recordings in testing scripts are recorded by actions in a web application. The recording can include objects present or not present, links, presence of text, and buttons clicked.

Figure 3 from paper

Discussion
The last two papers I read have dealt with website research. I found this paper to be extremely boring and although there are some interesting aspect such as the script subroutines, I do not agree with the author's ideas. First of all is someone is going to develop website applications, I would expect that person to have an advanced knowledge of computer programming. This system is trying to implement a scripting programming language that can be used by people who do not necessarily have programming knowledge. CoTester is trying to aim towards programming by display which I do not disagree with. However I still think someone with programming skills should be the one doing this. The accuracy of their algorithm is pretty high and might be useful in another application, but the main purpose of this paper to me is irrelevant to future web technology.

Full Blog - Coming of Age in Samoa

Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa was an interesting book since I could relate to many aspects of the Samoan's lifestyle.  Mead used a translator to interact with the Samoan girls to disable the disadvantage of the language barrier. The translators also gives more freedom to the native girls to express themselves. In her book Mead describes her findings of many aspects of the Samoan life and how she was able to gather the data she has. 

At the beginning Mead explains that she travels to Samoa to study the lives of 50 adolescent girls in the different towns. Chapter one begins by analyzing adolescence and how young people start developing physical changes and rebellion against authority. In chapter two, she describes a typical day in their life and what each family member does. In chapter three, Mead starts describing the different types of responsibility each member has. An example is the older girl taking care of the newborns so the mom can carry on her other activities. She goes on to describe that relatives are always expected to help out each other. Mead describes how there is a highest hierarchical title for both men and women. Mead explains the importance of dance in Samoan culture. This activity seems to be the only one where people of all age groups and gender can participate in. In dancing the children are actually the main focus. There comes a time when people have to choose if they will continue their education to become professionals, or they don't want to continue their education and just work. 

This was a very interesting read because it kept me impressed on how many things the Samoan culture and the Mexican culture are very similar. The hierarchical roles are incredibly marked. Everything is based on how the society views certain family members. I believe it was a good ethnography book.

Ethnography Results Week # 8

This week one of my group's member made an important contribution to our ethnography project and to our final project. The idea is to get some attention away from the actual interaction in the movie theater and focus on the CHI aspect of our project. We need to take into consideration how people attending the theater are interacting with technology. In the theater lobby there is a kiosk machine where you can purchase people and cut the line from the office box. However in the time that we have been observing the movie theaters, there do not seem to be a lot of people using this self-use machine. We started wondering why people do not use this if it can provide the benefit of cutting the line when there are many people and you might be late for a movie showing. When brainstorming ideas of why this could be, we came to the conclusion that maybe people do not use the machine because it does not allow student ticket discount. So when thinking about this we taught it would be really cool to create an application that would allow you to purchase tickets, and provide you a bar code. This bar code could be shown directly to the usher in the movie theater, have the usher scan your mobile and on you go to your movie. The benefit of this would be that people can completely skip the ticket box line and while we are at it we can go green!

Book Reading # 44

Chapter 4: We Wear Rose Colored Glasses & Chapter 5: We Can Walk and Chew Gum - but Not Much Else

Summary
In chapter four, Hallinan discusses how humans tend to see and remember things in a way that makes us look better. In some sense we look through rose colored glasses to cover up some of our mistakes. In the next chapter, Hallinan discusses that humans are not good are multitasking and how this can lead to errors. He claims that we can only focus on one event at a time.
Discussion
I enjoy the fact that Hallinan describes his chapters with long descriptions and examples. The title of chapter five is funny, and I do not completely agree with his claim that humans cannot multitasking. My roommate is always telling me to not talk to him when he is doing something else because he can only focus on one event at a time. On the other hand, there are many examples of how people are talking on the phone, writing down notes, and walking perhaps. When it really matters is when we need to pay undivided attention to a certain event.

Book Reading # 43

Reference:
Things that Makes Us Smart
Donald A. Norman
Chapter 1 & Chapter 2

Summary
The first chapter talks about how technology can help us make us smarter or can also work in the opposite direction. Norman claims his main research is the development of tools that aid the mind. There are two types of artifacts that aid cognition: physical and mental. Norma goes on to describe that technology developed as an accident, and as a result of its evolution there are only a specialized group of talented people that develop it. Norman wants to stay positive that technology will be able to continue helping us, and therefore he believes people need to focus on human-centered design and not in machine-centered design. He goes on to talk about the two types of cognition: experiential and reflective cognition. The three types of learning are accretion, tuning, and restructuring.
Discussion
I really enjoy reading Norman's material. In the first chapter he seems really optimistic that people can use technology in their benefit and gives examples on how we can do that. He also wants designers to focus on human-centered technology as it is better in the long run.

Paper Reading # 19

Comments
Comment1
Comment2

Reference
WildThumb:  A Web Browser Supporting Efficient Task Management on Wide Displays
Shenwei Liu, Keishi Tajima
IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary
This paper talks about the advantages and disadvantages of current web browsers. Liu and Tajima claim that none of the current web browsers provide enough support for managing multiple windows or tabs. Since users are spending more browsing the web, tab-browsers are the predominant web browsers. According to a cited previous work, users who use larger displays tend to open more tabs or windows. The research done by Liu and Tajima is focused specifically in wide displays. The main disadvantages of current web browsers are difficulty in page recognition, inefficient scan of tabs, difficulty selecting tabs using pointing devices, and inefficient page organization. The main difficulty when working with many tabs is that as you increase the number of opened tabs, the size of the tab becomes smaller and the site titles become indistinguishable. When many tabs are opened, it takes a longer time to scan the list to find the desired tab. One of the main disadvantages when using wide displays is that most sites have unused empty side margins. The authors propose a system where this unused space will be replaced by augmented thumbnails to solve the disadvantages mentioned previously. These thumbnails will be shown in the current focused page and will show the most relevant sites visited calculated by an algorithm which infers information from the history.


Discussion
I personally do not own a wide display computer, but my co-worker does and I can say he does open many tabs at once. I always ask him how he can keep up with so many, but he seems to perform well the way he browses the web. I think the augmented thumbnails are a great idea, but I do not know how accurate they could be. If there are two pages from the same site with no image, it would be extremely hard to differentiate.

Final Project Proposal

Group Members:
Stephen Morrow
Jorge Perez
Miguel Cardenas

For our final project, we will be implementing the system that we design in project 3 (our ethnography system). The system will be a companion to patrons going to the movie theatre. It will allow them to find theatres, view show times, purchase tickets, share activity on facebook, and discuss each movie after it is over with other users. The main goal of our system will be ticket purchasing. This will allow the user to simply scan a barcode for entrance into the movie (via an electronic turnstyle) instead of waiting in line to purchase a ticket, and then wait in line again to have their ticket torn by the attendant. The motivation behind this idea is to allow the user to have a much easier method to purchase tickets electronically, as well as be able to apply student and senior discounts to the purchase. Existing electronic ticket purchase systems require users to still wait in line to pick up their ticket, as well as charge them a convenience fee. We will implement this using a mobile-friendly website to ensure cross platform compatibility, as well as allow printing of the barcode for user’s without smart phones. To verify student discount eligibility, the system will require the user to create an account and link that account to their .edu email address.