School has been hassling me for my attention and so far it is winning. The drastic contrast between working at my co-op just 2 months ago compared to where I am today with school is insane. While working in the “corporate” world afforded me routine schedules, meeting interesting people, and not having to worry about any work after 6PM was nice, so is having to learn something completely interesting and engaging everyday and pushing my levels of creativity until my mind collapses during class.

sign

More after the jump

Anyways, my projects have been interesting none the less. In my Industrial Design Studio class (ART 317), we are working with understanding the implications of designing robots and the challeneges they possess. I’ve taken the road of nanotechnology that doesn’t really have too much phsyical design per say, but the interactions are pretty radical. How do you engage with something that you can’t see with the naked eye? So far I’ve come up with some sketches about different ways the bot could conceivably look and operate. Now it’s time to work on a proposal document since Industrial Design isn’t a huge factor in nano robotic production. Some of the ideas are borrowed from other research that exists by Robert A. Freitas Jr’s work on nanomedicine. I’ll share more insights about the physical, emotional and psychological interactions on microscopic and embedded devices later.

Illustrator rendering of one idea…

My Human-Computer Interaction’s (T C 319) team just finished doing some ethnographic studies on students and classroom participation in class and online. We uncovered some interesting trends and comments about behavioral patterns and motivations. Readings by Jonathan Grudin and A.J. Brush from Microsoft Research have also been extremely helpful. The readings discussed the potentials of anchored discussions, document annotations and multimedia usage for asynchronous distance learning. Our project’s initial goal was to suppliment live classroom lectures with a collaborative, video annotation interface of recorded presentations. However, I have a feeling that the scope of our project is going to focus more on group activities such as studying for tests and preparing for papers. This stems from the observations that most group activities (think CSCW) happen when extreme necessity occurs. Who knows, ideas need to be fleshed out in our next meeting this Thursday.

Finally in my Computer Supported Coordinated Work (INFO 447) class, I’m working on a, wait for it… project, on access control mechanisms related to the television in home environments. Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) and TiVos introduce an interesting array of interactions and behavioral shifts in television watching that we are trying to investigate. Some research has been recently put out in past conferences, and we are looking to these exploratory ethnographic studies to propose storyboards and clickable user interfaces address access control concerns. If time permits, we may look more into routines and information sharing.

Movie Trailer

Now that the nerd talk is over, I’d like to point out that the trailer for Ocean’s 13 is out! Even though Ocean’s 12 was a little lack luster, I still love them.

Design News

This is also an interesting article on Cnet News.com about Human Factors and it’s increasing impact on businesses today.

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When user’s have too much control, it could be a bad thing. Some general insights about how to design a progressive learning curve and empower the user. Kathy Sierra rocks. Creating Passionate Users rocks even harder. My favorite part:

“canyon of pain”

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Barack Obama has gone Web2.0! He even has ways to connect to him through Facebook, YouTube, blogs and more. Interesting how political campaigning has progressed.

What The Duck

One Last Note

DRM should die, RFID is scary and long live Free Culture!

We develop decision-centered solutions for our clients by improving interactions between technology and people, among team members, and between decision makers and their environments. Our goal is to enhance the performance of those confronted with judgments and decisions in situations marked by high stakes, time pressure, ambiguous or conflicting information, and rapidly changing situations.

Background
Enthnography and anthropology are becoming a growing influence on design principles as well as studies in psychology and sociology. The idea of user-center design is such a buzzword that breeds a new form of designers. More over, newer emerging design concepts and frameworks are growing popularity such as ecological interface design and cognitive work analysis. With all these design and engineering techniques, a revolution is admist in the world of design.

Cognitive Engineering combines these interdisciplinary perspectives to advance our understanding of how highly technological worlds make new claims on human ingenuity and to lead to practical advancecs that aument human decision making from the board room tot he operating room

-C/S/E/L Website

Among these new frameworks is my interest in cognition and human interactions. Last year, I read Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell which was an interesting non-fiction on sub-conscious behaviors. He made a reference about intution from Gary Klein’s, The Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. Originally, I wanted to read Klein’s book to help me be a better decision maker. Instead, it helped me learn about human interaction and thought processes. This was incredibly interesting and I wanted to learn more. My elective course work turned to human interactions and congitive work analysis. Last quarter I took a class with Raya Fidel, in a graduate program (LIS 515) on Ecology in Information Systems. Now I am taking a three course series in the Industrial Design program in the Art School studying Interaction Design, Interface Design and ending the series with an Open Project Design course. Now I need to find jobs that want designers of my breed.

After reading the article, I found myself doing the same the first time. I would read exactly as the pattern described. This is absolutely true in all cases and reveals a lot of how we interpret our world. We make assertions about the content and move forward subconsciously browsing for information that satisfy our interests.

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