Book Reading #50: Why We Make Mistakes

Reference Information

Title: Why We Make Mistakes

Author: Joseph T. Hallinan

Publisher: 2009 Crown Archetype

Chapter 12: We Don't Constrain Ourselves
Summary
This chapter discussed constraints and affordances and how they can be used to eliminate errors. Selecting things that are easily recognizable, eliminating uncertainty, simplifying things, and determining the source of error can all be used to reduce error. A person's attitude plays a large role in the occurrence of mistakes, since overconfidence is a large cause of error.


Discussion
I thought the comparison of doctors vs. aviators established the author's point very well, and many of the examples were interesting. However, the beginning of the chapter sounded like it was coming straight out of a Norman book, with the discussion of constraints and affordances. The author even used many of the same examples that Norman used in Design of Everyday Things.


Chapter 13: The Grass Does Look Greener
Summary
This chapter discussed the tendency of people to be unable to accurately predict how they will feel about things that happen in the future, leading to projection bias with gift cards and rebates. People focus on the wrong details when making decisions, exaggerating the importance of individual factors and ignoring the major factors. Personal happiness does not require much, and people often have a difficult time judging the happiness of others.


Discussion
I thought this chapter was very interesting. I especially liked the comparison between people in northern states wanting to move to California because they thought it would be better, when in reality they were only focusing on things like weather and not important things like cost of living.


Conclusion
Summary
The conclusion summarized the mistakes discussed throughout the book and offered solutions to prevent mistakes. These included thinking small, thinking negatively (considering what bad consequences could happen), letting non-experts take part in things, disregarding habits, slowing down, and getting some sleep. The affect of happiness was discussed, including the fact that people that are happier increase their tendency to see relations between material and overcome habits. Finally, the author suggested that money is not the currency of life, but time.


Discussion
I liked the suggestion to think negatively. Growing up, I was always taught to "plan for the worst, but hope for the best" so that every negative consequence of an action would be considered. I believe that this is a good way to think, since it eliminates overconfidence and therefore error. I also liked how all of the major examples discussed throughout the book were mentioned to remind the reader of everything that was discussed.

Book Reading #49: Why We Make Mistakes

Reference Information

Title: Why We Make Mistakes

Author: Joseph T. Hallinan

Publisher: 2009 Crown Archetype

Chapter 10: We All Think We're Above Average
Summary
This chapter discussed the fact that humans tend to think that they are above average and overconfident, which tends to create many human errors. The author presented examples such as advertising that takes advantage of overconfidence, counting on people to overestimate their self-control (like gym memberships). Calibration is used to judge how overconfident someone is, and it measures the difference between actual  and perceived abilities. The power of feedback, the illusion of control (as tasks get harder, the degree of overconfidence goes up), and information overload were also discussed


Discussion
I found it interesting that the author stated that almost everyone is overconfident, except for those people who are slightly depressed, as they tend to be realists. I also thought it was interesting that, while many people complain about how inaccurate weathermen are, the weather forecasters tend to be remarkably calibrated with a long track record of accurate predictions.


Chapter 11: We'd Rather Wing It
Summary
This chapter discussed the human tendency to not read instruction manuals. When it comes tasks of judgment, experts are often worse than believed, practice to form a library in the mind is essential to becoming an expert, and cognitive maps are used to solve everyday problems. Also, once people learn a particular way to do something, they are likely to stick with it, even if there is a simpler method.


Discussion
It is very true that people do not like to read instructions, so I found this chapter rather amusing to read. I did find it interesting that people do not like to learn new, simpler ways of doing things and that this reluctance leads to difficulties solving problems and the inability to think outside of the box.

Full Blog: Media Equation

Reference Information
Title: Machines and Mindlessness: Social Responses to Computers
Authors: Clifford Nass, Youngme Moon
Published: Journal of Social Issues, 2000

Title: Computers are Social Actors
Authors: Clifford Nass, Jonathan Steuer, Ellen Tauber
When/Where: CHI 1994

Title: Can Computer Personalities Be Human Personalities?
Authors: Clifford Nass, Youngme Moon, BJ Fogg, Byron Reeves, Chris Dryer
When/Where: CHI 1995

Summary
These papers all had a very similar point that they made. Each one of them discussed similar experiments that related human-human interactions and the psychological theory associated with them to human-computer interactions.


The first paper discussed how people tend to have social responses such as politeness towards computers. The paper suggested that these social responses do not occur on the basis of thinking that computers have human attributed, but are actually due to mindless behavior that results in subconscious social reactions due to similar situations. Experiments were conducted that confirmed psychological theories applied to human-computer interaction in areas of social categories (gender roles, ethnicity, ingroup vs. outgroup, politeness, reciprocity, and self-disclosure), premature cognitive commitment (labeling of specialist vs. generalist), and personality. Finally, the paper listed possible alternative explanations for this behavior, such as ignorance, anthropomorphism, and orientation to the programmer, and provided reasons that these do not hold.

An example of the experiment setups. Source: Computers are Social Actors

 The second paper presented experimental evidence that people's interactions with computers follow psychological social rules that apply to human-human interactions, and are not the result of ignorance or social dysfunctions, much like the first paper. However, the method of reproducing these social interactions was discussed and applied to various situations, including politeness, self vs. other, gender roles, and computer vs. programmer vs. "I" context. Each of the social norms was proven through experimentation.

The third paper presented a study to find the minimum set of clues needed to create a computer-based personality and to show that it can elicit social responses from users. Dominance/submission aspects of personality were tested by assigning particular attributes to computers. The results confirmed all of the hypotheses that were based on psychological theory.


Discussion
These papers were very interesting to read. Most people generally attribute ignorance or anthropomorphism to acting socially towards computers, so it was very intriguing to discover that it is not the case. Reading three papers all discussing the same experiments got a little old, and some of the graphs presented in the papers seemed to be confusing and a bad choice of the type of graph, but the idea presented was good. It seems like knowing that many psychological theories apply to human-computer interaction could be applied to designing better programs. Since simple adjustments to programs, such as adding particular voices or assigning a dominant/submissive trait, can elicit social responses, it seems like all the effort to design mimicry of humans, such as AI and graphical representations, could be eliminated. These studies showed that much simpler programs can still create social responses.

Book Reading #48: Media Equation

Part 1: Machines and Mindlessness: Social Responses to Computers
Reference Information
Title: Machines and Mindlessness: Social Responses to Computers
Authors: Clifford Nass, Youngme Moon
Published: Journal of Social Issues, 2000


Summary
This paper discussed how people tend to have social responses, such as politeness, towards computers. This paper suggests that it is not due to ignorance of thinking that computers have human attributes, but due to mindless behavior that results in subconscious social reactions due to similarities in the situation. Experiments were conducted to show this that tested attributing social categories (such as gender roles, ethnicity traits, ingroup vs. outgroup, politeness, reciprocity, and self-disclosure), premature cognitive commitment (labeling of specialist vs. generalist), and personality. The paper also denounced alternative explanations, such as ignorance, anthropomorphism, or orientation to the programmer.


Discussion
I am aware of the fact that people tend to treat computers like humans in many aspects, but I found this paper to be very interesting in that it debunked the theories of anthropomorphism and such. I thought the extent and amount of different experiments that were carried out was very thorough, and I found it interesting that in every experiment, humans followed psychology principles towards computers.


Part 2: Computers are Social Actors
Reference Information
Title: Computers are Social Actors
Authors: Clifford Nass, Jonathan Steuer, Ellen Tauber
When/Where: CHI 1994


Summary
This paper discussed human-computer interaction and presented experimental evidence that people's interactions with computers follow psychological social rules that apply to human-human interactions, and are not the result of ignorance or social dysfunctions. The method of reproducing these social interactions was discussed, then applied to various situations, including politeness, self vs. other, gender roles, and the computer vs. programmer vs. "I" context. Every one of these social norms was proven.


Discussion
This paper seemed to repeat much of the discussion in the first paper, but I liked the more in-depth discussion about the experiments. I found it particularly interesting that there was no difference in human reactions between the computer using "computer" tense and "I" tense. Finally, I liked that this paper presented what the implications of this were for computer science, specifically that this means that programs do not need expensive AI and GUIs to elicit social responses.


Part 3: Can Computer Personalities Be Human Personalities?
Reference Information
Title: Can Computer Personalities Be Human Personalities?
Authors: Clifford Nass, Youngme Moon, BJ Fogg, Byron Reeves, Chris Dryer
When/Where: CHI 1995


Summary
This paper presents a study to find the minimum set of clues needed to create a computer-based personality and to show that this can elicit social responses from users. Dominance/submission aspects of personality were tested  by assigning particular attributes to computers. The results confirmed all of the hypotheses that were based on psychological theory.


Discussion
I liked that this paper discussed just one study in-depth that had been discussed in both of the previous papers. It was interesting to read about the hypotheses, but other than that, this paper just seemed pretty repetitive after reading the previous papers. The conclusion was pretty interesting though, that minimal attempts are necessary to effect humans and that humans respond socially to technology.

Paper Reading #22: A $3 Gesture Recognizer

Comments
Steven Hennessy
Patrick Frith 

Reference Information

Title: A $3 Gesture Recognizer - Simple Gesture Recognition for Devices Equipped with 3D Acceleration Sensors
Authors: Sven Kratz, Michael Rohs
When/Where: IUI 2010

Summary
This paper discussed a simple gesture recognizer using 3D accelerometer input from a device such as a mobile phone or Wii controller. The algorithm uses only trigonometric and geometric calculations, and is designed to be device-independent without the use of special tool-kits or frameworks. About 5 training examples are required to perform the recognition. The approach is quick, cheap, requires minimal training, and a decent recognition rate.

Testing of the system was done using a Wii controller. Each participant in the evaluation study was asked to complete a set of gestures, entering each one 15 times. The first 5 were used for training, and the rest for evaluation of recognition. The evaluation showed that correct recognition was lower than that of a more complex system, but for the purposes of this system (quick responses for prototyping systems) it is acceptable.

The set of gestures used for evaluation. Source: paper.

Discussion

I thought this was a good idea, since gesture recognition generally takes a lot of computation. However, it seems like there were a lot of drawbacks of this system. For instance, the gesture vocabulary could only have 10-15 gestures before the computational overhead became too large to be practical. So while this system may be useful for prototype systems that need fast feedback, it seems like it would be rather useless in a complete system. With that said, I think it could be useful to continue to investigate faster and different methods for gesture recognition, since more and more devices seem to be providing uses for such a system.

Book Reading #47: Why We Make Mistakes

Reference Information

Title: Why We Make Mistakes

Author: Joseph T. Hallinan

Publisher: 2009 Crown Archetype

Chapter 8: We Like Things Tidy
Summary
This chapter discussed the human tendency to distort irregular details of memories in a way that makes them simpler and smoother. This is shown through a number of experiments, such as Milgram's, the drawing of a map of Paris in which the main river was straightened, and the war of the ghosts retelling. Short distances are overestimated, distances to a landmark are judged to be less than distances from the landmark, and the human mind forms a map by organizing information into a hierarchy. Finally, since memories can be distorted, stories that are told are tailored to the audience and the purpose, and conversation is more a means creating an impression.


Discussion
I found it interesting that conversation is not so much about telling the truth, but creating an impression, and that what is said is altered depending on who's saying it and who it's being said to. However, it's not too surprising. Also, the idea that memories are altered to make them more rational and smoother seemed interesting. I wonder how many things are actually distorted in our memories that we are unaware of?


Chapter 9: Men Shoot First
Summary
This chapter discussed the differences in behavior between men and women that tend to lead to different errors. Men tend to be more overconfident, which is the leading source of human error. Women are more risk averse, partially due to how they see the rewards of the risk, and they are more likely to not use debugging features on a computer due to lack of confidence about them. Finally, maps and the asking of directions was discussed, which seems to depend on how wide the home range a person had as a child.


Discussion
I found it interesting that men and women typically view the world so differently, which means that they commit different types of errors in everyday life. I especially thought it was intriguing that how far a person was allowed to wonder as a child affected their confidence, mapping skills, and many decisions when they are older.

Paper Reading #21: A Multimodal Labeling Interface for Wearable Computing

Comments
Steven Hennessy 
Jeremy Nelissen

Reference Information
Title: A Multimodal Labeling Interface for Wearable Computing
Authors: Shanqing Li, Yunde Jia
When/Where: IUI 2010

Summary
This paper proposed a system for labeling objects in wearable environments using a multimodal interface instead of with the inconvenient mice and keyboard. The program uses visual tracking to allow the user to circle on object by pointing, then the user speaks the name of the object and speech recognition is used to get the label. The visual tracking and speech recognition is performed in real-time. The system hardware consists of a head-mounted display to track the user's circling of objects, a wearable computer, and a Bluetooth microphone to capture the user's voice.

View of the system in process. Source: Article.

Experiments were held with the system to evaluate it, involving a user circling various objects and speaking the name "circle". By comparing these results with those using a mice and keyboard, the evaluation showed that this approach was more efficient that mice and keyboard for wearable environments.

Discussion
I thought this system was pretty interesting. It makes sense that for this kind of environment, a keyboard and mouse would be inconvenient, so this proposed approach seems like it would be efficient. However, it seems like its effectiveness would depend largely on how well the speech recognition and hand-tracking recognition systems work. Also, most of the paper was largely technical and mathematical, making it rather hard to understand. However, I like the idea of changing the input methods for unique systems such that the method of input is adapted to the system itself.