User Experience

Psychophysiological techniques to measure user experience with entertainment technologies

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Using psychophysiological techniques to measure user experience with entertainment technologies by Mandryk R, Inkpen K, Calvert T, Behaviour and Information Technology, Vol. 25, No. 2. (April 2006), pp. 141-158. This seems to be the new trend in 'user experience' analysis: using psychophysiological techniques to attest/validate specific applications/environments. Here is roughly, the point of the paper:

Current subjective methods of evaluating entertainment technology aren’t sufficiently robust. This paper describes two experiments designed to test the efficacy of physiological measures as evaluators of user experience with entertainment technologies. We found evidence that there is a different physiological response in the body when playing against a computer versus playing against a friend. These physiological results are mirrored in the subjective reports provided by the participants.

The authors base their claim on the fact that current methods are either costly (coding gesture, body language... then there are some inter-rater reliability) or too subjective ( user preference) and then advocates for taking psychophysiological techniques into account: Galvanic skin response, Cardiovascular measures, Respiratory measures, Electromyography, Emotions identifications.

Some of the results:

The methodological problems that we initially experienced in collecting and analyzing physiological data revealed a number of caveats for conducting this type of research. For example, great care must be taken to avoid stimuli that affect emotional responses, other than the stimuli being investigated. Although we took many precautions in Experiment One, such as the caffeine intake, sex, and age of the participants, there were still effects that we did not predict, such as the responses generated.

Make your own skateboard

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skateboardsforschools is a positive resource that provides "teachers and their students with a new and exciting alternative to the old standard Wood Shop and Tech Ed. Projects". They show how to make a DIY skateboard. As the motto says "We're talkin' Skateboards".

The fact is, kids have always wanted to make skateboard decks in their woodshop classes but teachers and students never knew how to put the concave shapes and turned up nose and tail in the wood. Decks cut out of plywood and pine stock just don't work! And where do you drill for correct wheel placement in order to get proper flex and balance? Well, Skateboardsforschools.com has taken care of all of that for you!

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Gamepad ergonomics: Nintendo controller and 3 years old

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This button makes you go up: three-year-olds and the Nintendo controller by Erik F. Strommen, Setareh Razavi and Lisa M. Medoff in Applied Ergonomics 1992, Vol. 23, No. 6, (pp. 409-413).

Abstract: Forty three-year-old children used the Nintendo controller in a simple cursor-placement task, with two different software interfaces. The directional interface required children to map specific directions of movement on to specific buttons on the controller. The non-directional interface simply advanced the cursor in a clockwise direction to the next placement location, regardless of the specific directional button pressed. Results indicate that while the youngest three-year-old children find the non-directional interface slightly easier to use, older three-year-olds are more successful with the directional interface. In addition, all three-year-olds actually experienced problems using the simpler, non-directional interface - and problems increased with age.

Why do I blog this? I am always interested by research about gamepad. This paper is a bit old but we can still consider some of thre results + the methodology since some gamepads are still similar (the Nintendo DS pads is very close to it).

Emotion-aware mobile music player

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An intriguing notion: an Emotion-aware mobile music player described in a paper by andor Dornbush, Kevin Fisher, Kyle McKay, Alex Prikhodko, and Zary Segall at the soon-to-be International Conference on Mobile Technology, Applications and Systems (2006)

the notion of collecting human emotion and activity information from the user, and explore how this information could be used to improve the user experience with mobile music players. (...) a mobile MP3 player, XPod, which is able to automate the process of selecting the song best suited to the emotion and the current activity of the user. The XPod concept is based on the idea of automating much of the interaction between the music player and its user. (...) After an initial training period, the XPod is able to use its internal algorithms to make an educated selection of the song that would best fit its user's emotion and situation. We use the data gathered from a streaming version of the BodyMedia SenseWear to detect different levels of user activity and emotion. After determining the state of the user the neural network engine compares the user's current state, time, and activity levels to past user song preferences matching the existing set of conditions and makes a musical selection. The XPod system was trained to play different music based on the user’s activity level. A simple pattern was used so the state dependant customization could be verified. XPod successfully learned the pattern of listening behavior exhibited by the test user. As the training proceeded the XPod learned the desired behavior and chose music to match the preferences of the test user. XPod automates the process of choosing music best suited for a user’s current activity. The success of the initial implementation of XPod concepts provides the basis for further exploration of human- and emotion-aware mobile music players.

Read their paper here (pdf)

Why do I blog this? human- and emotion-aware technology is still in its infancy, I am curious to see how it can be included into the interaction design of various technologies (especially video-games) and what would be the users' reaction, i.e the adequation of the output (in this case the mp3 played) and the users' reaction: would there be a real matching? will it be well received. Also, the dark side of my mind think about potential hacks like using this to create new technosocial situation (it's the other way around: when the output is totally the opposite of what would fit).

One month before LIFT

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We're getting closer and closer to the LIFT Conference in Geneva, our event about new technologies and people! On February 2-3, 2006, this event will gather great thinkers and doers to discuss about understanding current challenges and creative solutions presented by emerging technologies.

In this context, I also organize a workshop, along with californian pal Julian Bleecker. More about it later.

Socio-Cultural Anthropology of Pervasive Computing

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Dr. Daniel Cerqui-Ducret is a social and cultural anthropologist who works on neat project:

My researches focus on the development of the new information technologies and the 'information society' these technologies are supposed to create. In such a society computers are more and more integrated everywhere in our environment ('pervasive computing'). Furthermore, chips and human bodies are merging and such a symbiosis has consequences for the future of humankind. I am especially interested in how engineers who work on these new technologies see this future: what is (descriptive aspect) and what should be (normative aspect) a human being according to them?

Furthermore, I am interested in the ethical and social aspects of the convergent robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology, as all of them are merging to modify humankind.

Why do I blog this? Since she works close to our school (EPFL is close to the University of Lausanne) I'd love to hear her perspective on pervasive computing.

Besides, her current project is pretty interesting:

currently carrying out a two years research (since June 2004) in the Department of Cybernetics of the University of Reading, where Kevin Warwick was , in 2002, the first human with a chip implanted in his body and directly linked to his nervous system.

On the one hand, I am doing an ethnographical job in this Department, which means following Kevin in his activites, trying to understand which are his main values and how a cyborg culture can be promoted.

On the other hand, as I think that social scientists must be engaged, I collaborate with Kevin in order to make him aware of he main social. ethical, philosophical and anthropological issues related to his work.

Moreover, we are using our original collaboration to produce common papers. We hope that it will make social scientists aware of how far Kevin is going in his researches, and computer scientists aware of the fundamental issues raised by their practices , even if they are convinced that technology is just a neutral tool.

Urbanhermes: redefining fashion and identity

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Urbanhermes is a project conducted at the Sociable Media Group at the MIT, Medialab by Christine Liu (good blog for knitting fans too) and Judith Donath
Urbanhermes is an augmented messenger bag that aims to incorporate the fluid, expressive signals of electronic fashion into the constrained, material-based environment of physical fashion. the bag is able to change its dynamic, temporal display within the context of its social environment, providing versatile means for face-to-face signaling. by accelerating the physical fashion cycle, urbanhermes facilitates more meaningful and communicative representions of self-identity.

Why do I blog this? what I like in this project is this concept:

fashion signals are important in displaying one's quality of access of information. electronic fashions, information that may circulate within blog circles or online communities, experience rapid fashion cycles as the information is easily disseminated and regenerated. physical fashions, such as clothing, are unable to update as quickly as information flow due to their physical structure.

Using fashion signals as a basis for design seems to be a clever way of creating new experiences

New interaction design lab

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Interaction-Design Lab is a new lab in Milano (started by former-Interaction Design Institute from Ivrea):

We are a group of people from different disciplines and countries. We explore interactivity with objects and spaces, telling stories and creating experiences. Our main tools are simple: ready-made technologies, recycled, re-usable, light, off-the-shelf ingredients.

We are interested in designing the present. Our interpretation of interaction design is wide – as the only current way to think about design. The dialog is what interest us the most.

We combine in our activities a strong conceptual level, a process of crafting, commercial value for us and our clients, and a big emphasis on communication. Noting that concept, crafting, commerce and communication all start with c, we’ve named these: “the four Cs”: Concept - Commerce -Communication - Craft

Look at their first project called 999 cards!

Using technology to encourage displacement

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I just blogged on Petistic (our pet-centered stuff blog with Regine and Fabien) this improbable tool called Pee Post. The point of this tool is to encourage pets to eliminate in a specific area:

This reminds me this mosquito sound generator which aimed at avoiding teenagers loitering: a device that generate an awful mosquito sound to make bad guys go somewhere else.

Why do I blog this? It's another trend in technology: encouraging displacement. This is not really a location-based service but rather, a "go-to-that-location" direction tracker! Even though the underyling idea beneath the 'pee post' is interesting, the mosquito sounds seems to be pretty scary. What's next?

Mobile phone location in public places

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A good one about mobile phone location in public plaecs: WHERE'S THE PHONE? A STUDY OF MOBILE PHONE LOCATION IN PUBLIC SPACES by F. Ichikawa, J. Chipchase, R. Grignani (from Nokia), Mobility 2005 conference in Guangzhou, China. The paper describes characteristics of how mobile phones are carried whilst users are out and about in public spaces. This emereged from series of contextual interviews in public spaces of Helsinki, Milan and New York. The point of this research is to get some insights about designing handheld technology: there is a need for users to explicitly remember to carry them from place to place. That's why they investigated where people keep their phones when they are in mobile context so that they canFind out if there are specific profiles of the user tied to the phone location. The last goal was to verify if there is any influence of the phone location to the user or their perception on phone interaction.

most male participants carried their phones in trousers front pocket and female participants in their shoulder bags. High penetration of front pocket, which can be tight and uncomfortable, shows that a mere capacity of the location is not enough to influence where users should keep their phone. A high concentration of males over 30 used belt clips, which we interpret to be because of the relative importance of convenience and security (risk of theft of the device) over appearance.

Why do I blog this? once in a while Nokia gives a bit of its research... it's then nice to see what they are looking at and how they are doing so. The article is full of other interesting findings as well as ideas of how they can impact design of future products (flexible displays? what if new featurea re included...)

How video-games blur the boundaries of work and play

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In his paper The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur The Boundaries of Work and Play (Games and Culture, Vol. 1, pg. 68-71 (2006) ), Nick Yee explains how "video games are inherently work platforms that train us to become better game workers". The underyling assumption in this paper is that work being performed in video games is increasingly similar to the work performed in business corporations. The author hence studies online games and sees them as a way to "reveal larger social trends in the blurring boundaries between work and play". In order to assess these statements, he taks relevant examples such Star Wars Galaxies players who "operate a pharmaceutical manufacturing business for fun". He also underlines this interesting point: "The central irony of MMORPGs is that they are advertised as worlds to escape to after coming home from work, but they too make us work and burn us out". And now, the bunch of studies about virtual goods which have a real value can lead us to think that game play can constitute a real work... His last word is strikingly pertinent: "he blurring of work and play begs the question - what does “fun” really mean? ".

Yes guys, playing is hard and it's not a matter of toying with simple things as people reluctant to consider video games as a serious activity think.

Evaluation of 3 Ubicomp systems

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Prototypes in the Wild: Lessons from Three Ubicomp Systems by Scott Carter and Jennifer Mankoff, in IEEE Pervasive Computing Journal, October-December 2005 (Vol. 4, No. 4) pp. 51-57. This paper is an account of three ubicomp systems evaluation at multiple design stages:

  • PALplates: to support office workers in doing everyday tasks by presenting key information and services at places of need, or locations where workers were most likely to need them.
  • A nutrition tracking system that uses inexpensive, low-impact sensing to collect data about what household members are purchasing and consuming and then uses simple yet persuasive techniques to suggest potential changes.
  • Hebb: a system which capture and convey shared interests, it senses group members’ interests via email analysis software and displays relationships between members on public and private displays to encourage conversation about those topics. The Hebb system includes interest sensors, presence sensors, and public and private displays

Why do I blog this? For each of these projects, the authors provide a description of how they evaluated them (mostly with paper prototypes first and field experiments with interactive prototypes afterwards). What is strikingly interesting is that their computer science perspective lead them to "a struggle to balance quality of evaluation and ease of prototyping" as they say. This paper is yet another element to attest that testing ubicomp applications in field settings is particularly important. I was also interested by the fact that they studied their prototypes at different stages of design.

Mash-up of IM/RSS and publishing services

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I am happy to see that I am not the only one thinking about how IM could be a good interface for information management (search, database query), as I described last year.John Battelle wrote a clever post about it, connecting this to mobile interfaces:

first of all, a mashup of RSS and IM is just a very cool idea. The medium of IM has been underappreciated by nearly everyone in the "media" business for one reason - the leaders of the business didn't use IM. But lord knows the rest of the world sure does.

there are other types of branded content that makes total sense in IM: publications and personal web services. A great publication has an intimate relationship with its audience, it's a trusted source of information, a pal, a buddy. And blogs, as I've argued again and again, can be great publications. And great web services like local search have earned our trust, know who we are, and we know that when we ask them questions, useful answers will come back. No one wants a stupid chat bot that tries to be, say, Santa Claus, that gets old fast. But a chat bot that is useful? That can instantly deliver your favorite content to your mobile phone without forcing it through the crappy sphincter of your mobile operators crippled web interface? Or can answer questions like, say, "pharmacy 91106" with the speed and intimacy of an IM chat session?

Why do i blog this? I like this idea and I am used to ask question to AIM bots about weather forecast, movie schedule... would it work on a mobile phone? I don't really know but I'd love to have this on my Nintendo DS for sure... There is an interesting debate in the comment part of this post. For instance usabiltiy-guru Jakob Nielsen complains that it's just re-inventing the command line. Some others expects "that the rich client UI applications of tomorrow will be delivered when the "browser" is merged with an "IM client"...

Gadgets of 2005, small improvements rules

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The NYT has an interesting list of what they think are 2005 gadgets:

THE FOLDING MEMORY CARD / THE VOICE MAIL VCR / THE FRONT-SIDE TV CONNECTOR / THE BIGGER-THAN-TV MOVIE / TV A LA CARTE / THE OUTER-BUTTON FLIP PHONE / THE FREE DOMAIN NAME / THE MODULAR DVD SCREEN / THE FAMILY-PORTRAIT BURST MODE / THE HYBRID HIGH-DEFINITION TAPE

The list is very intruiging with some nice examples, the most interesting comment was certainly this:

And there you have it: some of the year's best small, sweet improvements in our electronic lives

That's it, we're in a process of small improvements lately. Big things (mass usage of the Internet, web explosion, wireless communication...) happened few years back and now things are improving (web to web2.0...), user-centered applications are developed, etc.

Myths of multimodal interaction

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In Ten myths of multimodal interaction (Communications of the ACM, Vol. 42 , No. 11, pp. 74 - 81, 1999), Sharon Oviatt describes common myths about multimodal interaction (i.e. interacting with a computer using more different input/outputs, like mouse/voice/keyboards or more recent technologies). The myths she is describing are quite relevant to lots of HCI research:

  • Myth #1: If you build a multimodal system, users will interact multimodally.
  • Myth#2: Speech and pointing is the dominant multimodal integration pattern.
  • Myth #3: Multimodal input involves simultaneous signals.
  • Myth #4: Speech is the primary input mode in any multimodal system that includes it.
  • Myth #5: Multimodal language does not differ linguistically from unimodal language.
  • Myth #6: Multimodal integration involves redundancy of content between modes.
  • Myth #7: Individual error-prone recognition technologies combine multimodally to produce even greater unreliability.
  • Myth #8: All users’ multimodal commands are integrated in a uniform way
  • Myth #9: Different input modes are capable of transmitting comparable content.during periods of blank staring.
  • Myth #10: Enhanced efficiency is the main advantage of multimodal systems

The article is full of interesting examples that explains how each of these myths can be deconsctructed.

Extreme tinkering: Microwave oven against missiles

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One year ago I blogged about microwave oven hacks and yesterday I ran across this intriguing usage of microwave technology: NATO pilots during the war in Kosovo has been fooled by microwave ovens they bombed, believing it was Serbian tanks. Some more information here:

According to a British officer who spent six months in the region and offered his own assessment of bombing damage, the Serbs lured the NATO planes using household microwave ovens to simulate the emissions of armored transport systems. (...) A NATO officer who gave an anonymous interview to the British Herald stated that only three tanks were found. "The Serbs use a lot of tricks to elude NATO bombs. The use of microwave ovens from houses in Kosovo to thumb their noses at the alliance was only one of their ruses." (...) it demanded nothing of them, since they used 100-dollar decoy devices (microwave ovens) which were available in every household. And the guided bombs cost around 30,000 dollars.

Yet another example of a lowtech jamming trick... Any this is a good example of how people hack existing technologies for other purposes.

Update: Spot on this topic, I just saw this on Boing Boing: a book about "extreme tinkering and radical self expression through technology" (which is obviously one of the topic I am fascinated of). It's entitled "Adventures from the Technology Underground : Catapults, Pulsejets, Rail Guns, Flamethrowers, Tesla Coils, Air Cannons, and the Garage Warriors Who Love Them (Hardcover)" by William Gurstelle who also blogs here.

Intriguing Toys, an LBS for kids

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Today I went in a toy shop to buy some presents and I stumbled across this very curious Spy Gear by Wild Planet Toy, among I others I noticed: The Spy tracker system: "Set up three secret spy trackers, draw a map on your control panel showing where each one is, and you will know where and when intruders (e.g., little sisters or parents) have entered the secured zone (...) Track movement up to 75 feet away. Includes cool tracking headquarters case with light-up display, audible warning signals and 3 remote motion sensors. Works indoors and out. ". Better than the follow-your-kids-with-a-GPS, it's a "be-tracked-by-your-kids". Note the vocabulary deployed: "you will know where and when intruders (e.g., little sisters or parents) have entered the secured zone " (well of course there is the spy rethoric). Now, things are reverse, there are location-based services for kids!

There are also an eavesdropping device in the form of a pair of glasses or of a little car or as a pod. Besides, the night vision goggles looks cool. My favorite is definitely the Eye-Link Communicators: a headset display and arm-mounted keypad to transmit silent messages to other "agents".

Finally, while venturing around on the web to find these toys, I was amazed by the comments/reviews, see for instance: "The worst part is that the batteries are EXPENSIVE and kids NEVER remember to turn it off because the switch is so small and almost hidden. The batteries ran down after about an hour of play and about an hour of sitting in the room before he remembered to go turn them off", "This is a frustrating toy because it looks cool, and might even be worth the price if it weren't so easy to forget to turn off and had a bigger switch that is clearly marked "on" and "off."", "A Kid's Review: I go this for my birthday. It works poorly, and i can barely hear any better than i can without it"... Of course some are less pertinent but funny: "I am a twenty-year-old professional secret agent, and was delighted to find this ultra-cool-looking piece of equipment at such an affordable price"...

Times passes faster when classical music is played (but only for men)

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(via) A weird result: MORE CHOICES AND SPEEDIER DELIVERY SIMPLIFY MUSIC AND MESSAGES ON-HOLDBy Milton Allimadi :

The call center industry has shifted to digitally-recorded music and messages on-hold over the past two years for enhanced audio quality and faster shipment over the Internet and Web sites. Acquiring on-hold products is only part of the challenge. Your next step is to select the type of music callers hear. You should be careful to investigate the impact of the music you select. A study led by the University of Cincinnati’s Dr. James Kellaris finds that male callers who listen to classical music while on hold tend to think time flies, while female callers who hear the same music have the impression that time drags on.