Sunday, May 3, 2009
Fitt's Law
Fitt's Law makes a lot of sense from a common sense standpoint. Bigger closer stuff is easier to get to. Though it doesn't account for some stuff like the person getting used to something being a certain location, it is still a good equation for measuring ease of use and for factoring in when designing things. The paper itself was BORING! But I did enjoy brian's lecture about fitt's law. It's interesting to see things so well quantified in an equation.
Emotional Design
I was right about the fact that all Don Norman books are the same. Sure he's changing his entire perspective on everything about design, but this book reeks of Norman from cover to cover. His repeated examples and restating of everything twice makes sure that you don't forget what you're reading or who wrote it. This book was obviously liked more by the class and it is better than the previous 2. Though I think the book may just look good in comparison to the other 2 we were required to read. In all fairness Norman does comment on some interesting ideas about designing with emotion in mind rather than his previous obsession with behavioral design. It is just hard to take the man seriously when he pulls such a 180 from book to book even though he proclaims everything he states as pure undeniable fact. I believe my annoyance with the man clouds my judgment of his books, so it might be a good idea to go back and read this one later whenever I've forgotten about how much I can't stand reading this guy's literature.
The Man who shocked the world
This book accurately depicted the entire life of Stanley Milgram. It's hard to find fault with a book for doing exactly what it set out to do, but very little in this book interested me in the least. His experiments were fun to read about and provided a good starting point for thinking about things. But his bouncing around colleges and fascination with films is knowledge that only takes up what little room I have in my head. In my opinion no mortal man's entire life is worth knowing about. Things they do, yes. Significant events, perhaps. But the entire drawn out story, no. An abstract of this book could be a very positive reading experience, but the book is too dry for me to enjoy.
The design of future things
Summary
The Design of Everyday Things discussed objects that we use in our day to day lives such as telephones and doors. The author discussed the flaws in many of these objects in addition to giving positive examples that showed good design. In his examples, the author pointed out how each object could be improved or how it was well thought out and made the use of it simpler. The overall design quality desired by the author was a simple yet effective device.
Discussion
This book explored some interesting views on things in everyday life. It did a good job of mixing in humor (showing comical examples of bad design) to keep the audience engaged. The author also mixed in some personal examples which made the reading interesting. While parts of this book entertained me, the vast majority of it was repetitive to the point of being frustrating. I feel like this book could have been trimmed in half and not lost much of its meaning or effectiveness. It felt as though I were reading a book for a child who needs things to be drilled into his head in order for him to retain any of it. While giving numerous examples improved the book, the author didn't need to explain each story immediately after when each example was making the same point. This annoyed me as I was reading and subsequently distracted me from the point the author was trying to make and actually made the book less effective.
Yes, i just copied and pasted my design of everyday things blog here. Why? because this book was pretty much the same. It was slightly less grueling because it was a little more up to date, but it still wasted much of our time talking about problems that have been solved already. The one positive thing I can say about this book is that it was at least shorter than his first, though its still about twice as long as it would take a normal person to get the same points across.
The Design of Everyday Things discussed objects that we use in our day to day lives such as telephones and doors. The author discussed the flaws in many of these objects in addition to giving positive examples that showed good design. In his examples, the author pointed out how each object could be improved or how it was well thought out and made the use of it simpler. The overall design quality desired by the author was a simple yet effective device.
Discussion
This book explored some interesting views on things in everyday life. It did a good job of mixing in humor (showing comical examples of bad design) to keep the audience engaged. The author also mixed in some personal examples which made the reading interesting. While parts of this book entertained me, the vast majority of it was repetitive to the point of being frustrating. I feel like this book could have been trimmed in half and not lost much of its meaning or effectiveness. It felt as though I were reading a book for a child who needs things to be drilled into his head in order for him to retain any of it. While giving numerous examples improved the book, the author didn't need to explain each story immediately after when each example was making the same point. This annoyed me as I was reading and subsequently distracted me from the point the author was trying to make and actually made the book less effective.
Yes, i just copied and pasted my design of everyday things blog here. Why? because this book was pretty much the same. It was slightly less grueling because it was a little more up to date, but it still wasted much of our time talking about problems that have been solved already. The one positive thing I can say about this book is that it was at least shorter than his first, though its still about twice as long as it would take a normal person to get the same points across.
UIST 2008 - Multitouch sphere
I read the UIST 2008 paper over creating a multitouch sphere. Overall it was a pretty cool project. They used a projector to project the image from below the sphere and used an infrared camera to pick up touch points. However the idea of the design itself has many flaws. You lose a lot of screen space from it being located on a part of the sphere that isn't usable (like near the bottom). You deal with heavy image distortion (addressed slightly with the photo application). You're apps have to be written specifically for the sphere. And it's fairly expensive to make. The sphere seems somewhat gimmicky and would be fun to play around on, but for most work it would be inefficient and unnecessary. This could possibly be used in a specialized situations, but for the most part it's overall just a fun and expensive toy to play pong on.
Mole People
Mole people was actually semi-interesting to me. I didn't mind this book as much as the previous 2. However I felt it didn't adequately teach me anything at all about ethnographies or how to write them. The book was though, like i said, fairly interesting. Which is expected since it's pretty much just a bunch of stories about random homeless people. If this book wasn't for school I think I could have enjoyed it more. Reading required books makes me more critical of them.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Media Equation
Media = Real Life.
I'm also going to patent my own equation. It's called the media equation equation. Here's how it goes: The Media Equation = The worst book I've ever read. I understand that the point of these blogs isn't to rant about things I don't like, but its my nature to get angry about everyday things (no pun intended on the first book we had to read...but yes...it made me angry as well). I think I wouldn't hate this book so much if it was a book. If it was a research paper it would be fine. But when I pick up a book I'm not expecting to read: "Here's what we thought would happen. Here's what we did to test it. We were right. Here's why you think we're wrong, but you're wrong...we are right." Every 15 pages for 250 gruesome pages. I'm not saying that there weren't ANY good things being said in the book or that it was a complete waste of time, but I read about 1 page every 2 minutes...I'm just a slow reader. I can read faster if I try hard enough, but I don't enjoy it at all then and I have to focus on reading quickly and it's just not any fun. So taking that in consideration, I spent 5 hectominutes (that's 500 minutes or 8 hours and 20 minutes for those of you who don't prefer the metric system). So an average of Reeves saying something remotely interesting once ever 2 hours doesn't really cut it for a book I'd want to read. I tried to mellow out on the first book blog because this is for a class, but we were told that this blog is mainly for our own records so we can remember something from this book. So this to future Cole: if you wonder what it was like to read this book here's an activity to illustrate it...turn on a football game, mute the volume, then turn around and close your eyes for 8 hours. You are allowed to turn and glance at the score every 2 hours to keep you "interested." And to all the rest of you reading this blog: I'm sorry I've wasted your time. But not that sorry.
I'm also going to patent my own equation. It's called the media equation equation. Here's how it goes: The Media Equation = The worst book I've ever read. I understand that the point of these blogs isn't to rant about things I don't like, but its my nature to get angry about everyday things (no pun intended on the first book we had to read...but yes...it made me angry as well). I think I wouldn't hate this book so much if it was a book. If it was a research paper it would be fine. But when I pick up a book I'm not expecting to read: "Here's what we thought would happen. Here's what we did to test it. We were right. Here's why you think we're wrong, but you're wrong...we are right." Every 15 pages for 250 gruesome pages. I'm not saying that there weren't ANY good things being said in the book or that it was a complete waste of time, but I read about 1 page every 2 minutes...I'm just a slow reader. I can read faster if I try hard enough, but I don't enjoy it at all then and I have to focus on reading quickly and it's just not any fun. So taking that in consideration, I spent 5 hectominutes (that's 500 minutes or 8 hours and 20 minutes for those of you who don't prefer the metric system). So an average of Reeves saying something remotely interesting once ever 2 hours doesn't really cut it for a book I'd want to read. I tried to mellow out on the first book blog because this is for a class, but we were told that this blog is mainly for our own records so we can remember something from this book. So this to future Cole: if you wonder what it was like to read this book here's an activity to illustrate it...turn on a football game, mute the volume, then turn around and close your eyes for 8 hours. You are allowed to turn and glance at the score every 2 hours to keep you "interested." And to all the rest of you reading this blog: I'm sorry I've wasted your time. But not that sorry.
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