22-06-2006 by Fabio Sergio

Interaction Museum, contest announcement.

Good news from Wendy Mackay, who is leading activities for the Convivio-sponsored Interaction Museum.

The Interaction Museum is a new on-line collection of interaction techniques, methods and systems.
Designed to support professional software developers and researchers, the goal is to preserve historically important and on-going advances in interaction.
Entries provide detailed descriptions, including video and interactive applets, to facilitate search and comparison across techniques.
Exhibits provide edited presentations of selected entries, for professional, educational or research purposes.

The Interaction Museum contest, in conjunction with UIST 2006, is designed to raise awareness of the Interaction Museum, populate the museum with high-quality entries and create the basis for bench-marking interaction techniques.
It’s also fun!

Why a contest?
We are interested in collecting Classic Techniques (scrollbars, marking menus, toolglasses, etc.) and Novel Interaction Techniques for pointing, selection and navigation.
You need not be the author of the technique: think of it as an interactive wikipedia entry.

Who should participate?
Anyone who can program an interaction technique using the Java Swing toolkit (preferably with our SwingStates extension).
You may use other tools, such as Flash, but if you do you will not be able to enter the benchmark part of the contest. However, you will still be eligible for the ‘best entry’ prizes.

How can you create an entry?
Entries include an abstract (image, description & keywords), a short storyboard, video and/or software applets that let Interaction Museum users test the technique, and references.
All entries will be reviewed for clarity and accuracy; the best will appear at UIST 2006.

How will the contest work?
We will use a standard experimental protocol for benchmarking the techniques, using the applets you provide.
We will ask UIST 2006 conference attendees to test the techniques under experimental conditions and will collect both performance and preference data.
A distinguished jury will evaluate the quality of the entries and the efficacy of each techniques.
A “Interaction Museum madness” event will show off the best entries and best techniques, which will win small prizes and be announced in ACM Interactions Magazine.

Lef wondering how can you enter the contest?
Here are some key dates:

July 31st, 2006
Express your interest by sending an email to: interestimuseum@lri.fr.
August 31st, 2006
Submit your entry here.
15 September 15th, 2006
Submit your final applet here for the benchmark.

References:
Wendy Mackay, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon & Caroline Appert
Sponsored by:
Convivio and in|situ| - INRIA Futurs & LRI

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11-06-2006 by Fabio Sergio

Power to the people.

In “Words Matter. Talk About People: Not Customers, Not Consumers, Not Users.” Don Norman advocates against depersonalizing those we design for by calling them with terms that overly simplify the complexity of the many roles they play:

“Words matter.
Psychologists depersonalize the people they study by calling them “subjects.”
We depersonalize the people we study by calling them “users.”
Both terms are derogatory.
They take us away from our primary mission: to help people.
Power to the people, I say, to repurpose an old phrase.
People. Human Beings. That’s what our discipline is really about.

Time to admit that we are people, that we design for people.
Yes, I know, the various terms arose from the need to distinguish the many different roles people play in the world of artifacts, machines, and gizmos: those who specify, those who distribute, those who purchase (customers), those who actually use them (users). Those who stand by and watch.
But that is still no excuse. All of them are people.
All deserve their share of dignity. Their roles can be specified in other ways.
It is time to wipe words such as consumer, customer, and user from our vocabulary.
Time to speak of people. Power to the people.”

Convivio has always put such considerations at the center of its very identity, being in fact a network for “human-centered design of interactive technology”… thus also comes as no surprise that Liam Bannon, who’s remembered by Norman “passionately arguing that the terms we used would control the way we thought“, is part of Convivio’s Executive Committee.

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06-06-2006 by Fabio Sergio

Participatory Design, a critical view.

In “Effective Use Of Participatory Design Methods“Jeff Axup points to 10 potential pitfalls in the use of participatory design techniques:

“Participatory design (PD) is a design framework and related methods which advocate user involvement in design.

There are a number of positive aspects to PD … however, some of my recent research and a review of other PD research has revealed a number of potential pitfalls in the application of participatory design methods.”

1. Asking participants to design objects themselves.
2. Expecting domain experts to be technology experts.
3. Asking participants to predict theoretical usage.
4. Asking participants to start from scratch.
5. Expecting participants to want to contribute.
6. Letting small numbers of users greatly impact design.
7. Focusing on what participants design instead of what they need.
8. Confusing design education with creating good designs.
9. Attempting to prescribe humane workplaces via designs.
10. Judging what is not participatory design.

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