Thursday, April 22, 2010

Tom R. Bi-graphs at GVU talk

Tom Rodden  (professor Rodden to you ) was giving a good talk about formalisms about space at an impromptu volcano refugees talk at GVU ( Georgia Tech Atlanta )

Particularly Bi-graphs by Robin Milner. These are very formal mathematical models which there where using to reason about space.

He also mentioned Proxemics as a social model of space.

I do have a problem with this very simplistic notion of space which is it assumes we know what 'a' space is. For example is it doesn't take the physical aspects of space for example how would you model half hights dividers.


interesting.


Robin Milner (Paperback - Apr 20, 2009)
$40.50

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Calm/Slow email

One of the themes at the plenary was the notion of technology voids - going places without email/internet to create the sensation of calm and rest/contemplation. 


I was talking to paul about a mail server that would shut down for the evening from 6:00 to 6:00 in the morning which would sent an automatic email saying the mail server didn't deliver email outside office hours. I think it might also say this at weekends.  


I think the important part is the mail server would take the bullet for you not seeing the email. Perhaps it would suggest phoning with a number to release the email if it was very important. This would put the weight back on the sender to socially interrupt you making clear the other commitments you have. 


Perhaps with that you could create the calm spaces to recover rest and give rhythm to your life. 


The idear was you could still send but didn't get stuck on a treadmill of mail. I know so many people who drive them selves crazy answering email late at night.  I quite like the notion of periods of no interuption.  My wife now regularly gets documents at 10:00/11:00 in the evening which the students expect her to read them for their tutorials the next morning. For some reason instead of telling the student this is far too late, she will sit up till the early hours reading it for the next day. I feel this helps no one ( how can you work well when tired). So the idea is the technology becomes the facilitor creating their own technology void. 


I've been thinking of putting a timer on the wireless in the house which shuts off at 11:30 but you would have to have the facility to turn it on some how in an emergency.

Paul found macfreedom - it turns the internet off for periods but I wondered if a mail server as I described above

http://macfreedom.com/



Found link to BBC article about new book here. Good but the solutions are a bit weak. 



Just a few more dyslexia links ( honest )

Nice prescriptive description  To little 

www.dyslexia.com one

http://otal.umd.edu/UUGuide/erica/ is interesting only because it breaks its own guidelines.

HCI for people with cognitive disabilities is also a highly dyslexic un-friendly paper. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1102190 Basically this is advocacy paper but failes to identify what 'cognitive' impairment means. Also suggests a 'cognativily impaired' person on the usability panel.

Extra-Ordinary Human-Computer Interaction: Interfaces for Users With Disabilities. (book reviews): An article from: Technical Communication

While there is little in the literature about dyslexia there is quite a lot about cognitive disability. Which is interesting but doesn't let you play with the positive aspects.

http://proxies.xhaus.com/java/

Reading tests

I thought about creating a program which would give you dyslexia but then how to assess it ? I realised you could create an page modification which would be harder to read and then you could test people's reading ages until it got low enough.

I wonder if anyone in the OU does this.

http://www.sedl.org/cgi-bin/mysql/rad.cgi?searchid=246


Authors: Muter, Paul; LatrĂ©mouille, Susane A.; Treurniet, William C.; Beam, Paul
Source: Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Volume 24, Number 5, October 1982 , pp. 501-508(8)

Did text on TV screen against a book "Video subjects read 28.5% more slowly than book subjects" but other wise the same. But this work was really out of data text wise. 

one to check out later. 
http://www.jstor.org/pss/40030408
FH Heppner, JGT Anderson, AE Farstrup, NH … - Journal of Reading

only 2/3 of the original speed is not bad. 



this looks good from the HCI perspective. 
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118865288/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

positive aspect of dyslecxia ( from a feel good website ) 


  • Perception: the ability to alter and create perceptions;
  • Highly aware of the environment;
  • Highly curious;
  • Great intuition and insightful;
  • Thinking and perceiving multi-dimensionally (using all the senses);
  • A lively imagination;
  • Can experience thought as reality;
  • Creativity;
  • Easy adoption of change;
  • Holistic, see the big picture, don’t get lost in details, get to the important aspects;
  • See patterns, connections, and similarities very easy;
  • Concentration;
  • Can be very driven, ambitious and persistent;
  • Superior reasoning;
  • Capable of seeing things differently than others;
  • Love for complexity;
  • Simultaneous multiple thought processing;
  • Not following the crowd;
  • The ability of visual, spatial and lateral thinking.
I'm not sure I agree with all of these. Like what does 'experience thought as reality  mean ? ' and in what why is creativity and 'a lively imagination' different? I'm not sure about 'superior reasoning' mean perhaps is more like the holistic one but just badly phrased. I'm not sure I would put ambitious in the list how can this be related to the other features. and visual, spatial and lateral thinking are very similar to others previously mentioned. 

OK pinch of salt time. I don't think these are universal. 

Ok in another webiste the advantages are 

 - perception if visual figure gestalt 
  - Strong visual imagery/Mory 
 - visually observant (people,things) 
  - good with spatial problems. 
  - lateral thinking/problem solving.  (good with logic puzzels)
-  visual thinking (I think I would agree with that).
 - color sensitivities 
 - Thinking holistically
 - Abstractive
 - Interdisciplinary. 
 - strong spatial memory ( Another I agree with ) 
 - strong emotional memory  - ( I've never thought of that and not sure ) 
 - Excellent long-term memory for experiences, ( hard to say ) from here
 -  Excellent long-term memory locations, ( hard to say )
 -  Excellent long-term memory  faces. ( hard to say )
- Ability to drift in time - ( not sure but I've seen other comments like that but they lack clarity, is this related to 'poor time management?' ) 
 - See the over all shape no the texture of detail. 
- Some comments about being able to predict what is going to happen in a film. I do that but I'm not sure this is a dyslexic thing. I mean everyone finds films very predictable right ? 
 - Maths conceptualisation, 
 - Mechanical ability 
 - Practical skills ( is this different from mechanical ability ) 
 - Verbal Communication ( I'm not sure if this is inherant but I'm quite articulate' )
 - Musical Skills  (apparently)
 - I've seen strong work ethic but is this in the mind or learnt ? 
 -  Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic. ( from New York times). Similar study did 20% in the UK. Again I've done this but I don't know if this is the result of some primal urge to set  a business up. Perhaps its the result of more creativity or perhaps the ability to ignore convention at will. If your born out of line then perhaps its easy to being to do the impossible and ignore convention. Perhaps its difficulties being stuck at the bottom with clearly insipid minds above you. Perhaps this makes you feel you could do things smarter. 


I've found more quotes about 
  • Determined
  • Persistent
  • Empathetic - which might match up with other desciptions above 
  • Insightful - bit vague but links up with the holistic thinking. 


One interesting quote 'I adopted a strategy for squeezing through the system.' I know of a number of dyslexics who squeeze through the gaps in society rather than find a traditional path within in. Again an interesting observation but how does this relate to software design. 


So how might you support/use this in software design ?
 How do you design for someone who is much stronger spatially than you? 
How do you facilitate someone with better lateral thinking skills ? 


more advice on the down side
http://www.made-for-all.com/2009/01/06/designing-for-users-dyslexia/
http://81.89.134.99/main/information/extras/x09frend.asp
http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/mag35.html

good example of what I have to do 
http://jackieweber.net/Projects/downloads/dyslexia.pdf
Helen Irlen's book Reading by the Colors.

mirror-opposites: s/he might see


  • instead of q,
  • d instead of b,
  • 127 instead of 721
  • saw instead of was
  • lion instead of loin


on the up side ( Iphone ) 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/apr/06/iphone-makes-reading-books-easier

Oh someone has done a simulatrion poo
http://www.webaim.org/simulations/dyslexia-sim.html


Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Crickey (more dyslexia)

I just met Caroline Jarrett who was running a workshop at Chi with a strong readability issue. Cool.  Works near by so might meet up again.

http://www.dyslex-editing.webs.com/

Multi touch design principles.

From the talk atCHI. 


Multi-user computing 
design for touch 
content is the interface 


design for touch
do touch from the ground up ( not mouse emulation) 


Making metaphores on a napkins ( low fidelity drawing) made 100 then reduced to 10. 
(to me sounds like design patterns for designers)
created mood boards 
(intresting number of people taking photos of highly visual
one tangible to make documents
trash can tangible - to delete. (nice)


Lots of lovely design then tested out the metaphores with users. 
Rapid Interactive testing and evaluation(RITE testing)


use words to describe the interface.  

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

CHI 2010 AlVIS direct manipulation for computer program

43% drop out rate on programming courses.

programming environment which combines direct manipulation with text box.
uses some programming by showing ( drag over array to show it )

experiment to test if they they got programming (but with small numbers).

the number suggest that it works.

less looking at the help system.

I wonder if this is the same as Scratch.

Viscosity problem - changing a line of  code is slow.

CHI2010 and dyslexia

There was a great Alt.chi paper given as a comic ( I loved it ).

I'd love to do  an Alt.chi paper as a comic. I began to wonder what to do and wondered about doing one for dyslexia. I've been doing a quick look but I didn't much about designing stuff for dyslexics but did get a few papers. What I notice is that they talk about overcoming limitations of dyslexia rather than trying to support what dyslexics are good at.

Perhaps there is a simpler paper about creating user guides for dyslexics using comics ( comic/text ) comparison?
'Dyslexia affects at least 1 out of every 5 children in the United States'


functionally illiterate person can read and possibly write simple sentences with a limited vocabulary, but cannot read or write well enough to deal with the everyday requirements of life in their own society
85% of US juvenile inmates are functionally illiterate.
All over the U.S.A. 30 million (14% of adults) are unable to perform simple and everyday literacy activities.[3]


What about a program that generates comics automatically.

Gregor, P., Dickinson, A., Macaffer, A and Andreasen, P. (2003) See-Word - a personal
word processing environment for dyslexic computer users, British Journal of Educational
Technology, 34(3) pp. 341-355
8. McKeown, Sally (2000). Dyslexia and ICT: Building on Success. British Educational and
Communications Technology Agency

User sensitive inclusive design”— in search of a new paradigm ACM Conference on Universal Usability 2000 

Dyslexia and learning computer programming - Proceedings of the 9th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education


( this looks good ) 







Perhaps we could take the approach of dyslexia being a both a negative and positive thing requiring new approaches to software design.


This is also a good link talking about the positives of dyslexia.  



"The gift of dyslexia is being able to see the whole picture at once.
It's being able to make huge intuitive and creative leaps in thinking that lead a person to the problem's answer without having to take all the usual steps to get there. It's having the unique perspective to see all possibilities from all angles. It's being completely confounded by the small, mundane, rote, basic forms of learning, yet able to master the advanced, abstract concepts meant for older, more experienced students without even trying." 


The most common difficulty that comes with dyslexia is the inability to, or difficulty with, a concept called sequencing, the step-by-step way in which most people solve problems and organize their lives


How do we create software to both support the negatives (the disabilities) and more importantly the positives ( the abilities ). OK supporting the negatives supports low