Valentine's Day Recommendations

This entry re-establishes a tradition on my blog suggesting technical books and novels for your significant other on Valentine's Day.  What better way to show you care than providing someone with a riveting book on Computer Science or Software Engineeirng!

My first recommendation is an edited compilation from Diomidis Spinellis and Georgios Gousios (Eds.), Beautiful Architecture.  This book provides some great chapters on software architecture and will be part of my software architecture and design course in the fall.  Diomidis is no stranger to my Valentine's list.  Year's ago I recommended, Code Reading, a book on reading code and it too would make a great gift.  Moving onto HCI, for years I have been pressing for including an anthropological approach to user experience work.  I gained this appreciation through a book by Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O'Day, Information Ecologies, and am using a new book by Bonnie Nardi in my HCI course at Penn, My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft.  Night Elf Priest is a great companion to these cold winter nights with your significant other in either real or virtual worlds. My final recommendations for technical books that would make great Valentine's Day presents are: HTML5: Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim and, in case your significant other loves to learn a new software language (and who doesn't!), Getting Started with Processing by Casey Reas and Ben Fry.  If your significant other also likes to build things, you can supplement the last book with an arduino kit.

My science fiction recommendations this year start with some classics I am rereading.  The first is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, an excellent read even the nth time around, a gift that will keep giving.  Note that I provided a link to a used book store, alibris, which I frequently use for older technical books.  A great service and a hedge with a less expensive gift, in case you think your romance will not survive another year!  I also am in the midst of rereading the Dune books by Frank Herbert.  The two of you will gain a new appreciation for a glass of water.  Some more modern recommendations are Richard K. Morgan's, TH1RTE3N, Morgan's books will certainly encourage togetherness since they are great scifi thrillers with a new concept almost every page.  Another mind blowing idea a page flip author is Charlie Stross' Glass House, a bit of gender bending and a truly fascinating read.  Stross's books are always mind blowing.  I once communicated with Charlie and he actually gave me a manuscript version of Halting State (a great book) but alas when I got swamped and did not return any comments, he never responded to any further emails.  My loss, but don't make it yours, highly recommended.  Other authors I will cover in future posts are China Mieville, John Scalzi - Old Man's War is a modern classic as is Stross' Accelerando, all fantastic reads for your valentine.  Last I could not close the science fiction section without mentioning a novel that is hard to classify but excellent to read William Gibson's, Zero History.  Actually it is best to read the earlier novels in the triology before you gift this one, Pattern Recognition and Spook Country.  Definitely the triology would make a special Valentine's gift.  Gibson is also an avid tweeter, if you are interested follow GreatDismal on twitter. 

Phew!  Finally if you really want to make Monday special, cook for your valentine.  If you are at a loss for what to prepare, I recommend a good marinara sauce (gravy in new jersey) with pasta from Marcella Hazan's book, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.  A no knead bread with a great crust would complement this menu and one of the best is from Jeff Potter's, Cooking for Geeks.

Later!

HCI course on web

No crazy title for this entry,since it is a shameless bit of self promotion! If you are interested, I am conducting a web based HCI course on the web at Stevens, CS 545WS. This course will be using a new text, Press On, in addition to texts by Stone and Maeda.

My new goal is a blog entry a week, but you've heard that before! Later!

TRAINing

One of my aspirations is to apply the same sort of creativity that goes into the look, feel and operation of computer games to business applications.  Some of the benefits of doing this are presenting information in a more efficient manner (3D and pictures provides the potential of presenting more information), minimizing training and making it more enjoyable.

This weekend an article in the New York Times Art and Entertainment section reviewed the game, Dead Space: Extraction, for the Nintendo Wii. Note - warning mature themes! What makes this game somewhat unique is that it is a "rail" game.  In rail games the game moves you, just as if you were in some invisible rail car, and your tasks are shooting and gathering objects.  This lack of concern for motion has its price - once you have passed something you can't go back, it is inherently a serial presentation.

When I read this I thought that perhaps we might be able to use this approach for work flow, especially work flow that builds on previous steps.  Although we might not have control of speed we may have the ability to slow or momentarily pause (an emergency "brake") the progression.  Work flow then becomes a natural progression rather than an annoying stream of menus and programs.  I realize this is analogous to frames and scripts from the AI literature, but perhaps we could push the rails analogy and actually have us moving by the steps, adding information as we cruise by.  A perspective button could provide a perspective on what is left in the path.

So what do you think, are their business applications that would benefit by placing users on "rails" and guiding through the workflow?  I would be interested in your thoughts on this and also whether rail games are compelling as a game genera - I like them because as I get older it is one less thing to do.  Later!

WORD!

Established products present additional challenges to User Experience Design. The central issue is how do we improve it without changing it.  There is impedance to change since users have "over learned"  the interface and change results in errors and a fairly significant re-learning process, usually more protracted than a new user would experience.  Microsoft designers have in the past few years done exactly that, changed Microsoft's office interface as described in this article.  This was a bold decision and has not been without its critics - see these comments on Amazon's Microsoft Office site.

Eric Lorenz discusses these issues in this entry from his log book.  He also discusses the quest for simplicity that may have motivated the changes, this was after we had discussed Maeda's, Laws of Simplicity, in the class.  I have mentioned Maeda's book in several posts and it is highly recommended.  Here's Eric's post:

During our lecture on 6/1/09, we covered Maeda’s “Laws of Simplicity”.  These Laws, and some of our other readings dealing with simplicity and complexity, have sparked some thoughts about two particular products on the market today that most of us come in contact with daily: Microsoft Office and the automobile. 

I brought up Microsoft Office during the lecture.  I was commenting on how the menu structure of the “new” 2007 version is considerably altered compared to the earlier versions, which had all been fairly consistent in design.  In my mind, this is a perfect example of the struggle between Consistency and organization.  The “what goes with what?” question has been answered well by Microsoft in the new version.  However, upon first inspection, the new version seems quite counter–intuitive and harder to navigate to existing users.  On an objective level, the new software is better organized and therefore offers improvement over the previous versions.  Because of its revamped organization, it is actually simpler: new users would probably find the 2007 version more intuitive, as they are not influenced by where the commands used to be located.  The menus are functionally consistent, if not version consistent.  I guess simplicity is in the eye of the beholder to some extent: Better organization may be friendlier for new users but the change of menus may actually seem to make the system more complex to confounded existing users. 

In this way, the gains in simplicity for new users are balanced with the learning and time difficulties for existing users.  (I wonder how Microsoft decides which group is more important?)  After all, most of the workforce does not receive formal training for a new version of MS Office.  Therefore we are forced to dive right in, which we know most likely costs extra time (and money) in the long run.  Along the same line, time penalties also result in user (and possibly their superiors’) frustration. 

In the end, I think Microsoft balanced its interests well because I believe they have done the right thing by improving the product first and foremost.  However, although the learning curve is probably not considered exceptionally steep for users’ of previous versions of the Microsoft Office suite, the impact is considerable because of the broadness of its effect as an organization’s entire workforce absorbs the time to adjust; not an insignificant event for something considered “productivity software.”

Personally, even though I was used to the old version and had been using this product for years, since I have become familiar with the new version I do prefer it.  I tend to be a logical person and like to have everything in its place, especially if it is a functionally organized place.  I was also well aware of the inconsistencies in the old version.  Even though the new version of Office is much different visually, I can appreciate the simpler organization because I see the difference between it and the (in my opinion) more complex old version. 

So what do you think, was MIcrosoft correct in its interface changes for the Office Suite?  Let us know what you think.  It will also be a great question to revisit.  Later.

FLUidity

The last quarter of 2009 and the first half of 2010 is going to be interesting for software projects.  The knowledgeable lead tech person should prepare for sporadic absences caused by the H1N1 virus.  A great place to follow the spread of the contagion is the flu tracker site in Pittsburgh.   Universities are feeling the effect of the H1N1 virus and are doing all they can to make preparations.

My advice would be to make sure you have flexibility and fluidity in your assignments, insuring that all critical areas of code have a main developer and a "buddy" (Brooks' co-pilot) that is very familiar with the code.  Perhaps this is the time to begin pair programming.

This also is the time to establish a remote work program so that folks feeling ill are not tempted to come to work.  It would be worthwhile to make it clear that folks feeling ill should stay home.  It also may be a great time to experiment with Second Life as a venue for remote meetings.

Please add any other suggestions you would like to share on preparing for and coping with this pandemic.  Later!

Class Tested

Last Friday was the last HCI class for 2009 at Penn.  The last class is the time for class teams to demonstrate their HCI projects.  There were three this year:  ParkMe - an iPhone application to show available parking spots in an area, complete with such arcane details as traffic regulations; meMote - a Wii-mote based tv controller that had content based selection and accommodated the elderly and SendMe - a proprietary application that a student did n conjunction with his day job.  All three were superb, but ParkMe won the great of the 8's contest.  The class is EMTM 608 so hence the awards name.

I used a new book this year, Bill  Moggridge's Designing Interactions, ISBN: 0-262-13474-8.  It provided a perspective on design that nicely complemented the other texts in the course: Don Norman's Design of Everyday things, ISBN: 465067107, a classic that should be read repeatedly; John Maeda's The Laws of Simplicity, ISBN: 0262134721, a book that really like, great for a cross country plane trip and covered in an earlier post and User Interface Design and Evaluation, ISBN: 0120884364 by Stone, Jarrett, Woodroffe and Minocha, an excellent, practical textbook on doing HCI.  These books, complimented by Ben Schneiderman's, et.al., classic and encyclopedic, Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective HCI, ISBN: 0321537351 form a basis for an HCI library.

If you would like to explore my HCI lectures, they will be available for a few more weeks at my homepage.  I would appreciate any additional recommendations of books to add to an HCI library, I will suggest a few more in the coming months, but always looking for pointers.  Later!

YouTube not for Everyone

I am starting my HCI course at Penn and coincidentally some of my last lectures in my Stevens courses deal with HCI issues.  One of my students in my Stevens Software Engineering course, Todd Bernstein, sent me this perceptive email that I thought I would share with you concerning YouTube and other on line video sites.

Does the 1998 amendment to Rehabilitation act extend to online videos? I am surprised that captions are not available on the many videos posted on the web. At the very least, I think the big networks sites should have them. I know many elders would benefit from this as well as the hearing impaired population. With the explosion in video on the web, I think it would make sense to have a inclusive reach to the audience and include language translations as well but that may be out of the scope of the Rehabilitation act.

Since I am in the midst of tests and papers I have not had a chance to investigate it but my bet is it does not since the Law pre-dates the site.  As Todd points out, this limits the population that can view the site and given the role these on line video sites played in the election, it makes accessibility difficult to a significant part of the electorate.  Of course this would be an expensive process, but it could also be a differentiator and a subtle way to advertise (close captioning provided by ...).  I would like to collect opinions on this.

By the way, if you would like to follow my lectures at Penn, you can download them at my home page here.

Hopefully since I am correcting a ton of logbooks and have some free time between semesters, the posts should increase again.   Later!