Timing Is Everything? The Effects of Timing and Placement of Online Privacy Indicators

This article was designed to study Internet privacy concerns for people buying items or even surfing different websites. The study was geared towards discovering if internet users were more likely to visit sites and purchase items from them when privacy indicators are made more prevalent and present at certain times. This study goes into a new P3P system sort of like the P2P networks that some are already familiar with. When a user searches for something the site returns results with red or green birds to determine the privacy of each site. The the red birds indicate that a site has conflicts with the users privacy concerns i.e. information gathering or spam sites, where as the green birds indicate that a site conforms with the users privacy concerns. This is similar to if a user has an anti-virus platform that restricts a user from opening phishing sites or even rejecting and blocking malicious sites/cookies that could cause harm or lead to private user data being taken.

I believe this sort of technology to be superflous in the fact that we already have programs that can block said sites and other such malicious materials. I however do like the fact that this information is integrated right into the search engine so a user does not have to attempt to go to a site first before they are rejected by there current malicious code blocking programs.


This article written by: Serge Egelman, Janice Tsai, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Alessandro Acquisti

Simulated Augmented Reality Windshield Display as a Cognitive Mapping Aid for Elder Driver Navigation

It was impossible to get a picture so some imagination is required. The authors of this paper have designed an augmented virtual representation for older drivers who have problems with spatial cognition. This means they are unable to judge distances and process other information that is crucial while driving. They have also added a navigation system that is displayed on the windshield in order to decrease information overload as well as keep the drivers eyes on the road. This product offers elder drivers confidence in driving so that they can still drive to the store or attend social events. They use a combination of cameras, gps and inertial sensors to make the output video correspond with actual road travel as if it was not there. They also can show cars in low visibility environments to help drivers to not hit others. Since the directions from the navigation system are superimposed over the screen a driver can easily see where to go and not have to squint at a small screen because it is enlarged on the windshield. This system also switches between a birds eye view like most nagigation systems and a real time view posted directly in front of a driver. However this system is hard to test on actual roads with drivers due to safety hazards.

This would be a great product because my grandmother often complains that is hard to see the road and since she lives out in the country there is a lot of wild life and you know how that goes. Some draw backs would be if you lose gps tracking under a bridge or a sudden power failure resulting in the driver freaking out and crashing.




This article by: SeungJun Kim and Anind K. Dey

Team Analytics: Understanding Teams in the Global Workplace

This article focuses on the problem of searching for employees and organising them into groups to better facilitate communication and makes the search process faster. This program offers several different grouping techniques such as:

• Picture gallery: Displays all the employees at the top of the screen and gives their name upon mouse scroll over. This increases the effectiveness of selecting a person faster because of the visual feedback of a face can be stronger than seeing a name.
• Organisation chart: This is a quick way of describing how the different employees fit together as a group by using a flow chart. This makes searching easier as all the members are on one screen instead of having to look up each person to see how they fit in the organisation. The nodes are also color coded to determine the members role in a group i.e. manager.
  
• Attribute pie chart: Used to quickly determine the attribute distribution of a large group such as engineers or managers.
• Timezone pain chart: This is used to organize meetings with people who live in different timezones so that employees are not inconvenienced.
  
• Bizcard Section: Simply this section provides job titles and contact info for each employee.

I believe this is a great application to easily find and separate people into different groups. This seems to be like the new Facebook for the business world and will become very useful.

This article by: Jan H. Pieper, Julia Grace, Stephen Dill

Magic Cards: A Paper Tag Interface for Implicit Robot Control

This article is about interacting with robots in an easier way and using them to do simple tasks to better the users life.

These new types of robots can be controlled implicitly instead of explicitly. The difference is instead of interacting directly with the robot and telling it what to do, the robots finds these cards that are placed around the house and the robot will do the assigned job. There are three different reasons why the programmers of these robots decided to create the cards as input. The first reason is they wanted to create an indirect robot communication with the robots and they decided the best way would to create tasks for the robots to complete. The second reason is that housework tasks do not really change much such as vacuuming is done the same way everytime so the robots can do these monotonous jobs that most people hate doing. The third reason is being able to assign the robot tasks while you are out is much better than having to constantly monitor like it's some sort of child, instead it is more like a live in maid that you never have to pay. From the picture above there seems to be one robot dedicated to picking up and reading the cards then delegating tasks to the other robots. This type of delegation adds expandibility so you could have multiple vacuum robots so the job is finished much quicker. Of course there are also the cards depicted above that has the type of task that the robots are to complete.

I believe this is a great invention because i am a college student and sometimes i never have anytime to myself as well as time to clean. To have a robot that would be like my own personal maid that i know wont steal m stuff or judge me for the things in my room sounds great!






















This article by: Shengdong Zhao1,3, Koichi Nakamura1,2, Kentaro Ishii1, Takeo Igarashi1,2

The design of Everyday Things

The Design of Everyday Things By Donald Norman

This is an interesting book that deals with the constant battle between users and designers of products. There seems to be a distinct difference between and designers. Designers are concerned with adding as many features as possible but they sometimes forget that not all users are technically inclined. On the other hand a user just wants products that work intuitively and correctly.

There are several different themes to consider when designing a product that are sometimes overlooked or not figured into a products complexity.

• Conceptual Model - This is basically a model of how a product is supposed to perform. This conceptual model can be given to a user or created by a user from past experiences. For example i have seen and used a pencil before so if i encounter another pencil i can use the mental model i have from previous experiences to know how to use the new pencil. Also if i walk up to a door and i see a sign that says push i know that i must push to open the door from the conceptual model printed on the door.
  
• Affordances - Which is the ability of a product to allow a user to perform an action. For example a chair is for sitting but it can't be used to type a paper.
• Constraints - This genre has to do with the circumstances that a product cannot be used. There are several different types of constarints.

1. Cultural - Different cultures have dealt with different items so not every culture can be compatible with every product. For example my grandmother can barely use a computer, that's not because she is a dumb person, it's because in her culture they did not have computers thus no conceptual model to figure out how to use one.
2. Logical - This is a very relative term because something that is logical to me may not be for someone else. Some products are so complex or misleading that it is sometimes hard for a user to determine what they should do next in order to achieve a desired result.
3. Physical - Not all items can perform the way they are intend in every environment. For example you can't use a computer underwater because it would malfunction.
4. Semantic - Some products can be so highly technical that someone without explicit knowledge may not be able to use the product.

• Mappings - This helps to increase a products usefulness through intuition. For example on a stove the knobs are in a line and not setup the in a square formation like the burners. Therefore a user must check the little pictures to see if they turned on the correct burner or not instead of looking at a spatial representation and choosing the correct burner intuitively.
• Feedback - This is a big problem with some of the products out today. Feedback is the ability of a product to inform a user on how they are interacting with the product. For example moving a mouse across the screen in easy because the cursor gives the user visual feedback of where the mouse is located in a virtual plane. What if the cursor disapeared? then how would a user know what they are clicking?
• Visibility - This helps to further increase a products intuitiveness by giving visual signals of a products use. If a door says push you wouldn't pull because the door wouldn't open.
• Slips - Not every product works correctly all the time. Sometimes they malfunction and the user should not be so quick to blame themselves because sometimes stuff goes wrong for no apparent reason.
• Causality - actions beget actions. This is a realtionship between two events or where the second is ultimately cause by the first.

This was a very interesting book to see how some people interact with everyday items. As a technically inclined person i don't usually have problems with technical things. I do admit however that some products are just difficult to use or hard to use and must be learned because they are not intuitive what so ever.

Abracadabra: Wireless, High-Precision, and Unpowered Finger Input for Very Small Mobile Devices - summary

This article is mainly about how we will interface with touch screens as they become smaller. This particular unit shown offers a screen and behind the screen is a magnetic sensor that is used to essentially track the magnet attached to a users finger. There are several ways to control the screen via the magnet. The first control is a click which is done by starting with the magnet in front of the screen and slowly dropping below the screen's horizon. As the magnet drops below the screens horizon the sensors will pick up a polar shift from north to south of the magnet thus initiating a click. the second type of control is the scrolling capability. the sensor is able to detect when the magnet moves across the screen activating the scrolling mechanism programmed into the screen.


This would be useful for current touch screens to remedy the "fat finger" problem, however a screen this small as depicted would be hard to read and would not be popular. Also vision would be impaired since you need to pass your finger in front of a small screen instead of a pin point of a stylus.


Article written by: Chris Harrison, Scott E. Hudson Human-Computer Interaction Institute Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213 {chris.harrison, scott.hudson}@cs.cmu.edu

Ripples: Utilizing Per-Contact Visualizations to Improve User Interaction with Touch Displays - summary

This article is about trying to fix the ambiguity problem of touch screens. When a user touches the screen he or she receives visual feedback of where they touched. Receiving visual feedback helps a user with accuracy when using a touch screen. This technology will also increase a users confidence in touch screen devices because they get a visual of how their fingers influence the screen. This type of application adds a sort of invisible map pointer allowing a user to further increase precision when manipulating the touch screen.


I believe this is a great idea, i have an iphone and several times i have clicked something on the edge of the screen and nothing happens. I believe this application would help to determine if the phone is just slow, misaligned or im just not clicking the right place.

Article by: Daniel Wigdor1, Sarah Williams2, Michael Cronin2, Robert Levy1, Katie White2, Maxim Mazeev1, Hrvoje Benko3 Microsoft Surface1 | Microsoft Corp.2 | Microsoft Research3 One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA, 98052 { dwigdor | sarahwil | micron | rlevy | katwhite | maximm | benko } @microsoft.com

Integrated Videos and Maps for Driving Directions - Summary

This article is about increasing the effectiveness of GPS navigation. By using streaming video of the path you are taking the creator ha shown that the effectiveness is increased. By showing the video familiarity of the area is increased making a driver more comfortable. The creator also syncs the speed of the vehicle with the video so as a user stops so does the video. The videos are automatically generated and can be changed to better suit the driver. The user can change the aspect ratio and view.

This new GPS technology sounds like a great improvement. Some people are more visually oriented so this would greatly enhance the "driving to a new place" experience. When the driver is more confident about where they are going thwn they are less likely to make traffic errors.

Collabio: a game for annotating people within social networks - summary

Collabio stands for collaborative biography This article is about enhancing the current social networking tagging system; essentially turning it into a game. The purpose for making tagging into a game is to encourage users to provide accurate information about themselves and their friends. The game gives out points to users who can correctly guess the tag of one of their friends. Users get an extra point if they guess a tag already guessed by another user. Users can manage tags created for them and by them this feature helps to improve accuracy as a user can untag items that are not correct. The game allows for the expansion of its user base and retains the current users. For every one user tagging an other user, they received 11 tags in return. Basically the game is engineered to gather as much data of individuals as possible.




I believe this type of game is deceptive because it offers a point system to trick a user into giving out semi personal information. This gathered information could be used to hack into users accounts. For example on some bank websites a user can recover their password by typing in a correct answer to a security question. Some questions include where you went to school or the name of your pet. Therefore a hacker just needs to login and view the tags and can easily determine where you went to school and access your account. This just seems like a new method of phishing and once the information hits the internet it can never be removed.

Article by:
Michael Bernstein1, Desney Tan2, Greg Smith2, Mary Czerwinski2, Eric Horvitz2
1 MIT CSAIL
32 Vassar Street, Cambridge MA 02139
msbernst@mit.edu
2 Microsoft Research
One Microsoft Way, Redmond WA 98052
{desney, gregsmi, marycz, horvitz}@microsoft.com