CHI 2007: Day 1

My first time at CHI has proven to be pretty interesting. I ran into a bunch of people I wasn't expecting to: Karen, Boaz, and Prof. Hollan from UCSD cogsci, Kevin from Stanford, Kerry from Google.

I went to a bunch of paper talks which were more interesting than I expected them to be. The Q&A sessions after each presentation are good. People ask good questions and it is thought-provoking. I am reminded of how in school everyone seems to hate the kid/s that raise their hand all the time and ask questions or make comments. Is it the same thing but somehow more enjoyable?

The author of the textbook for our Cognitive Engineering course (COGS 102C), Karen Holtzblatt taught a few courses. Kelly and I went to one each. It was interesting to hear her convey the same ideas in a more adamant and no-bull way. Also, she gave great examples of each main concept that made everything easy to understand. Sometimes when I read the hypothetical or procedural text, it can be ambiguous.

A few course points, paper presentations, and posters were especially intriguing but I'm too tired to write them in this post. Tomorrow, I've got an all-day course and I'm starting to wonder if that is an unrealistic plan. I guess we'll see!

Random observation: Lots of people from UK are at CHI.

Hi-res widescreen is a pleasure

Before I plow through my homework for tonight, I re-realized how much a pleasure working on my 1680 x 1050 pixel monitor is. I can easily work with an open PDF that has the homework problems on it and an open document to write in. There are times when I feel reading on the screen just doesn't cut it but that's a story for another day.

Entrepreneur Stories Are the Best

I find it particularly enjoyable to read entrepreneur and startup stories. Of course, mainly stories with good outcomes get circulated but I enjoy a quality about them that is reminiscent of any classic hero story formula. The great thing is that you as a reader might have real-world connection to aspects of the story either through similar experiences or because you know their product or industry.

For example, I think a big part of what would make reading the Google story interesting is the fact that it's something you use and know about and you could become aware of how it came to be. Then again, I'm an absolute documentary nut and I don't read much fiction.

I stumbled across this book while browsing the web, Founders At Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days. The quotes are pretty interesting and I enjoy that the page numbers are cited, giving a sense of how the book might be paced and the range of variety.

I think I'll pick up a copy at some point and I hope that it will differ from other startup story books by presenting an interesting cross-section of startup lore as opposed to one profile that is drawn out for longer than necessary.

Get more results with fewer keywords

eBay has this interesting suggestion tool for when a search on their site yields zero items. Not only does it suggest alternative search strings with fewer keywords, it also shows how many items are found for which combinations of fewer keywords. Listing the number of items found for each possible query string provides decent information scent and seems to be the coolest part about this tool. Of course, I have to decide which keywords are the important ones but this saves a lot of my time and guesswork effort.

Pretty nifty!

Here's a direct link to the search string I used: "2001 monster 750 frame" in case you wanted to see if there are still no items and play with the alternate keyword combinations.

Loved Ones = Costs to Cut?

I recently bought some tickets at ticketmaster.com and after I completed my transaction, there was a link that said something like "Want to get $40 back? Find out how!" On that page, there was this picture of what looks like a father and son at a hockey game.

Hopefully it is supposed to say to me something like "Your son can go for free."

HUIEUIIFDEAR

That is a Human Usability Interaction Experience User Information Interface Factors Designer Engineer Architect Researcher. If it's not the same jobs having different names, it's a job that is eating up other jobs. Information Architecture a culprit? (Explained in Joshua Porter's Thoughts on the Impending Death of Information Architecture and Part 2.)

The field of study/work I'm interested in has some seemingly unsettled terminology. Is it Human Computer Interaction (HCI) or Computer Human Interaction (CHI)? HCI more accurately reflects the goal of being human-centric but saying "H.C.I." is sort of a mouthful while saying "CHI" (like "kai") is easy. Then there's the hyphenation issue Human Computer Interaction or Human-Computer Interaction?

Also, I am becoming confused lately as to whether I'm working on the "usability" of something or the "user experience" of it. For sure, the two can't be cleanly delineated (if I understand them correctly). Usability of something can be enhanced by improving the user experience, as noted by Don Norman in his book Emotional Design. Likewise, the user experience can be enhanced by improving usability. However, if I had to choose, I'd say that it might make more sense that user experience could be improved by usability enhancements than the other way around.

I recently read two blog posts describing what the authors think the difference is between user experience and usability. Jared Spool, mentions in his article The Difference Between Usability and User Experience:

Usability answers the question, “Can the user accomplish their goal?”

User experience answers the question, “Did the user have as delightful an experience as possible?”

which seems quite in line with the more humorous explanation in Marc Hassenzahl on User Experience:

Usability [with its focus on effectiveness and efficiency] wants us to die rich; user experience wants us to die happy.

Hrm, shouldn't we die rich and happy? Anyway, I think those two articles are helping me to understand the difference.

Remote Usability Studies

I like to call it usability study instead of test. I worry that "user test" makes the participants/users (not "subjects") think that they're being tested when actually the product is being tested. Conducting a "study" sounds more like no value judgments are being made. Strictly business, my friends.

Recently, I've been looking into remote usability solutions and I'm still looking around but here's what I discovered so far: my colleagues and I are using Macs without IE and that is not helping our search. There were two appealing products specifically designed for remote user studies. However, TechSmith's UserVue is Microsoft Windows-only and Bolt | Peter's Ethnio requires Microsoft Internet Explorer. Boo!

I found some interesting presentation slides from Paul Hibbitts on "Usability at a Distance" and at the same time discovered there is a YouTube for slides, SlideShare. Of course when anything serious about presentations is involved, Guy Kawasaki's name should be dropped somewhere along the way.

What my colleague and I ended up using for a 1-hour remote user study session were the following:

• Video
  
• Yugma for viewing the user's screen broadcast over internet.
• iShowU for recording my screen (including the screen broadcast).
  
• Audio
  
• Skype with SkypeOut for calling in to the phone conference line provided free by Yugma.
  
• Audio Hijack Pro for recording the Skype conversation.
• Editing
  
• Quicktime Pro for cropping audio and video and then manually synchronizing the two.

The overall result was pretty smooth and not too troublesome. I'd prefer less troublesome but we still managed to glean a solid stack of data from the session.

There's also this neat site Remote Online Usability Testing Wiki hosted by Bolt | Peters User Experience. Thank goodness the URL is only RemoteUsability.com -- phew. There's a nice list of remote usability-specific tools but most of them aren't products as much as they are services with products. I've got my eyes on ClickTale. I hope they let me try the Beta soon.

Good Luck On Finals

I guess it's probably too late to wish most people good luck on their finals, but if you're in UCSD area, Domino's is still having a discount on pizza until March 28th, 2007.

I wish I had my camera to take a picture of these fliers strewn across the sidewalk at a UCSD City Shuttle bus stop. I think it's pretty clever advertising for pizza discounts on finals week and making the phone number end with UCSD. Nice.

One presentation and one final to go today! Going on a Panda Express study break yielded a sad fortune:

Frames of Reference

Overheard in the school bookstore:
Girl: What's the difference between these two iPod cases?
Sales guy: Well, this one's like an Aston Martin and this one's like a Mercedes Benz.
Girl: I… I don't know what that means.
Sales guy: Well, which one would you rather drive?
Girl: I don't care… I drive a Honda.

Seen on Discovery channel documentary:
"…it weighs seventy-five times as much as The Statue of Liberty."

Unfinished Reading

I am reading a bunch of books that are at various stages of being finished.

Starting to read a book usually has one of, or a combination of the following reasons:

1. It's damned interesting
2. It could be useful for schoolwork
3. It could be useful or is necessary for work
4. Someone gave me the impression that I should read it
   

Usually, the problem with finishing them before starting the next one is some combination of the following reasons:

1. Periodicals get in the way. They're interesting and bite-sized and damn do I have a lot of them!
2. One of the four above reasons become heavily weighted due to prioritizing needs and requires a change in reading material
   
3. Material isn't suitable for short reading sessions - it's too dense or not as meaningful in little pieces
4. Book is a PDF or e-book tucked away on my computer somewhere and outta sight, outta mind
5. Not using bookmarks and/or reading late at night mean re-reading sections again and again
6. I'm pretty sure I read more slowly than most people :-(

Anyway, here's the in-progress list of books that haunts me with guilt when I'm goofing off or vegetating in front of the TV (in order of priority):

1. Book of JavaScript
2. Information Dashboard Design
3. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
   
4. The Art of Innovation
5. Emotional Design
6. Understanding Comics
   
7. Designing Interactions
8. The Inmates are Running the Asylum
9. Philosophy Gym
10. Conversations on Consciousness

I can't wait 'till spring break…