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(section 090)
March 30th: Non-Determinism and Other Fun Machine States
Announcements
Tonight's Plan...
- Reading Quiz #3: Logon to Moodle and the quiz will be released at 6:35. (You'll have 10 minutes)
- Midterm Review: Let's do this at the top of the class since you don't seem to ever get around to it...
- HAL Chapters 1-4 (Mostly 3 & 4)
- Planning User Doc #3
Midterm Review
The midterm is closed in Moodle, but I have a copy up on the big screen. Let's go over the questions.
The Wonderful World of Machines
Taming Hal: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001 has moved from user frustration to disaster. I would like us to think about ways to understand and, therefore, communicate about machines that have different states and the following issues:
- Event: an action performed on a machine (i.e., press, turn, insert, etc.).
- State: a particular behavior of a machine (i.e. on, off, idle, armed, etc.).
- Transition: the movement from or change of states.
- User model: similar to "mental model," this is what the user sees and knows about as the system (p. 29).
- Machine model: description of ALL the configurations and transitions underlying a system (p. 29).
- Non-determinism: the quality of a system that behaves in a way that can't be determined (p. 35).
- Side effect: events that can bring about multiple outcomes (p. 43).
- Automatic transitions: non-user-initiated transitions (p. 59).
After our little participation discussion, I hope the following are discussion points. I want you to have HAL inspire your next user doc (#3). Read over the questions and contemplate them for a bit. Then, we'll discuss them as a class.
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Come up with a list of five
non-deterministic features on a technology or several technologies. Give the
technology and explain the feature or features that are non-deterministic.
If possible, explain how to correct that.
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Explain a Golem-like technology that
you've encountered or heard about (not one from our reading). Describe the
technology and explain how it behaves in a non-deterministic fashion? This
is related to the question above, but, as you can see, it asks for a single
technology and not features. This can be a fictional technology.
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Explain what it means to accept that
machines go awry? What does Degani say about this acceptance, and who else
agrees with him?
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Death by technical communication
classification. Briefly describe the technical classification that sealed
the fate of Korean Airlines flight 007. What are two other technical
classifications that could make an item or person go from safe to in danger
based on user perception? (tough one)
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The ends of Chapters 3 and 4 both ask,
who's responsible for non-deterministic technologies. Considering either a
specific technology or many, come up with a reason (almost like a heuristic)
for placing blame when it comes to non-deterministic technologies.
User Document #3 Overview
Your last document, User Doc #3, is going
to be slightly larger than your previous User Doc #2. The new feature for your proposal/planning documents is the abstraction. Depending on the instrument you come up
with, you may or may not end up having the user critique your abstraction
diagram. Since we have nice, powerful Adobe software, I would like those of you who know how to use the software to use it for your next document. Of course, that isn't a requirement.
Think of Instructional/Educational
Guides as well. Don't limit yourself to just instructions or manuals.
Also, you may do this with a partner--NO MORE THAN TWO!!!
Planning for User Doc #3 User
Testing
Your user test will be April 13th (two weeks), so you must have something for users to test. An
instructional-type document will be at the heart of this assignment, so I want
you all to come up with three personas for the instrument you'll document.
I also want you to include the following:
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Describe the instrument or educational value
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Explain how the user would IDEALLY approach the set of instructions, and plan how you would IDEALLY test your draft.
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Create an abstraction (if applicable...there's a little room for not having one)
for you system. (See HAL)
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Describe the three (3) personas you had in mind
when creating the document or IDEAL testing situation. Personas don't really work after the fact, so come up with them prior to starting your document.
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Come up with five post-test questions
that use a Likert scale and have a comments section
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Set at least four goals and make sure
they're measurable. You may specify these in your planning document.
Remember, you need to build on your skills
throughout the semester (and from the previous semester, year, or what have
you), so I want to see some sophistication.
HAL Presentations for
5181 Students
Those of you enrolled in 5181 will be doing
a nice 4-5 minute presentation on HAL or inspired by HAL. I
originally wanted you to take an aspect of user design from the book and
discuss it. For instance, you could take one of the big case studies/examples
and present the issue to the class in your own words. One of the disasters or
mishaps would work well. Just get up in front of class and convey the
information to the non-expert audience.
Remember, presentations are not ALL
ENCOMPASSING descriptions, they're astutely concise representations of a
topic.
Before We Go...
Keep reading Degani's Taming Hal: Designing Interfaces beyond 2001 for next week. Please have a rough draft of your User Document #3. This may be a group (as in two people) or individual assignment. Your user test will be April 13th. I'm asking you to do a document for a significantly larger project than User Docs #1 and #2. Also, don't forget to bring your books with you next week.
Also, your revised User Document #2 will be re-due (get it?) on April 13th. You should receive an edited copy from Dr. Morgan's ENGL 4183/5183 "Editing Technical Documents" class. You will still have a chance to revise it once more for your final portfolio.
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