Paper Reading #18: Aspect-level News Browsing: Understanding News Events from Multiple Viewpoints

Reference Information:
Title: Aspect-level News Browsing: Understanding News Events from Multiple Viewpoints
Authors: Souneil Park, SangJeong Lee, Junehwa Song
Presentation Venue: IUI’10, February 7–10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary:
This paper looks to solve bias in news media by providing a classified view of news articles with different view points. This functionality is called Aspect Level News Browsing and will allow the reader to read different points of views of important news article so they obtain a better understanding away from the bias that comes with every news article.

The problem with this idea is classifying each article into categories for the reader. This is done computationally by reading through the articles and parsing phrases that occur commonly in certain categories. There are few different ways of clustering articles together to form a specific category.

This is done by a method called Framing cycle-aware clustering. This type of clustering allows articles to be sorted in a head-tail model. The head-tail idea is articles extremely relevant to the category are placed in the front and articles with a smaller match are placed towards the end.

By clustering many articles together from different news sources the user can mitigate media bias. The reader can formulate their own balanced viewpoint from reading the different contrasting aspects.

Discussion: 
The idea of this is very interesting from a computational standpoint. I think this because it seems like it would be extremely difficult to accurately organize hundreds of news articles automatically. The ideas they use for sorting through the articles and clustering them together is pretty cool. I didn't go into a lot of detail about the parsing and sorting of the articles but if you want the technical details you can read the paper.

I like the idea of being able to read multiple news articles to try and get rid of bias because bias exists in everything we read. Even though bias cannot be completely removed, from reading multiple articles on the same news topic the authors hope the reader can realize different angles about the topic and have a full understanding. The only problem I have with reading multiple articles is I would have to be extremely interested in the topic to read about it more than once but those willing to read that much this kind of application would be useful for understanding news topics fully. I think its also worth noting a convience factor with this application, all of the articles are placed together so you do not have to go to different sources to view the same topics.

Full Blog For "Emotional Design"

Summary:
The book starts out by stating that more attractive designs are perceived as easier to use. The idea of focus and fun are discussed and how they can be incorporated in design. Focus is usually demanded by negative affects, such as deadlines. Creativity and fun are usually promoted by a nice design. The example used to incorporate both possibilities in a design would be to have a pretty design but if something goes wrong and much focus is needed give negative feedback such as a buzzer, flashing light, or flashing light with beeping.

There are three levels of emotion that work together that must be thought about in design. There is visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Visceral deals with how we feel about appearance. This emotion is our first impression. Behavioral is linked to how we feel when using the product and how effective it is. The reflective emotion deals with how we feel about the emotions we have towards the product after using it. An example of reflective is something that has sentimental value. These levels of emotion can be used when designing a product based on what its function is supposed to be. These emotions can also appeal to marketing and influence our decision to purchase or use a product.

The levels of emotion can be broken down further. Visceral is dominated by how something looks, feels, and sounds. Behavioral is all about function and use, appearance has no role in it. Reflective is influenced more by what message the product sends. This idea can vary between cultures and this factor should be thought of in design.

Discussion: 
These readings elaborated more on the idea of a different element of design to consider. These ideas are very important because if they are used properly they can help a designer understand the different levels of design and what all of the factors are to consider.  The more a designer knows about the people the design is being made for the better these ideas can be used.

Book Reading #42 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Appendix III: Samoan Civilization as It Is Today
Summary:
This chapter discusses how the Samoan culture has adopted new things from the modern age but kept their identity and all of their traditional ways alive. Many examples are given stating that state the idea of new ideas or tools being used but the old ways or tools are still prefered in many cases. At the end of the chapter Mead says the Samoans are an example of a culture that have just adopted some new things to make their living more comfortable and flexible. They have not been subject to many things our society posses that could be viewed as troublesome.


Discussion: 
The last couple of chapters have dealt with the direct comparison of something in our culture to the Samoan culture. I liked this chapter because it elaborated on the fact that our culture is indeed presesnt in the Samoan culture but they have not been consumed by any of the bad things that come with it. They have just taken what they could use and simply use it for what they want.

Book Reading #41 - Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 2: We All Search for Meaning
Summary :
This chapter begins by discussing that our memory remembers meaning not details. The examples used are that people remember faces better but not names and that people can't recall all of the details of a penny.

It is also discussed how memorizing something with no meaning, like a string of numbers, can be extremely difficult for anybody but if it is memorized by associating the meaningless with the meaningful, like converting the numbers to time or dates, memorizing can become much easier. This idea can also be associated with hiding places and passwords.

It is also described how shaky the human memory is when it comes to identifying people because a lot of different things can factor what the person remembers at a later time.

Discussion:
This chapter makes a lot of sense and makes me not feel so bad when I forget somebodies name or something I studied. I liked all of the examples for memorizing things and I think I will try that tactic more in the future when I study. I thought the study to see if people could recall the details of a penny was interesting. I don't even want to try and do that myself because I know I would fail miserably.


Chapter 3: We Connect the Dots
Summary:
The way we view something is what the author calls 'connecting the dots' and says its machinery embedded deep inside us. When the machinery can't connect the dots and we try to overide the impulse we make mistakes.

There are many things that are invisible to us but don't go unnoticed. The example used was females during their fertility cycle making more money at their jobs at the gentlemen's club.

Other things that skew our judgement like characteristics of items can have a large impact on what we think of things such as price or color of the item.

Regret is then discussed a little and how it adjusts our memory. It is said that an even that causes much regret is remembered better than ones that did not.

Discussion:
This chapter had useful examples to help elaborate what the author was describing. I liked this chapter because it discussed things that affect the way we act but are very subtle or even completely invicible. 

Book Reading #40 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 14: Education for Choice
Summary:
In this chapter the author talks about some of the struggles of the adolescent girl in our own society. She describes the choices that are available and how they are clouded by the American theory of endless possibilities. The parents must teach their children one of many ways to live life where the Samoan culture knows only one way.

Discussion: 
I thought an interesting thing Mead said was some things an adolescent has to choose between can either win the approval of her family or the approval of her peers but not really both. This just helps emphasize how there are many different choices adolescents can make in our society but in Samoan culture there is a standard that is known and the children don't really know any better than that.

Book Reading #39 - Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 0: Introduction: Why Do We Make Mistakes? Because...
Summary:
This chapter introduces the idea that why and who we blame for mistakes may not be accurate. Most errors made can be attributed to humans. This suggests that the mistakes are due to the limitations of what we can do. There exists a bias that alters our perception when mistakes are made. The mistakes we make are shaped by simple factors and will be discussed further.

Discussion:
This subject was talked about in our Donald Norman readings. It will be interesting to read an entire book about it assuming it doesn't repeat itself over and over! I liked how the idea was introduced by describing the world around us and what it expects. An example is remembering things like PIN numbers and passwords and how studies showed that most people forgot them shortly.

Chapter 1: We Look but Don’t Always See
Summary:
This chapter talks about how we don't always see what we need to see. It talks about visual errors and how humans are prone to them. Movie mistakes and how nobody really notices them is given as an example. It also discusses some other limitations for the way we see things, such as looking for something familiar. The example used is a beer bottle. If we expect to see it in one place and it is not there? How do we search for it? Things such as shape, size, labels, color, and other things can be used to compare with other items. Searching for things may be longer and harder than one would think.

Discussion:
This chapter was interesting because it started to talk about some of the limitations to the human site. Some errors are just made because we can't visually see what we need to see to not make the error. This is interesting because it is just something we have to deal with and can't really be changed unless we take more time to view every single thing we do.

Ethnogrophy Results: Week 7

This week I wanted to go further into the idea that people are more attracted to commenting and posting on material that is short and doesn't take much time to view. I noted in my last week's blog that the 'Pics' section was a very simple section on Reddit.com that is only pictures. Most pictures do not require a lot of viewing time. I'm going to do what I did last week and track several users who have posted material on the front page and see what their posting tendancies are. From my observations in previous weeks I will go ahead and say that people who are active and have posted something that has made it to the front page of the 'Pics' section will have many more posts in short content sections. Here are the results from five active users that posted front page content in the'Pics' section.

User 1:

• Pics x 11
• Reddit.com x 5
• Funny x 2
• Gaming x 2
• wtf
• videos x 2

User 2:

• Pics x 2
• Gaming x  8
• reddit.com x 3
• technology

User 3:

• Pics x 3
• fuuuuuuuuuuuu x 5
• reddit.com
• funny x 3
• todayilearned x 3

User 4:

• Music x 4
• Pics x 4
• ffuuuuuu
• gaming x 2
• worldnews x 5

User 5:

• Pics x 7
• Politics x 4
• Music x 6
• AskReddit x 2
• reddit.com
• funny x 2

Because I have not done this with thousands of users I cannot conclude anything for sure but I can have ideas. I think from these results it shows that people do in fact prefer greatly to post short content. Interestingly enough none of the users I looked at made posts in the science section I originally started with. Another idea worth noting is that there are sections, such as 'Pics', that are much more general than sections such as 'Science'. I've seen many people post in the science section and also make posts in the pics and funny sections but not the other way around. To me this emphasises that there are indeed communities in reddit. Some communities just appeal to more people and have a more general use.

Paper Reading #17: Personalized Reading Support for Second-Language Web Documents by Collective Intelligence

Reference Information:
Title:  Personalized Reading Support for Second-Language Web Documents by Collective Intelligence
Authors: Yo Ehara, Nobuyiku Shimizu, Takashi Ninomiya, Hiroshi Nakagawa
Presentation Venue: IUI’10, February 7–10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary:

This paper is about an interface that predicts what words on an English web page the user might not understand. If the user clicks on the word than the definition of the word will be displayed to the user. This can be more efficient than previous glossing systems because it glosses only the words that are predicted and not every single word in the text regardless if the user knows the word or not.

Logistic regression is used to model the system and predict the words unkown to the user. The next part of this paper discusses the very technical and mathematical explanation behind this model.

For testing purposes a database of 12,000 words was created that lists the most fundamental words that an English speaker should know. For the first study each of the 16subject answered 12,000 questions, one for each word in the database. Users were asked to match definitions with words.

From studies it is encouraging that it has been shown that the algorithm used adapts quickly to new users. This is helpful to know because it shows that something like this can be helpful to first time users opposed to using a system that has a static list of "difficult" words already defined.


Discussion:

I think something like this would be pretty helpful in certain situations. In most cases I personally would not want to have something like this taking up space on my screen. However, if I were reading a technical document or something for school I would like to have something like this available. I like how something can be created to adapt to each user's vocabulary.

What I didn't like about this document is even after reading it fully I'm not 100% sure I understand how the model works and the results from the studies. This sounds weird but the middle of the document is cluttered with specific terms to the field and mathematics. This was hard to follow because I don't understand fully what they are talking about even after they try to give a short description. I think this is just because the paper is meant for people already familiar with the subject.

Full Blog For "Obedience to Authority"

Summary:
This book describes a series of experiments and results about obedience done by Stanley Milgram.

The first couple chapters of the book discuss what it means to be obedient and disobedient. After these are established it is noted how people THINK they would react to the experiments that are about to happen. Most people view themselves in favorable light and don't see themselves being extremely obedient in a stressful environment.

The first half of the book after what was described above is about the experiments and results done by Milgram. Many experiments are done but the parameters are changed many times.

The experiment is done by having a learner, subject, and instructor. The way these three interact is different based on the parameters but the basis is that subject must shock the learner when the instructor tells them too.

The experiments deal with variables that may affect obedience. The first one tested is closeness to the victim. This is tested by allowing the subject to hear the learner's cries but they cannot see each other. From this it was shown that most people were obedient till the end. The experiment continued to bring the learner closer to the subject. The results showed that the closer the learner was the more disobedient the subject was. The experiment location was then changed to see if the results were unique to the original location. The results showed the results were the same for both areas using different subjects. Other variables were changed such as, the attitude and appearance of the instructor were changed which showed that it didn't really matter. Orders were given over the phone which showed people were more obedient when orders were given in person. Results with men and women were about the same. The role between learner and experimenter was switched which caused people to be disobedient. Having two instructors with different orders caused the subjects to hesitate. Having one instructor give orders and another instructor be the learner also caused hesitation.

The second half of the book discusses the psychology and reasons why obedience exists. The idea of people needing to be in a hierarchical society and how it functions is discussed. The different states of mind are discussed. When people are obedient they are in an anatomical state of mind and when they begin to disobey they enter the agentic state. Different things can cause people to alter states such as one's family.

These experiments deal mainly with the subject being aggressive. This causes strain on the subject and can cause disobedience. It was noted that the behavior of the subjects was with the obedient relationship with the instructor and not from anger.

The experiments criticism was then discussed and address. These questions include the subjects used in the experiment, if the subjects knew they were actually shocking the learner, and does the laboratory background have an effect on the results.

Discussion:
After reading the chapter about Milgrim in "Opening Skinner's Box" it was really interesting to read more details about the experiment and the results. I really liked reading about the experiments and the altered parameters each time but not so much the psychology behind it. However, I think it is very important to read about the psychology that comes from these results in the second half of the book because it helps answer the questions dealing with why people obey when they do and why they disobey when they do.

Book Reading #38 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 13: Our Educational Problems in the Light of Samoan Contrasts

Summary:
In this chapter instead of discussing the lives of children in the Samoan culture, the author discusses some of the differences with our own culture. Many things are discussed in great depth.

One of the things discussed are the difference in sex knowledge. This is linked with the difference in privacy the cultures have. The privacy also has an affect on the way birth and death are viewed to the children.

Samoan children also handle affection differently.They don't lack it compared to our culture but they do not express feelings and affection as much.

Education is also a big difference. Samoan children are constantly doing work with their parents. This helps them know how they will benefit society.

Discussion:
This chapter made me think a lot about what would happen if our society had some of the qualities of the Samoan society and how different it would be. I liked reading about the education portion and how it has compared to my life. It made me remember a conversation I had with my mother my freshman year where I told her what classes I was taking and she replied with "Aren't you a computer engineer?". This made me wonder why I had to take the classes I did and couldn't really think of an excellent reason. I think the comparisons made me picture the culture even better because it was directly compared to the culture we live in currently.

Book Reading #37 - Obedience to Authority

Summary:
Chapter 9: Group Effects
This chapter discusses the effects when there is a group of people rebelling rather than just an individual. The difference between conformity and obedience is distinguished and their differences as well. The differences lie in that subjects of Hierarchy, Imitation, Explicitness, and Voluntarism. After explaining these an experiment is described along with results.

Experiment 17 puts the strength of the group to the test. Two people are instructed to act along with the experiment and then disobey the instructor. After both people have rebelled it was shown that most people followed the group. The subject is the person doing the shocking in this experiment.

In the next experiment the same people are used except the subject is not doing the shocking. Only 3 out of 40 refused to participate until the end.

Chapter 10: Why Obedience? An Analysis
This chapter starts by discussing the value of hierarchy and why it causes obedience. Hierarchies promote stability and harmony and reduce friction between people. Along with the potential for obedience that we are born with this makes obedience possible.

The points to be taken from this chapter are the following, organized social life provide survival benefits, behavioral and psychological features that are necessary have been shaped by evolutionary forces, and the need for hierarchies. An important concept, the agentic state, is described as the condition a person is in when he sees himself as an agent for carrying out another person's wishes. This state is largely a state of mind.

Chapter 11: The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment
Questions are answered regarding the agentic state.

What does it take for a person to move to the agentic state? There are different factors such as family, institutional settings, and other properties of immediate atecedent conditions that make this state possible.

Characteristics of the agentic state are then described along with binding factors. These factors include things such as anxiety and obligations.

Chapter 12: Strain and Disobedience
The methods for disobedience are described as strain. The ways that strain are caused from the study are discussed, an example is hearing the screams of the learner. The way strain is resolved is by the act of disobedience. There are more ways to resolve strain such as avoidance of the situation. The ultimate resolution of strain is disobedience.

Chapter 13: An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?
This chapter discusses if the aggressive act of shocking the learner was the key to the disobedience. It talked about the experiment 11 where subjects were allowed to shock the learner with any shock level they thought was necessary but most of them shocked with the lowest level. The key to the behavior of the subjects lies with their relationship with authority not any built up anger or feelings.

Chapter 14: Problems of Method
Some ideas are discussed about how people may think the method is flawed.

The first problem people have discussed is that the subjects used were not normal and represented a special group. The first group used was Yale undergraduates who were described as aggressive and competitive. However, when the study used subjects from all over the city they observed the same outcome.

The second problem discusses if the subjects knew if they were physically shocking the learners. The facts from the experiments are re-stated to show that most thought the experiment was genuine and only a few did not.

The third problem is whether or not the laboratory situation was special and what was observed can not contribute to what would be viewed in the social world. It is said that the experiments are legit because of how easily people become instruments of authority. It is also worth noting that subjects used in the experiments are volunteers who willingly comply to what society has given them.

Discussion:
This half of the book was interesting because it discussed what was drawn from all of the experiments.  I liked the first half better but it is important to hear both sides of the story. I like how the author stated what was drawn from the experiment but also defended his claims at the end of the book.

Paper Reading #16: UIMarks: Quick Graphical Interaction with Specific Targets

Reference Information:
Title: UIMarks: Quick Graphical Interaction with Specific Targets
Authors: Olivier Chapuis, Nicolas Roussel
Presentation Venue: UIST’10, October 3–6, 2010, New Yomrk, New York, USA

Summary:
This paper discusses software called UIMarks that deals with improving the way we interact with systems with pointers, in most cases that is through the use of a mouse. UIMarks works by working like a macro which is a chain of events. Marks can be created to have a primary action and a following action. The following action is optional. Marks can be saved on the screen so multiple Marks can be present at once. The user can cycle through Marks by using a keystroke on the keyboard.

The paper suggests that it makes sense that the Marks would be advantageous on a large screen where the travel distance is great. A study was done to see if there were any other situations UIMarks would be better for rather than standard mouse operations. It was found that UIMarks was more advantageous when the target was very small. When the users were asked if they thought using the marks was faster and easier based on a five point scale. All users put four or five for speed and three, four, or five for ease.

Discussion:

This system seems pretty interesting because you can have multiple pointers on the screen that can do different things if you want them to. It seems like if you get really used to using this system you could do things much quicker rather than using one pointer to move around on the screen. One thing I don't like about this paper is that there is a ton of terms defined by the authors used in the design that I had to reference multiple times just to decode a lot of the sentences. It was really annoying to try and understand the results of the study when I had to keep scrolling up to read what every other term meant.

Ethnography Results, Week 6

Ethnography Results - Week 6

This week I wanted to try a different section of Reddit to compare it with the Science section. Before I switch sections I would like to re-state the observations I have made from my time spent in the Science section. From observing several users who have posted popular content that has made it to the front page of the Science section I took note of their commenting and posting tendencies. I noticed several things which include

• most science articles were lengthy and would require at least a couple of minutes to read and comprehend. 
• Users that posted popular material were not frequent posters in the Science section.
• Popular comments made in popular posts in the Science were usually not lengthy.
• Most users that posted popular material commenting in other sections more frequently than the Science section.

I think most of the above bullets relate to how long the article or post would take to read. Most users on a large site with a ton of viewing material do not like to spend all of their time reading a single article or lengthy comment. I want to check if this is true for a section that doesn't have material that will consume a lot of time viewing. I'm going to do some observing of the 'Funny' section.

What I plan to do in the Funny section is check what sections the users who have posted front page material usually post in. I want to see if this matches the characteristics of the users I checked out that post in the Science section.

I took five users who posted content that made it to the front page and recorded different sections that they have posted in. The following is the data that was collected.

User 1

• Pics x 8
• Funny
• Videos
• Animation
• WTF x 2
• Music
• Politics
• Technology
• History

User 2

•  Funny
• Pics x  6
• Technology x 3
• Worldnews x 3
• WTF
• Music

User 3

• Funny x 9
• Askreddit
• Pics x 3 
• Music x 4

User 4

• Funny x 4
• Reddit.com x 2
• Security
• Pics
• History
• Google

User 5

• Funny x 7
• Pics x 2
• WTF x 6
• offbeat x 4

From this data is appears to be a lot more consistent than the users I viewed in the Science section.Many of the users post a lot of stuff in the Funny section. I think it is also worth noting that a lot of the other sections that these five users post in have very short content as well, such as the very popular 'Pics' section. I think that this example  shows further that most users spend their time with short content. From the science section I think that comments work the same way. I will probably have a look at the comments users make in the Funny section next week but that will be important to observe to go beside this study.

From the results it may seem like the 'Pics' section would have been the easiest section to study that has short content because the content is only a picture. I did not choose this section because I wanted to look at content that could have the possibility to be an article as well which takes more time to view than the average picture.

Book Reading #35: Obedience to Authority

Summary:
Chapter 1: The Dilemma of Obedience
This chapter talks about the meaning of obedience. It describes the experiment done to test the obedience of individuals. What was found was most people were very obedient when it came to shocking people even if they thought there was a lot of danger. This led to to the reasons behind the obedience. Such as, people don't feel responsible for their actions if they are being told to do something by a superior. An example used is the Nazi's in Germany.



Chapter 2: Method of Inquiry
The line between being obedient and disobedient is described at the beginning of this chapter. Recruits for this shock experiment were taken from the entire New Haven community. A wide variety of individuals responded and were used in the experiment. The rest of the chapter describes how the experiment was set up and conducted.

Chapter 3: Expected Behavior
This chapter provides results of what people would expect people to do when placed in the situation of shocking another. Most people want to view themselves in favorable light and do not think about other variables in an unknown social situation.
 

Chapter 4: Closeness of the Victim
The first experiment described has it setup where the subject cannot hear or see the person being shocked. 26 out of 40 people obeyed the instructor until the end of the experiment. The victim was then brought closer where they could be seen through a silvered glass. The victim was brought closer and closer from silvered glass, to vocal range, seeing range, same room, then they were asked to touch the person. The closer the victim the more disobedient people were.  


Chapter 5: Individuals Confront Authority
The experiment's goal was to just see if an individual was obedient or disobedient. This chapter explains that it is important to note the comments and experiences of each individual because of the different variables they bring to the experiment. Several subjects are described in the rest of the chapter.


Chapter 6: Further Variations and Controls
A fifth experiment was explained where the lab the experiment was conducted in the basement of the lab at Yale. Milgram wanted to see if the less impressive lab in the basement had any effect on the outcome. The victim was also told to express concerns of having a small heart problem. The results concluded that these two new factors didn't have any conclusive effect on the outcome.

Experiment six checked to see if the appearance and personality of the experimenter and victim were a major factor. The roles were reversed and the results showed that it didn't really matter.

Experiment seven removed the experimenter from the room and gave orders by telephone. The results of this showed that this was a major effect on the situation. When orders were given over the phone people were not as obedient.

Experiment eight used women as subjects. The results were pretty much the same as men.

Experiment nine used a contract between the subject and victim. About half of the people still went to the end.

Experiment ten moved experiment sites to an office building in Bridgeport to have complete dissociation from Yale University. The obedience level was slightly lower but not significantly.

Experiment eleven allowed the subject to shock at any level they wanted to. Most of the subjects didn't go above the lowest level shock.


Chapter 7: Individuals Confront Authority II
This chapter describes the effect the experiment had on more individuals and what they thought. 


Chapter 8: Role Permutations

Experiment twelve reversed the roles of the experimenter and the victim. The victim would demand to be shocked and the experimenter would plead for the subject not to do it. Every single subject listened to the experimenter and stopped when asked.

Experiment thirteen used what seemed to be ordinary men working together with the subject to do the experiment. The subject does the shocking but no shock level is specified. The experimenter gets a phone call and leaves the room. One of the ordinary men suggests that they increase the shock level every time a mistake is made. Most of the subjects broke with the ordinary man and didn't comply.

Experiment thirteen a happened when the subject refused to go along with the ordinary man. If the subject wouldn't do it then he was asked to switch places with the man. Most people refused to go along with it and took action against him.

Experiment fourteen puts the subject in a situation where he must shock the experimenter to prove to the victim that it is alright. Every subject stopped shocking when the experimenter cried for them to stop.

Experiment fifteen used two experimenters instead of one. These experimenters gave conflicting commands. Most people stopped when or close to when the argument started. Nobody took advantage of the opportunity to continue shocking until the end,

Experiment sixteen used two experimenters but one of them acted as the victim. This experiment showed that the experimenter in the chair did not fair any better than the original victim. He lost all of his power he had as an authority. People in this experiment either stopped when they were asked by the victim or kept going all the way like in the original experiment.

Discussion: 
I was kind of amazed after reading this at how many different experiments were done. From reading in Opening Skinner's Box I knew about the experiment but had no idea it was done this many times with this many variations. So, it was cool to see what experiments were conducted and very interesting to see the results and how they changed the subjects actions. 

Full Blog For "Opening Skinner's Box"

This book was about different people and their experiments and how they have impacted our world today.

The beginning of the book introduced Skinner and how people think of him. People think he is scary and his name is startling. Skinner's experiments were based on animals and making them do certain things for food. These experiments are famous  because they have to do with the idea of free will and why we do certain things as humans.

The following experiments are discussed in the book.

Stanley Milgram's experiment with obedience to authority where he wanted to see how many people would continuously shock somebody when told to do so even if it appeared to be hurting them badly. This experiment is important because it shows how people think in an unknown environment when instructed by somebody else.

The next experiment is about David Rosenhan's experiment that challenged psychiatric medicine. Rosenhan and several others admitted themselves to a ward and then acted completely normal. The experiment was to see how long it took for the doctors to see they were normal and healthy. It is worth noting that the author of the book also tried something like this and made the comment that it was too easy to get medicine for this and that maybe the doctors were unsure of themselves.

There was also an experiment opposite of Skinner's in chapter 1. It involved dealing with unkown situations when there was no authority around. A room was filled with smoke and an actor was instructed not to react to the smoke. When the actor was present people were hesitant to get help for the smoke but when the actor was removed most people recognized the need to get help when the smoke appeared.

Harry Harlow's experiment with monkeys and how he thought he isolated the variables of love. He showed that baby monkeys preferred a mother that was soft over one that was hard with food. This went badly though when the monkeys couldn't interact with each other socially. 

Bruce Alexander's rat park experiment is discussed as well. This dealt with addiction and if it was in our heads or not. He placed rats in a luxury environment called Rat Park and rats in a simple cage. He showed that rats in the simple cage constantly stayed high. This showed that the environment greatly influenced the rat's decision to drink the drugged water.

There are also experiments about memory. The first one deals with Dr. Elizabeth Loftus and her idea that somebody can believe in a memory that doesn't exist if they are led to believe that it does over and over. Her idea was to plant a false memory of being lost in the mall and see how many people would go along with it. The results showed that many people went along with it.

Dr. Scoville's experiment about removing a man's hippocampus is discussed. It was noted that removing this part of the brain removed the man's short term memory. This led to Eric Kandal's experiments with sea slugs. From this he discovered drugs that enhanced and repressed a persons memory.

The last chapter is about lobotomies and the history of them. They have become more sophisticated over time but are still risky and require the approval of an ethics board for somebody to get one done.

Discussion:
I really enjoyed this book because of the variety of topics covered. Even for similar topics such as memory, there were different experiments done. I liked how the author reflected on each experiment and how it has impacted our society today.

Book Reading #36 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 12: Maturity and Old Age

Summary:
The difference between married and non-married woman is discussed. The Samoan culture sees no difference between these married and non-married woman. Woman aren't really affected by the choice to live in the husband's families house or the wife's. The decision affects the men more than the women. Hierarchy of men and women are discussed further also.


Discussion:
This book is interesting because its always interesting to read about the cultural differences. I thought the difference between men and woman in there 20s and 30s was interesting as well. She said the men had a harder time because of their title seeking.

Paper Reading #15: Jogging over a Distance between Europe and Australia

Comments:
1
2

Reference Information:
Title: Jogging over a Distance between Europe and Australia
Authors: Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller, Frank Vetere, Martin R. Gibbs, Darren Edge, Stefan Agamanolis,
              Jennifer G.  Sheridan
Presentation Venue: UIST’10, October 3–6, 2010, New Yomrk, New York, USA

Summary:

This paper is about a project that social joggers can use to have a social experience with others from long distances. A social jogger is somebody who uses jogging to spend time with others to do such things as 'catch up with what is going in their friends life'.  A person can choose to jog with anybody in the world and use features that allow communication and a feature that let's each person know if they are running together or ahead or behind the other.

 
Communication is done with the other person through a headset. The communication channel is through a cell phone that is stored in a mini pouch around the persons waist. Through the headset multiple people can talk to each other from anywhere in the world.

The pacing feature is done through a mini-computer inside the pouch around each persons waste. Before jogging the user must enter a target heart rate so the system has knowledge of what should be average for each user. The heart rate of the user is kept track of during exercise through a wireless heart monitor on the users chest. This system allows people to run together even if they are in completely different condition. If one persons heart rate is above their average jogging heart rate then that means they are running faster. The other user is made aware of this through the headset. The other person will sound like they are running ahead and the other behind. If both users are running at their target heart rate they will sound like they are right next to each other.

Some things worth noting are most users thought this was better than actually running with somebody in person. They felt safer running alone at night because of the constant and direct communication with another person. Most people jogged in parks so headset didn't interfere with traffic sounds.

Discussion:


This was a very interesting paper because from experience I can understand how difficult it is to jog with somebody else. You have to slow down or speed up constantly and it is often hard to communicate because you are breathing so hard or maybe they aren't close enough to you. This system allows each person to run at their own speed but at the same time know how they are doing in real time compared to their partner in case they want to try and keep up with them on an exercise level. This system is also cool because it could allow friends from all over the world to have a social experience in a different way unless maybe they were jogging partners in the past.  I think this type of idea is perfect for casual/social joggers. I also like how the results of how each person is doing compared to the other is given in real time and not when they are done jogging.

Ethnography Results, Week 5

Week 5:

During week 4 I did a short study on what kind of content users were commenting about. I did this by searching articles for very popular comments, then following the user that made the comment. This week I did a similar observation but instead I observed what people posted about. I took popular articles from the science section and observed the user that made the post.

I picked 5 users that posted the top 5 articles at the time of this observation. The following data includes the user number and the section that they posted in. From this I will try to see if there are any conclusions that can be drawn or looked into.

User 1:

·         Worldnews x 9

·         Business x 2

·         News x 3

·         Wtf x 3

·         Politics x 1

·         Sports  x 3

User 2:

·         Science x 3

·         Todayilearned x 2

·         Reddit.com x 2

User 3:

·         science x 3

·         worldnews x 7

·         history

·         netsec

·         Politics

·         Truereddit x 2

·         Programming

User 4:

·         Science

·          Worldnews x 5

·         Pics x 2

·         Reddit.com x 5

·         Wtf x 3

·         Funny x 2

User 5:

·         Space x 2

·         Netsec x 2

·         Physics

·         Science

·         Technology x 2

·         Comics

·         Politics

·         Reddit.com x 3

·         Android x 2

·         Pics

·         Geek

Some things to not about the users are the time range for the posts recorded. User 1 was very active and posted all of the articles within 12 hours of each other. User 2's posts are within 3 months. User 3's posts are within 20 days. User 4's posts are within 4 months. User 5's are within 9 days. This just shows how active each user is.

From this study I wanted to see if the articles popularity was possibly linked to the popularity of the user. If the user constantly posted material in the same section, active users might recognize the user's name. From this data it looks like there are several sections that most of the users posted in, not just the science section with the popular article. If a lot of different users browse these similar sections then the users might be well known in the community. In general though if someone just browsed the science section they would most likely not recognize these users. To me this says that the popularity of these articles are based fully on the content and not the popularity of the user. That is not to say though that the credibility of the user that posted the article does not effect the popularity of the article. A user can view another users 'karma' by viewing their profile. The more karma somebody has the higher their credibility and reputation.

 

Book Reading #33 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 11: The Girl in Conflict
Summary:
This chapter is about girls who deviated from the standard Samoan expectations. The first group of girls described deviated by not accepting their environment and rejected traditional choices. There was no harm in these girl's actions. The next group described are the delinquents. These girls were involved in conflict.

Discussion:

I liked this chapter because most of it was examples of the girls in the village and what their experiences were. This helped me better understand what the author was trying to describe. I think it is interesting to note the differences in the general lifestyle's of all the girls described. These are described at the end of the chaoter in the last paragraph.

Book Reading #34 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 10: Chipped
Summary:
Lobotomy was the first breakthrough in helping severly ill mental patients but was questioned ethically due to the way patients were selected and the side effects. After drugs were created that would help mentally ill people lobotomies lost the hype. The procedure has been greatly refined but is now extremely hard to get due to ethical matters. The end of the chapter discusses a person who is permitted to get a lobotomy because he has exhausted all other options and comes out of the surgery cured.


Discussion: 
I think its kind of shocking how many aspects of what doctors are doing to our brains is unkown. People take drugs rather than surgery because it feels like they have control and know exactly what is happening, when in fact the doctors don`t even fully understand. One quote that stuck out to me in this chapter was  "Our cure is only as good as our courage".

Paper Reading #14: Sensing Foot Gestures from the Pocket

Comments:
1
2

Reference Information:
Title: Multitoe: Sensing Foot Gestures from the Pocket
Authors: Jeremy Scott, David Dearman, Koji Yatani, and Khai N. Truong
Presentation Venue: UIST’10, October 3–6, 2010, New Yomrk, New York, USA

Summary:

This paper discusses an interface for mobile phones. The interface is hands-free because input is taken from movement in the user's foot. The interface also allows an eyes-free environment by not demanding the user's attention to the mobile devices scree. This is done by giving feedback through vibrating the phone or making noises.

Ways the user could have there phone while interacting

A study was done to see what kind of movements worked best for the user in terms of accuracy and what was the most comfortable. It showed that the plantar flexion movement was the most accurate movement but selection error had consistant error for all movements. The users preffered gestures which involved lifting or rotating the toe, however this was the least accurate. From this data a follow up was done with an accelerometer in a mobile phone in the user's pocket or holster. This follow up showed that they could get the accelerometer to be 86% accurate when tracking these movements.

The paper goes on compare the different axis of rotation and how accurate and comparable they are.

Different ranges of motions and shows that each item selection was 10 degrees apart.

Discussion:
I got a weird feeling from this paper when I thought about who would sacrifice the accuracy that you get from your fingers for the accuracy you get from your foot. This also includes the fact that on mobile phones when you hit a button you are physically putting force on the button which gives you a better sense of what is being pressed. I'm also not sure what kind of applications this kind of idea could be used for. However, I do feel that this paper was written not to promote the interface but to promote the study of thinking of new ways to interact with mobile devices, which is interesting. I like the idea of having more feedback from a device so the user would not have to give 100% of their attention to the task they are doing. I think this will be interesting and useful in small tasks that don't have any importance. This is because I believe the user would much rather devote full attention to the device in these times.

Book Reading #32 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 9: Memory Inc.
Summary:
This chapter started with discussion about how a man, Dr. Scoville, removed a man's(H.M) hippocampus. This unknowingly removed his short term memory. Eric Kandal, took this knowledge to study memory inside the brain of slugs (he used slugs because they don't have as many neurons). From his studies he discoved a drug that enhances memory called CREB. He also discovered a CREB repressor. It was also discussed how a man being studied in a different place had an unbelievable memory and could recite pages and pages of text after only viewing it for a brief time. This man could not comprehend what the words meant though. The author questions if we become the same way will we lose what it is to be human?

Discussion:
I think this chapter was interesting because a totally botched experiment turned into something much greater. What this shows to me from the studies done by Kandal is that the way memories work is starting to be unfolded. It is interesting that he chose slugs as his subjects to me. If his work is 100% credible I'm not for sure but what I am sure of is it has probably had a great impact on the study of memory.

Book Reading #31 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 10: The Experience and Individuality of the Average Girl
Summary:
The beginning of this chapter explains why children could not speak the courtesy language and how they mix up terms that we would think odd.

Most of the children had seen life and death, the culture didn't feel the need to hide them from these things.

The Samoan children have complete knowledge on the human body and its functions. They also understand the nature of sex.

The differences between small household children and larger households is then discussed. In smaller households the children learn responsibility and initiative much quicker.

The difference between girls living in the pastor's house is that they had no love affairs and lived a "more orderly" existence. However, their interest in salacious material was stronger than the girls who could actually experiment. Other differences include they trust other girls more, worked better in groups, and were less concious of their place in their own households.

Discussion:
The experiences the girls go through is important to note. I don't really know what to think about this chapter other than it was interesting to read about the average girl and some experiences. The examples made me better understand what was meant by the author. I do feel like I've read this material before in previous chapters but without as much detail and analysis.

Book Reading #30 - Emotional Design

Chapter 3: Three Levels of Design: Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective
Summary:
This chapter discusses the ideas behind using the visceral, behavioral, and reflective senses in design. Visceral design is dominated by look, feel, and sound. Behaviroal design is about use and performance, appearance doesn't matter. It is important in behavioral design to make sure the system image of the final design matches the right user model. Reflective design is more about what message the product sends. This can vary between cultures but is always important. The example about the motorola headset shows how all of these factors can be used in design.

Discussion:
This chapter repeats itself some more but at least this time it dives a little into how visceral, behavioral, and reflective design are used through example. I thought the motorola example was rather helpful but the example about the clothing stores was not.

Paper Reading #13: Multitoe: High-Precision Interaction with Back-Projected Floors Based on High-Resolution Multi-Touch Input

Comments:
Vince Kocks
Shena Hoffmann

Reference Information:
Title: Multitoe: High-Precision Interaction with Back-Projected Floors Based on High-Resolution     Multi-Touch Input
Authors: Thomas Augsten, Konstantin Kaefer, René Meusel, Caroline Fetzer, Dorian Kanitz, Thomas Stoff, Torsten Becker, Christian Holz, and Patrick Baudisch
Presentation Venue: UIST’10, October 3–6, 2010, New York, New York, USA
 
Summary:

Most multi-touch systems today are limited to what the user can reach in arm's length. This paper discusses a floor with high-resolution that a user can use their shoes to perform actions with the interface.

Hotspot example

Many factors had to be studied to make this as user friendly as possible. User studies for this project were conducted to make design decisions. A study was done to see what actions users preffered to interact with the floor. From this study the action of tapping, stomping, jumping, and double tapping were seen to be the most recurring. To select an option on the interface the user taps their foot. To invoke a menu the user must jump .A separate study was done to decide what most users considered to be the target area of their shoe. The study showed that most users used the projection of their shoe. The point of having a large display is to have more room for material. What if there are many buttons and they need to be scaled down to fit in the desired area? A last study was done to see what users considered to be a hotspot for their shoe. This is one little pressure spot that can be used for more precision. From the study it was decided to allow the user to personalize the hotspot used.

identifying a user

Different algorithms were discussed on how to identify users and how to distinguish walking vs tapping. A database of soles are kept to try and identify users who use the system. To check whether the user is walking or interacting the system compares pressure points to a "time line". If somebody is walking there is a general pattern for pressure on the foot. This can be seen in the picture below.

Pressure on somebodies foot as they walk

If the user is tapping then the time line would look like nothing, pressure on the ball, nothing.

Discussion:
This paper was cool to read and I enjoyed it because there wasn't too much technical involved. The idea of this kind of large scale multi-touch system sounds really cool but I'm not quite sure when it will be extremely useful. I think in certain environments, like a large corporation, this could be useful in some cases but for me to use this would take a lot of getting used to.

However, this system is not about trying to instantly get everybody to switch to a foot based multi-touch system. I feel its about trying to evolve the idea into something useful and more practical.

Ethnography Results, Week 4

Week 4:
For this weeks study I had the idea to do a short user study that would look into how users commented on scientific material and what other categories they post in. On the science front page nothing looked extreme or out of place. The topics included technology, biology, medical, climate, and space articles. What I did was selected some of the more popular front page articles and viewed the comments. If the user had a popular comment that had a good rating I looked further into that user's profile to see what other topics were commented on.

I picked a total of five users because I wasn't sure what to expect. From each users profile I viewed the last ten comments made to see what category it was in and if the comment was relevant to the subject. I'm sure its not like this for everybody but I got consistent results from all five users. 

User 1:

• Funny x 4
• Pics x 3
• Politics
• WTF
• Science 

User 2:

• Minecraft x 4
• Science x 2
• Videos x 3
• Funny x 4
• Gaming x 2

User 3:

• Funny
• Videos
• Starcraft x 2
• WTF x 2
• Pics x 4
• Science

User 4:

• Science x 2
• Funny x 8

User 5:

• Videos x 3
• Politics x 2
• Science
• Funny x 3
• Pics x 3              

From the results it is obvious that from the users there are not that many posts from the section I took the user from. Another thing to note is that the comments are listed in order of the time they were posted. So, the most recent are on the left.

Discussion:
From these five users it seems pictures and short videos are favored to comment on rather than the lengthy science articles. This also says to me that these users tend to stay in one category for a period of time and read several articles.

Not all of the comments made in the science section from the five users were really relevant to the topic, but the comment were still up-voted and popular. These results are interesting to me because it seems like most of the discussion in the science section is very involved and intelligent. Maybe this happens because the actual population that the a specific science article greatly appeals to is small. Many people probably think the article is interesting but like these witty, short comments better than a more scientific comment.

I think for next week I will continue observing the same five users but also choose five new users to monitor to see if any of the claims I made above remain consistent. Along with this I will do a study on the topics that users post about rather than comment on. The study will probably be done in the same manner as the user comment study.