Monthly Archives: October 2007

Features Unavailable, Thanks Regions Bank

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So I used to bank at Regions Bank. There aren’t a lot of good choices for banking in Bloomington, IN if you ask me. We’ve tried most of the major banks in town, and some of the local alternatives. Most of the online banking sites are really bad, and regions closed the branch that was close to us. I think we’re going to go back to Chase, at least the online banking doesn’t suck with Chase, unlike the others we have tried.

We recently got this from Regions: (I apologize in advance for making you click the image, but he full-size image broke the column layout)

regions-announcement.png

This is supposed to bring us “new benefits” and “greater convenience”

So they are coming into the 2004 by letting us choose from a list of merchants. Wow! We can access our credit card information…. ummmm again this has been around for ages. Really lame stuff. The new alert thing is decent, but Chase has been doing that for at least a couple of years, I applaud them for adding it though. Then they start taking things away. One used to be able to access register items from way back. NO LONGER. Why wouldn’t ppl want this information?

My favorite is the following

regions-new-features.png

They basically took several really useful features from online banking and said screw you! You’ll need to call us or come into a bank, or just log in more often. Why would you encourage people to come into branches or call 1-800 numbers to do simple things like transfer from one account to another or stop payment? This doesn’t make a lot of business or design design sense.

Oh the follies of letting the system dictate the functions instead of well-thought out, human-centered, sound business design.

Sad…

Shame on you regions!

My 5 min Presentation on Serious Games

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Aaron’s Current Capstone Presentation – Google Doc or on SlideShare

So I had to finally present to my colleagues last night (as referenced by Dave RoedlRoyer’s post at the Interaction Culture Blog) and got some great feedback on several fronts. One interesting thing Sam Shoulders brought up was to compare educational TV to educational games. It may be interesting to take a look at the differences between production of let’s say any ol’ cartoon, like transformers, and say Dora the Explora (or are you supposed to spell explorere properly?). That may produce some interesting items.

Essentially what Dave was saying in his post is that all games are serious, and teach people something. The difference between a “serious game” and just a game is that it was designed with the intent to teach, and that was explicitly made part of the game. Keywords: intent, explicit. All games teach, although it may not be what people think.

Some people think violent video games teach people to be violent, making it into a causal relationship. Kid A plays GTA, GTA in turn causes that kid to be violent. Perhaps we can put it in terms of influence, or that it sends the message that certain things are OK. I don’t really know, but it’s pretty clear from the millions of people who have played very violent games like say Contra, Duke Nukem, or pretty much any of the early space games (space invaders, galaga et al) who haven’t become violent (yet?!) that there is more to this question.

What’s the take home message here? Everything we make as designers embed values, judgments, prejudice… in short we embed a piece of ourselves and our culture in everything we make.

What does this mean for us? My reaction to this is, Hey Aaron, be the best man you can be! So that when you make your next game that explicitly teaches, it will make the world a better place.

Grad student Executive Committee Nominations

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I have been nominated for both the Executive Chair and the Member-at-Large positions on the executive committee for the soon-to-be-named graduate student association in the department of Informatics.

As a nominee I’ve been asked to publicly say why what I want for the organization.

Here’s the Twitter/SMS version:
We have a unique chance with the remaking of AGIS to make INFO a better place for everyone especially all the grad students, let’s grab it!

Here’s the short version:

What do I hope to achieve through my service on the executive committee?
I believe that the actions, tone, and proper organization of the graduate student association will set a precedent, and will bring a new level of transparency of information, service, and connectedness to current, past, and future students with each other, the school, and the larger communities we practice in. As a friend said, whoever is executive chair needs to really make it their “thing.” I am making it “my thing” no matter what position of service you choose to have me in.

About me:
I’m a second year MSc student in HCI/D who is applying to PhD programs, including here at IU, for next year. My main research interests are the theory & philosophy of all the following (as well as their implied design & critique methodologies in those fields):Technology, HCI, Design, Games, Serious Games. I’ve been married for a little over 5 years now to my wonderful wife Vanessa who is a mom/opera singer. We have 2 young boys, Ezra & Micah (2yrs & 3 mos). If I had any spare time I would spend it playing WoW or Wii Sports, notice the IF at the beginning of the sentence.

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Here’s the extra long stuff:

Why do I care at all?
As a first year student and someone who was returning to school after a break, I didn’t know how things worked. I didn’t understand (and still don’t completely) how an academic school/department is structured, who controls what, what the committees are, who I vitally needed to get to know and talk to in the administration and staff. All I knew was that I could ask a Linda. Now there is only one Linda and we have Rachel, and for all you new students, you should already know and love these two fine ladies. They will help you any way they can. Often though, it is very helpful to understand what else is going on. I think that our association can bring a lot more transparency to how the school works, who’s in charge of what, and who you need to talk to, including alumni, and other students who have already been down the road you are now starting on.

Why am I accepting nominations for both Ex-Chair and Member at Large?
Put very simply I am passionate about making grad students’ lives better, and having our interests represented more fairly in the school and in the IU community at large. I enjoy the democratic way of doing things, and I respect that process, but given the fact I may not win one or the other I am keeping my hat in the ring for both positions so that I am almost certainly going to be able to be involved in a very meaningful way.

The long version: I want to make some kind of lasting impact on the school for good. There is a possibility that I will not return here for my PhD, and if that is the case then I need to do that now. What I want to do the most on the executive committee is to make our organization impactful and long-lasting. There was an organization that was in place a few years ago. Our program was smaller then, and the organization was less formal and organized. Unfortunately the officers last year of the organization chose not to, probably through omission while being busy on the job hunt, plan for the continuity of the organization. This has left us with nothing. We are not registered with IU as an official organization, we have very little if any representation to the school and it’s various committees. The large growth in our grad program started with my class has led to less communication and socializing between the programs, we need to change this. We need to have well developed programs to help prepare us for our future careers. We are in a unique position in a unique school, and that means we have a slightly different set of things to deal with when we go looking for jobs and to publish our research.

What will I do if I win both positions?
If there is no runner-up for the at-large position I would probably nominate a first year student, someone who can take the feeling of participation and community and power that will come with our organization this year into a future year or years. The cohesion and power of our association depends on everyone feeling like they have a say, and that their interests and concerns are represented, I would nominate someone who I think can do those kinds of things for all of the programs in our department

Technology=Innovation? A reaction to Ted Dziuba

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Ted's picture in Wired

“…there’s no real technology there. There’s no noteworthy computer-science problem being solved. The Ajax stuff is pre-written. You just have to go to the libraries and put it all together.
When Gmail came out — and Gmail is a pretty kick-ass product — it was like, “Ha! Ajax for dynamic web apps! We can use it for everything!” So now you have companies like Zoho, for example. Their sole goal is to take every desktop app that ever existed and reimplement it in Ajax with no added features or functionality. It irritates me as an engineer that companies with no engineering merit.” (Emphasis mine)

This quote is from Ted Dziuba, and came from Wired, and I read it first in Zoho Blog (via Scoble’s Tweetstream). Ted has BS in Computation Mathematics, and perhaps that is why I fundamentally disagree on this issue, here are the three issues I have with his analysis.

#1 By “No real technology” I think that Ted means that there is no innovation.–WRONG
#2 “There’s no noteworthy computer-science problem being solved”–RIGHT (maybe), but that’s not the point!
#3 Ted is an engineer, and he’s mad because “There’s no engineering Merit” in Zoho– RIGHT, but again not the point.

#1 One could take him to mean that liteally there is no technology there, but I sincerely doubt that is what he is saying, rather that there is nothing new, no innovation. The idea of a word processor or a spreadsheet has been around for at least as long as Ted has been alive, so it’s true that part of it isn’t new. Of course the idea of sending messages to someone, in the form of letters has been around for centuries, millenia in fact, but when we suddenly got to be able to do it online it was the killer app. IM then changed things again, but it was still essentially the same concept. We applied computer science to it. We reduced something to s set of rules, modeled those rules in a computer language and, presto, our world is forever changed (Well I’m sure there is more than just computer science at work here,but for the sake of room and simplicity). Real, seamless online collaboration with word processing and other productivity applications is an innovation, one that is already starting to change the way people work. We are in the early stages, there is no doubt, but I feel comfortable saying that this kind of collaboration will change the way we do think about work.

#2 If you choose to define computer science at the logical positivist/reductionist activities of creating computer languages and modeling different rule sets to create things, then you are right. There is no big problem, they didn’t create Ajax. I’m no coder, so I don’t know, I’m guessing they may not even be pushing Ajax to it’s limits, maybe there is no new code at all, just rearranging things in novel ways to create new applications. So essentially it’s true, from a CS perpective online collaborative word processing and it’s sister apps are not a noteworthy computer science problem, and by that definition most computer applications aren’t either unless they are pushing the language into places it hasn’t been before, combining rule sets in significantly new ways, or something else like that. Again, I’m no coder, so I don’t really have any examples at hand, and if I’m wrong I’d like to hear about it. No the problem Zoho is solving is essentially a social one, a human problem, a problem tackled by interaction designers. I blogged about designing for sociality, and in fact I used productivity software as my example. Zoho is starting to solve a great HCI problem, and I applaud them for it. So yes, Ted, you’re right, but you’ve missed the point IMO.

#3 This is pretty much the same thing, but with engineering as it’s focus. I assume Ted means computer engineering, which is essentially the applied branch of CS. I was kind of sketchy between CS & CE in #2, I haven’t thought about that too much, and I frankly don’t plan to in the near future. Again Ted you’ve missed the point. There are companies that get money and success through engineering, or scientific merit. I would say originally, Google was one of these (no longer though, IMO, but they do have very good CS & CE). A good technology business, one that will be successful is a blend of several things: CS, CE, Entrepreneurship, HCI & UX Design, believing in your idea  in your idea to the point of being one or more of the following: arrogance, stupidity, chauvinism.   I’m sure I left out a bunch of other things too.

So go sneer to yourself and your minions, and realize that excellence and innovation and good technology in this world comes form cross-disciplinary teams working together.  HCI people need CS, CE people need CS ideas, and the list can go on forever.

Last of all, thank you Ted for making me think about this, you’ve clarified and crystallized some of my views, and I welcome any corrections and discussion.

Liveblog of Informatics Colloquium

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Usual liveblog disclaimer: This is rough, and just my poor attempt to capture the colloquium as it was given.

Jeff Bardzell: Massively Amateur Creativity From Timelines and Libraries to Cyborg Sitcoms and Pencil Skirts.

Amateur Multimedia
What is it and why should we care about it? It’s HUGE! 65,000 videos posted EVERYDAY. Newgrounds has 500k flash objects. Numa Numa alone has been downloiaded 700 million times (BBC). SL has more virtual acreage is larger than Singapore

Jeff’s Interests in AMM

Reveal ways that tools shape message-making. That is creative software support is an input into culture.How amateur communities innovate on production practices. This suggests possible ways of looking at creativity

Dominant ideas of Creativity

The Science of creativity, cognition & creativity and NSF sponsored research. What is the model of creativity used in these studies? Study professionals, they are all experts, well defined roles. They practice processual creativity, which can be discovered via observation. They are “supported” by networks of other professionals and software.

Software embeds this model

Designed for a single user, it’s a set of tools experts use to achieve their preexisting visions. Powerful feature set, requires training. Lack their own content, users have to supply that. Basic features available for sharing and Check-in Check-out systems etc.

Three theorizations of creativity

Phychoology & Informatics
Poststructuralist-Author as disruptor making new clearings (in the heideggerian sense)
Technological Determinism- Medium is the message, all expression is mediated by technology

Despite the fact that these are all very different, they are broadly compatible.
They all talk about professionals, not fine artists, not romantic self-expression, creativity enmeshed in systems.
Thesis: Informatics mdel of creativity does not fit the empirical reality of one of it’s user bases.
We’re designing software tools that fail to support this kind of creativity
We’re missing opportunities

Primary Research: Systematic analysis of multimedia authoring tools, analysis of 100s of AMM artifacts, What are the relationships between the characteristics of production and influence within community. Analysis of criticism (blog poss and comments and revews) what is good and what is bad? How is technology represented. Interviews.

The usable is the message (how these applications are used)

Easy to use features get used the most. Features used the mose become the core constituents of visual languages. Visual languages constitute expression.
Analysis of tools: Nearly all had some process of creative activity, regardless of medium.
Technical mediums allow people to become proficient quickly in different art forms

Example Art element of creation:

From Scratch, From Primitives, From components (flash web services, dreamweaver server vehaviors etc)
Most people use prims because they are the most usable and require the least skill. Prims offer the higher self expression to production time ratio.
Low-production value compositing lends itself to absurdist commentary, not so much to serious or high art. Though there is some

Cicierega video—

The Discourse of AMM

The emergence of amateur theorization of AMM aesthetics
The most popular and successful works often innovate on a groups works
The historical trajectories of designers in AMM are all very similar, they progress across tools.

Video Montage— You gotta see it to believe some of this stuff

Machinima History

Progression: Starts with simple prims, native to the game.  Moves to smarter use of prims from both in and out of game.  Supplement prims with stuff made from scratch.  Games always always already have conent in there.  Juxtaposing different kinds of images makes meanings.

Emergent Apparatus: Fashion started as a hobby, progressed into an industry, established and stable fashion press, professionalism.

Evaluation

Agency: Informatics: individual, recognized expert, observable. AMM: Community, low-to medium skills quasi anaymous, not observable, but incredible trail of aertifacts, evolusion of visual language is massiv, undirected and intensely distributed

Social Context: Informatics: Social network is a support to individual creativity, distributed cognition. AMM: Individuals matter much less, Individual artifacts can foster the formation of cliques, community organized by general characteristics of the genre, not professions.

Role of Software Tools: Informatics: Tools modleed on the behavior of experts, tools support creative experts processes. AMM Usable features disproportionately, tools help produce a special kind of creative “expert” use of tools evolves over time at the level of the population.

Conclusions:
Unit of Analysis: Evolution of visual languages at least as important as individual cognition

Role of software: Usable compositing environments: replaces “expert system” as the core value of software in these communities.

Historicity: Informatics sequence School -> cert -> jobs -> participation. AMM: participate -> cert -> jobs