March 28th: Non-Determinism and Other Fun Machine States

Announcements/

• Becoming a W.I.S.E.R. Woman
  Tues., March 22nd at 3:30pm
  Student Union--GHI
• "The Myth of Having it All" Christine Hassler
  Tues., March 22nd at 7:00pm
  Student Union--GHI
• Patricia Hill Collins
  March 30th at 7:00pm
  McKnight Hall--Cone Center
• Career Expo: 4/6/2011 9:30-3:00 in the SAC

Overview

• Reading Quiz #3 on Moodle
• HAL Ch. 1-4 Discussion (mostly 3 & 4)
• Planning for User Doc #3 (Have a rough draft next week)
• Hal Presentations --5181 students only
• Persona Research--Think about the types of audiences you may serve and technological literacy
  educated AND males AND literacy
• Pay attention to the syllabus and due dates

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).

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.

If our discussion isn't fruitful, these will be individual assignments you post online. Hey, I just let you look at my music list, so we've had our sit back and relax time. Now, it's your turn to perform.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Explain what it means to accept that machines go awry? What does Degani say about this acceptance, and who else agrees with him?

4. 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 danger based on user perception? (tough one)

5. 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...but it would make me happy.

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 11th (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 (assignments page link):

• Describe the instrument or educational value

• Explain how the user would IDEALLY approach the set of instructions, and plan how you would IDEALLY test your draft.

• Create an abstraction (if applicable...there's a little room for not having one) for you system. (See HAL)

• 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.

• Come up with five post-test questions that use a Likert scale and have a comments section

• 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 11th. 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.

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