#interaction15

[bsn-design-gallery]

Sketchnotes from Danny Stillion at Interaction 15

[voiceandgesture]

Following Langer (1992), this paper reviews a series of experimental studies that demonstrate that individuals mindlessly apply social rules and expectations to computers. The first set of studies illustrate how individuals over-use human social categories, applying gender stereotypes to computers and identifying with computer agents that share their ethnicity. The second set of experiments demonstrate that people exhibit over-learned social behaviors such as politeness and reciprocity with respect to computers. In the third set of studies, premature cognitive commitments are demonstrated: A television set labeled a specialist is perceived as providing better content than a television set that provides multiple types of content. A final series of studies demonstrate the depth of social responses with respect to computer “personality.” Alternative explanations for these findings, such as anthropomorphism, intentional social responses, and demand characteristics, cannot explain the results. We conclude with an agenda for the next generation of research.

[bsn-design-gallery]

Sketchnotes from Dan Saffer at Interaction 15 conference

[voiceandgesture]

Interesting research showing that ambient help systems can be useful for people completing casual tasks, but during intense tasks users essentially ignore the help system.

[voiceandgesture]

This is a fabulous tumblr showcasing the great and awful elements of first time user experiences, generally on iPhone apps.

[voiceandgesture]

Best summarized by NNG, the paradox of the motivated user explains why people don't read the manual.

The "paradox of the active user" is a paradox because users would save time in the long term by taking some initial time to optimize the system and learn more about it. But that's not how people behave in the real world, so we cannot allow engineers to build products for an idealized rational user when real humans are irrational: we must design for the way users actually behave.

Abstract One of the most sweeping changes ever in the ecology of human cognition may be taking place today. People are beginning to learn and use very powerful and sophisticated information processing technology as a matter of daily life. From the perspective of human history, this could be a transitional point dividing a period when machines merely helped us do things from a period when machines will seriously help us think about things. But if this is so, we are indeed still very much within the transition. For most people, computers have more possibility than they have real practical utility.

[voiceandgesture]

CHI 2013 - Understanding Palm-Based Imaginary Interfaces (by Sean Gustafson)

Link to paper

[voiceandgesture]

We show that large consensus exists among users in the way they articulate stroke gestures at various scales (i.e., small, medium, and large), and formulate a simple rule that estimates the user-intended scale of input gestures with 87% accuracy. Our estimator can enhance current gestural interfaces by leveraging scale as a natural parameter for gesture input, reflective of user perception (i.e., no training required). Gesture scale can simplify gesture set design, improve gesture-to-function mappings, and reduce the need for users to learn and for recognizers to discriminate unnecessary symbols. Download the study (PDF)