Book Reading #46 - Why We Make Mistakes

Title:

Chapter 6: We’re in the Wrong Frame of Mind
Chapter 7: We Skim

Reference:

Hallinan, Joseph.  Why We Make Mistakes.  Random House, Inc.c New York.  2009

Summary:

Chapter 6: We’re in the Wrong Frame of Mind

The frame of mind in which we are in when we enter into decisions plays a key role in our decision making.  From cues outside of ourselves, we can be swayed one way or another to buy a product or have a certain kind of thought as opposed to if no cues were coming in, or if different cues were coming in.  We often try to get a sure thing for the positive even when we have the potential in another option to obtain a greater good, and the reverse in the opposite case, that is we seek the greater good when the sure thing is shown in a negative view.  In the same way, time affects our frame of reference.  In looking into the future, we choose things more beneficial to us than our immediate impulses would say.

Anchoring plays a large role in our decisions too.  When our minds are influenced by a previous number or idea, we are likely to use that as our frame of reference disregarding other factors involved in the decision.

Chapter 7: We Skim

This chapter points out the observation that we as people skim over things and look for patterns rather than meticulously go through every detail.  This is found in our perception of almost everything as we get more comfortable with it - the more familiar something is the more likely we are to not notice the details of it.  When sight reading music, expert musicians look for patterns rather than pay attention to individual notes. Also, when we are reading things, we often only look at the beginnings of words and sentences and fill in the rest in our minds.

The importance of context is of extreme value as well.  If we are unsure what context we know something or someone from, when we see them in a different context, we are often confused and do not necessarily recognize them. 

Discussion:
Frame of reference, I believe, is important when making decisions.  This reminds me of bias and how disclosed bias affects the outcome of a situation.  It seems impossible to get outside of these frames, so rather instead we should try and take advantage of these, but also inform people of how in general this is the case.  It seems like common sense, but I suppose some don't think of things like that.

I  completely agree that we skim.  It is easy to see in my own personal readings when I am not terribly interested in the material I am reading about.

Book Reading #45 - Things That Make Us Smart

Title:

Chapter 3: The Power of Representation 

Chapter 4: Fitting the Artifact to the Person

Reference:

Summary:

Chapter 3: The Power of Representation

This chapter spoke on how we use artifacts and other representations to model things that are not easily realized.  This could be in the form of paper clips and pencils representing a car accident or different numbering systems representing conceptual numbers.  Norman notes that a representational system involves the represented world and the representing world.  The form of the presentation is integral to our understanding of it as we recognize and comprehend spatial things much better than numerical or factual.  Represented information makes it easier for us to locate the relevant information and thus make a conclusion from that information.

Chapter 4: Fitting the Artifact to the Person

This chapter dealt with the appearance of the representation and how that can make a difference in people's perception of the artifact.  It gives three variations of the tower of Hanoi puzzle in showing the power of forcing functions.  He claims that we are very good at making perceptual judgments but very bad at making symbolic or abstract ones.

Norman speaks of graphs and different kinds of representations and our interpretation of them.  Based upon the data they are showing, some are easier to comprehend than others even though they may be showing the exact same data.  

Discussion:
The most interesting part of chapter three was his brief mention of the spatial verse other types of cognition.  It reminds me of the way memory palaces utilize this aspect of the brain in order to memorize vast amounts of data.

It seemed like Norman went on a rant again focusing on the topics he sees most pertinent to him at the time of writing.  This time it was his airline pamphlet.  I got very little out of this chapter because it seemed like he was just giving an overview of what his other books were about.

Paper Reading #20: Designing a thesaurus-based comparison search interface for linked cultural heritage sources

Title:

Designing a thesaurus-based comparison search interface for linked cultural heritage sources

Comments:

Cindy Skach
Luke Roberts

Reference:

Amin, A., Hildebrand, M., Ossenbruggen, J., Hardman, L.  Designing a thesaurus-based comparison search interface for linked cultural heritage sources.  IUI '10.  ACM, New York, NY. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1720005&CFID=5889600&CFTOKEN=71833395

Summary:

This paper attempts to lay a foundation for a search comparison algorithm specifically in the cultural heritage domain.  The researchers do this by doing two studies.  The first study was in two parts: a) to get a grasp on problems experts have when doing comparison studies, and b) to determine the realistic use of comparisons.  The second study was to test a thesaurus-based comparison module that would be able to search, select, and compare different artifacts in cultural heritage.

The preliminary study found that the problems experts are having in this comparison domain are name aliases, multiple languages, multiple terms, comparing many sets of data, single and multiple property comparison.  This finding enforces the use of a thesaurus based algorithm in order to categorize data.  The uses found were learning about collections, planning exhibitions, museometry, qualitative comparison.  This was accounted for by the comparison at the end of the program.  They used a program called LISA in order facilitate this process.

The secondary study brought experts together to test the performance of the LISA component verses the standard system.  Results found that the search, selection, and comparison process were interdependent with each other. For searching and selecting artwork, the design gave faster results than the current systems.  However, for comparison, the time speed up was not significant. 

Future work stem from the improvements seen needed during the second study.  They include a better implementation of the auto-complete ability, supporting interactivity visualizations, and providing bookmarking and search history storage.

Discussion:
While the idea was not relevant to any study of my own, I can see it as a beneficial application for those part of the domain of interest.  The idea of using a Thesaurus to assist in search could be really useful.  I think it is a design that could be implemented in most searches if it is not already.  Those algorithms would need to already have a low running time though.  It was interesting to see that the researchers expected search, select, and compare to be completely separate.  One thing they could do for future projects would be to expand their domain to a different field.

Things That Make Us Smart

Title:
Things That Make Us Smart
Full Blog

Reference:
Norman, Donald.  Things That Make Us Smart.  Basic Books, New York: 1993.

Summary:
This book dealt with the things in our society, specifically technology, that contribute to our cognition.  Technology can be both helpful and hurtful to our cognition and way of thinking.

There are benefits in technology such as having alternative ways to view data.  Graphs can represent things that we would not have been able to easily view in a more conventional method.  Also, if the correct type of media is incorporated with the skill of teachers in the material they present to students, education could become much more efficient in stimulating interest in subjects.  Norman states that flow is necessary in order to have someone entranced into the task at hand.  In terms of education he sees this as very important.  People are very good at having this flow when playing video games; they do much research and planning in order to find out exactly how to win.  They use reflective cognition to think back on different situations in order to find the best route to the end they desire.  He claims that more of this needs to be done in our school system.  People just aren't as into school as they are other things.

There are also things about technology that could hinder our cognition.  Norman points to entertainment through media to be an aspect of society that could be very much hindering it.  In watching movies, people are usually in the state of flow.  Movies however are not typically offering any type of informative information, but rather simply try to entrance the viewer as much as possible.  Object lessons are often looked past in order to make the movie more captivating.  Norman says that this could actually hinder our cognition in having us expectant on a constant use of experiential cognition.  This is the type that is displayed in experts when they must recall or react in an instant.  It is in the moment reaction.

The way things are represented play a large role in our perception of them.  Depending on the presentation it makes it easier or more difficult for us to understand and extrapolate information from the expression.

Discussion:
The book thus far seemed like it was a lot of thoughts that were all over the place.  It was difficult to follow his line of thought and the overall point he was trying to get across.  It did not flow too well.  This is not unlike his other books, however.  Maybe if I were to read more of the book (the chapters we didn't read) it would all make sense, but I doubt it.

It was interesting seeing the types of categories he classified cognition into.  It seemed as though he has a lot of thoughts that he cannot exactly put together in a coherent way.  I agree with him about the whole graph idea.  People tend to use graphs in the most inappropriate way just because they can't figure out how to use the program designing them.

Book Reading #44 - Why We Make Mistakes

Title:

Chapter 4: We Wear Rose Colored Glasses

Chapter 5: We Can Walk and Chew Gum - but Not Much Else

Reference:

Hallinan, Joseph.  Why We Make Mistakes.  Random House, Inc.c New York.  2009

Summary:

Chapter 4: We Wear Rose Colored Glasses

When we try to remember things, we remember them in a more favorable outcome for us than they actually occurred.  We not only reconstruct ourselves in memories in self-flattering ways, but also even our own appearance.

Hallinan talks about bias not in the way of putting a large prejudice on something, but rather slightly altering the correct view based upon our condition of favoring ourselves.  This is the bias that influences our memories.  This is seen in the asking of how many sex partners a man has had as well as the reasons for which a gambler won or lost.  Our decisions are based much more on our own bias that we like to realize.

Simply disclosing a bias does not cancel its effect.  Often, when this occurs, people feel more inclined to be bias on the same side as the original.  It is almost like it gives more freedom to be bias.

Chapter 5: We Can Walk and Chew Gum - but Not Much Else

This chapter explains the idea of multitasking.  The term derives from computers that don't actually do two things at the same time, only give the appearance of doing so.  In the same way, humans cannot multi-task.  

We can focus our attention only on one specific thing at a time.  The question arises, "well I can drive and talk to someone at the same time".  This is true, however, the author states that this is only possible when one of the activities being done is pushed to the sub-conscious level.  Thus, driving can be done by the sub-conscious mind.  Think of zoning out while driving.  While your active mind may not be paying attention to the road, you somehow manage to avoid crashing.

Discussion:
Our bias is something that is deeply ingrained in us, but it is interesting to think whether we would ever be able to look objectively at something.  What about people who often look at themselves in a light that is lower than the original on a consistent basis?  Are these just differences in our genetic make up or our nurture?

The idea of pushing something into the sub-conscious in order to achieve multitasking is a novel idea!  I really enjoy thinking about it.  It translates into so many areas of life.  I believe we can train ourselves to push various things into the subconscious in order to do this.

Book Reading #43 - Things That Make Us Smart

Title:

Chapter 1: A Human-Centered Technology 

Chapter 2: Experiencing the World

Reference:

Summary:

Chapter 1: A Human-Centered Technology

This chapter was about the benefits and hindrances of technology in terms of our cognition.  Norman points out that much of the technology we use today (mostly looking at entertainment) reduces the intelligence level of the observer.  There is an insert of an article or presentation from the 1993 World's Fair.  In it, the claim is that science an engineering has tended towards the more abstract and analytical analysis.  His proposal is to counter this by designing with the human in mind - keeping the integral methods that make the human a part of the design.  He says that when tasks get automated even by a person the overall outcome of the product goes down due to lack of experience by the worker.

Norman then points to two type of cognition which he will focus on later in the book.  The first is experiential cognition, that which is a reactive cognition or way of doing things.  This is found in experts of something because they are able to immediately react to a situation in their field with results that are beneficial.  Reflective cognition, on the other hand, would be the well thought out, analyzed, incremental way of thinking which is needed in order to have innovation.

Chapter 2: Experiencing the World

This chapter discusses how education is not quite right.  It speaks of both the classroom setting and museums as lacking.  When they try to use experiential ways of teaching (multimedia) it usually just entertains and the user is devoid of reflection.  Norman notes that "flow" is essential in learning.  This is something that we experience in recreation - he notes video games as a prime example.  He notes again that experiential thought is key to skilled behavior, but reflective thought is necessary to learn.  The difference in a comparison between playing and practicing.  In participating in a game experiential thought is needed for quick reaction, but practicing reflection is needed in order to fine-tune skills.  Motivation is key to getting people to truly learn.  Norman says that we need to "marry" the entertainments capture of our attention with the knowledge of what to teach from the teachers.

Three kinds of learning include accretion, the accumulation of facts, tuning, honing a skill, and restructuring, or where new conceptual skills are required.

Discussion:
The idea of classifying the types of cognition into two is an interesting concept in terms of focusing on certain aspects of cognition.  It was interesting how he labeled professionals as those who need experiential cognition in order to work really well.  It didn't really touch explicitly on how experts do, in fact, need reflective cognition in order to attain their expertise.

Paper Reading #19: Local danger warnings for drivers: the effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction

Title:

Local danger warnings for drivers: the effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction

Comments:
Cindy Skach
Joshua Penick

Reference:

Cao, Y., Mahr, A., Castronovo, S., Theune, M., Stahl, C., Muller, C.  Local danger warnings for drivers: the effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction.  IUI '10.  ACM, New York, NY.  http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1720004&CFID=5889600&CFTOKEN=71833395

Summary:
The researchers sought to find out what are the most influential, and thus safe, ways to communicate to vehicle drivers using Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).  The study was focused on both modality factors (speech warning, visual plus speech warning, visual warning with blinking, and visual warning without sound cue) as well as the level of assistance, or whether or not action was prescribed or not.  An experiment was designed in order to test these questions.

In the experiment, subject drivers were put in a car with a projected image on the front windshield (a digital projection of a road) and the ADAS was mounted on the dash.  Drivers were to respond as they normally would in a driving situation.  The ADAS would communicate to the driver before the actual obstacle entered the view in the windshield projection giving the subject time to adjust to the navigation system.  The researchers recorded the behavior of the drivers in terms of obeying the ADAS, response times, and unsafe behavior.  

In the control experiment, without ADAS, all but one subject showed unsafe behavior.  The percentage of unsafe behavior with ADAS reduced from 19.1% to 1.4%.  Thus safe driving could be enforced using this type of ADAS.  Concerning modality, the combination of blinking lights with obstacles as well as speech provided the most usability for the user.

Future work includes actually projecting the images on the windshield rather than in the peripheral view of the driver.

Discussion:
From the books that we have been reading for class, it seems as though all of these peripherals in vehicles could be causing more distraction than production.  It would be interesting to add other distractions to the driver outside of the main communication of this system.  Possibly a passenger to talk to would show different results.  The use of a projected view of a road on the windshield could be a poor way of representing actual situations.  I think further testing should be done on a closed obstacle course which simulated a similar situation.

Ethnography Results, Week 8

By Evin Schuchardt, Jeremy Nelissen, Ryan Kerbow and Wesley Konderla

Goal:
Our goal was to once again go to a poetry slam to go more in depth in our analysis of both the reasons poets recite what they do as well as the reasons the crowd reacts.  In doing this we hope to gain a better understanding of the emotional state of the guests.

Setting:
Sunday night around 10PM was fairly windy.  The slam took place outside this time which made much more room for people to sit.  There were about 60 people outside in attendance and 7 inside at the bar. 

People:
The main MC was back heading the slam.  There were a couple regular poets I noticed, however, there were more faces I did not recognize than normal.  At least half of the poets for open mic I had never seen before.  Many of them were from Austin who came with the feature performance.  The DJ was also a different person than usual.  The bartender was the same person.

Mood of Poetry:
This night was filled with expressive poetry of accusation of others, expression of self as the better way of life, and sex.  There were two types of poems that were told: the poem either involved the condemnation of someone or some class of people, or the poet crying out in pain (physical, emotional, or spiritual).  It put a very dark mood on the night.  Often, when a poet would express a poem that was anticipated to be deeply heart-wrenching, sad, or convicting, they would often ask to perform one more of a bit lighter mood.  This was interesting because the poet did not want to leave the stage with the audience hurt.  This at first did not make sense to me, but as more people did it, by their words I found that it was not so much for the audience but for the next poet.  They respected the upcoming poet and therefore did not want to have the audience in a mood that would alter their connection with their poem.

Response of Audience:
The response I saw from the audience was exactly what I expected from our previous encounters at poetry slam.  Snaps, claps, and cheers rose up for anti-religion, pro-spirituality, hauntings from the past, and thoughts against political policies.

Coming of Age in Samoa

Title:
Coming of Age in Samoa
Full Blog

Reference:
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Summary:
Margaret Mead is interested in the adolescent girl.  In America, Mead says that adolescent girls are a field of emotions and inner struggle with so many important decisions to make, conflicting ideas, overarching parents, and the like.  She wants to see if this is a typical trait of all adolescent girls over all societies or if this is an outcome of the western world.  To study this, she decides to venture to Samoa, pictured right.  She planed to study the eduction, family structure, social interaction, and religion of Samoa in order to get a better grasp at an answer to her initial problem.  She studies three villages of the same island for a little less than a year.  She is acclimated to their culture and immerses herself in their way of life to truly understand their inner workings.

The village is a very cohesive unit that is much unchanged from the way it was a hundred years prior to her coming.  Fishing, farming, taking care of infants, and leisure catalog a typical day in Samoa.  Children are raised by family members of their household, often the younger females.  Responsibility is transfered to younger siblings as caretakers reach the years just before being a teenager as the family structure allows.  They are taught by model of their parents the ways in which to take care of little ones, fishing, weaving, and other activities.  There is a very lackadaisical attitude toward obedience and punishment is often differed.  A household consists of many people in a small hut.  There is very little privacy as everything is for the most part open.  All the extended family usually stays in the same house.  If children are having difficulty living under the authority of a home, they often just go to stay with other family members.  This is an accepted practice.

Each age of people have their own group of which they are a part.  There are matais, or heads of villages, the aumaga which is a classification of men that aren't boys, the aualama which is the female group of older people, there are wives of matais, and then there are gangs of boys and gangs of girls.  These groups never really mix as relations across sex lines are fairly taboo.  Boys continue on with these groups until older teen years, but girls grow out of them by about age 12.  This allows the boys more social interaction while the girls don't have the pleasure of such social growth.  Up until puberty, boy-girl relations are mostly antagonistic, but at puberty, sexual play is highly rampant.  This is seen in homosexual and heterosexual relations.  These are not necessarily discouraged by the elders.  The way in which boys court females is with the help of a soa, or a close friend (usually relative) who is loyal to the boy's cause of finding a mate.

Dance plays an important role in the Samoan society.  The dance is a place that children of all ages are free to express themselves as they want and there is no view of outside influences which affect people interpretation of the dance; it is an encouraging time for the children.  Almost all ages of both sexes participate in dances.  They are community events.  Mead points to this as a place where much education occurs simply because of the fact that children are not always hushed and shooed away.

Mead looks at education for both America and Samoa to do a bit of a comparison in order to find if there is any way to improve the way we raise our children to eliminate the turmoil of the adolescent girl.  She sees Samoa as a cultural that cares very little about most things whereas Americans make a big deal out of everything.  Samoan children have much less responsibility as well as choices.  The American child on the other hand is constantly having decisions and opportunity forced upon them.  The relation between parents and children is less close in Samoa than in America.  She points out that America separates work, play, and school to the point where we loathe school because we don't see any application to real life and work because it is just what we have to do in order to play.  She sees American children with double standards being shown to them everywhere.  She conjectures that any change in the way we raise our children would most likely be a backtrack in our societal gain and only hurt future generations because of our preconceived notions as they are.  She says the solution is to simply teach children the way in which to make choices for themselves.  This eliminates putting unnecessary forced beliefs on the child and frees them to choose between what they see as best in the future.


Discussion:
I would like to first point out that I do not agree with her conclusion.  That being said, I believe insight can be gained from reviewing the findings of the differences in our two societies.  The Samoan's obviously have a completely different way of life than we do here in America and I think she accurately points out that we cannot directly implement some of the things they do there just as they cannot implement some of the things we do here simply because of cultural and physical constraints.

The missionaries coming over and planting the church give an interesting dynamic to Samoa.  I would be interested to see how things would have played out with Mead had they not already made ties there.  She even pointed out how the culture had changed significantly in terms of status of women and others in the household as well as punishment because of the missionaries influence.  It doesn't seem like the girls going to the missionary boarding school have too significant an effect on the rest of the village.

Book Reading #42 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Title:
Appendix III: Samoan Civilization as It Is Today

Reference:
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Summary:
The appendix pointed out the changes that Samoa has had in part because of modernization due to foreigners coming in.  The most important things Mead notes is that with the introduction of new tools, devices, and ways of life, the Samoan people is relatively unchanged.  She points out that in many other societies, they forget their past and move on to a disparity between child and great-grandmother.  This is not the case in Samoa.

The introduction of Christianity on the island has significantly lowered the mortal and harsh (by our standards) treatment of people in the village for offenses or upset feelings.  The matai and leader of a household no longer holds ultimate authority over the rest of the clan.

The naval scene is important for inter-island travel along the archipelago.  The people use small canoes for this and save large voyages for passing ships to take them along.

Discussion:
This was a delightful read coming from all the other chapters in the book because I could relate to it much more.  It didn't jump around to every which subject when I thought it was trying to make one specific point.  It showed nicely the progression of the civilization in recent (back then) years.

Book Reading #41 - Why We Make Mistakes

Title:
Chapter 2: We All Search for Meaning (18 pages)
Chapter 3: We Connect the Dots (13 pages)

Reference:
Hallinan, Joseph.  Why We Make Mistakes.  Random House, Inc. New York.  2009

Summary:
Chapter 2: We All Search for Meaning

This chapter went through the things that we do and don't remember well.  It pointed out that names are not remembered very well at all, while faces are remembered well.  It points to meaning as the key to remembrance.  Names don't matter to us because they have little meaning to our lives.

Concerning names, we have slip-of-the-tongue mistakes - saying names that are not right when we may be thinking of something else.

The chapter points to mnemonics - making nonsense meaningful.  It gives the example of a runner who figured out he could make meaning out of numbers he saw while running by associating them with running times.

Faces become more meaningful to us when we take a higher critical view of the face.  If we make personal judgments of someone's face, we are more likely to remember it.

Chapter 3: We Connect the Dots

Hallinan says that the things that make us perceive things as we do are not only deep within us, but are automatic.  Concerning faces, people are inclined to pick a pretty face over an ugly face when voting for something.  With strippers, it was found that they make the most money when they are the most fertile.  This is interesting because men cannot consciously tell if a woman is fertile, but somehow, according to these findings, men can subconsciously.

With cost of things, people become more excited and experience a greater pleasure from the same items (wine) if they are priced higher.

In a similar way, in terms of color, dark things are perceived to be stronger and more aggressive while lighter things are weaker and less aggressive.

Studies over the past 70 years show that if we think about changing an answer on a test we should because that is often the better decision, yet we have a deep desire to keep our original answer.  We find responsibility in action greater than inaction, and if we change and get it wrong, we feel more guilty than had we kept our original answer and been wrong.

Discussion:
I have recently very much noticed that I not only have trouble placing names with faces when outside the normal context I see people, but also I simply have trouble remembering a face.  I took the face recognition expert's quote to heart of making personal judgments about a face.  I may try that to see if it helps any.

The fact that it pointed out how we often recognize pretty faces and do not recognize plain, dull, or ugly faces was very sad.

The idea of changing test answers is interesting because in preparing for the SAT myself in high school, I remember being taught to go with my first answer.

Paper Reading #18: Speeding pointing in tiled widgets: understanding the effects of target expansion and misprediction

Title:
Speeding pointing in tiled widgets: understanding the effects of target expansion and misprediction

Comments:
Cindy Skach
Aaron Kirkes

Reference:
Ruiz, Jaime and Lank, Edward.  Speeding pointing in tiled widgets: understanding the effects of target expansion and misprediction.  IUI '10.  ACM, New York, NY.  http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1730000/1720002/p229-ruiz.pdf?key1=1720002&key2=7482431031&coll=DL&dl=ACM&ip=165.91.4.174&CFID=14048121&CFTOKEN=85270824


Summary:

This paper focused on the thought of speeding up the time it takes for a user to correctly press an icon in a tiled set.  Such as these are found in many modern applications such as file menus, functions, and widgets.  The researchers tested two cases: they wanted to know if target expansion would increase the accuracy, and therefore time, of the user to click an icon, and if so could an endpoint prediction algorithm coupled with expansion further increase this accuracy.  They performed two separate experiments.  One was simply based on the expansion of icons with a simulated prediction algorithm.  As it turns out this was the case (also observed by previous researchers).  The results revealed that the possibility of and endpoint prediction increasing this accuracy was favorable.  However, upon the second experiment of the Kinematic Endpoint Prediction, a common prediction algorithm, it was found that this did not increase accuracy of the user significantly over the control group.


Discussion:
I have not thought much of the idea of expanding icons.  I have used my roommates mac on occasion which has that feature for his programs bar, but outside of that I have no interaction.  I suppose I like the idea if it increases accuracy.  I feel as though it would be kind of annoying for experienced computer users in the same way auto-aim is a nuisance for experienced gamers.

From their paper I did not understand the difference between the simulated and the actual algorithm to find the endpoint.  The distinction wasn't found clear to me.

Emotional Design

Title:
Full Blog

Reference:
Norman, Donald.  Emotional Design. Basic Books.  New York. 2004

Summary:
Norman uses this book to take the approach of pointing to emotion, mood, and aesthetics as important in design.  He cites different studies that show that people tend to use and get less frustrated with things that are more aesthetically pleasing.

Our mood also has a play in both our productivity and ingenuity.  If our mood is relaxed, we are more likely to be able to problem solve with an open mind, whereas a stressful mood fosters strict and devoted work.

Norman points to three different types of emotional devices:

1. Visceral - pre-conscious, pre-thought; appearance.  Visceral design is focused on the visual aspect of a piece.  When someone sees a product, their first reaction they have is usually due to the visceral appeal of the object, and is therefore of great importance.  This aspect plays on our outward emotions drawing us to a design.
2. Behavioral - experience with the product; pleasure and effectiveness of use.  Behavioral design is the functionality of an object.  Will it match my need?  Will it be effective?  Enhancement and innovation have been shown to be great ways to drive this design because slight modification can be made in an incremental fashion in order to tweak it to the most apt degree.  Once a desired design has been reached, like say a wrench, the design is mostly kept the same.  Testing and user feedback are important for this type of design as it is in the end the user who is going to be operating the device, and the more pleased he is with the functionality, the more successful this aspect of design has been.
3. Reflective - feelings, emotions, cognition; self-image and memories.  Reflective design extends to our deep emotions of passion, personal remembrances, and self-image.  Reflective design often conveys a message that is meant to deeply impact us such as the way Coca-Cola markets to its customers.

Different approaches to design could be better for different aspects of design, and therefore it is difficult to come of with a faultless design for a specified group.  If there is just a single person designing something, the design could be very liberal in its regulations and the personality of the design, however with a committee as the design team, a design is likely to undergo a much more iterative approach with people playing off each others' ideas.  Seeing this, Norman states that it is impossible to please everyone.

Discussion:
It is easy to see how these different areas of design affect our everyday choices and likings.  Just go to the grocery store and not only will advertisement and placement of goods affect your thinking and, in turn, purchasing, but your emotions will also be played with by the ambiance of your surroundings.

The idea of attractive things working better reminds of the book Why We Make Mistakes.  We have these notions of "pretty is good", and not only do we see these things as good, but that translates into all parts of our life, even people.  We can classify people as good or bad based upon their outward appearance to us.  To me this shows the shallowness of our own subconsciousness.  On the other hand, it could be a beautiful thing - we were designed to see the beauty in things.  It is only our society has has labeled what is beautiful and what is not.  If you look at what a beautiful woman looked like 70 years ago, it is quite different than what we deem as beautiful today.  If we were able to shed down the callouses on our eyes society has blanketed us with, maybe we could see the beauty in the truly good things and appreciate them for what they are.

Book Reading #40 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Title:
Chapter 14: Education for Choice

Reference:
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Summary:
In this chapter, Mead tries to analyze her findings in terms how our adolescence could benefit from her larger picture.  She points to our problem as the constant conflict within the young people of double standards everywhere.  Making young people make difficult and life changes choices puts a heavy burden on them.  For instance the girl going into a job at the age of 15 or 16 puts her under her own authority when her parents have been trying to teach her morals that are counter to society for the previous part of her life.

Mead says while many solutions could be looked at, most would be a backtrack to our society.  She says that the only way to fix this imbalance is to train our young one in the way in which they can think on their own, not instilling values directly ourselves.

Discussion:
This chapter gathered all the information she found from her study and gave her interpretation of how all these things add up and could make a significant impact on adolescent girls.  I did not agree with her conclusion because I believe in an absolute set of moral standards.  If we just teach our kids how to think, I see no real difference in the way they are today.  It seems like through social factors their maturity would be the same at the age they are at, and simply showing them methods to think for themselves has no real effect in the end.

Book Reading #39 - Why We Make Mistakes

Title:
Chapter 0: Introduction
Chapter 1: We Look but Don’t Always See

Reference:
Hallinan, Joseph.  Why We Make Mistakes.  Random House, Inc.c New York.  2009

Summary:

Chapter 0: Introduction

The introduction gave an overview of the reasons we make mistakes.  Hallinan states that while many mistakes are the fault of humans, many are not entirely the humans' fault; we all have bias in the way we view things and this contributes greatly to the mistakes we make.  These biases operate outside our consciousness and therefore are near impossible to correct without solving a deeper problem.

One reason we make the same mistake over and over is because we assign blame to other things rather than ourselves.

The last paragraph gives an overview of what the book contains and the inspiration for the book: for all of us to learn to "walk another way".

Chapter 1: We Look but Don’t Always See

This chapter focused on the reasons we don't see things.  Our eyes only see a fraction of the whole; the eye sees about two degrees which is not very much.  The writer also points out that experts and novices see things differently in their particular field.  This further shows that it is easy for us to not see everything.

We see things on a need to know basis.  That being the case, we often use stereotypes and other forms of classification to assist us in our visual understanding of a situation.  This was shown in Simons and Levin's experiment of having a door pass between two people who were talking and replacing one of the talkers.  This was called change blindness.

Continuity errors are where for instance in a movie something is damaged earlier in the movie, but seen intact later in the movie.

When we look for things not often seen, we are less likely to see them.  When we look for things more often seen, we are more likely to see them.

Discussion:
This book sounds a lot like Norman's books.  Hopefully he will take a much different approach and not talk around in circles for the entire book.  It is interesting thinking of the reasons we make mistakes, however, I feel like we already took an adequate look at that in the Deign of Everyday Things book.

It was interesting reading about the fact shown that we see less when we expect less.  This seems to be important in so many professions and yet, as stated by the author earlier, it is almost impossible to correct for this even though we are very aware of the fact.

Paper Reading #17: A code reuse interface for non-programmer middle school students

Title:
A code reuse interface for non-programmer middle school students

Comments:
Cindy Skach
Luke Roberts

Reference:
Gross, P., Herstand, M., Hodges, J., Kelleher, C.  A code reuse interface for non-programmer middle school students.  IUI '10.  ACM New York, NY. http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1730000/1720001/p219-gross.pdf?key1=1720001&key2=3067331031&coll=DL&dl=ACM&ip=165.91.15.179&CFID=15500876&CFTOKEN=20687613

Summary:
This system is an interface specifically focused on middle school students.  It looks to allow them to reuse code without programming experience.  One of the motivations behind this work was to encourage math and science in earlier years (especially among girls).

The interface is set up in three parts:

1. Record the execution of the program containing the functionality of interest.
2. Identify the beginning and ending of the functionality of interest.
3. Abstract the code responsible for the functionality by describing the roles that each character in the functionality plays.

The interface name was Looking Glass which was similar to a flash animation.  The user could create, manipulate, and animate 3-D objects.  In order to capture the code for reuse, the interface allows the user to click a 'record' button in order to capture an object's movement during animation run-time.  The user can specify and also narrow this time.  Once the appropriate portion of the code is captured, a new program is created and the action is associated with a new object of the new program.

There was a user test of 47 sixth through eighth graders attending the Exxon Mobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp which was for students with potential but at some risk of not being able to use that potential.  The study took four two-hour sessions to see if students could successfully integrate copied code into a new program.  It was found that 46 of the 47 students successfully did so.  77% of the students' code was longer than 5 lines, showing that there was a fairly high level of functionality in their code, i.e. it was not trivial.  The level of integration and complexity varied.  The authors concluded that this could very well be beneficial in order to grow interest in new programmers in an easily explainable manner.

Future work includes customization and modification of the script used by the users.


Discussion:
This is an interesting idea to get people more comfortable about programming.  When I took my first CS class, it was not very hands on, it was abstract, and the teacher didn't know what he was doing.  Something as simple as this seems to allow for a much more friendly and comfortable environment.  I would be an interesting intro class for a middle school class as it is atypical for middle school students to be programming.

It didn't seem like their findings were very conclusive simply because of the special students who participated in the study.  The researchers commented on this, but that still doesn't validate the findings.

Future work also could include a study of a wider range of students and from that tweak the interface to allow for easier understandability.

Ethnography Results, Week 7

By Evin Schuchardt, Jeremy Nelissen, Ryan Kerbow and Wesley Konderla


Goal:
The goal of going out for this week was to experience once again a Monday night at the bar as the past few findings have been Sundays for poetry slam.  Now that notice of the regulars at poetry slam have been found, we want to know if the same people attend Monday nights as well.  Hopefully conversation will arise from there.



Setting:
We were able to go out Monday night around 10PM.  There was a band on the inside of the bar with about eight people inside when we arrived.  The band was playing as we arrived as we could hear it when we pulled up.

People:
There was probably a total of no more than 18 people there the entire time we were there, never more than 12 guests on the inside of the bar and around 7 on the outside.  There were two guys playing an in-house game of chess, while everyone else inside seemed to be listening to the band.  Only a little over half of them seemed to be drinking.  A couple looked to be with members of the band.  The lady who was sitting at the bar the first time we ever went in to Rev's was there again - could be a Monday regular.  The usual bartender was there in addition to a new female bartender.  She told us we were welcome to pull in chairs from the outside since most of the seats were taken when we arrived.

Band:
The band consisted of five members - guitar/singer, mandolin, violin, bass, and another singer.  As the night began, only three were playing.  They were waiting for the basis.  The lead singer and guitar player was the mandolin man we saw a few times before.  Once the bassist arrived another singer joined them from the audience.  Mandolin man kept talking about the fact that they had been all around Bryan that day mostly hanging outside The Village Cafe playing and singing.  It seemed as though they had a much better time there than they were at Rev's because of the frequent mention of it.  He was often distracted by a stage light that was on a random timer and would flicker about 3 times every 5 seconds which made it annoying for the lead vocalist (which he expressed).

The music was always played in a minor key and the melody often sounded similar to the other songs performed that night.  They had some songs that they were still working on that were just instrumental.

Book Reading #38 - Coming of Age in Samoa

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


Reference:
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Summary:
In this chapter Mead analyzes her questions of whether or not adolescent girls in all societies entails a time of stress and conflict.  As seen in previous chapters she states the answer is no.  She now focuses on why there is this turmoil in the United States.

She points out the idea of not caring in the Samoans.  This is an attitude not carried in the US because we care about so much, and we make big deals out of everything.  Our children are faced with many choices in morality.  Samoan children really don't have any obligation to moral circumstances.  Our children are are socially pressured into choosing a group to relate their ideas to.  In this group there is even a contradiction of ideas.  In Samoa, the entire village holds the same attitude about all things for the most part.  Building off of this idea, Samoa does not have the extreme individualistic attitude that we do.

The close relationship between parent and child is also not found in Samoa.  There are not the taboos of America concerning kids, sex, and death found in Samoa.  Mead points that this is vital in the development of internal conflict.

Mead sees a resolution to the problem in the form of education.  She poitns out that America separates work, play, and school.  School is seen here as incompatible for the most part with the activities of adult life, making a complacent and bad attitude towards school.

Discussion:
This was the first truly interesting chapter in the book.  It was very applicable to life here in America, especially her thoughts about education and the differences between work, play, and school.  This is something to truly consider when raising children, or thinking about our education system as a whole.  I can see what she means by the disconnect between school and adult life.  I think something that we can take from this book is to have school be more applicable not just to professional jobs, but to everyday life.

Book Reading #37 - Obedience to Authority

Title:
Chapters 9-14

Reference:
Stanley Milgram.  Obedience to Authority. HarperCollins Publishers: New York. 1974.

Summary:
Chapter 9: Group Effects
Milgram wants to study the outcome of a subject when peers are involved in the experiment.  He sees a need for a definition and look at conformity and contrasts it with obedience.  He states that conformity arises among peers of equal standing.  It is noted that subjects deny conformity but embrace obedience.  Thus, two more experiments arose.

17. Two Peers Rebel - Here there are three teachers, two of which are in on the scheme.  One breaks off at level 10 at the first outcry of wanting to stop, and the other at 14.  They remain in the room but sit in a corner.  Milgram says that this persuades the subject partly due to disapproval by the peers and usually makes the subject conform to their actions in defiance of authority.  36 of 40 subjects disobeyed authority.
18. A Peer Administers Shocks - Here there was a peer giving the shocks while the subject was reading the word pairs.  This removed him from the action of the shock.  The results found only 3 of the 40 broke off of the experiment.

Milgram sees people act for three reasons: because of their own morals, because of authority, and because of peers.

Chapter 10: Why Obedience? - An Analysis
Milgram looks at obedience and the structure of an individual in the aspect of an autonomous being and an agentic being.  He points out that when an individual moves from an autonomous state into a structure of more than one being, that individual must concede some of his own personal desires in order to function in the group, otherwise mutual destruction is ensured according to Milgram.  He points out that beings are in a hierarchical structure and when everyone accepts and fulfills their role, then there is harmony.  When a person goes into a hierarchy, he no longer must consider just his own conscience, but also the commands coming from above him.  When this is the case, he often considers the commands outside of his own moral code and therefore these commands are not filtered through his conscience.

Chapter 11: The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment
This chapter focuses on the build up to the action of obedience or disobedience.  The ties are deeply rooted within our being as Milgram notes through evolution.  It is also in our family as we have grown up knowing to be obedient through parents, school, and work.  He also notes that when obedient, one often receives rewards over slander.

The conditions involved before the subject needs to make the decision to breach authority start with the perception that there is an authority figure involved.  The subject then makes a contract in terms of participating in the experiment in a way binding him to the experiment.  The idea is not easily broken of breaking authority.

Next is the agentic state.  Once contracted, the authority figure is usually looked at with a greater favor than any other lesser participants in an engagement.  The situation in which the subject plays affects his actions as it is not the authority who the subject lays blame on and fears rather than his own morals.  The subject has a self-image to keep, now with the authority rather than anyone he may be hurting.

Binding factors keep the subject in an agentic state.  Because the subject has already committed lesser actions of shocking, he figures that if he breaks off, his previous actions will not be justified, thus he continues.  He is also told that the experiment requires him to continue.

Chapter 12: Strain and Disobedience
Strain arises from inner conflict within the subject.  Milgram points to sources of strain being the fact that the subject is apparently hurting another individual as well as the fact that he could be held responsible legally and morally for his actions.

Through the experiments, it was shown that Distance, time, and physical barriers all aid in reducing the moral sense of the subject and therefore decrease the strain he encounters.

The ultimate resolution of strain is disobedience, however, depending on the experiment, not many defected.  Some steps in the process of reducing strain in the subject were "avoidance, denial, physical conversion, minimal compliance, subterfuge, the search for social reassurance, blaming the victim, and noninstrumental dissent."

The actual act of disobedience starts with inner doubt, externalization of doubt, dissent, threat, and ultimately disobedience.

Chapter 13: An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?
Milgram looks again into the possibility that a man's sadistic attitude is the root of his performance in the experiments.  He asks the question that if this is the case, why did more not make the victim suffer in such experiments like number 11.  There were occasionally a subject who took pleasure in hearing the cry of the victim, but he was "the rare exception".

Chapter 14: Problems of Methods
Milgram points out three ways where others have seen his experiments and results as defective: (1) the people studied were not regular, average people, (2) the subjects did not believe that they were, in fact, administering shocks to the victim, and (3) lab work is not generalized to the larger world.

1. Milgram and his colleagues first did the experiment at Yale, but decided the results were too high so then extended the experiment to the larger New Haven area.  The results were the same in both locations.  He drew participants from different age groups and professions.
2. The tension and strain showed by the subjects partly shows their belief the experiment was shocking the victim.  In the follow up survey, most responded that they did believe they were administering shocks to the victim, and even those who didn't could be trying to justify their actions.
3. The idea of the problem being observed is how easily humans can come under authority and carry out that authorities commands.  The subject does not respond to the commands so much as the authority.

Comparing this with Nazi Germany, Milgram notes that the differences are vast, but the underlying factors of obedience concerning disposition, binding factors, and strain carry through both situations.  

Discussion:
First of all it seems like Milgram did not exhaust the group observation.  I think he could have put in a few more permutations of the experiment.  I don't think that this would have been necessary and may be the reason he did not do it, but for completeness he could have put in a few more.

In his analysis of obedience, he was not very objective in keeping with his Darwinistic view along with his Freudian concepts of ego and superego.  I think he could have generalized things more as these are simply philisophical views and not facts.

His idea of the agentic state is interesting in that it captures the attitude of a person once under authority and charges that this is in a very real way different from their normal state of being.

He seems to have already addressed the issue of aggression, but it seems that he was having a lot of arguments for this point by others.  I think he dutifully put the argument to rest by pointing out so many ways that it could not be the case that human aggression was the cause of his findings.  The results of many of the experiments should have played out differently if this were the case.

Again, the problems of methods he has been pointing out this entire book and adequately adjusted and made new experiments to cover all bases in this regard.  Through all of them it was shown that these objections have hardly any merit due to the nature of the results of the experiment.

The relation to Germany seems to be just stuck there in the last chapter.  I don't think it was a very thorough analysis, but did protect the idea that it is not necessarily exactly the same thing, but the inner workings of humans remains constant in both situations.

Obedience to Authority

Title:
Obedience to Authority
Full blog

Reference:
Stanley Milgram.  Obedience to Authority. HarperCollins Publishers: New York. 1974.

Summary:
Obedience to Authority is a report of Stanley Milgram's finding concerning his famous experiment of testing obedience in his subjects.  Milgram states that it is important to try to study obedience for many reasons, one of which is to study the state of Nazi Germany and how so many people could have blindly obeyed authority seemingly without regard for human life.  This book catalogs his motivations, experiment and inner workings, changes and permutations to the experiment, results, analysis, comments, objections, and conclusion.

Setting of Experiments:

The experiments were began using Yale undergrads as subjects, but Milgram decided that this was too bias a group as these subjects could be much more likely to obey and therefore wanted to bring his experiment to a larger audience and subject set.  He expanded it to the New Haven area taking volunteers he would pay to be in his study.  He took a distribution of people of different ages (20 to 50) as well as different professions in order to get an adequate representation of people and leave less bias.

Milgram conducted 17 different experiments all of which focusing on different facets of obedience to authority.  The experiment consisted of a teacher, learner, and researcher.  The teacher would attempt to teach the learner to remember word pairs based upon reading the words.  If the learner could not repeat the proper word, the teacher was to administer a shock.  The shocks were to increase in intensity upon each mistake.  If a teacher would question the experiment, the researcher would say 4 responses to enforce that the experiment should continue.  The prods are as follows: please continue, the experiment requires that you continue, it is absolutely essential that you continue, you have no other choice you must go on.  The variations in the experiment and a brief description and analysis are listed below.

1. Remote-Feedback: The experiment took place where the teacher would have no feedback from the learner.  26 of the 40 subjects continued to the end of the experiment administering the highest level of shocks.
2. Voice-Feedback: The subject could hear the voice of the victim in this experiment.  25 of 40 subjects continued to the end.
3. Proximity: The teacher was in the same room as the learner.  16 of 40 continued to the end.
4. Touch-Proximity: The teacher would have to manually place the learner's hand onto a pad in order for the assumed shock to incur.  12 of 40 proceeded to the end.
5. New Base-Line Condition: In the following experiments including this one, the learner talked about a heart condition and was wary of signing the release form.  26 of 40 subjects proceeded to the end.
6. Change of personnel: A different learner and researcher were brought in.  20 of 40 continued until the end.
7. Experimenter Absent: The experimenter was reachable by phone, but otherwise was not present.  9 of 40 proceeded until the end.
8. Women: In this experiment, women were enlisted as the subjects of the experiment.  IT was found that there was not a significant difference between their break off and mens as 26 of 40 continued with the experiment.
9. Enters with Prior Conditions: Here the learner would point out in the initial agreement that he would only do it on the condition that he would be able to back out at any time he wanted to.  16 of 40 finished the experiment. 
10. Office Building, Bridgeport: To separate the prestige of Yale with the experiment, this experiment took place in an office building in the business district.  It was found that 19 of 40 continued to the end of the experiment.
11. Subject Chooses Shock Level: Here the researcher told the subject he was free to choose what level of shock to give the victim.  Only 1of 40 participant finished the experiment.
12. Learner Demands to be Shocked: Here the learner demands to be shocked and the researcher says the experiment should not go on.  No subjects of the 20 finished the experiment.
13. An Ordinary Man Gives Orders: In this experiment, there was just a common man, the subject thought was a volunteer, giving the orders.  The man would take over the controls if the subject refused to continue.  16 of 20 subjects broke off the experiment, and it is significant to note that five took physical action against the machine or the man.
14. Authority as Victim: An Ordinary Man Commanding: Here the researcher took the seat to be shocked and the ordinary man was the one giving the orders.  None of the 20 subjects continued all the way to the end of the shocks.
15. Two Authorities: Contradictory Command: With two researchers who would argue at the 150 mark, none of the subjects finished.  All broke off very quickly if not immediately after the conflict arose.
16. Two Authorities: One as Victim: Here one of the researchers took the position of the victim and the other gave the orders.  There was no difference than ordinary man in the chair.
17. Two Peers Rebel: Here there were three teachers.  The subject would give the shocks, but when the two peers quit the experiment but stayed in the room, only 4 of 40 subjects continued to the end of the experiment.
18. Peer Administers Shocks: Here it was not the subject but a peer administering shocks and the subject was just reading the word pairs.  37 of 40 finished the experiment.

Findings:

The experiment showed that people's obedience was not simply based upon the command but rather the authority himself when the subject believed that this person was worthy of having authority in the situation. For instance when there was just an ordinary man giving orders he did not continue to the extent if which a researcher were giving the orders.  Also with a switch in location, the credibility was hindered in a slight way as well.  Peers had a great influence on the subjects actions.  Also when the subject is not the one at the end of the line of abuse, i.e. not the one actually administering shocks, they are much more likely to comply.  The closer the subject is to the victim, the less likely the subject is to complete the task.

Analysis:

Milgram points to a person going into an agentic state when he comes under the role of an authority.  His usual moral standings are often released to that of the authority so that he would do things he would not admit he would have done had he been alone.  This differs the responsibility to the researcher in the mind of the subject. 

The subject goes through strain as he must weight his own morals against his actions.  There are several factors that play into this.  The subject seeks to relieve the strain and this is ultimately accomplished with the breaking of the agentic state - disobeying authority.  The actual act of disobedience starts with inner doubt, externalization of doubt, dissent, threat, and ultimately disobedience.

Finally, Milgram refutes opposition he has been dealing with the entire book and tries to extrapolate the thought and nature of the subjects to the event of the Holocaust.  

Discussion:
The book was extremely informative of all the different aspects of the experiment, Milgram's thoughts, and results.  Each experiment was carefully and strategically planned in order to test the different parts of obedience that could play out.  Through all of these different experiments as noted in chapter 14, he very much exhausted the possibilities that people could slander him on his experimental bias but in doing so also provided an excellent description of how obedience comes into play under an authority figure and the factors of how each affect the subject.

I appreciated the responses of the victims in the chapters titled "individuals confront authority".  This seemed to relay even more the tension and thoughts a subject was feeling while going through the experiment.  It is extremely difficult, as noted in the book, to put ourselves in the situation conceptually and anticipate how we would react to the situation.  So many other factors have been shown to play than simply our moral standards.

The experiments of role permutations in my opinion were vital in showing qualities in our nature that maybe would not have otherwise been noted.  I thought it was interesting how the concept of authority is ascribed to those we view as being in a position to administer authority.  When this is broken, the authority who we may have been listening to just a little while earlier would be completely replaced with what in our minds we see as a higher authority.

I thought Milgram's explanation and analysis were very thorough.  I did not, however, appreciate the following of certain philosophical views.  He stuck very closely to the theory of evolution as well as some of Freud's views (ego and superego).  I think if he would have made a  more general observation or maybe instead used many different philosophical views to back up his facts and explain himself it would be easier to appreciate.

The experiment was made in part to study how Nazi Germany played out.  It did not seem like he touched too much on this topic, and did not really leave it up to the reader to think about this himself either.  That may have been some further writings he could have included in his book.

Paper Reading #16: Using fNIRS brain sensing in realistic HCI settings: experiments and guidelines

Title:
Using fNIRS brain sensing in realistic HCI settings: experiments and guidelines

Comments:
Cindy Skach
Luke Roberts

Reference:
Solovey, E., Girouard, A., Chauncey, K., Hirshfield, L., Sassaroli, A., Zheng, F., Fantini, S., Jacob, R.  Using fNIRS brain sensing in realistic HCI settings: experiments and guidelines.  UIST '09.  http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1630000/1622207/p157-solovey.pdf?key1=1622207&key2=5715740031&coll=DL&dl=ACM&ip=128.194.132.227&CFID=14252216&CFTOKEN=68607047

Summary:

The researchers were interested in using brain sensors for HCI, and therefore conducted 5 experiments in order to see how these sensors could be used for HCI.  They claim many brain sensing mechanisms would be inappropriate for HCI due to their operation and vulnerability to disturbances, therefore the researchers chose to use functional near-infrared spectroskopy (fNIRS).  Using fNIRS, they sought to test the effects of keyboard and mouse input, head movement, and facial movement of a user doing a cognitive task on the fNIRS results.

For the experiments, the user was given a time of rest as well as a time of a cognitive task on a computer.  This task consisted of looking at a 7-digit number, waiting 15 seconds, and then recalling that number.  The five experiments are as follows:

0. No artifacts - This was to test if there was a difference that the fNIRS could pick up from doing the cognitive task and not doing the task.  It was shown that there is an observed difference between these two states allowing the experimenters to continue their experiments.
1. Keyboard input - Here in addition to the rest time and cognitive task, the user would type random letters using the keyboard.  It was found that whether doing this continually or intermittently they were able to pinpoint the cognitive task.
2. Mouse input - Here the user pointed and clicked a target on the computer.  The results for this experiment were not as conclusive as the keyboard input.  If a user is constantly using the mouse through both rest and the cognitive task, then the cognitive task was able to be distinguished, however if there was only intermittent clicking it could not.
3. Head movement - The clicking and keyboard input here is replaced by head movement.  The results were found to be exactly the same as experiment 2.
4. Facial movement - Here the facial gesture of frowning was studied.  It was found that if there was constant frowning then the cognitive task could not be pinpointed, but if it was intermittent then it could.  They claim this to be an interesting finding.

They analyzed these results in order to extrapolate the possible use of fNIRS in HCI.  A brief summary of the results are shown in Table 1.  For mouse clicking, typing, hemodynamic-response, eye movement, and blinking it is acceptable to distinguish in between these tasks and a cognitive task using fNIRS.  For Respiration and heartbeat, minor head movement, ambient light, and ambient noise it is appropriate using a certain correction.  Forehead movement and major head movement need to be avoided or controlled.

Discussion:

This was an interesting paper being as I just finished Obedience to Authority.  I had not previously seen a paper that is simply performing an experiment to extrapolate data to a larger context, and this provided a nice break from test cases measuring user ability.  The idea of using brain sensing technology for computing is an area that I think has great potential but seems by the results of this study to be too constrained to be useful for anything as of right now.  Also I can see wearing an article on your head while computing isn't the most desirable thing either.  Something like this could however be incorporated into headphones or something like that.

As far as further study, since this paper in a way lays the groundwork for use with this system, anything involving this technology could be studied.  Concerning the constraints of the system, the researchers could further study more possible ways to control these artifacts.

Book Reading #36 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Title:
Chapter 12: Maturity and Old Age


Reference:
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971)

Summary:
Maturity in Old Age spoke about the different roles of women as they progress past the teenage years.  When there is a marriage, the wife is able to adapt easier than her husband if they move into the spouses home.  The woman takes on the duties that she would have otherwise.  Her duty is child-care.  On the other hand, the man is always seeking position within the community.  He is seeking to have a title of higher honor.  This is done by progressively showing success and ability over his fellow men.

Discussion:
I found it interesting that the hardest work in the village is done by women from 45 to 50 years of age.  The fact that men are always seeking to get ahead reminded me of America, but in a slightly different context.  It seems that the means are for the most part the same in Samoa, whilst in America there are many ways of making it to the top.  It brings in the idea of acting older than one is, that opinion that the village seems to so desperately hate.

Book Reading #35 - Obedience to Authority

Title:
Chapter 1 - 8:

Reference:
Stanley Milgram.  Obedience to Authority. HarperCollins Publishers: New York. 1974.

Summary:
Chapter 1 - The Dilemma of Obedience:
In the first chapter, Milgram introduces a brief overview of his experiment and what it hoped to test: volunteers shocking victims based upon incorrect answering of a question.  A man in a lab coat (the authority) was encouraging the behavior while the victim would fake being shocked at each wrong question.  The voltage was increased with each shock.  This experiment was developed in part to the systematic slaughter of people under Hitler's command in Nazi Germany.  The point of the experiment was to see how far a person will proceed in obeying when being ordered when someone's life is theoretically at stake.  It was found that almost two-thirds of the subjects were obedient to the point of lethal shock.

Obedience has long been thought of as a virtue.  It could be, but it could also, as has been seen, be detrimental to a people.  A question of "where does responsibility lie?" comes into play when one thinks about obedience.

When dealing with authority, people are sheepish to confront that authority due to awkwardness and a sense of responsibility to that authority.  A subject's morality can be shifted from that of responsibility for a human life to responsibility of obeying the authority.

Chapter 2 - Method of Inquiry:
Milgram states that simplicity is the key to an effective scientific inquiry.  He seeks to simplify the experiment in order to get adequate results.  Milgram obtained people of different occupations from ages 20 to 50 for the experiment from the great New Haven area by means of a newspaper add and mail invitation.  The experiment was held at a Yale University laboratory for credibility.  The "victim" was a forty-seven year old accountant who was trained for the part.  The subject would read word pairs followed by a word with four other words which the victim would have to correctly identify as the matching word.  The subject would use a fake shock generator to increasingly shock the victim upon a wrong answer.  When subjects asked the experimenter for guidence, he was to respond with four increasing prods from "please, go on" to "you must go on, you have no other choice".  The victim was recorded and feedback varying from initial non-response, to irritated pain, to severe pain, to refusal to answer questions, to non-response was fed back to the subject in accordance with which shock was administered.  The subjects were debriefed in order to ease their minds that they in fact had not killed the victim and the experimenter went on to explain elements of the experiment.

Chapter 3 - Expected  Behavior:
The experiment, after giving a lecture on obedience to authority, gave a questionnaire to the listeners of the lecture that asked them to gauge their own expected level of obedience in the same experiment.  None of them said they would go all the way.  Again, the same thing was explained, but this time for the listeners to respond for the general populous.  Again, virtually all said that people would not go all the way.

Chapter 4 - Closeness of the Victim:
The level of closeness the subject and victim were contributed to the outcome of the defiants.  In four different experiments - remote condition, voice-feedback, proximity, and touch-proximity - it was found that the percentage of subjects that defied authority was 35, 37.5, 60, and 70 percent respectively.  Milgram brings possible accounts for this behavior in 6 forms.

1. Empathetic cues: felt verses unfelt empathy based upon proximity.
2. Denial and narrowing of the cognitive field: the idea that one can "tune out" something going on; out of sight out of mind.
3. Reciprocal fields: with proximity, the subjects actions come to the scrutiny of the victim.
4. Experienced unity of act: the act is unified with the response with proximity.
5. Incipient-group formation: the subject with proximity has an ally to team up against the experimenter rather than the subject teaming up with the experimenter.
6. Acquired behavior dispositions: experienced violence leads to violence while experienced non-violence leads to non-violence. 

The proximity of an assailant to a victim could highly influence the assailant's reaction and response.  

Unexpected behavior included the subject's willingness to obey beyond what would be considered moral standards and also the tension that the experiment caused.

Chapter 5 - Individuals Confront Authority:
This chapter highlights some of the responses and actions of 5 subjects.

1. Bruno Batta, a welder, was described as simple and fairly unintelligent.  He was very willing and eager to obey orders.  He did not seem to see any larger ramifications to the experiment and was fully confident in the experimenter.  
2. A professor of the old testament refused to continue after pleas from the victim.  The minister decided to align his obedience to the victim rather than the experimenter, simply shifting his obedience.  The man sees God as the ultimate authority and if man aligned his will more with God's, then these moral dilemma would go away.
3. Jack Washington, a drill press operator, was drafted into the army.  He puts the blame on the experimenter and had complete faith in him.
4. Jan Rensaleer is an industrial engineer and stopped the shocks after 255 because he said he knew what it was like to be shocked being an electrical engineer.  He said that even though it may not cause permanent damage, it still plays with someone's emotions.
5. Morris Braverman is a social worker who couldn't control his laughter at the whole situation.  He wanted to rather modify the teaching method than disobey authority.

Chapter 6 - Further Variations and Controls:
Seven different variations and controls are explained in this chapter beginning with experiment 5.

5. This experiment introduced the notion that the victim had heart problems.  It was related to the voice-feedback.  The result was hardly different where 26 of 40 continued to the highest level of shock whereas 25 of 50 in voice-feedback continued to the highest level.
6. Experiment 6 changed personnel and made the experimenter not as stern and the victim someone who looked like "he could do well in a scrap".  This, however, also had little effect on the level of obedience.
7. The experimenter was removed from the room that the subject was in.  This was found to have the subject often lie about the level of shock being administered and to sometimes just keep administering low levels of shock.  Obedience sharply dropped.
8. Women were made as subjects for this experiment.  The level of obedience was virtually identical to that of men.
9. In this, the victim was hesitant at the contract referring to his heart condition and only signing it on the condition that he could be let out when he asked to be.  Sixteen of 40 continued to obey.
10. Thinking that Yale may cause people to obey more than another institution, they moved to a local business complex named Bridgeport and reported to be doing research for industry in general.  They wanted to disassociate with Yale.  48% of the Bridgeport subjects continued to obey compared to 65% at Yale.
11. In the last experiment people were free to choose the level of shock administered.  This was to test the claim that men are inherently sadistic and when put in a situation to harm others with no consequence they will.  Here, most subjects administered very low shock treatments with only two going above level 25 (one 25 and one 30).  

Chapter 7 - Individuals Confront Authority II:
This follows more people in the variations of the experiment.

1. Fred Prozi, unemployed, participated in experiment 5.  In words he was very shaken up by having to continue, but nonetheless does all the way.  There is a disassociation between his words and actions.
2. Karen Dontz, a nurse, was in Experiment 8.  She was always humble toward the experimenter.  She obeyed not with protests, but simply with questions on whether or not she could.
3. Elinor Rosenblum, a housewife, was in experiment 8.  When she was a nurse, she had to deal with situations like this as well where she could question authority and bring it to a supervisor.  She claims herself to have nerves of steel in emergency situations and does whatever is needed at any cost.  She went through till the end.
4. Gretchen Brandt was a medical technician who was firm and resolute throughout.  She said she did not want to be responsible for his harm and stopped.  
5. Pasqual Gino, a water inspector in experiment 7 was nervous for the victim.  He attributed that to the experimenter not being there; otherwise he would have been confident.  Nonetheless he went through to the end.

Chapter 8 - Role Permutations:
Up to this point in the experiments the roles had been kept the same - there was the experimenter as the authority, the teacher as the subject, and the learner as the victim.  These six experiments permute these roles.

12. In experiment 12, the learner demands to be shocked and the experimenter says to stop.  Not a single subject obeyed the learner but all stopped at the experimenters request.
13. This experiment put a common man in the position of authority.  Sixteen of 20 broke the authority and stopped the experiment.
1. Here instead when the subject refused to go on, the authority (common man) took over the controls and tried to keep administering shocks.  Five of 16 people used force to either try and takeover the man or machine while virtually all verbally opposed his actions.
14. Now there was the experimenter as the victim with a common man in the authority role.  All subjects broke off immediately when the experimenter wanted out.

These results confirm that it is the authority itself, not the order given, that drives people to do things.

15. Here there were two authorities with contradictory commands.  Both were in the room taking notes, but at 150 volts when the learner is wanting to stop, one experimenter objects and one says to proceed.  In this instance, all subjects suspend their action, one before argument, one at the level above argument, and the other 18 immediately when the argument starts.  They often try to figure out which one has more authority.
16. Here there are again two authorities, but one is the victim.  It was found that the experimenter as the victim showed in the subject that there was virtually no difference than if an ordinary man was in the chair.  It was as if the experimenter relinquished his authority when he became the victim.  

Discussion:
So far this book has been extremely insightful into the different approaches that Milgram took in observing obedience to authority.  I appreciated his first chapter on giving a background to the dilemma of obedience.  I also got a much better picture of the original four experiments.  I was unaware that so many took place.  It gives greater insight into just which results people draw from when they are explaining the experiment.  It was extremely interesting seeing the different ways people responded to authority in different situations.  For me, the most revealing conclusions came from the last experiments explained in these set of chapters: role permutations.