"Flow" & Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

In one of our guest lectures we saw a video which was about the concept of Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

In simple terms the research showed that people were generally unhappy "doing nothing", were generally happy doing things, and generally knew very little about what made them happy.


Applying the flow concept to our digital dinner :

1. Completely involved focused, concentrating : the user of our webpage would be completely involved in his activities while browsing for information etc

2. Sense of ecstasy - being outside reality
By browsing pictures, videos, links - it will give user many different experiences just by being seated in front of his screen

3. Greater inner clarity : knowing what needs to be done
Instructions would be there on the page to guide the user to facilitate any activities he would like to do.

4. Knowing that activity is doable
Simple instructions will be available and the fact that other users will have posted videos, texts etc will show that is easy to do so for the user as well

5. Sense of serenity - no worries about self, feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of ego
On the page, user will be able to share experiences, be able to express themselves free, free from any worries about self in various forums

6. Timeliness - thoroughly focused on present, don't notice time passing
When on the site, the user will be so absorbed in browsing pictures, videos, sharing information that in a way they will not find time passing by.

7. Intrinsic motivation - whatever produces "flow" becomes its own reward
The intrinsic motivations such a challenge/fantasy/curiosity/novelty/surprise have been discussed earlier in my blog

Comments on the Compendium

II:1

The area of focus of this paper is on “Calm Technology”, which forms part of the Ubiquitous Computing era. This concept of calmness implies that while we have computers everywhere around us, they should be design in such a way so that the people being shared by the computers remain serene and in control. The authors argues that the way technology can be calming is by the way it engages our attention. Calm technology engages both the center and periphery of our attention and moves back and forth between the two. The author defines periphery as to things that we are attuned to without to attending to explicitly. A technology may enhance the peripheral reach by bringing more details in the periphery. Calm technology could definitely play a big part while designing new technologies due to the large amount of information that would be flowing. This would enable us be more attuned to this information inflow but attend to it less, so that we can do more in the real world.

II:2

As domestic technology becomes more integrated and more complex, there is a need for better understanding this “new usability”. The users should be able to explore the different facets of the technology without much difficulty but the present usability engineering methods provide little support in understanding how use develops from first meeting with the whole product. For the authors, the answer lies in the activity theory, which emphasizes that the context of use is central to understanding technology. Usability is becoming a central issue in design of a vast range of technologies and some businesses are struggling with some demanding usability techniques. Traditional approaches of ensuring usability such as laboratory-based usability testing is being quite obsolete. The new usability challenge is how to quickly respond to emerging technologies and applications. Usability engineering and usability tests need to be more calibrated so that they can allow the creation of highly usable technologies.
II:3

This paper discusses the concept of Ubiquitous Computing and its three main interaction themes which are: natural interfaces, context-aware applications and automated capture and access. The concept natural interface is a very important one since it is through interfaces that users interact with a technology. Interaction through voice has been tried previously but has been found to hard to implement. Context-aware computing is equally essential since it incorporates knowledge about time, history, location with who the users are and how/why they will be using it. Ubiquitous applications also strive to automate the capture of live experiences and provide universal access to those experiences later on. Also discussed in the paper is the concept of “everyday computing” which results from considering the consequences of scaling ubiquitous computing with respect to time.


II:4

This paper describes the many differences that exist in the ways of computation between a human being and a computer. While a human being makes decisions based on experience, situation and the computers follow a set of codes and algorithms. For a best performance, there needs to be a proper interaction between humans and computer. Also for a good interactive experience, the computer should provide a level of usability that is multidimensional and which has a wide of complexity which can be used by both beginners and experts. This interaction is determined by the designers and he can make it as he wants it to be.

II:5


In this paper the authors discuss the study of a new media for interpersonal communication. The effect of light is used as a means of communication. The authors called their area of research as telematic emotional communication. The project that they carried out investigated inter family communication as well. The approach used was a design driven approach where the first step was Observation on normal users as an ethnographic study. Situational scenarios were then used to detect any patterns among the users. Afterwards prototypes were developed by exploring the interaction while communicating with the artifact. While interacting with the artifact users wrote down their feelings and experiences in a logbook. This kind of study can be important while developing technologies for the household so that a better product can be developed.

II:6

The authors of this paper discuss the research made on the emerging mobile computing tools on the urban landscape which are called Urban Atmospheres. The research challenge is to understand how the fabric of digital and wireless computing would influence, disrupt, expand and be integrated into social patters within the public urban landscapes. Use of urban probes is the methodology used for exploring the computation in the urban environment. These probes exploit methods of deep observation together with experimentation and concrete interventions in urbanism. The authors conducted an experiment, using a trashcan as a probe to explore themes in a small urban microcosm. Their goal was to reveal the patters of usage and flows surrounding trash and trashcans in the city, challenge assumptions about the use of trashcans and gain qualitative insights into urban trash and its connection to everyday stories of people and place. The results from the Urban probes methodology were used to influence the design of a functional urban artifact.

Cool Designs

This is the link to the website which shows the annual interaction design exhibition of the Interaction Design Master's Programme at Gothenburg IT University. The theme of the exhibition was interactive interacting personalities.

One of my favorite projects from the exhibition was the Interactive Floor which has the following concept :

The Interactive Floor is a video-projection displayed on the floor that people can interact with. As soon as someone walks into the projected area he becomes part of the digital world that is projected around him.

The setup consists of a beamer projecting images on the floor and a webcam scanning the projected area for user positions. The beamer projects interactive interacting personalities on the floor that react to the user moving within the projected field.
The main communication in the system is a cycle between the input and output module. The input module analyses a live video stream of the floor and extracts information such as people’s positions, direction of movement and a general level of movement. This information is passed to a separate output module which determines the next action of the currently running application. The result of this process is then projected back onto the floor, prompting the user(s) to make his/her next move. The cycle continues until the application terminates.

The Interactive Floor offers a low-barrier interaction. People do not have to have any knowledge or skills to perform the interaction; the only requirement is that they enter and move around in the projection area. As soon as someone enters the area he is no longer a bystander, but a user. The system keeps track of where the user is and uses this information to change the interface that it projects around the user.



http://ide09.se/

The Digital Dinner Concept

Digital Dinner Concept

The Digital Dinner Concept was used as a metaphor for the design of our project.
The Kitchen was the metaphor for all the back room work, that is, all the work and research process that went on so that we could make a successful design. We made use of the Busyland page to create our events and announcements that helped organized our group meetings.

The Metaphors

The main course of our digital dinner was the use of our TakeMeThere website concept, for a user to gain information about various countries he would like to travel to and organize trips and share information. The starter would be the various pictures and facts that the user would see that would make him interested in making more use of the website.

The drinks, we thought would be the array of pictures and videos and links should be able to "intoxicate" the viewer and they could be consumed without moderation.

The coffee and desert would be the fact that the users could have a chat with other users and share experiences.

If the user is satisfied with his course, he will definitely come back to our restaurant!

Reflections on the Guest Lectures

Team Building

Even if I had previously had some knowledge in working in teams from previous courses and assignments, this guest lecture on Team Building, did provide more insight into the dynamics of a team and how to able to learn and grow through team work.

Some essential points which I thought that were worth retaining where :
- Every member in the team should be aware of their respective roles
- Team work should consist of both active and reflective work
- Organizing group meetings and communicating effectively.

Working in groups can be broken down into 3 main processes :

- Control : Everyone in team needs to know who the leader him and their respective roles and responsibilities and what is expected from them.
- Openness : Roles should be delegated according to the member's ability and preference if possible
- Inclusion : lastly, to be part of a group, one should feel comfortable enough to be able to work in it.

For me communication and hard work is key to the success of a team!!! :)


Guest Lecture on Sharepoint

The guest lecture on Sharepoint provided us with very useful tips and information. I had no previous knowledge about Sharepoint, neither did my team mates. Sharepoint seemed to be and proved to be a very useful tool in enabling communication by creating different announcement and events. From there on, we went on exploring Sharepoint on our own to gain knowledge about is functionalities.

Instrinsic Motivation of our digital dinner

To make a successful design it has to grasp the attention of its user and provide an enjoyable experience.

Bearing this in mind, in our digital dinner design we tried to include the following aspects, which are based on Thomas and Macredie's (1994) elements which contribute to an intrinsic motivation, to our webpage :

- Challenge : The design and layout of the webpage has to be such that the level of "difficulty" increases with the users proficiency of the site. By this we mean that as the user get used to the website, he should be able to make full use of its components, such as creating and organizing events. The user should be able to take an active role as opposed to just browsing through the website.

- Fantasy : The motivation of fantasy is that it should provide the user with a set of magical events and enable him to perform magical actions
Here, the fantasy is that the user is being able to visit different places of the world simply by sitting on his chair. The magical actions would be to share the experiences with the other users of the websites and also to be able to organize and take part in events on the website.

- Curiosity : This requires that information has to be "hidden" and requires effort from the user to access this information.
The example here is the forums we created for the different travelers of the different regions they been to. If users want to get this insight and gain tips and other helpful information he should navigate through the website and look for this information.

- Novelty : This aspect requires that the user is continuously presented with new or transformed information and situations.
The purpose of our travel website is to provide with the potential travelers and any other user with the latest information, videos and photos of the places they have been or want to visit. Users will continuously be posting details about their new travels thus always providing the website with new information.

- Complexity : Here, the motivation requires that the website should demand significant amount of reasoning in order to make progress. If a user for example wants to go somewhere, and is looking for other travelers going to similar places as him and wants to meet up with them, he has to be able to search for them and be able to contact them.

- Surprise : This requires that the design should be such that the user cannot predict the unfolding of events
When using our website, the user will be able to gather a large amount of new information and will surely be surprised by the contents on there.

- Control : The user not only proceeds through and learns about the game through active participation but also directs what is going on to some extent.
Again here when the user creates an event, he is in full control of what is going on, also when sharing information on a forum, the user has full liberty to edit, upgrade, modify anything he shares.

- Competition : The user should have the possibilities to "compete" against other people. On our website the user can gloat about the number of places and visited and be proud of sharing his experience.

SixthSense

Pranav Mistry is the inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data.

At TEDIndia, he demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop." In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.