Human Factors and Artificial Intelligence

Increasing machine intelligence leads to a shift from a mere interactive to a much more complex cooperative human-machine relation requiring a multidisciplinary development approach. Current HCI research, personalization and adaptive interfaces are proposed to enable easy access to proliferating functions and services. The increase in intelligence of machines leads to a shift from HCI to human-machine cooperation (HMC). Artificial Intelligence can be used to design future machines that are designed or learn to cooperate with humans. There will be a need for humans and machines to understand and comprehend each other’s reasoning and behavior. The possibilities for HMC are extensive, but knowledge is lacking in how to integrate human factors (HF) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) into a successful machine design. Cognitive engineering is a methodology that provides insight into increasing cognitive factors of human performance.

Some Human Factors and Artificial Intelligence Links:

Activity Theory vs Cognitive Science in the Study of Human-Computer Interaction

Integrating Human Factors and Artificial Intelligence in the Development of Human-Machine Cooperation

Service Blueprinting

I ran across an article while performing research for SD2, it talked about how service blueprinting is a key to service innovation. The article talks about how service blueprinting offers a surprisingly flexible means of helping companies understand how well, or not, they are serving their customers. Service blueprinting focuses primary on customer experience. The idea behind service blueprinting is simple. Companies put themselves in their customers’ shoes to find out what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to be changed. The article goes on to discuss the uniqueness of this technique as compared to other process techniques. The customer is the center and focus for service improvement and innovation. Companies that create blueprints first quickly identify the specific service process to b e explored and can identify the customers that the service targets. Blueprinting is flexible, because most businesses are services at some level. Blueprinting has been used by companies across all industries, and the researchers expect the years to come to bring more widespread adoption of the technique. As that occurs, users will offer their own innovations to the process, making it all the more effective in the long run.

Futuristic Interfaces

SIGGRAPH 2009 just wrapped up in New Orleans this week. At the event, there are some interesting futuristic interfaces were displayed. You can check out other interfaces in the above link.

• Touchable Holography
• Augmented Reality for Ordinary Toys
• Hyper-realistic Virtual Reality
• 3D Teleconferencing
• Scratchable Input

These futuristic interfaces imagined and developed. Some are very practical and some are not. I feel futuristic inputs are cool and fine, but something seems to be missing from their project descriptions. As we read Dourish, “Where the Action Is”, I personally think designers should read this book and understand what embodied action is. It’s about shared awareness between users and the world surrounds us. I think I mentioned this in other post about engineers or developers creating cool gadget because they can. That should not be encouraged or at least others should be asking questions. Designers must consider social awareness, intimacy and emotions in physical world. Any system should be considered as human-centered. What do you think of designers considering embodied interaction? Is it practical or that’s just an idealistic view?

By the way, a guy that does scratching surfaces will not be invited to my place. I don’t want him to scratch my furniture. ;)

Source:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23940/

Why does your vehicle smell like “forest”?

In last July, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. announced the development of new air conditioning system called, “Forest AC”. This new AC system creates optimum cabin environment by controlling temperature, ventilation, aroma, and humidity. You say, aroma? Yes, I know. Nissan says the new system was based on a research on effects of aroma on human mental activity. You can read the rest as I was curious about what can really do with aroma. There are some systems out there to control automatic temperature of interior of your car and add pollen filters to help you make comfortable while you drive. All these system goes under ubiquitous computing. This new system even goes further by blocking order and removing order using “ion”. Making feel comfortable as you drive is a good idea, but you wonder about the process of designing system like that.

Nissan says…

“Nissan develops technology to set new standards in terms of comfort, quality and other factors for every aspect of the automobile, putting human characteristics first, based on the Life on Board concept, which is designed to deliver more joy of driving.”

Where am I going with this? Well, I am wondering if engineers in general think because they can develop system like this, they will develop it. I wondered if they ever consider users and context of driving in general. You can put as many sensors as you can install in a vehicle, but I wonder if they try to understand the context of driving. Making driver “not think” may not apply to this context. Did they just forget about “experience of driving”? Humidity and airflow control maybe good idea, but aroma has some issues. I think “scent” is another sensor drivers use to detect something wrong in a car. Is it good idea to take away users natural senses while driving? I thought drivers should be using all the senses to connect with vehicle and roads to create “driving experience”. I wonder what Dourish would say about relationship between a driver, car, and the road. Did he think these senses ruin your interaction with the world surround us?

Source:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/27/nissans-forest-ac-blows-wild-scents-through-your-ride-to-keep-y/

http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/NEWS/2009/_STORY/090723-01-e.html

Visual Search

Recently I started reading Ambient Findability by Peter Morville. So far it is a an excellent read on information architecture and wayfinding. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596007655/findability-20/). As I read the book, it strikes me how utterly dependent we have become on text and knowing the right words or combination of words to find what we are searching for when interacting with the web. We have all experienced this, we are searching from something and we find very little but later come to realize that we did not have the best keyword to yield the results we were searching for. If we focus on creating the best user experience possible, this will most likely include the ability for users to search items with more than just the perfect keywords or through a winding path of linked ideas. What about searching through key images or visual represetations of our desired topic? I conducted a search (using text of course) and found the following link with terrific references to visual search engines available today.

http://www.masternewmedia.org/top-visual-search-engines-the-most-interesting-ways-to-visually-explore-search-engine-results/

After quickly finding this page, I sit with the question, why are these visual search engines not in the mainstream search options? Google, the Godfather of search engines has incorporated visual aids such as the Wonder Wheel and Timeline to assist searchers with visual and semantic information but they have not created anything yet that is similar to the visual search engines on this page.

Happy searching!

Advertisement vs. Design

On July 27, 09 in New York Times, an article talked about how Walt Disney is cooked up this Disney Media and Advertisement Lab to identify how effective ads are displayed on their sites.

The chosen tools are advanced than what you would think. As we have discussed various usability tests in the class, these media groups are using similar methods to track how ads are viewed and which ones are effective. Such tools besides eye tracking were heart-rate monitors, skin temperature readings and facial expressions to monitor. They are trying to figure out how small the ads can be but still viewed by users or how they feel about certain ads by looking at their facial expressions.

Again, we are faced with corporate driven $tragegy vs. functionality of information dissemination. This disturbs me greatly as they have to figure out a way to effectively making sure users see ads. As a usability designer, how would you feel about your design being compromised. I understand if it is for entertainment. What annoys me the most is that ads are getting aggressive and no longer a part of the page anymore. In old days, ads had a space in your page. They are in your face and you have to click to stop ads. In usability standpoint, it is not functional part of the sites and not friendly to users. It distracts you from doing what you want to do. If you are an independent designer, you may purposely add spaces for ads. In larger corporate levels, is this how it works? Would designer informed how ads will be displayed so they need to change design to accommodate ads or simply told to design a site but marketing dept. will figure how to put over ads over your design?

What happened to user-centered design? I haven’t across any design books/sites that talks about how to incorporate ads as a part of design. I see Google ads model where you can simply select what type of ads and place a widget on your page. But that’s more for independent designer. I wonder about larger corporations that accept ads. What do you think?

Emergence of Interaction Design (section 2.2)

Since the first few weeks of HCI 596, I have been challenged. I have stated before that the readings/teachings in this class has challenged a lot of what I have been taught in my world of engineering. So I have been searching to find a meeting place between the two - HCI and Engineering. How can I apply this to systems engineering or Electrical engineering? If I can't, why not? I can not say that I have found the answers, but I did find a few interesting readings. One in particular I will attach to this blog.

http://hci.stanford.edu/~winograd/acm97.html See section 2.2

The article talks about the emerging area of interaction design. Now I am still trying to wrap my fingers around service design; now interaction design. Simply put, the author describes it as a shift from seeing the machinery to seeing the people using it. This sound a lot like service design; is it the same thing? Or is service design one sector of interaction deisgn? Wikipedia describes service as the non-material equivalent of a good. Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect on one another. I guess from the definition one can have service interaction design. Seeing the people using the service instead of the service itself..make sense? So if I am an engineer designing a vehicle display, I am designing based on the user that will be viewing the display and not the technology. Help me here? What are your thoughts?