Book Reading #42: Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference Information

Title: Coming of Age in Samoa

Author: Margaret Mead

Editor: Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Appendix III: Samoan Civilization as it is Today
Summary
This chapter discussed how Samoan civilization has or has not been influenced by the merging of European ideas. This includes new tools and materials, a Naval base that provides a system of government to each village, Christian influences, and the establishment of schools. Despite each of these changes, the culture has remained very flexible, taking only those parts of our culture that have made Samoan life more comfortable and flexible and ignoring those parts that would hurt the culture.

Discussion
I found it interesting that, while many cultures are influenced negatively by other cultures, Samoan culture reacted oppositely. The cultural adaptations only made life easier, removing things such as violent punishment but substituting no other form of punishment into its place. This made for a very flexible culture, where life stages such as adolescence produce no extra stress or strain.

Book Reading #41: Why We Make Mistakes

Reference Information
Title: Why We Make Mistakes
Author: Joseph T. Hallinan
Publisher: 2009 Crown Archetype

Chapter 2: We All Search for Meaning
Summary
This chapter discussed the importance of meaning when dealing with memory. In general, meaning matters when remembering something, but details, such as names, do not matter as much so they are easily forgotten. This means that if a person were to associate an emotion with someone, such as a judgment, they are more likely to remember that person's face due to the new, associated meaning with them. This also suggests the importance of mnemonics when memorizing.


Discussion
I find it interesting that we are more likely to remember faces than names, but it make sense. I also liked the story of finding a good hiding place, as I thought it had an important lesson: Hide things in a place that has meaning so you don't lose them forever. I also found it interesting how many people are wrongly convicted for crimes due to incorrect witness recognition.

Chapter 3: We Connect the Dots
Summary
This chapter discussed how brains often connect meaning without a person realizing it. This also means that initial impressions are very important and hard to change. The chapter also discussed the importance of subtle clues that a person would not generally be able to recognize on their own, such as scents, the importance of price, and the effect of regret.


Discussion
The fact that you should change your answer on a test because it is mostly changed from right to wrong was very interesting. It just seems wrong to change an answer, especially because many teachers have told me that you always change it from right to wrong. It makes sense that regret would play a factor in this, though, making the mistake more memorable than correcting.

Paper Reading #18: Automatic Generation of Research Trails in Web History

Comments
Jorge Perez
Adam Friedli

Reference Information
Title: Automatic Generation of Research Trails in Web History
Authors: Elin Ronby Pederson, Karl Gyllstrom, Shengyin Go, Peter Jin Hong
When/Where: IUI 2010


Summary
A research trail is an ordered sequence of web pages, accessed as part of a larger search. They are often created as a researcher looks for information online. An ethnographic study was conducted, showing that many people are engaged in extensive research using the internet, but have problems maintaining context. Therefore, this paper proposes automatically generating research trails to help web users create context and to remember where they left off when conducting fragmented web research.

A real trail, since a research trail is a little harder to picture. Source: awtec.net

These research trails are constructed by evaluating users' history, using both semantic (focusing on the material the user interacts with) and activity (focusing on how a user interacts with data) analysis to group similar web pages together. The concept of early research is considered as an area that needs such trails, considering its fragmented nature and the occurrence of topic sliding, where the first step in the trail differs from the last step depending on the information gathered between them.  Using research trails, the user would be shown where he or she is currently at within a particular research endeavor.

Finally, the paper outlined an implementation of automatic generation of research trails within an internet browser. It captures users' history, detects topics, and clusters the topics into research trails using Google history data. In the new tab page, the user can see a list of the most recent research trails, and can request other research trails. These can each be viewed. A study was conducted with this system on three users, which confirmed the goals of the system.

Discussion 
I thought the idea of research trails was very interesting, and that it would be very useful to have something like the paper discussed, whereby research trails are recorded and available for viewing within the browser. It would have been nice to read more about the evaluation of the system, since only three people were included in the study and none of their opinions about the system were provided. However, the authors did state that they plan to conduct a more extensive evaluation in the future. I would love to be able to try this system out. I often find myself researching a particular topic, going from page to page on Google, when something that I found makes something discovered earlier make sense but I can no longer find that previous page. In addition, if I were to close out the browser and come back to later, I have generally forgotten where I was at. With research trails, all of this information would be easily accessible, making researching a topic much easier.

Full Blog: Emotional Design

Reference Information

Title: Emotional Design

Author: Donald Norman

Publisher: 2002 Basic Books

Summary
Only the first three chapters of emotional design were read, but from those chapters an idea of the book was established. This book discussed the emotional aspects of design and how they should be taken into account.

How emotions affect human cognitive processes was discussed, including the fact that attractive things seem to work better. This occurs because people are happier with attractive things, making the person more likely to ignore minor faults and to keep an open mind when deciding what actions to take. The three levels of processing (visceral, behavioral, and reflective) were discussed, as well.

These three levels of processing each affect design in various ways (appearance, effectiveness of use, and personal satisfaction, respectively). In addition, the way that objects affect memories, such as tacky souvenirs, people's concept of self, and the personality of a product were all explained. The marketing of products was linked with the psychology of thought and emotion.

The three levels of design. Source: marcbubb.wordpress.com

The final chapter that was read also discussed the three levels of processing (or design); however, they were discussed in more detail. Visceral contains emotional signals from the environment that get interpreted automatically by the brain, with its basic principles being consistent across people and cultures. Behavioral design is about actual use, including the four components of good design (function, understandability, usability, and physical feel) and can include either enhancement of a current product or innovation of a new product. Reflective design is about message, culture, and the meaning of a product or its use, and is different for every person.


Discussion
I think the concepts mentioned in this book were very good points. Many designers neglect to think about the emotional aspects of a system, but as humans we are very linked to our emotions, so it only makes sense that they would affect how designs are perceived. I liked the detailed discussion about the different levels of design, and I found it very interesting that people tend to find attractive things easier to use. I believe that many of the ideas discussed could be applied to future programming projects, such as making a program look nicer in order to make it more attractive and thus "easier" to use.

Book Reading #40: Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference Information

Title: Coming of Age in Samoa

Author: Margaret Mead

Editor: Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Chapter 14: Education for Choice
Summary
This chapter discussed the problems with our educational system and suggested some solutions to fixing them (with some insight from Samoan culture). The chapter stresses that adolescence is not necessarily a time of stress and strain, but that the inherent, uneasily changed, cultural factors of American and English societies tend to make it so. The presence of conflicting standards, such as a child's family vs. other people in that child's generation, add to the stress.

Discussion 
I found it interesting that the author stated that American and English children have parental disapproval expressed through control of money, which ends up presenting a problem once the adolescent is old enough to get a job. It's very true that money seems to be a large factor in parental control, and that seems like it could lead to many problems. In addition, I agree that the problem of emphasizing the ability to choose your beliefs, but then insisting that a child follow a particular belief, such as the parents', is a large problem of conflict. However, I liked the author's solution of educating children about every option that they will be confronted with, so that they will have less stress of trying to decide between obeying their family's beliefs or their generation's beliefs, but instead can easily choose for themselves.

Book Reading #39: Why We Make Mistakes

Reference Information
Title: Why We Make Mistakes
Author: Joseph T. Hallinan
Publisher: 2009 Crown Archetype

Chapter 0: Introduction
Summary
This chapter introduced errors and mistakes, even giving a definition (a mistake/error is a misunderstanding of the meaning/implication of something or a wrong action/statement preceding from faulty judgment). The author emphasizes that the world is not designed for how humans are wired, so the world around us actually encourages us to make mistakes. The reason that we make mistakes over and over again can be attributed to blaming the wrong thing or person for a mistake, and therefore not learning from it.

Discussion
Many of the facts and research presented regarding mistakes was very interesting. In particular, I found it interesting that right-handed people tend to orient towards the right, and that when you try to remember something, you should be in the same state that you learned it in (there was even a study done regarding learning while inebriated). It sounds like a lot of problems regarding the origin of mistakes comes from bad design of the things that we interact with daily.

Chapter 1: We Look But Don't Always See
Summary
This chapter described the particular error of looking at something and not seeing everything. The eye can only see a finite amount of data, and what is actually seen depends on the person (man/woman, right-handed/left-handed, novice/expert, and even that person's career or hobbies). Included in the topics discussed are the quiet-eye period, change blindness, movie mistakes, and the quitting threshold for noticing details.

Discussion  
This chapter was also very interesting, as it discussed how little people actually notice about the world around them. In particular, the idea that the details noticed depend entirely upon the person that is viewing seems interesting, as this means that every person views the world slightly differently, or at least notices different details about it.

Paper Reading #17: The Why UI: Using Goal Networks to Improve User Interfaces

Comments
Chris Kam 
Aaron Kirkes


Reference Information
Title: The Why UI: Using Goal Networks to Improve User Interfaces
Authors: Dustin A. Smith, Henry Lieberman
When/Where: IUI 2010, Hong Kong, China 

Summary
This paper discussed modeling user goals to improve user interfaces. When an application is aware of the user's goal, the knowledge can be used for automated planning to help the user by automating common tasks. The idea is to construct a goal network, relating what goals people have with how people solve them.  Goals are labeled with details such as where the goal is met and how long it takes to achieve. Goal networks have previously been used for recommendation systems, processing natural language queries, and for plan recognition systems.

Goal libraries are used to map interface-level goals to human-level goals (goals that people communicate with each other). This paper discussed processing natural language plans from a website where users share and discuss goals and plans in order to acquire data for the goal library. This is done by considering goal statements that specify a specific goal and plan statements, stories by people of how they achieved that goal. The English statements were corrected and tokenized, a directed, weighted goal graph was created then clustered, and verb-phrases were extracted and associated with rules. The human goals were analyzed to find which were most popular, controversial, and which goals were most central to the entire goal network. Finally, using this information, an example interface was created using to-do lists for plan recognition.

A subgraph for a single goal. Source: Article.

 Discussion
This paper discussed more of an idea than an actual application, but it was still fairly interesting. I agree that goal-oriented applications could be very helpful to users, so focusing on collecting and parsing goals, then applying them to user interfaces seems like it could be a very useful application. The paper could have been more informative if it had focused more on application than explaining the subject area. In addition, the one application that was discussed was not described very well, so I am still a little unsure about how it works. Maybe including a brief user study could have helped understanding the topic or even have been useful to understand how important the subject area actually is. However, goal networking could be very useful for applications such as automating simple tasks and reminding users of steps that they have forgotten within a process, so I think that it should be kept in mind when designing user interfaces.

Ethnography Results, Week 7

This week, we were supposed to go to Zapatos to see a band on Saturday night, but it was overbooked and ended up being canceled. I had already been to see Blaggards at O'Bannon's on Friday night, so I can talk a bit about that, instead, but I did not take note of much since we were planning to attend a different event for the ethnography.

O'Bannon's was holding an event called St. Blaggards' Day, with Blaggards playing all night. I arrived around 11:00, to find that the bar wasn't very crowded. Most people were sitting or standing around the band. However, many of them were having conversations among themselves and the atmosphere was very tame. By midnight, there were a lot more people there and almost everyone had their attention focused on the band, with some mild dancing occurring. During breaks between songs, the crowd would yell out songs that they wanted to hear or go up to quietly ask the band to play desired songs. For the most part, the band obliged, even playing the Aggie War Hymn to which the audience sang along and sawed em off.

Book Reading #37: Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference Information

Title: Coming of Age in Samoa

Author: Margaret Mead

Editor: Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Chapter 13: Our Educational Problems in the Light of Samoan Contrasts
Summary
This chapter summarized all of the topics talked about in previous chapters, comparing the Samoan way of life with the American/English way of life. The author offered suggestions based on these comparisons to improve our way of life, including changing the attitude of keeping children away from birth and death and having larger household conglomerates.



Discussion
While the author made some interesting suggestions that would improve the educational system here, I feel that most people would never agree to them. Generally, people like the way of life and the traditions that come with it that they are currently in. That makes it difficult to make radical changes, such as suddenly letting children be privy to every bit of knowledge available.

Full Blog: Obedience to Authority

Reference Information

Title: Obedience to Authority

Author: Stanley Milgram

Publisher: 2009 Harper Perennial Modern Classics

Summary
Obedience to Authority discussed the shock experiments of Stanley Milgram, and the results of obedience being prevalent. The book thoroughly discussed each of the variations of the experiment and the results of the experiments, including some personal stories of those involved in the experiments. The author even suggested theories about obedience to authority that came about from the results of the experiments.

The basic premise of the experiment: A subject shocking a victim (actually an actor), at the orders of an experimenter (the authority figure). Source: psychcentral.com

The terms obedience and authority were defined as they relate to Milgram's experiment. The experiment itself was thoroughly discussed, including its methods, the participants, the people playing roles within the experiment, and the methods of obtaining data (observation and interviewing). To obtain a baseline for analyzing the data, hypotheses were gathered from an impartial audience to determine what others believed the results of the experiment would be, including asking them to describe what they would do in the situation and what they thought others would be likely to do.

One of the variations of the experiment was variations of the closeness of the victim, including voice feedback, proximity, and touch-proximity. As the victim was brought closer, obedience increased. Other variations include moving the location of the experiment, giving a heart condition to the victim, changing the personnel and their personalities, altering the closeness of the authority figure, observing women as subjects, limiting contact of the victim, and allowing the subject to choose the level of shock. More experiments change the roles of those involved in it, such as having the learner demand to be shocked, an ordinary person giving orders, the subject as a bystander, the authority as victim, and contradicting authorities. Group effects were considered as well, running experiments with peers that tended to lead to the subject following the same action.

Hierarchical structures of obedience and authority were defined and thoroughly examined, including looking at the cybernetic view of an evolving organism moving from autonomous functioning to functioning within an organization. The factors of authority were also considered, including conditions that cause an individual to enter into an hierarchy of authority and the binding factors that keep them obeying the authority. Strain was also defined and how it factored into the experiment, including factors that generate strain and methods of reducing or eliminating it (such as disobedience). Aggression was also defined, in consideration for being an alternative cause of obedience, but it was ultimately disregarded for the overwhelming idea of authority.

Finally, the author considered criticisms of his experiment, including generalizing the data, having atypical participants in the experiment, and the participants not thinking the victim was actually being shocked. However, Milgram denied each of these, citing experimental results to refute the claims.


Discussion
I found this book to be very interesting. The chapter about Milgram's shock experiment in Opening Skinner's Box was the first that I had heard of this experiment, and I found it very thought-provoking and interesting from there. Because of that, I found it interesting to read about the experiments in more detail. In particular, I liked reading about the many variations of the experiment that occurred, and how each variation affected the results. The idea that the proximity of authority and the influence of peers affected participants' actions so much seems rather pivotal. I know that advertising and such often takes advantage of this, but I wonder how it could be applied in computer science terms? Maybe having "peers" that have already used a confusing piece of software could influence a non-user to also use and enjoy the software. Although that practice would probably just encourage sloppy design.

Book Reading #36: Obedience to Authority

Reference Information

Title: Obedience to Authority

Author: Stanley Milgram

Publisher: 2009 Harper Perennial Modern Classics

Chapter 9: Group Effects
Summary
This chapter discussed how having the subject within a group situation affected obedience. More experiments occurred with this variation, including having 2 peers rebel against the authority and different shock levels and having a peer administer the shocks. Generally, the actions of peers seemed to influence the subjects to follow the peers' actions.

Discussion
I thought this result was to be expected. Peer pressure tends to be fairly strong, so if the subject was among other "subjects", they would be more likely to follow the peers' actions since they would suggest the appropriate action to take for that particular social situation.

Chapter 10: Why Disobedience? An Analysis
Summary
This chapter analyzed the composition of obedience, describing it as an evolved feature necessary for survival. The cybernetic viewpoint was considered, whereby an evolving organism moves from autonomous functioning to a capacity for functioning within an organization. In addition, the hierarchical structure of authority was examined, including the need for an inhibitory mechanism to maintain social order. Finally, the agentic shift was described, whereby the autonomous agent is integrated into the hierarchy of authority.


Discussion
This chapter was really boring and difficult to get through, as it suggested models for describing obedience and authority in a purely theoretical way. Although I agree that the defined terms and theories did help to understand the basis of authority and obedience.

Chapter 11: The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment
Summary
This chapter discussed how the theories in the previous chapter related to the actual experiment, serving to analyze the results found in the experiments. Antecedent conditions were described, being the conditions under which a person will move from being an autonomous individual to the agentic state of being under someone else's authority (includes family, institutional settings, and rewards). Consequences and binding factors (what keeps a person in the state of obedience). The agentic state was better defined, as well.

Discussion
This chapter seemed a lot like the previous chapter, although I found the properties that lead a person to the agentic state and the factors that keep them there to be very interesting. In particular, the binding factors seemed to be a good explanation for why an individual would not disobey in the experiment, despite common belief.
Chapter 12: Strain and Disobedience
Summary
This chapter defined strain and how it links to obedience, including the factors within the experiment that generate strain (cries of pain from the victim, administering pain), and how such strain could be reduced or resolved (disobedience, avoidance, denial, subterfuge, physical conversion, dissent). Ultimately, disobedience completely resolves the strain created by the experiment.

Discussion
I found this discussion of strain within the experiment to be particularly interesting. I would not think that disobedience would completely remove strain, so I thought it was interesting that the author believed it would.

Chapter 13: An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression Key?
Summary
This chapter discussed the possibility of aggression being the cause of obedience instead of the need to obey an authority. The idea is that people would take advantage of the situation, seeing it as an opportunity to cause harm to another without breaking social contracts due to its contributions to science. Ultimately, the author proves that this is not case citing evidence from the experiments, including the fact that when given the choice of shocking strength, most people would use the lower levels.

Discussion 
I agree that aggression should be considered as a cause of obedience, but it seems that, for the most part, it was not the case. Milgram presented many instances from the experiments where violence did not seem to be the cause of action, and they all seemed to be plausible.

Chapter 14: Problems of Method
Summary
This chapter discussed criticisms that the public had with the experiment, including the claims that the people that were studied were atypical, they didn't believe they were administering actual shocks, and that it is not possible to generalize from the lab to the real world. However, the author presented refuting arguments for each of these claims, using experimental evidence from both his experiment and others to prove they were false. Finally, the author compared the findings of his experiment to Nazi Germany.

Discussion 
The criticisms listed were problems that I also thought of while reading about the experiment, but I agree that, after having read the results and the author's claims, the criticisms seem to be false.

Paper Reading #16: Performance Optimizations of Virtual Keyboards for Stroke-Based Text Entry on a Touch-Based Tabletop

Comments
Paola Garza 
Zack Henkel


Reference Information
Title: Performance Optimizations of Virtual Keyboards for Stroke-Based Text Entry on a Touch-Based Tabletop
Author: Jochen Rick
When/Where: UIST 2010

Summary
This paper discussed finding an efficient keyboard solution for table-top touch devices. The solution suggested is shape writing, which is where the user strokes through all of the letters in the word on a virtual keyboard without ever lifting his finger. The problem is that table-top touch devices are used differently than a normal computer, with the user generally standing up, looking down at the surface. Physical keyboards are impractical, and the QWERTY keyboard layout is inefficient, since the hands cannot be rested on the surface to type. Because of this, stroke-based virtual keyboards are a viable alternative.

Various keyboard layouts. Source: Paper

The author discussed different keyboard layouts, and then conducted a user study to examine how people would complete stroke sequences. From this, a mathematical model was created using Fitts's Law. Then, adjustments were made to existing keyboard layouts in order to evaluate the usage of each. This study showed that a layout optimized for one purpose might be very problematic when applied to a different purpose. From the data retrieved by evaluating each keyboard layout, a new and improved layout was designed using a simulated annealing process with hill climbing.

All in all, it was determined that getting people to adopt a new keyboard layout is difficult, since it requires a learning process, whereas most people are already familiar with the QWERTY layout. However, with the introduction of new technologies, such as interactive tabletops, there is an opportunity to introduce a new keyboard layout or even new typing methods to improve performance and have a better chance of being widely accepted.

Discussion
This paper was rather difficult to get through, since it was mostly mathematical evaluations of designs that are difficult to conceptualize if you have not seen them before. However, I believe that there were some very good points raised. For instance, while there are many keyboard layouts that improve upon the QWERTY layout, most people have become accustomed to using it and are therefore unwilling to switch to a new system. However, with new technologies, new methods can be introduced without requiring a large learning curve. Therefore, I like the paper's suggestion that we develop new typing methods for new technologies. I believe this should be kept in mind when designing new devices.

Book Reading #35: Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference Information

Title: Coming of Age in Samoa

Author: Margaret Mead

Editor: Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Chapter 12: Maturity and Old Age
Summary
This chapter discussed how maturity affects an individual in society, including how their role changes as they age. Obtaining titles is generally important to the men, and happens all throughout life; however, the author states that a woman's greatest accomplishment is her first born child. It is the woman's responsibility to teach the younger people of the household common activities, and for the old aged people, there is no longer any regard for taboos.


Discussion
I found it interesting that at an old age, people are allowed to disregard the taboos they have been following since they were children. In addition, I found it amusing that the author noted that there is no conflict between a daughter-in-law and a mother-in-law like in our culture, but it is just a relationship of respect for authority.

Book Reading #34: Obedience to Authority

Reference Information
Title: Obedience to Authority
Author: Stanley Milgram
Publisher: 2009 Harper Perennial Modern Classics


Chapter 1: The Dilemma of Obedience
Summary
This chapter discussed the term obedience and the system of authority, where obedience is defined as the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. The shock experiment is described, along with factors that bind people to authority.

Discussion
This chapter provided a good introduction to the topic, although the description of the shock experiment was already known to me due to Opening Skinner's Box. I like that the term obedience was defined.


Chapter 2: Method of Inquiry
Summary
This chapter discussed the methods of the shock experiment. To achieve simplicity for studying obedience, he described the need to have a situation where one person orders another person to perform an action and to note when obedience occurs or doesn't occur. The method of obtaining participants was described, including the need to not use undergraduates due to the possibility of leaking information. The methods of obtaining personel and a location were discussed, along with the actual procedure and evaluation methods, in detail.


Discussion
I find it interesting that Milgrim so carefully thought out each aspect of this experiment, including each part of the procedure, the personalities of those playing along in the experiment, and how to let the participant know what had actually happened. I especially like that undergrads weren't used just for their convenience, but that others were sought out due to the experiment's needs.


Chapter 3: Expected Behavior
Summary
This chapter discussed the need for a prior hypothesis in order to have a baseline of what people expect the results of the experiment to be. An audience was told of the experiment, then asked to make predictions about the results and to describe how both they, and others, would act in such a situation. They explained that most people would not continue shocking very far, since their reactions were from sources of empathy and justice, as opposed to insight into the situation itself.


Discussion
I thought it was very interesting that they thought to receive feedback on what others thought the results would be, instead of just using the researchers' opinions for the baseline hypothesis. I believe that this would lead to much more reliable predictions, or at least a better impression of what society believes would occur in such a situation.


Chapter 4: Closeness of the Victim
Summary
This chapter discussed variations of the closeness of the victim, and how that affected results of the experiment. This included voice feedback, proximity, and touch-proximity. As the victim was brought closer, obedience decreased. Still, the results differed from those that were expected, including the level of tension created by the experiment.


Discussion
I think it's rather strange that the experimenters had not predicted a high level of tension that would result from this experiment. They were tricking people into thinking they were shocking someone to death by order of someone with a higher authority, of course there would be tension!


Chapter 5: Individuals Confront Authority
Summary
This chapter focused on the individuals who took part in the study, since each person's experience was unique to them. Because of this, the researchers relied heavily on participants' own comments and assertions about the experiment to determine behavior. Specific individuals and there reactions were discussed.


Discussion
I found it rather disturbing that one of the participants started laughing uncontrollably as he followed orders and shocked the victim. But in general, I liked getting to read about the way different people experienced the experiment. It made it more personal and more about the reactions than just reading general, numerical results.


Chapter 6: Further Variations and Controls
Summary
This chapter discussed further variations that were used for experiments, including moving the location of the experiment, giving a heart condition to the victim, changing personnel, altering the closeness of the authority, observing women as subjects, limiting contact of the victim, and allowing the subject to choose the level of shock.


Discussion
The fact that they conducted a separate experiment just to observe the reactions of women was interesting, especially since there was not much of a difference in results. In particular, I found it interesting that the proximity of the authority figure seemed to alter the results the most.


Chapter 7: Individuals Confront Authority II
Summary
This chapter discussed the experiences and results of individuals for the second set of experiments. Most of the individuals were women, and the results were once again very different and pertained to personal thoughts and experiences related to the experiment.

Discussion
Once again, I liked getting to read about individual experiences. I find it interesting that every person has their own justification about why they did what they did, and that most of them seem to make sense.


Chapter 8: Role Permutations
Summary
This chapter discussed the elements of position, status, and action, and how varying each leads to different results. More experiment variations were discussed, these involving changes in the roles of the people taking part in the experiment. These included the learner demanding to be shocked, an ordinary person giving orders, the subject as a bystander, the authority as a victim, contradictory authorities, and one authority as a victim with another leading the experiment.


Discussion
I found the level of acting and manipulating necessary to achieve some of these experiments rather astounding, and I wonder how that itself may have affected the results. However, I also found it interesting that the authority seemed to be the dominating factor in behavior, and that with multiple authorities, the subject would listen to the one that seemed to have the most power.

Full Blog: Opening Skinner's Box

Reference Information
Title: Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
Author: Lauren Slater
Editor: W.W Norton & Company, 2008


Summary
Opening Skinner's Box discussed some of the greatest psychological experiments, describing them in a narrative-type view. Each chapter discussed a particular experiment or psychologist, including effects that occurred due to the research. In many chapters, the author included personal interviews and even some experiments that she conducted on her own.

Chapter 1 discussed the positive reinforcement experiments of B.F. Skinner, in which he created operated conditioning, or the training of a human or animal by another human to perform tasks that they would not normally perform, based on a system of rewards and reinforcements. His research was very experimental, with many arguing that he was showing the lack of free will that humans had. However, the experiments did produce quantifiable data from which it was determined how organisms learn, and how the learning experience can be predicted and controlled.

Chapter 2 discussed Milgram's experiments of obedience to authority, whereby a set of people were tricked into thinking that they were shocking a person to death for a learning experiment, when really they were taking part in an experiment to see how far a person would go on the orders of someone in authority. The results were astounding, in that 65% of people would obey the experimenter and shock the other person to "death". The author described the effect the experiment had on the participants themselves, and even  interviewed some of them.

Chapter 3 discussed the experiments of Rosenhan, which consisted of a group of people faking their way into a mental institution, then acting normally to see if the psychiatrists could detect their sanity. The experimenters experienced inhumane treatment, and being treated as insane. When this experiment went public, it led to refinements in psychiatric codes. The author tried the experiment herself, with much nicer treatment and the prescription of many unnecessary drugs.

Chapter 4 was about social cuing and the bystander effect, discussing the events and repercussions of Darley and Latane's experiments. These experiments included seizure and smoke experiments, whereby something happened to a person while in the vicinity of other people, to test the likeliness of people to help others in a scenario of turmoil or danger. The results were that the larger the group, the less likely someone is to help.

Chapter 5 discussed Festinger's research about cognitive dissonance, or the event of an individual changing their beliefs due to incompatible ideas. The author described the "Sananda cult", which changed their beliefs to believe visitors would come on a certain day. When they did not appear, they modified their beliefs accordingly. The author also described interviewing a woman whose comatose daughter is considered to be a saint. This chapter considered only observational conclusions, as opposed to experimental results.


Chapter 6, "Monkey Love," discussed Harlow's attachment experiments with monkeys, where he provided a soft, surrogate mother to determine the variables of love: touch, motion, and play. In the end, the monkeys ended up being autistic-like. His findings were explained to the public, causing some changes in how society handled children.

Chapter 7 outlined the addiction experiments of Alexander, in which he tested two different test groups, rats offered morphine that lived in cages, and rats living in a rat utopia that were also offered the drug. Those in the cages lived off of it; those not in cages avoided it. Alexander used this to conclude that addiction arises only due to circumstances and situation, not because of chemical dependence or helplessness. The author conducted her own addiction experiment on herself, which led to no addiction.

A rat cage with morphine, symbolizing the addiction experiments.
 Source: wn.com/Rat_Park

Chapter 8 discussed Loftus's false memory experiments, where a false memory was implanted into someone's memory by showing them written statements of the event by family members. She showed that many people wold start to "remember" details about the memory, even though it did not exist, and she used this to conclude that human memory is unreliable.

Chapter 9 discussed H.M., the man with his hippocampus removed, eliminating his ability to retain new memories. It also explained Kandel's sea slug experiments, whereby he tested individual neurons in sea slugs to determine their purpose and to produce fast learning. From this, he realized that learning can be increased or removed due to different chemicals, and started testing chemicals that could be marketed to the general public. This explained the physical properties of memory.

Chapter 10 discussed the practice of psychosurgery, including procedures such as lobotomies, which the author claims to be started by Moniz. She discussed his procedures and findings, then narrated the procedure of one particular patient that she was allowed to interview and observe. While many believe these surgeries to be questionable, there have been many improvements with time, and many benefits are cited as a result of the procedure.


Discussion
I found Opening Skinner's Box to be highly interesting. The writing style that the author used, narrating rather than stating research results, was very good at keeping my attention. In addition, each of the experiments and research topics seemed to be of great importance, having influenced some aspect of society. While some of the author's own personal experiments could be deemed questionable, and some of her comments within the chapters are also controversial, the points raised were very good. In particular, I liked the experiments on behavior, as they could be easily applied to some aspects of computer science. If you know how a person is most likely to learn, or how they are most likely to act when put in some social situation, it is easier to design a system for that person to use. In particular, though, I believe the idea of conducting user studies and observing people is most applicable to our field. These experiments showed that people and their opinions differ, and human behavior does not always follow what is expected. Therefore, to design an optimal system, the computer scientist should observe the actual people that are intended to use the system.

Paper Reading #15: Gesture Search: A Tool for Fast Mobile Data Access

Comments
Paola Garza 
Stephen Morrow 

Reference Information
Title: Gesture Search: A Tool for Fast Mobile Data Access
Author: Yang Li
Where/When: UIST 2010


Summary
Gesture Search is a tool for mobile phones that allows users to quickly search for data items stored on the phone by use of touch gestures. The idea behind the tool is to make data access on mobile phones faster and easier, due to the power and storage potential of such devices. Current gesture systems require users to input specific gestures for specific data items, such as a shortcut for a desired application, and allow gestures to be input into only a small section of the already-limited screen. However, Gesture Search works by allowing the user to input a gesture using the entire touch screen.

The process of using gesture search by inputting two alphabetical gestures, with the end results displayed on the far right. Source: operationandroid.com

Gesture Search uses the input of character gestures to search through data elements on the phone, such as contacts and applications. Gestures include single letters or letter sequences to produce a list of search results. It actively learns from the user's search history to optimize future search results for those particular gestures. Because of this, gestures that are not entirely recognizable may at first produce many different results, but if the user selects the desired result from the results list, the next time that gesture is used it will show the selected result at the top of the list. In addition, this means that gestures do not need to be precise. Feedback is provided to the user by highlighting the letters in each item of the results list that are matched to the inputted gesture. Gestures are automatically distinguished from typical phone motions such as scrolling by analyzing trajectories and usage patterns.

A long-term user study was conducted by allowing employees at the company to try out the system for months at a time. User logs were maintained and a survey was issued at the end. Only those that had frequently used the application or had used it for long amounts of time were included in the results that were analyzed. It was determined that the learning of past search histories greatly improved the search quality and made the access of mobile data faster. However, the fact that Gesture Search had to be used through a home screen shortcut made it difficult. Gesture Search is now a publicly available, widely used application.


Discussion
I found this article very interesting, as it discussed the production of a product currently on the market for public use. I like that there was a need for such a product, and that Gesture Search was designed specifically to improve upon current systems and to fulfill the need to access data in an easier fashion on mobile phones. In addition, the long-term, large user study was very interesting, since it was not done in a lab. Data from actual, every-day usage was used, so I would expect the data to be very accurate as to how the system would be perceived and used in the real world. I did not find many faults with this paper, but I think the idea of applying real-world user studies should be used more often, where it can be used.

Ethnography Results, Week 6

We went to O'Bannan's on St. Patrick's Day, where festivities started at 7 in the morning. Blaggards was playing at noon, so we went to see them.  We saw Blaggards a few weeks ago at O'Bannans and had some interesting observations then.

This time, the concert was outside in a blocked-off, tented area in the street in front of the bar. While Blaggards was playing, at about 2pm, there were approximately 80 people in the outside area alone. Most people were Sitting at tables in the back or standing around in front of the stage watching the band. Both the drink and food bars were crowded. Many people were dancing with green beer in hand, and there was even a beer-chugging contest that occurred during a break in the music.

Overall, the atmosphere was very different from anything we've seen before. Many people were drinking or already drunk, a few people had brought their dogs, most everyone was wearing green, and people were easily talking to perfect strangers. It was as if the holiday gave people an excuse to be less reserved. Free stuff like t-shirts and beaded necklaces were being handed out continuously, with people swarming over the new, green additions to their wardrobes. Many people left shortly after Blaggards left at 3pm.

We came back at 9pm, to find that the bar, mostly inside, had become very crowded. Total, there were about 250 people, with only 60 or so in the outside area. At this point in time, a different band was playing outside with a more traditional Irish sound that most people seemed to be bored with. The outside bar was more crowded than the area in front of the stage, and the only people paying attention to the band were those that had been dancing wildly earlier in the day, and which were still dancing wildly, albeit with more spilling of their drinks.

It would have been interesting to see if other bars or concerts were like this on St. Patrick's Day, or how concerts at this bar fare on other holidays.

Book Reading #34: Opening Skinner's Box

Reference Information

Title: Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century

Author: Lauren Slater

Editor: W.W Norton & Company, 2008

Chapter 10: Chipped

Summary

This chapter discussed the creation and practice of psychosurgery, including procedures such as lobotomies. The author claims Antonio Moniz to be the father of psychosurgery, and discussed his processes and findings before narrating the particular procedure of one patient that the author was allowed to follow. While these surgeries started out as being highly unsafe and questionable, there have been many improvements with new technology and many benefits are cited as result of the procedure.

Discussion
I found the discussion of psychosurgery to be fairly interesting, especially because of its controversy surrounding the fact that many people apparently consider the brain to be sacred. For example, many people worried that the lobotomies were taking away a person's soul. I liked how the author stated that all of the worry surrounding such methods is likely to be caused by the human need for suffering, and I found it interesting that the patient that the author followed talked about having more psychosurgery if he wasn't quite happy enough.

Book Reading #33: Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference Information

Title: Coming of Age in Samoa

Author: Margaret Mead

Editor: Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Chapter 11: The Girl in Conflict

Summary

This chapter discussed possible conflicts a girl in Samoa could find herself in, and what kinds of things caused such conflicts. The author discussed some of the "deviants" of the group of girls she was studying, in which they deviated from traditional conduct and demanded a different or improved environment. Such conflicts arose from things like living in the pastor's house or living on the outskirts of town.

Discussion
The fact that the author focused largely on religion and how it produced deviants, then said that religion was taken fairly lightly and did not produce conflicts was rather contradicting. I did find it interesting that conflicts with parents are largely avoided due to the threat of moving to a new household, and conflicts between those of the same age were solved by one of them moving out of the household.

Paper Reading #14: Eden: Supporting Home Network Management Through Interactive Visual Tools

Comments
Patrick Frith
Alyssa Nabors

Reference Information
Title: Eden: Supporting Home Network Management Through Interactive Visual Tools
Authors: Jeonghwa Yang, W. Keith Edwards, David Haslem
When/Where: UIST 2010

Summary
Network management is now necessary in most households, even though management systems for networks are mostly designed for business purposes, making management a confusing chore for non-technical users. This paper discusses Eden, an interactive home network management system to help alleviate this problem by simplifying the network management process, making it easier to do actions necessary for a household network. Overall, it is hoped that the program can actually teach non-technical users more about how their networking systems operate.

A screenshot of Eden's user interface. Source: Article

Eden's user interface consists of an image representation of a home, separated into rooms with pictures to represent devices. Lines connecting devices demonstrate the topology of the network. Dragging and dropping can be done to perform network tasks on devices, including assigning "badges" to devices that designate such things as which devices should have network preference over others and setting parental controls. Devices in put in a specific room have the room's preferences applied to it, and movement of a mobile device throughout the house does not affect its room designation.

This project started development by conducting user studies to determine what kind of needs the typical user has of a networking system, including what kind of current systems are good and what additional features users would like to see in such a system in the future. From this, a range of tasks were defined, including membership management, access control, network monitoring, and bandwidth priority. Many different prototypes were created with this model, then tested to determine the best display and interaction setup for the system. The actual system was then created, and then user tested again for evaluation purposes. Overall, many users found the system understandable and helpful.

Discussion
I think Eden is a very good idea to help non-technical users easily manage their home networks. This seems like a product that is both necessary and helpful. With its additional networking features (as opposed to business network management systems), it could help everyday people to accomplish tasks that they previously thought were impossible, such as putting different security controls on only certain computers in the household network. I believe that the fact that the system design was largely directed by user studies is one of the reasons why it seemed to be so successful. If more products used this user-centered design, maybe there wouldn't be so much confusion and problems with a large number of software products.

Ethnography Results, Week 5

This week, we went to the Stafford in downtown Bryan. It was a CD release party for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and the entire event consisted of 7 different bands. We got there as the second band came on at 9pm, and there were about 60 people there at that time. Most people were either near the bar or right in front of the band. By the time we left at 11:30pm, there were about 90 people in attendance. This event required payment to get in, unlike others that we have visited.

This venue was much different than the others we have been to so far. The stage was clearly the focus point of the place and  was outfitted with many different lights that emphasized the music. There was a guy behind a soundboard that controlled the lights and sounds. The place had poor ventilation, as there was so much cigarette smoke that we initially thought there was a smoke machine on stage. As for the crowd at this concert, it was also very different than the other places we're been. It was much more of an alternative crowd, with many people wearing plaid shirts and Toms shoes. I even saw two girls with their hair in dreadlocks. Not many people were actually drinking, although the number increased throughout the night. As for the behavior of people, they mostly just stood around, facing the bands. A few people tapped their feet to the music, but that was the extent of the dancing. The atmosphere wasn't nearly as excited as the past places we have been.

In addition to the Stafford, there were many other musical events occuring in downtown Bryan on the same night. Between bands, we walked around and checked out some of the other music performances. TAMU percussion was having free performances, each of which attracted a crowd large enough to fill the outdoor area they were in almost immediately after they started playing. There was also a jazz performance going on in a parking lot, with a very chill atmosphere and approximately 40 people sitting leisurely around the performers on blankets and lawn chairs. Many people just walked the streets, going from place to place, staying at each performance for only short periods of time.

Book Reading #32: Openning Skinner's Box

Reference Information

Title: Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century

Author: Lauren Slater

Editor: W.W Norton & Company, 2008

Chapter 9: Memory Inc.

Summary

This chapter discussed H.M., the man who's hippocampus was removed to stop seizures, effectively removing his ability to have any kind of short term memory, but still retaining general long term memories. This inspired much research regarding the location of memories in the brain, including Eric Kandel's Sea Slug experiments, whereby he tested individual neurons in sea slugs to determine their purpose and produce fast learning. From this, he learned that learning can be increased/sped up by the use of certain chemicals.

Discussion

I like that the author followed the previous chapter of false memories with this one, discussing the physical nature of memories and where they reside in a person's brain. I find it particularly interesting that through experiments with sea slugs, Kandel was able to determine that a particular chemical promoted increased memory functions, and is now working on marketing it as a drug. This could have incredible impact for those that suffer from memory loss, although the author brought up a good point when she mentioned that it would bring up many ethical questions.

Book Reading #31: Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference Information

Title: Coming of Age in Samoa

Author: Margaret Mead

Editor: Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Chapter 10: The Experience and Individuality of the Average Girl

Summary
This chapter discussed the specific group of girls that the author followed, explaining their personal experiences and roles in society. The author noted that these girls tended to know more about the biology of life and death and very little about the common courtesy and organization of the society. In addition, there seems to be no desire to protect children from shocking experiences or to keep them ignorant about more "mature" matters.

Discussion

This chapter gave a lot of specific information about a girl's life in Samoa. In general, though, the chapter was very long, drawn out, and difficult to get through. I did find it interesting that in one place in the chapter, the author noted that the prettier children in the group of girls she was studying tended to have more character and a more charged attitude towards their parents.

Book Reading #30: Emotional Design

Reference Information

Title: Emotional Design

Author: Donald Norman

Publisher: 2002 Basic Books

Chapter 3: Three Levels of Design: Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective

Summary
This chapter discussed the three levels of design. Visceral contains emotional signals from the environment that get interpreted automatically by the brain and the basic principles are consistent across people and cultures. Behavioral design is about actual use, including the four components of good design (function, understandability, usability, and physical feel) and can include either enhancement of a current product or innovation of a new product. Reflective design is about message, culture, and the meaning of a product or its use, and is different for each person.

Discussion
I like that this chapter thoroughly discussed the aspects of each of the three levels of design. It helped clear up  some confusion about them, but most of this information has already been presented in previous readings that we've been assigned from this author. I did like the example of water bottles being used for reflective design, though.

Paper Reading #13: TwinSpace: an Infrastructure for Cross-Reality Team Spaces

Comments
Aaron Kirkes 
Cindy Skach


Reference Information
Title: TwinSpace: an Infrastructure for Cross-Reality Team Spaces
Authors: Derek F. Reilly, Hafez Rouzati, Andy Wu, Jee Yeon Hwang, Jeremy Brudvik, W. Keith Edwards
Where: UIST 2010

Summary
This paper discussed TwinSpace, a software infrastructure to combine actual workspaces with collaborative virtual worlds, to support interconnectivity and flexible mappings between physical and virtual spaces. Many collaborative, group-work spaces are created for only those members within a particular space, or those separated in location. This limits interaction, so TwinSpace includes both aspects to create virtual spaces that are connected with a physical smart space and that remote collaborators can join. This permits many actions disallowed by virtual spaces alone, allowing remote workers to have more available actions.

The key features of TwinSpace include a communications layer that links event-notification and transactions in virtual space to physical space, a common model for each space, mapping capability for managing synchronization between physical and virtual spaces, and specialized clients. It combines mixed presence (supports simultaneous collocated and remote collaboration) and cross-reality (integrates real and virtual worlds in a useful way). Events that occur in either the physical or virtual world can be published in the other world, allowing for easy collaboration. People in the physical space are also represented in the virtual space, and multiple rooms can be connected to a single virtual space at the same time. TwinSpace uses OpenWonderland and Event Heap for the virtual world engine and communications, respectively.

Two case studies were discussed that use TwinSpace. The first created a virtual team collaboration room that allowed for brainstorming ideas between members and for one person at a time to hold presentations for the other members of the room. This study was applied at weekly meetings and was used successfully, with some issues that could be improved. The second case study was a game that allowed players to collaborate according to virtual distance. Use of this study was not discussed.

An example of TwinSpace. The physical world is shown, and in the computer screen, the corresponding virtual world can be seen. Source: Article.

Discussion
While we have read articles about shared spaces and virtual collaboration rooms, this software seems to be the first to combine physical and virtual spaces. I think it's a good idea, as it would allow multiple people in multiple locations to communicate in the same ways and to effectively accomplish some goal. It was a little confusing as to how the system actually corresponds physical areas to virtual areas, and I would have liked to read about more user response regarding the system in order to see how it is percieved by those people that would be potentially using it on an everyday basis. Overall, though, I think this could be useful for industry projects in order to get feedback from people across the world.