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April 17, 2006
Testing A song on PlanetInfo
I added the macro code to my rss feed, lets see if it shows up in planet info
Long live Techno!
Posted by whazlewo at 10:46 PM | Comments (0)
Tell me if this would creep you out?
There is an act that everyone does, but no one will admit it. I think its time that people just accept it as a natural act of human curiosity. I'm sure you've all guessed that I'm referring to the act of Googlig your own name to see what comes up :-).
Any how, what came up for me has disturbed me to no end. It was an obituary of a person with the same name, from the same state, that died on my birthday! Here is the entry:
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William R. Hazlewood
August 7, 2003 – February 18, 2003
Graveside funeral services will be held on Wednesday morning, February 26, 2003, at 11:00 a.m. in Gafford Chapel Cemetery in Hopkins County, Texas, for Westside resident, William R. Hazlewood, 81.
Mr. Hazlewood was born on August 7, 1921, in Sulphur Springs, Texas, and passed away in Bakersfield on February 18, 2003. He was the owner of Hazlewood Drilling and worked as a driller for 65 years.
He was preceded in death by his mother, father, brothers and sisters and is survived by his sons and their wives, Brad and Lorelei Hazlewood of Taft and Greg and Jocelyn Hazlewood of Scottsdale, Arizona; his grandson, Bob Hazlewood of Taft; had by his granddaughters Lacey Hazlewood, Malory Robbins, Tess Robbins and Mary Hazlewood all of Taft.
The arrangements are under the direction of Erickson and Brown Funeral Home.
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What are the odds!?
Posted by whazlewo at 1:05 AM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2006
How do people figure it out?
I am working on a study that asks participants to figure out how to use a device that offers no affordances or clues as to what it actually does, and looks nothing like what it actually is. The device I am using is the Mathmos AirSwitch 1. It is a lamp, shaped like an erlenmeyer flask, and is operated via an infra-red sensor that is hidden inside. I've now conducted 5 separate sessions where I had 2 participants sit together and attempt to simply figure out what it is, and how it works.
The reason for this study is that I'm trying to understand how people figure out how to interact with devices when they have no examples to compare them with. Of course this is because in ambient displays and information devices, one of the main challenges is letting people know how to interact with devices that are designed to blend into their surroundings.
After viewing the video footage collected during the experiments, I've started work with Erik on a model which may help explain how people figure out how to use devices in general. After all, in order to understand how people could figure out ambient devices (which are designed to somewhat conceal themselves), I will need to know how they figure out devices designed to explicitly reveal their functions. For example, how does someone figure out how to operate a set of computer speakers that they have never seen before, or a new mp3 player, or a novelty cigarette-lighter?
Just from everyday observations, I believe that we store abstract notions of the devices we interact with in our heads. For example, we have a notion of "computer speaker" or of "cigarette-lighter", which is formed from all the computer speakers or cigarette-lighters we've ever seen. Also, we have abstract notions of interactions that belong to each of these abstract devices. For example, cigarette-lighter may have associations with the abstract "flick" or "push". So when someone presents us with a novel cigarette-lighter, we create a mental matrix of every cigarette-lighter we've seen, along with every interaction we've observed involving cigarette-lighters. If we are lucky, the lighter presented matches one of the combinations we came up with, in which case we can predict the new lighter's operation.
I thought of this example after noticing some cheap cigarette-lighter's for sell at a gas station. They were made to look like the expensive Zippo brand lighters, but when flipped open they revealed electric coils where the wick should be. These coils heated up and turned red when the button was pressed, which is similar to how the cigarette lighters in cars function. I already knew that the device purported to be a cigarette-lighter, and I've seen both a Zippo and a car cigarette-lighters, so it was easy to deduce a hybrid of the two. One pushes the button, waits for the coils to turn red, and then pushes the end of the cigarette to the coils as you do with the car version. Other examples I've noticed involve the hybridization of a cigarette-lighter with a digital camera, and a cigarette-ligter with a pig.
If this model is accurate, then how do we figure out devices that do not have any similarity with the set of abstract devices we already understand? This leads to the research question for this study, "How do people figure out the operation of devices when the devices are completely novel?" In the Mathmos lamp study, the most interesting part of the footage may be in the short amount of time before the participants realized that it was actually a lamp. Unfortunately, that time was very short because the first thing that several of the participants did was pick up the device and look inside at the light-bulb. Once the participants had decided that the device was a lamp, they quickly started forming their map of what its possible functions could be and how to evoke them (in this case, on/off, and brightness). However, in this case none of the participants had the necessary interactions associated with their abstract notion of "lamp" in their pool of abstract interactions. They instantly started looking for a knob, switch, or button. When none of the usual interaction mechanisms for "lamp" were found, the participants began a very erratic search to fill in the gaps. The participants blew on the lamp, tapped the lamp, and came up with interesting theories, like that the rings on their fingers were causing the lamp to turn on or off.
I guess what I have to do now is design a study to test my assumption about how we rationalize the use of novel devices. I think the method would involve providing groups with two unrelated devices, and then a third that was a hybrid of the other two. If I can show that I can provide the abstract notions necessary for figuring out the third device, then I believe that will support the model.
Posted by whazlewo at 7:34 PM | Comments (5)