Chapter 6: The Girl in Her Community
Summary
This chapter talks about sexual experiences by the Samoan girls. It describes that the first experience typically involved a girl with an older male. In the Samoan culture, adultery is looked down upon.
Discussion
It seems from reading this chapter that Samoans do not put too much importance into marriage, and how it seems to arise from sexual experiences. I completely disagree with the way Samoans handle this aspect of life because in my culture this is totally the opposite of acceptable behavior.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Book Reading # 18
Chapter 6: The Design Challenge
Summary
This chapter talks about product design difficulties. People want to design new products and therefore forget about old ideas which could have been helpful yet they are old research. It also talks about the mistake made by programmers or designers where they forget about errors that product users will be able to pin point.
Discussion
I liked reading this chapter because it makes you think as a software designer of the stages in the process of designing a product. It makes you think about showing your project to other designers for feedback in which the user errors can be found before actually deploying the product.
Summary
This chapter talks about product design difficulties. People want to design new products and therefore forget about old ideas which could have been helpful yet they are old research. It also talks about the mistake made by programmers or designers where they forget about errors that product users will be able to pin point.
Discussion
I liked reading this chapter because it makes you think as a software designer of the stages in the process of designing a product. It makes you think about showing your project to other designers for feedback in which the user errors can be found before actually deploying the product.
Book Reading # 17
Chapter 6, 7, 9, 10, 46, 47
Summary
Chapter six talks about creative programming and programming by example. The author talks about a research paper that focuses on creativity and graphical programming. Chapter seven talks about the documentation for the Xerox Star project and how users should be able to use this without any knowledge. The next chapter talks about ubiquitous computing. Chapter ten talked about location based services and a project where people in a building were given badges with sensors that facilitated the phone operator to locate them and re route phone calls to the closest phone station. The next chapters talk about the mental model to make a system intuitive for use.
Discussion
I liked reading chapter six because graphical programming can be related to HCI in many aspects. Chapter seven is very interesting because I consider my self a very consistent person and therefore that is how I like to document things. If a user without knowledge on a specific project can read some documentation and understand it, it is very well organized documentation. Chapter ten was the chapter that I enjoyed reading the most. It would be interested to apply the same experiment in a hospital perhaps with more people in it.
Summary
Chapter six talks about creative programming and programming by example. The author talks about a research paper that focuses on creativity and graphical programming. Chapter seven talks about the documentation for the Xerox Star project and how users should be able to use this without any knowledge. The next chapter talks about ubiquitous computing. Chapter ten talked about location based services and a project where people in a building were given badges with sensors that facilitated the phone operator to locate them and re route phone calls to the closest phone station. The next chapters talk about the mental model to make a system intuitive for use.
Discussion
I liked reading chapter six because graphical programming can be related to HCI in many aspects. Chapter seven is very interesting because I consider my self a very consistent person and therefore that is how I like to document things. If a user without knowledge on a specific project can read some documentation and understand it, it is very well organized documentation. Chapter ten was the chapter that I enjoyed reading the most. It would be interested to apply the same experiment in a hospital perhaps with more people in it.
Paper Reading # 12
Comments
Comment1
Comment2
Reference
Detecting and Leveraging Finger Orientation for Interaction with Direct-Touch Surfaces
Feng Wang, Xiang Cao, Xiangshi Ren and Pourang Irani
UIST'09 October 4-7, 2009, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Summary
This paper talks about an algorithm that detects finger orientation in real-time and how this algorithm could benefit the development of applications that rely heavily in finger orientation. Users have adapted very well to multi-touch devices since it gives the user the freedom to manipulate the system without an intermediary. The authors believe knowing the finger orientation is an important piece of information. There are two types of finger touch: vertical touch (finger pointing directly downward) and oblique touch (finger touching the surface at an oblique angle. When a finger touches a surfaces it creates an elliptic shape. By examining the finger's deformation on the surface, useful information can be found such as the location of the user's palm and the direction in which the finger is pointing to. In order to test their algorithm, researchers used a tabletop surface based on FTIR technology.
Discussion
This paper was very boring in my humble opinion. I can't think of a specific application that could benefit from their research. It is interesting to read some of things they pointed out but I think the existing touch interaction is very accurate. I might be wrong but I just did not enjoy reading this paper.
Comment1
Comment2
Reference
Detecting and Leveraging Finger Orientation for Interaction with Direct-Touch Surfaces
Feng Wang, Xiang Cao, Xiangshi Ren and Pourang Irani
UIST'09 October 4-7, 2009, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Summary
This paper talks about an algorithm that detects finger orientation in real-time and how this algorithm could benefit the development of applications that rely heavily in finger orientation. Users have adapted very well to multi-touch devices since it gives the user the freedom to manipulate the system without an intermediary. The authors believe knowing the finger orientation is an important piece of information. There are two types of finger touch: vertical touch (finger pointing directly downward) and oblique touch (finger touching the surface at an oblique angle. When a finger touches a surfaces it creates an elliptic shape. By examining the finger's deformation on the surface, useful information can be found such as the location of the user's palm and the direction in which the finger is pointing to. In order to test their algorithm, researchers used a tabletop surface based on FTIR technology.
Discussion
This paper was very boring in my humble opinion. I can't think of a specific application that could benefit from their research. It is interesting to read some of things they pointed out but I think the existing touch interaction is very accurate. I might be wrong but I just did not enjoy reading this paper.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Paper Reading # 13
Comments
Comment1
Comment2
Reference
Mouse 2.0: Multi-touch Meets the Mouse
Nicolas Villar, Shahram Izadi, Dan Rosenfeld, Hrvoje Benko, John Helmes, Jonathan Westhues, Steve Hodges, Eyal Ofek, Alex Butler, Xiang Cao, Billy Chen
UIST 09 October 4-7, 2009 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Summary
This paper talks about innovative input devices that have computer mice capabilities combined with multi-touch capabilities. Even though multi-touch has been incorporated to mobile phones and tablets, desktops have yet to incorporate multi-touch input devices. The authors describe five different MT mice along with their benefits and limitations. The five prototypes are the FTIR, Orb Mouse, Cap Mouse, Side Mouse, and the Arty Mouse. The frustrated total internal inflection (FTIR) mouse is composed of an acrylic sheet, IR-Leds, optical sensors, and a camera. When fingers are pressed on the acrylic sheet an IR light is detected by the camera. The acrylic sheet is molded as a smooth arc. The optical sensor is used to located input displacement across the acrylic sheet. The Orb Mouse is composed of an IR-sensitive camera and an internal source of IR illumination. Illumination radiates away from the center of the device and is reflected back by objects. The main problem here is that the objects could be a user's hand, or a keyboard that is close by which is hard for the device to differentiate. Cap Mouse uses capacitive touch sensing similar to how keyboards work. When a user presses the mouse a change in capacitance in a specific area is determined. The benefit of this system is that it is not affected by illumination. Side Mouse detects movement in the surface in front of it instead of actual movement in the mouse. Finger movement is reflected as IR light back to the camera. The main benefit of this mouse is that the input area is not limited by the surface of the device. Arty Mouse is composed of a base where the palm of the hand rests, and two arms extend from it where the thumb and index fingers are placed.
Discussion
It seems incredible to me that even though we know that multi-touch has become the new norm of input, we have not yet implemented multi-touch mice. I do not know if we are waiting for the next generation of desktops to incorporate multi-touch mice, but we are definitely lacking on that part. Out of the five designs described in this paper I think I would like the FTIR mouse the best.
Comment1
Comment2
Reference
Mouse 2.0: Multi-touch Meets the Mouse
Nicolas Villar, Shahram Izadi, Dan Rosenfeld, Hrvoje Benko, John Helmes, Jonathan Westhues, Steve Hodges, Eyal Ofek, Alex Butler, Xiang Cao, Billy Chen
UIST 09 October 4-7, 2009 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Summary
This paper talks about innovative input devices that have computer mice capabilities combined with multi-touch capabilities. Even though multi-touch has been incorporated to mobile phones and tablets, desktops have yet to incorporate multi-touch input devices. The authors describe five different MT mice along with their benefits and limitations. The five prototypes are the FTIR, Orb Mouse, Cap Mouse, Side Mouse, and the Arty Mouse. The frustrated total internal inflection (FTIR) mouse is composed of an acrylic sheet, IR-Leds, optical sensors, and a camera. When fingers are pressed on the acrylic sheet an IR light is detected by the camera. The acrylic sheet is molded as a smooth arc. The optical sensor is used to located input displacement across the acrylic sheet. The Orb Mouse is composed of an IR-sensitive camera and an internal source of IR illumination. Illumination radiates away from the center of the device and is reflected back by objects. The main problem here is that the objects could be a user's hand, or a keyboard that is close by which is hard for the device to differentiate. Cap Mouse uses capacitive touch sensing similar to how keyboards work. When a user presses the mouse a change in capacitance in a specific area is determined. The benefit of this system is that it is not affected by illumination. Side Mouse detects movement in the surface in front of it instead of actual movement in the mouse. Finger movement is reflected as IR light back to the camera. The main benefit of this mouse is that the input area is not limited by the surface of the device. Arty Mouse is composed of a base where the palm of the hand rests, and two arms extend from it where the thumb and index fingers are placed.
Discussion
It seems incredible to me that even though we know that multi-touch has become the new norm of input, we have not yet implemented multi-touch mice. I do not know if we are waiting for the next generation of desktops to incorporate multi-touch mice, but we are definitely lacking on that part. Out of the five designs described in this paper I think I would like the FTIR mouse the best.
Paper Reading # 25
Comments
Comment1
Comment2
Reference
A code Reuse Interface for Non-Programmer Middle School Students
Paul A. Gross, Micah S. Herstand, Jordana W. Hodges, Caitlin L. Kelleher
IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China
Summary
This paper talks about a programming tool for middle school students with no programming experience to reuse code functionality. The authors believe that middle school is a very important learning stage where students usually determine if they will pursue math and science related careers in the future. It is extremely rare that schools offer courses in Computer Science in this stage of education. In order to try to awake more interest in Computer Science, they developed a programming tool that is integrated with a program called Looking Glass. The process of this tool is the following: users will find the code that corresponds to the desired functionality, users will then extract this code which will be called Actionscript, and finally users will integrate this code into a new program. The main goal is to allow middle school students to reuse snippets of code without them fully understanding how all of the code works. In order to facilitate this process, the code navigation is based on an observable output display. Look Glass is based on story telling and is designed to create animation stories. An experiment was conducted on an Exxon Mobil Summer Science Camp. At the end of the session, the students participated in a quiz where they were asked to identify the best description of code snippets. According to their results, about 98% of the participants were able to capture and reuse Actionscripts.
Discussion
How awesome would it have been if I had been exposed to something similar to this? My first experience with computer programming was in my second semester in college. I truly believe that programs like this could really attract more people to Computer Engineering/Science. It is a very interesting approach and there should be more of these programs trying to teach middle school students about future opportunities. Even though this experiment was triggering students to become more familiar with Computer Science, it could work with any other subjects as well.
Comment1
Comment2
Reference
A code Reuse Interface for Non-Programmer Middle School Students
Paul A. Gross, Micah S. Herstand, Jordana W. Hodges, Caitlin L. Kelleher
IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China
Summary
This paper talks about a programming tool for middle school students with no programming experience to reuse code functionality. The authors believe that middle school is a very important learning stage where students usually determine if they will pursue math and science related careers in the future. It is extremely rare that schools offer courses in Computer Science in this stage of education. In order to try to awake more interest in Computer Science, they developed a programming tool that is integrated with a program called Looking Glass. The process of this tool is the following: users will find the code that corresponds to the desired functionality, users will then extract this code which will be called Actionscript, and finally users will integrate this code into a new program. The main goal is to allow middle school students to reuse snippets of code without them fully understanding how all of the code works. In order to facilitate this process, the code navigation is based on an observable output display. Look Glass is based on story telling and is designed to create animation stories. An experiment was conducted on an Exxon Mobil Summer Science Camp. At the end of the session, the students participated in a quiz where they were asked to identify the best description of code snippets. According to their results, about 98% of the participants were able to capture and reuse Actionscripts.
Discussion
How awesome would it have been if I had been exposed to something similar to this? My first experience with computer programming was in my second semester in college. I truly believe that programs like this could really attract more people to Computer Engineering/Science. It is a very interesting approach and there should be more of these programs trying to teach middle school students about future opportunities. Even though this experiment was triggering students to become more familiar with Computer Science, it could work with any other subjects as well.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Paper Reading # 24
Comments
Comment1
Comment2
Reference
Outline Wizard: Presentation Composition and Search
Lawrence Bergman, Jie Lu, Ravi Konuru, Julie MacNaught, Danny Yeh
IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China
Summary
This paper talks about creating presentations from existing presentations from common program such as Microsoft PowerPoint. There are no searching tools that can return single slides displaying the content a user is searching for. The authors propose a system called Outline Wizard which is an outline-based composition and search program. The main goal of Outline Wizard is to search from hierarchical structures to facilitate creating presentations and adding slides from existing presentation. Another important aspect of their system to achieve search that can find results that are relevant to a specific topic of information. Currently when you search for a specific keyword the user will find a single slide but other slides with relevant information on that keyword will not be retrieved in the search. Trying to find relevant information can be tedious and time consuming, so Outline Wizard stressed the importance of adding the capability of constructing presentation with a hierarchical structure.
Discussion
This paper introduces a very cool idea, I consider this paper one of those that can actually beneficial to users. I am not too familiar with PowerPoint's searching capabilities but I would think that idea would have been introduced earlier. Another thing that I noticed is that in the screen shots, they seem to have an older version of PowerPoint which would probably explain these proposed search capabilities were not present in PowerPoint yet.
Comment1
Comment2
Reference
Outline Wizard: Presentation Composition and Search
Lawrence Bergman, Jie Lu, Ravi Konuru, Julie MacNaught, Danny Yeh
IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China
Summary
This paper talks about creating presentations from existing presentations from common program such as Microsoft PowerPoint. There are no searching tools that can return single slides displaying the content a user is searching for. The authors propose a system called Outline Wizard which is an outline-based composition and search program. The main goal of Outline Wizard is to search from hierarchical structures to facilitate creating presentations and adding slides from existing presentation. Another important aspect of their system to achieve search that can find results that are relevant to a specific topic of information. Currently when you search for a specific keyword the user will find a single slide but other slides with relevant information on that keyword will not be retrieved in the search. Trying to find relevant information can be tedious and time consuming, so Outline Wizard stressed the importance of adding the capability of constructing presentation with a hierarchical structure.
Discussion
This paper introduces a very cool idea, I consider this paper one of those that can actually beneficial to users. I am not too familiar with PowerPoint's searching capabilities but I would think that idea would have been introduced earlier. Another thing that I noticed is that in the screen shots, they seem to have an older version of PowerPoint which would probably explain these proposed search capabilities were not present in PowerPoint yet.
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