MOCHI

Michigan CHI

2011-02-19T21:56:00.002-05:00

MOCHI is officially dead, but a new Michigan chapter of SIGCHI has been formed. See http://michichi.org/

Axure Tech Talk (Ann Arbor, MI)

2008-10-24T23:37:00.002-04:00

The following came through on the SI and SOCHI mailing lists. It is on campus in Ann Arbor. It is intended for students, so if you are not one, and attend this talk, please be aware and appropriate.

Hi everyone,

One thing that SOCHI is trying to do this year is help students teach other students the software and technologies that they know. We want you to be able to pick up new skills from this that can help you with class projects and finding jobs. Our first official Tech Talk of the semester will be on Axure, a prototyping tool that is great for making interactive prototypes for websites.

WHAT: Axure Tech Talk
WHEN: Next Wednesday, October 29th, 12-1 pm
WHERE: 412 West Hall
WHO: Presented by me, Debra Lauterbach

WHY you should come:
I learned how to use Axure this summer at my internship and found it surprisingly easy for making prototypes that can look and feel like they actually are real websites. This is great for user testing. To see some examples of what Axure can do, check out the sample prototypes and also the design patterns here and here. As you can see, pretty much every AJAX-y interactive website component can be mimicked using these patterns.

Even better news - Axure is available free to HCI students in good standing through their Good Student Program. Just email them your transcript and you get a free license, which is normally $589. (I checked with them, and first-year HCI students are eligible as well). Otherwise, you can download a 30-day free trial.

So, if you're going to come on Wednesday, I'd advise applying for your student license now, and getting the free trial set up on your computer until then. Caveat: it's Windows only, but if you have a Mac with Parallels or VMWare that'll work too.

On Wednesday, I'll explain the features of the software and demo how to actually build a simple prototype in only a few minutes. Then, I'll get into the advanced features of the software and how to use the design patterns. If you've got a project to use Axure for now, come with your questions and I'll do my best to answer them. And if anyone else is also a resident expert on Axure, please come too!

See you Wednesday!

Mozilla Design Jam II

2008-10-13T09:44:00.000-04:00

SOCHI and SCSI bring you the second design jam in our browser redesign series, answering Mozilla's call for participation.

WHAT: Sketch your ideas for improving or redesigning Firefox
WHEN: Thursday, October 16th, 7-8:30PM
WHERE: Design Lab 1, Duderstadt Center (North Campus)

You don't have to be a Firefox user or an HCI student to attend. Everyone is welcome, but if you were unable to attend the previous design jam, we ask that you read through SOCHI's summary of the event and check out the photos. Bring your sketchbooks if you like, (especially those students taking 682, this might add valuable content to your design notebook,) or do your sketches on a whiteboard. Snacks and swag will be provided, including a chance at free Firefox t-shirts.

This event is sponsored in part by SourceForge and Mozilla.

Hope to see you there!
SOCHI and SCSI

SI Design Jam

2008-09-16T16:10:00.001-04:00

(this from the SOCHI mailing list)
SOCHI and SCSI have joined together with SourceForge to bring you this school year's first design jam.

WHAT: Brainstorm your ideas for improving or redesigning Firefox
WHEN: Thursday, September 25th, 6-8PM
WHERE: Design Lab 1, Duderstadt Center (North Campus)
RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=23492638077

Please indicate via the Facebook event if you will be attending so that we have an accurate count for ordering pizza.

----
More information about the event:

We will be answering Mozilla's call for participation, which requests that we all put our heads together to come up with revolutionary new ideas for the browser. These ideas can range from a simple improvement on how new tabs work (see one idea from Aza Raskin, Mozilla's UX lead) to a more complete browser interface redesign such as the very futuristic designs seen on the call for participation page.

You don't have to be a Firefox user or an HCI student to attend. Everyone is welcome! Come share your browsing habits, frustrations, and ideas!

We will follow up with the ideas generated at this event during two additional design jams later in the semester in which we will sketch ideas and create prototypes, but coming to one is not a commitment to attend all three.

Not only will this be a whole lot of fun, but this is a great opportunity to build up experience and portfolio materials in interface design and contribute to open source in a way that matters with no long term commitment. SourceForge is providing T-shirts to all the participants. If you plan to attend, RSVP and please take a look at some of the videos in the links above to rev up your creative engines!

Hope to see you there!
SOCHI and SCSI

Refresh Detroit meeting May 21st - 6:30pm-8:30pm

2008-05-14T15:59:00.004-04:00

May's Refresh Detroit meeting will be on the 21st, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the downtown Ann Arbor District library in Ann Arbor. Map to the location.

SPONSORED BY YAHOO SEARCH MONKEY DEVELOPER PREVIEW

TOPIC: There will be a few quick presentations by members of our great group, and general discussion on the latest news, challenges, projects, and ideas that the group members have encountered in their web related occupations/hobbies/activities.

The event like always is free to anyone who is interested.

The current speakers will be:

Nick DeNardis
Designer of the Wayne State University Library and Information Science website. He will discuss the latest release of the website, their goals, process and challenges.

Brian Kerr
Information architecture, user experience, and django development guru. Exact topic details to come…

Paul Tarjan - Yahoo! SearchMonkey
The fine folks at Yahoo! are sponsoring this event and promise to bring lots of swag as well as give a short presentation on their new open source semantic web search in your own applications and websites. This new product they are releasing is called "Search Monkey" and you can read more at:

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000523.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/24/yahoo-open-search-platform-launches-into-private-beta/
http://searchengineland.com/080424-113600.php

Social Media: If you could only leverage what your customers know

2008-03-28T21:42:00.002-04:00

Sean O'Driscoll

7:30pm - 9pm
Monday, March 31st, 2008
411 West Hall (Ehrlicher Room) directions...

Abstract: Web 2.0, social media, Marketing 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, communities, transparency, virtual worlds, social graphs? Like most new trends, there's no shortage of buzz words, but there's a big gap between the enthusiasm for this "new media" and what it means to a business. This sessions will try to address the following fundamental questions designed to inform a business on how to get started: - What is Social Media? - What is Social Media Strategy? - Why does it matter to a business? - Who are the "influencers" who make these social spaces thrive? - How do you measure it? - What is the social graph...and why should I care?

About the Speaker

Sean O'Driscoll is a 15 year Microsoft veteran who recently left to form his own strategy consulting business focused on Social Media, community and influencer initiatives. In his most recent role at Microsoft, he was the general manager of community support services, where for the past 5 years he was responsible for leading the Web 2.0 strategy across Help and Support, focused on influencer engagement, user generated content, and integration with customer listening systems. For a bit more, visit his blog here: http://www.communitygrouptherapy.com

TechSmith talks user experience

2008-03-06T14:04:00.001-05:00

http://refresh-detroit.org/2008/02/29/march-19-2008-refreshing-snagit-a-case-study-for-focusing-on-the-user-experience/

Refresh Detroit is hosting Barb Hernandez from TechSmith to talk about how they evolved their Snagit product to focus on the experience of the user that leads to the conversion from interested person to customer.

Internet User Experience 2008: March 31 - April 3

2008-02-23T09:40:00.002-05:00

Our area's largest and best user experience conference, Internet User Experience, continues in its 4th year. It is again at the Morris Lawrence Building on the Washtenaw Community College Campus. It is 4 days of tutorials, panels, presentations, workshops and general hanging-out with some of the leading UX people in this part of the country.

See internetuserexperience.biz for more information. See you there!

the last Sochi Design Challenge of the year

2007-12-05T17:08:00.000-05:00

Exciting interaction design challenge tomorrow at the School of Information. Here is the description sent by Joshua Palay

It will be on Thurs. at 5:30 in Room 405A/B with lots of food.

Dealing with Google's open source phone OS - Android and its $10 million competition.

Hope to see you all there!
Josh

Here's a video introducing Android:

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49294145-5,00.htm

We'll send out an agenda next week, but let SOCHI know if you're interested!

For more on Android, read on below thoughts from HCI faculty member Mark Newman:

There are several videos on YouTube that seem to be about the best intro to what they're up to (start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg&feature=user and look at the other videos from "androiddevelopers" as well). The focus is primarily technical, which makes some sense because Android is being positioned as a Mobile OS. In some sense, it isn't technically very different from, say, Windows Mobile. The primary difference is that it's an open platform and, well, it's not Windows Mobile (or Palm OS, or Symbian OS, or the stripped down Mac OS running on the iPhone).

Thus, I'm not sure that a deep understanding of Android is totally necessary for the design jam. It might be enough to say "Now we'll be able to easily design and deploy applications for smartphones that have a persistent network connection and can (presumably) easily integrate with the latest and greatest web services like facebook, flickr, google maps, . We can assume that the platform will have a critical mass of users over the next few years. What applications should be developed to take advantage of such a platform?" While, in theory, this design exercise could have been done a few years ago, the fact that Google is putting its leverage into pushing this platform (not to mention the fact that Apple is opening up the iPhone SDK) means that such an exercise is more relevant now than it was previously. One can argue that smartphones are about to explode in the US (they are already fairly ubiquitous in Japan, Korea, and Europe) and that a new opportunity is presenting itself. Not to mention that Google is planning to give away buckets of cash for the best applications developed for Android. I'm not sure that SI can realistically compete with the various startups and major software companies that are likely to be going after that cash but who knows?

Finally, the Andriod platform may provide an easier way for handset manufacturers and third parties to create peripheral hardware. GPS locators are one add-on/built-in that is already on the rise for smartphones and will presumably be even easier to integrate with Android. We can probably assume that phones that know their location will be ubiquitous in the next few years. What other assumptions are safe to make? Cameras, limited voice recognition, bluetooth connectivity, are effectively ubiquitous already. 3D graphics acceleration, accelerometers (for doing in-air gesture-based interaction), integration with peripherals (large monitors, printers, scanners, speakers), and others may be coming sooner rather than later once an open platform exists that allows various market players to compete.

Come hear the Yahoo! VP for Advanced Development give a talk at U of Michigan

2007-11-20T22:19:00.000-05:00

Bradley Horowitz, VP for Advanced Development at Yahoo! will be a Guest Speaker on campus next week Tuesday, November 27 from 4-5pm in the 1670 Computer Science Building on North Campus. He is being co-sponsored by SI and CSE and the topic is of clear SI interest "Innovation and Evolution - How Search, Social Media, and New Ideas can Shape the Next Web".

Organizations can ask university students for help

2007-11-10T17:13:00.000-05:00

Regional organizations can now ask for FREE help from students in certain classes at both Michigan State University and the School of Information (SI) at University of Michigan. SI has been doing this at least since 1998, when I started, and now MSU announced a similar program. Details below:

Got tech, business challenges? MSU students want to help

Several teams of Michigan State University undergraduates and master's students are ready and waiting to help Michigan businesses and nonprofits solve some of their technology and advertising problems -- for free.

As part of their spring semester coursework in several communications and business classes, the students are required to work in cross- functional teams on real-world business problems. And, they just need a few more volunteer "clients."

Here are a few of the opportunities where local businesses and students can work together:

Management of an information technology project from start to finish -- Teams of three or four undergraduate and graduate students will serve as IT consultants to various mid-Michigan companies. Each student group will analyze the current situation of the business, determine the specifics of an IT project and implement a solution before April 25, 2008. For more details, contact Constantinos Coursaris, assistant professor of telecommunication, information studies and media, at coursari@msu.edu or (517) 353-3122.

Management of advertising and promotion projects -- Teams of four to six second-year master's level students will serve as advertising consultants to various mid-Michigan companies. The team will analyze the business position in the targeted market segment and will develop an advertising strategy based on the current needs of the business. Participating organizations will receive a written market analysis and recommendations of various advertising and promotion programs. For more details, contact Constantinos Coursaris, assistant professor of telecommunication, information studies and media, at coursari@msu.edu or (517) 353-3122.

IT Risk Assessment -- Information technology can create a lot of value for a business, but there are lots of ways things can go wrong. Students in the master's accounting program will work in teams of three or four to help local companies assess their IT processes. Issues covered range from adherence to basic security standards to identifying internal controls that may affect regulatory compliance. While no actual audit testing will be done, the team will interview company managers to produce a report to assist companies in developing a strategic IT plan and understanding IT governance issues. For more information, contact Brian Pentland, professor of accounting and information systems, at pentland@bus.msu.edu or (517) 432-2927.

HCI Reading Group at SI (U Mich)

2007-11-06T11:04:00.000-05:00

Folks at the School of Information, University of Michigan are holding a HCI reading group!

The first meeting will be:
Friday, 11/09
12PM-1:30PM
Culliton Conference Room (in the connector between Shapiro Library & West Hall)

They will discuss the first reading and will talk about what sort of readings people are interested in for the future.

Week 1 Reading (Nov. 9, 2007):

E.L. Hutchins, J.D. Hollan, and D.A. Norman, "Direct manipulation Interfaces", in User centered system design, D. A. Norman and S. W. Draper Eds., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 87-124, 1985.
http://hci.ucsd.edu/120/direct-manip.pdf

You can also find this on the HCI wiki:
http://hcireadinggroup.pbwiki.com/

If you won't be able to make the first meeting they will also be meeting on Friday, 12/07.

Live Web Site Evaluations: Branding, Message, Content, and Usability

2007-10-09T22:01:00.000-04:00

The Michigan Usability Professionals' Association and the West Michigan Shores Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication invite you to an exciting and engaging evening of focus and improvements to web site design...perhaps one of yours.

Live Web Site Evaluations: Branding, Message, Content, and Usability

Tuesday October 16th, 2007

Grand Rapids, MI

ABSTRACT
Why is Web site usability important? When have we adequately translated the brand image to a Web site? How clear is the marketing message? Let Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus help you count the ways in an informative and entertaining way. Come and experience live evaluations of a number of web sites that have been submitted by attendees. This session provides you with a rare opportunity to see it live, experience the interactions with the stakeholders and designers, and, time and bandwidth permitting, discuss YOUR site directly with Dave.

Call it 'extreme UX'... call it what you will. This interactive session will reveal both areas of excellence and opportunities for improvement, and it will focus attendees on what's important for design or improvement of the web sites they are responsible for. Attendees will walk away with a clear understanding of what constitutes user experience issues and roadblocks. They will immediately learn about redesign options that may fix, improve, or enhance each web site experience.

Dave began conducting these sessions in 2005 and continues to do them several times each year. This session, as all previous ones, will cover a new set of web sites based on attendee submissions.

SUBMIT YOUR SITE FOR EVALUATION
If you would like your company web site to be considered for this session, please state this in a separate email to events@miupa.org.

You must include the name and contact information for you or the appropriate person who will be able to interact with Dave during this session.

SPEAKER
Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus has designed user interfaces for hand-helds, kiosks, Web sites, and production machines, and has conducted evaluations in the lab, on the Web, in the field, and in the homes of consumers. He currently lead's Compuware's Usability and Interaction Design group whose mission is to improve usability and standardize user interfaces across Compuware's products. Dave is a frequent conference presenter and user interface design instructor, and authored a chapter in Design by People for People. He is an active member of ACM SIG-CHI, HFES, STC, UPA and Uxnet. Mitropoulos-Rundus has a master's degree in human factors psychology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

WHEN
Tuesday October 16, 2007
6:00-8:30PM (Food and networking at 6, program begins at 7)

WHERE
Dematic's Schoolhouse Facility
423 Plymouth Avenue NE
Grand Rapids, MI

The Dematic Schoolhouse is located on the corner of Michigan Ave. and Plymouth Rd. in Grand Rapids. Entry to the Dematic Schoolhouse building is off Plymouth Road.

>From the intersection of Michigan and Plymouth roads, go north on Plymouth (down the hill) and turn left into the first drive that you can, driving between two black iron gates. Drive straight ahead, turning left just before the fence and guardshack. Follow the road around the building you just passed and up the hill to the schoolhouse parking area.

COST (includes food and beverage)
$10 Students, $20 STC and UPA members, $30 all others

REGISTER
RSVP to events@miupa.org

Conference Proposals Deadline Extended for UPA International Conference

2007-09-27T11:16:00.000-04:00

> The 2008 Usability Professionals' Association International Conference
> is celebrating the diversity of communities that contribute to the
> usability field. In order to encourage participation from a multitude
> of disciplines and perspectives, we are pleased to announce that UPA
> is extending the deadline for conference proposal submissions to
> October 15, 2007.
>
> The 2008 Conference theme, "The Many Faces of User Experience: Usability
> through Holistic Practice" addresses the need for a wider view on
> usability. Marketing specialists, industrial designers, graphic designers,
> computer scientists, business analysts, psychologists, information
> architects, technical writers and others bring valuable perspectives to
> usability and user experience.
>
> UPA 2008 will be held June 16 – 20, 2008 at the Baltimore Marriott
> Waterfront in
> Baltimore's beautiful Inner Harbor district. Among the broad range of offerings
> this year, UPA will again be offering the very popular Experienced Practitioners
> track, as well as introducing a new track, Managing User Experience. This year
> only, a special track in e-Government Usability will also be offered.
>
> We invite you to share your ideas and experiences with fellow
> practitioners at the annual UPA international conference by submitting
> proposals for presentations, panels, papers, tutorials, and workshops.
>
> To submit a proposal on line, please see the full Call for
> Participation: http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/conference/2008/call-for-participation.htm
>
> To learn more about the 2008 UPA International Conference, please see:
> http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/conference/2008/index.htm
>
> For questions about the 2008 UPA International Conference, please
> contact Eva Gaumond at publicity2008@usabilityprofessionals.org
>
> We look forward to hearing your ideas!
>
>
> For more information about UPA, contact:
> email: office@upassoc.org
> web: http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org

World Usability Day for Michigan

2007-09-04T13:29:00.000-04:00

The MSU and the Michigan UPA are gearing up for another great World Usability Dan event here in Michigan. The date is Thursday, November 8, 2007 from 9:00 am - 5:30 pm in East Lansing, MI

Follow this link for World Usability Day for Michigan event details

Susan Weinschenk to Speak on User Interface Design for the Baby Boomers and the Net Generation

2007-08-03T11:39:00.000-04:00

The Michigan Usability Professionals' Association in combination with Quicken Loans invites you to an exciting and engaging evening of insights on the design of the user experience.

Design for Two Different Generations: A User Experience Challenge Tuesday August 21st, 2007

Susan Weinschenk
Cheif of Technical Staff, Human Factors International

ABSTRACT
We all know about the Baby Boomers… they are a huge demographic, there are a lot of them, and they are now aging…. but did you realize that there is a new generation that outnumbers the boomers? Called the “Net Generation” these are people who are born between 1977 and 1996. There are 8 million in the US and over 2 billion worldwide. And they are joining your organization and usability group as employees. They also may be a critical part of your current and upcoming target audience for the products you sell and/or the interfaces you design.

These generations are very different. In this session Dr. Susan Weinschenk will explore the two groups, their impact on the design of the user experience, and how their expectations, experience, use of technology and social collaboration will radically change the interfaces you design and the way you work.

SPEAKER
http://www.humanfactors.com/about/susan.asp
Dr. Susan Weinschenk is Chief of Technical Staff at Human Factors International. She has been an industry leader in the field of usability engineering for over 25 years. Dr. Weinschenk has a Ph.D. in Psychology from Pennsylvania State University, with three books on usability published by John Wiley and Sons.

WHEN
Tuesday August 21, 2007
6:00-8:30PM (Food and networking at 6, program begins at 7)

WHERE
Quicken Loans, Inc.
20255 Victor Pkwy.
Livonia, MI 48152-7018
http://www.quickenloans.com/
Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=20255+victor+parkway,+livonia,+MI&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=41.224889,62.226563&ie=UTF8&z=16&iwloc=addr&om=1

There is plenty of free parking outside the building. Come in the main entrance, take the elevators to the 3rd floor, and go right to the Puerto Rico room. Signs will be posted once you are in the building.

COST (includes food and beverage)
$5 Students, $10 UPA members, $20 all others

REGISTER
RSVP to events@miupa.org

announcement of an upcoming Usability Professionals Association meeting

2007-07-15T12:19:00.000-04:00

Continuing our series of Usability and Human Factors in things other than software and web sites, we offer an interesting and engaging evening on the campus of Michigan State University this month. Come to network with your peers, learn, participate, and even contribute your own research ideas!

-DaveMR, Michigan UPA Events Coordinator

Title
Optimizing the User Experience for Package Design
Presenter
Laura Bix, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Michigan State University School of Packaging

Abstract Dr. Bix and associates will provide an overview of the exciting research at the School of Packaging at Michigan State University. The lab aims to quantify and qualify the human/package interface, with an eventual goal of providing scientific guidelines that will help design teams optimize ease-of-use in their package designs. Projects include:

Child Resistant Drug Packaging and Arthritis: Can Older Consumers Access Their Medication?
Quantifying the Contact Area between Consumers and Packaging
Sight, Sound and Child-Resistance
Effectiveness of Required US Warnings for Over-the-Counter Drug Labels

As an added bonus, attendees will be given a tour and discussion of the lab facilities. The tour will include:

Eye trackers
An instrument that measures legibility of label elements and designs
Techniques that quantify the surface area of touch between people and packages
Techniques to understand the abilities and limitations of test subjects

Brought to you by
The Michigan UPA (www.miupa.org)
Michigan State University School of Packaging (http://www.packaging.msu.edu/)

When
Tuesday July 24th, 2007 6:00-8:30PM (Food and networking until 7:00, then presentation and tour)

Where
Michigan State University School of Packaging
153 Packaging Building
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-355-4556

Map at http://packaging.msu.edu/documents/PAULSMAP_001.PDF
Note: Parking is free starting at 6:00PM, there is a parking lot directly behind the building, and there is also a brick parking structure directly behind the Communications Building (corner of Wilson and Red Cedar).

Cost (includes food and beverage)
$5 Students, $10 UPA members, $15 all others
RSVP – Email events@miupa.org

STC and UPA are joining forces for a March 28th event

2007-03-14T11:16:00.000-04:00

STC/SM & MIUPA Joint Program:
"Creating and Evangelizing a Corporate Web Standards & Usability Program"

Where:
EDS, 750 Tower Drive , Troy MI

When:
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
6:30 pm: Networking and Appetizers
7:00 pm: Speaker's Presentation

Leader of EDS' Web Standards & Usability program, Deb Ermiger has been working in online communications since 1994. Her work has spanned many areas including writing, editing, graphic design, information architecture, usability testing, and yes ... even some coding.

Deb currently leads a cross-organizational team of experts in the documentation and delivery of user interface standards and guidelines for the Web. Her team also provides consulting to EDS Web sites and client accounts.

Preregister by Monday, 3/26/07 for a $5 discount
e-mail register@stc-sm.org

At the door registration:
UPA and STC-SM Members: $15
Non-members: $25
STC Members: $20
Students Members: $17
Students Nonmembers: $17

upcoming area events

2007-02-22T14:42:00.000-05:00

Some of our readers might be interested in a couple events happening Tuesday, February 27th
Small Business: In a Nutshell brought to you by the Southeast Michigan STC chapter
at Creative Solutions, 7322 Newman Boulevard, Dexter, Michigan
Christopher Juillet - attorney, writer, publisher, and consultant - will give a brief introduction to small business, including business entity (corporations, LLC, and such) issues, as well as employment contracts, non-compete/non-disclosure agreements, vendor agreements, a few Internet issues and an overview of how to work most efficiently (and economically) with attorneys.

and a meeting of Michigan's Interactive Designers and Software Development
at Frenchie's, 56 E. Cross Street, Ypsilanti, MI

IUE2007 is this week

2007-02-19T03:05:00.000-05:00

A note from one of the organizers of Internet User Experience 2007 :

Internet User Experience 2007 (IUE 2007), a conference spotlighting methods for dramatically improving today's web site user experience, begins this week. This year's program includes two core days of presentations and two days of tutorials. IUE 2007 will showcase a number of before/after improvements to existing web sites along with the methods that were used to achieve them, and will cover most aspects of web site design and strategy including user experience design, graphics, branding, marketing message, effective web writing, and enhancements that drive customers to a site.

Tutorial spaces are still available, we have added two Lunch Mini-workshops (usability labs and prototyping tools), and a number of companies seeking employees will be on-hand.

Discounts and special pricing are available to UPA, CHI, and STC members and to full-time students.
Details and registration at www.miupa.org and www.internetuserexperience.biz
Whether you come for a half-day tutorial, the Main Event, or the entire conference, make sure you spend some time here next week to learn, network, and be a part of this exciting and educational event!
-Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus, Michigan UPA President

for the love of Spam

2007-02-15T10:06:00.000-05:00

Nathaniel Borenstein gave a great MOCHI talk last night on the intractable problem of spam. He provided a brief overview of the huge impact spam has and will likely continue to have (ex: it costs around .01-.5% of the GDP of developing countries, depending on who is estimating). He then described the landscape of spam management approaches. A theme of his talk was that all of the rich sea of ideas for spam management will be needed to make a dent in spam, and even then, spam will remain an issue. Ultimately, he said, spam is a social and legal problem. Laws won't stop it, but technologists haven't done enough to further legal and social controls.

The discussion with the audience was interesting. Ed Vielmetti mentioned the observable behavior of people leaving a channel of communication when spam gets to be too much. This brought up the question of whether email should just be abandoned and replaced by something else - a question which Dr. Borenstein gets a lot - to which he noted that no one has come up with a better solution for what that "something else" would be. He also noted that email is something of a common denominator of a communication channel, and that taking it away could be just as bad as the initial problem. Also, that when people flee to less noisy channels, the spammers simply follow. And with the rise of internet telephony, we are likely to see great problems arise around phone spam.

There was a nice energy to yesterday's talk, as Dr. Borenstein has been working on email for 26 years - so he takes spam as something of a personal offense.

the socio-technical walkthrough

2007-02-07T11:15:00.000-05:00

Thomas Herrmann, from the University of Bochum in Germany, gave an interesting presentation to folks gathered for the joint CREW & MOCHI talk last night. We had to move the location of the talk because a water pipe had broken in the building (West Hall) and a very loud alarm was going off. We quickly found another meeting location in the Shapiro undergraduate library and had about 20 people in the room, thankful to be out of the very cold weather.

Professor Herrmann described work his group has done on techniques for improved communication support during the description of technical systems that are embedded within social processes.

His group has developed a semi-structured visual modeling technique, as well as a method for working with stakeholders that are involved in the situation the technical systems are being made for. The method is called the socio-technical walkthrough (STWT). It takes an initial version of the current processes, expressed in their modified process flow diagramming language, and during a series of short workshops, iteratively walks stakeholders through the processes - step-by-step - and enables discussion of how a technical system might better support those processes.

For more information, please see http://www.imtm-iaw.rub.de/home/aktuelles/index.html.en

Storytelling and Podcasting – New Media for Technical Communication

2007-01-19T17:06:00.000-05:00

Interesting local STC talk coming up next week:
"As technical communicators, it's our job to make sure technical content is accessible and available to end users. We typically write and publish by means of documents, help systems, or Web sites. Are there alternatives? Is there a better way? Explore the possibilities with Timothy Keirnan, co-founder MIUPA, and Professor Corinne Stavish, LTU."
more info see: http://stc-sm.org/program.htm

Dr. Nathaniel S. Borenstein | Spam and the Limits of Interpersonal Collaboration

2007-01-16T13:42:00.000-05:00

Dr. Nathaniel S. Borenstein will present at the next MOCHI meeting:

Spam and the Limits of Interpersonal Collaboration

Where: University of Michigan - 411 West Hall (Ehrlicher Room)

Feb 14, 2007 (Will you be MOCHI's Valentine?)
at 6:00pm (arrive, network, eat heart shaped treats)
at 6:30pm (talk begins, lasting around an hour + Q&A)

Event Description:
Spam is an extremely complex and, so far, remarkably intractable problem, increasingly affecting not just email but virtually every kind of interpersonal electronic communication. In this talk, I will summarize the state of the art, survey the remarkably wide set of antispam activities currently under way at IBM and elsewhere, and present the outlines of a comprehensive strategy to fight spam. Unfortunately, the bottom line remains that we are still working very hard just to keep the spam problem from getting worse, and no one should expect a quick or painless solution to this problem. However, the fight against spam has the potential to advance technology in several ways that might be broadly useful in enabling new kinds of Internet infrastructure.

Dr. Nathaniel S. Borenstein is an IBM Distinguished Engineer, responsible for research and standards strategy for the Lotus brand. He has been an Internet user, innovator, standardizer, entrepreneur, and social activist since 1980. His credits and collaborations include the MIME standard, the Andrew Mail System, the metamail software, the Safe-Tcl programming language, the first working Internet payment system, the startups First Virtual Holdings and NetPOS.com, "Programming as if People Mattered" and two other books, three patents,and the "One Planet, One Net" manifesto. He is a past president of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and former faculty member at the University of Michigan School of Information and at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Upcoming UPA meeting: Lou Rosenfeld

2007-01-08T17:24:00.000-05:00

The Michigan Usability Professionals Association will meet on Wednesday January 17 6:00-8:30PM for a presentation by Louis Rosenfeld on "Search Analytics: Diagnosing What Ails Your Site." We will also take this evening to say farewell to Lou who will be moving away from Michigan in the next few months. More information at www.miupa.org

Northwest Ohio World Usability Day

2006-11-06T23:07:00.000-05:00

To celebrate World Usability Day in the Toledo area, we are having a dinner / social gathering.

November 14th, 7:30pm - 9:30 pm, Cucina di Betto, 121 South Main St., Bowling Green, OH

See Northwest Ohio celebration for more information - please RSVP.

This is 1 of several activities in Ohio and many, many more around the world.

World Usability Day - November 14th

2006-10-29T08:50:00.000-05:00

MOCHI is an official sponsor of the World Usability Day conference at Michigan State on November 14th. See the detailed program. This will be one of the largest events of the day, anywhere in the world, so I think you will want to attend if you can.

We are still finalizing our plans for Northwest Ohio - it will be a social / dinner / networking meeting, not a conference or guest speaker. Stay tuned. But there are a lot of other World Usability Day activities happening in Ohio.

Joyce Chai: Enhancing Language Understanding through Salience Modeling in multimodal Human Computer Interaction (12 October 2006)

2006-10-17T23:02:00.000-04:00

We had the pleasure of welcoming Joyce Chai to MOCHI last Wednesday. Her presentation (described here) gave an excellent overview of efforts to improve the accuracy of voice recognition by introducing multiple modes of input - particularly non-verbal modalities.

She described her research into the effectiveness of particular improvements to models (bigram models + Bayes' theorem) that aim to make a best guess at what words a human is speaking by looking at the likelihood of certain words to be spoken together in a given order (based on a corpus of example utterances).

She described her system which used a person's gestures (and eye movements) to identify what the person might be speaking about. Knowing what the person is gesturing at allows Dr. Chai to feed that information into the model and correspondingly strengthen the likelihood that words from a certain subset of utterances will be considered to have a higher probability of being what the speaker said.

In other words, knowing what I'm pointing at allows the model to better guess what I'm saying. She calls this improved model a salience-driven bigram model. Read more in the papers on her site.

Mark Stock: Evolving Technique in Digital Art (9/20/2006)

2006-09-29T23:19:00.000-04:00

We had a great presentation from Mark Stock at the MOCHI meeting on Wednesday September 20th 2006. Mark Stock's presentation, Evolving Technique in Digital Art, conveyed a concise and very interesting history of the science & technology-influenced computer art that precedes and informs his creative work. Mark is one of a long line of artist-scientists who create images informed by scientific insight that are at once fantastic, beautiful and revealing of the forces in the universe.

Mark made it obvious through his examples that the artists he presented were largely directly manipulating code to create their art. Only in a couple examples was an off-the-shelf, GUI-based tool used to create the artwork he presented. Instead we heard about scientists or engineers working on the emerging edge of a technology or science, who happen to also have the sense and ability to create works of art.

He played videos, such as one by Golan Levin that showed live interaction between a camera, voice/sound and a projected dynamically interactive image. We saw animations created (conceptually) by Scott Draves with the the Electric Sheep project, wherein everyone who downloads the screen saver helps do the rendering and users vote for their favorites and the system uses genetic algorithms to alter future versions of the "sheep".

His pieces are based on the science of fluid dynamics and they depict manipulated particle systems and interacting sheets of vorticity, amongst other things. He described that many of his pieces contain farcical starting conditions: "You can't create random vorticity - it's unphysical."

When talking about his work, he mentioned that having fast computers is like having apprentices to do your painting for you. Important to his final images is a processor-cycle-intensive open source tool written by Greg Ward-Larson while at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, called Radiance. This software computes light reflection in the 3D models so finely that his images appear to be of real objects. He brought with him a physical Lightjet print of his "Mesh #3 Iso" image, and it was a pleasure to look at - this was attested to by the number of people that stopped to stare and look deep into it after the talk.

(From Mark's bio:) Mark Stock is a programmer, researcher, and artist who explores the boundary between the real and the unreal as it pertains to fluid dynamics, computer simulation, and visual perception. He has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from University of Michigan, and now works for a small fluid dynamics research company in California and develops his art in his free time. He has been producing art for seven years and has had work appear in juried exhibitions for five.

Go to Mark Stock's website to find out more.

SEMAFX promotion

2006-09-16T08:04:00.000-04:00

I just noticed that SEMAFX - local SIGGRAPH chapter - is promoting the next MOCHI event (September 20th, Evolving Technique in Digital Art).

Good to see this cross-promotion of local events.

Any interest in going to the next level - having both groups work together to organize an event on a topic that interests both groups? Maybe a panel on HCI and game design? Or interaction design from the "desktop" vs. "entertainment" angles?

Event notes: Obsession - Finding the sympathetic heart of design

2006-08-10T16:48:00.000-04:00

Obsession: Finding the sympathetic heart of design - Tom Brinck Creative Director, A9.com
08/09/06: Presentation (16 MB)

**photos for the event can be found in this flickr set**

This event was co-sponsored by the Michigan UPA.

Jack highlighted upcoming events for MOCHI:
- Joyce Chai, from MSU (probably September 14th - a Thursday)
- Peter Weinstein, from Altarum

Dave M-R highlighted the next events for UPA:
- Wed. August 16th: A survey of UI prototyping tools (Brian Phelps, 6 - 8pm, Quicken Loans, Livonia, MI
- World usability day, on Nov. 14th, in Lansing at MSU. Students are highly encouraged to participate in the student poster session being held this year.

Tim Kiernan gave a nice introduction to Tom:

Tom's presentation:
- talk's about a chapter in the 2nd Ed of usability for the web book
- user experience = difficulty in tying down the definition
- Starting off with example of Google:
-- extremely simple UI that accounts for its success
-- it actually works and does what people need
-- there's an aesthetic towards google
-- Tom launches into a design walkthrough of the google UI
-- little nuances to the UI of the google search engine

Why do people love some really ugly websites?
- parallel with why do ugly men have really pretty girlfriends
-- answer = personality
-- this is actually what the talk's about

e.g.. 2 Slashdot
- another example of a really ugly website
- but figured out who their audience was and catered to them by letting them "geek out"
-- letting people geek out about what their "obsession" is

e.g.. 3 craigslist
- didn't dwell on this eg too much

Bigger moral problem:
Why do people love sites and software that are really confusing and hard to use?
e.g.. 4 ebay
- usability problem = search for ipod nano but doesn't get what he's looking for
- as usability specialists: what good are we when we create hard to use sites that are still nonetheless popular
- serving a need and being really popular = question of how you are defining usability
-- tom defines usability in the broadest sense before
--

Usefulness & user experience
- people love what is useful, engaging and desirable
- people love what they love

e.g.. 5 iPhoto
- v1.0 was incredibly frustrating
- product has evolved since but tom is still using v1.0

Sympathetic heart of design
concept
connects:
- business needs
- brand and marketing
- user needs

Best word to describe this is "fit"
- matching what your audience wants and needs
- other synonyms: relevance, trust, culture

e.g.. 6 Michigan Ross Campaign site
- nice design
- doesn't answer questions about who it's targeted at and what do the labels mean
- e.g. of well-designed site that doesn't do what it needs to

e.g.. 7 vehix.com
- commercials really are not compelling. No one present in the audience has been to the site

e.g.. 8 1st national back weather cam
- banks used to ask diamond bullet to turn them into portals
- nobody goes to bank websites to find the weather
- banks have a problem of not having a login on the home-page
-- because login on a separate secure server
-- something that the banks needed to solve

e.g..9 answering service
- capture the problem
-- young designer at diamond bullet hit on the idea of capturing the problem visually

avoid boilerplate design
- don't have to have all pages in the site that look the same
- no inconsistent but what to have a clear message communicated in each page

e.g.. 10 PD trials
- site succeeded
- not the most beautiful design
- every element speaks out to the audience for i
- repeat users really want to see new additions to the site

e.g.. 11 coke.com
- tom never liked coke sites
- but they have very beautifully laid out pages
- however what was delivered i the site were cartoons and short films
question from jack = is it for user experience for geeks or for generating advertising to create new geeks

Rod Lowe: "usability is like safe sex it's codes of law rather than a focus on enhancement of experience."
- desirability has always been an important part of design
- some people may talk about usability as abstinence
-- usability as about rules rather then about excitement/

good concepts don't have to be ugly
e.g.. 12 world of warcraft
- 6m active users
- tuned for addictive play
- put in so much effort to make every refinement possible
- personalization and choice
- user ownership

e.g.. 13 neopets

e.g.. 14 comic life
- the coolest thing since sliced bread
- the interface is really fun

brands about user experience
e.g.. 15 ipod
- all about the user experience
- apple has built a user experience in the sense that they have a unified an easy to use system that surrounds the ipod
- Tom thinks that it's because people love to geek out on their music
- focus on "playing with my music"
- people can ignore everything but their music
- hitting on psychology of people = obsessive compulsive behavior
- most of these sites are about capturing obsessive compulsiveness in human nature
- e.g.. of blogs = people ill get obsessed about whether people have replied to their comments

e.g.. 16 starbucks
- starbuck's 3rd place
- strategy to create this third place
- there because there's comfy chairs and mood lighting
- about you having your own coffee

eg. 17 levis
- consistent effect of fit and wash
- built into giving consistency

tying this into web 2.0
- intro to what web 2.0 is by highlighting some of the buzzwords associated with web 2.0

e.g.. 18 friendster
- things that are really succeeding
- let's you connect to friends
- type of people who get on these sites = friend collectors!!!
- collectors are really a focus of this talk
- have tools that encourage this sort of behavior

obsessive properties of web 2.0
- social
-- connect to friends
-- share your data
-- find people like you
- collecting and organizing

e.g.. 19 wikipedia

design in this context is about having a social/cultural dialogue with your end-user community = creating, refining and evolving ideas

e.g.. 20 library thing
- tom's fave thing
- caters to book geeks, allows them to catalogue their libraries
- get to play with collection = rate them, sort theme, have graphs that display trends and allows visualizations of other and like-minded people
- fits all ideas of personalization, socialization and simplicity
- library thing = extremely usable
-- things respond very quickly
-- facilitates people's obsessive behavior

e.g.. 21 del.icio.us

e.g.. 22 flickr

e.g.. 23 youtube

Values and meanings at a deeper level
- "fit" and taoism
- virtue of being like "uncut wood"
-- true to himself, unpresumptious
- web 2.0 things are like that = open to experience and adapts to what happens
- designs that have no pretensions
reflecting passion for the topic and the user
- socially constructed knowledge
-- empty vessel and letting knowledge come to you = wiki
- perpetual beta
-- idea that things are not final and work
-- everything's beta
-- never call it done = always evaluating and asking user feedback

wabi sabi
- quiet or understated elegance
- pottery that sense the making = shows wear and tear and becomes a part of its environment
- inevitability = core to today's topic
-- when look at the pottery = thing is beautiful
-- imperfection has to be natural and has to come from the construction itself
-- the final design has to be = "i could not imagine that in any other way"
-- this inevitability is what tom is looking for in all design

Peter Boersma diagram for wabi sabi in user experience design

User experience is misused
- creating values in the design that are deceitful and encouraging the wrong values

How do we get a good concept with a good fit?
- by demanding high design standards
- renaissance and enlightenment values in design
- artisanship
- rational approach = metric
- focus on building a better world

PC boards esthetics:
- steve jobs " a great carpenter is not going to use lousy wood, even if its for the back of the cabinet"

how to uncover a concept:
- business needs
-- have a focussed idea of what you're trying to say
- background research
-- competitive analysis
-- user interviews
-- read books
- field research, contextual inquiry
-- know everything about your audience
-- e.g. of 30 days
-- go out and learn about the people in a way that you just cannot get information in any other way
- creativity
-- how do people come up with great ideas
-- book: how to get ideas
--- skill
--- productivity
--- risk-taking
- to find the idea that really hits the nail on the head:
-- work really hard and think!
-- not reflected in the design process
- when you have the idea down:
-- optimize
-- every element should be designed
- how do you know you've got it:
-- some group of people has to totally dig it
-- final design should feel inevitable
-- users should not imagine that it could have been other way

MOCHi & UPA presented a token of appreciation for Tom's talk

Q&A:
- recurring theme: sharing books on library thing
-- not entirely about sharing
-- some people are geeking out without having been contributors
-- various people can play different social roles

- perplexed about the tension between usability and utility
-- was there something new in what tom has been saying
-- summary = utility is crucial without it usability won't matter
-- best designs have utility and usability
-- much like chris alexander's pattern language = the quality without a name
-- ugly websites give you trust = true to their core values and not trying to be everything

- comment on renaissance and enlightenment
-- tie in with web 2.0 = not deterministic
-- balance between form and ongoing creation

The O in MOCHI

2006-08-05T14:53:00.000-04:00

Hi, my name is Keith Instone - I unofficially represent the "O" in MOCHI - Ohio. I live in the Toledo area and will use this blog to keep you informed about the (few) relevant events that are happening "south of the border."

We have a small group of user experience professionals in the northwest Ohio area and we are very grateful that when MOCHI was formed long ago, it included us. We come to as many meetings in Ann Arbor that we can (but it is not often enough). Someday we will host MOCHI events here and you can come visit us.

At this point, the little activity in our area is being pushed by our local ACM chapter - NWOACM. (Funny how southeastern Michigan has a SIGCHI and a SIGGRAPH chapter but no ACM chapter.) NWOACM - which I am involved in - is trying to organize something for World Usability Day (November 14th). That is probably the next thing around here that MOCHI members may be interested in.

You may also want to watch my Toledoan blog, where I cover various user experience activities in the Ohio and Michigan area. But if there is something that MOCHI members will be interested in, I will be sure to also blog it here.

And a thanks to the MOCHI officers for letting me join this blog. It will be a good way to help us all stay in touch.

MOCHI Summer Reading Series: Social Knowledge Construction - Are we really Smarter in groups?

2006-07-28T17:05:00.000-04:00

July 27th 2006
6 - 8pm
Starbucks Coffee (South University)

Present:
Jude Yew
Jack Zaientz
Dan Cooney
Carl Collins
Mr. Collins (Carl's dad can't remember his name)
Steve Benninghoff
Dale Hunscher
Jiang Yang
Jennifer Faber
Peter Weinstein
Andrea Wiggins
George Furnas
Paul Hartzog

<**There's a set of photos in my flickr account**>

Notes from meeting:
- Meeting started with a discussion of papers with the most traction:
- Carl began the meeting by rasing Jaron Lanier's Digital Maoism
-- Carl felt the article was a pointed diatribe that highlighted a lot of negative aspects of taking organization out of the hands of experts.
-- of particular interest to the group = the comments section to the Digital Maoism paper

- Paul concurred with that and highlighted the fact that Lanier's article generated a lot of reaction online.
-- e.g. Rhiengold had a scathing response to the paper
-- general opinion was that Lanier had conflated digital collective action with collectivism
-- additionally Paul mentioned that BoingBoing archived a set of responses to the Lanier paper at the following URL: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/10/responses_to_jaron_l.html

- Jack raised the issue of the elimination of the individual with aggregation mechanisms = a point which Lanier highlights in his article
-- an example of this can be seen in wikipedia
-- however in systems like Flickr, it's much easier to track the individual there
-- the point was raised that authorship was the whole point of using wikipedia

- Jude brought up the fact that there is a great diversity of collective production and aggregation systems
-- Lanier's paper overlooks the subtlties of incentive and effort required to participate in each different system
-- e.g. participation in wikipedia is very different from participation in wikipedia
- a problem raised was the fact that in aggregation systems, postings don't reflect the extremes
- George explored the possibility of applying a recommender layer for aggregation systems like Digg
- the type of aggregation function depends on the information that you need
- e.g. number of jelly beans in a jar = perform simple mathematical average
- other information may require more complex forms of aggregations

* George introduced a project that he and Mark Ackerman were working on = "Social Knowledge enhancements for groups"
- central question behind this project = "what are the dimensions that these things vary on?"
- for instance in wikipedia = authoring not for oneself
- the purpose of this is to figure out the design space for these systems
- george raise an issue of interest:
-- aggregation of information at the knwoledge level is much harder than aggregating information at the data level

- A question raised by the group:
-- Does wikipedia encourage alternative points of views
-- in the hierarchy of knowledge representation structures, wikipedia is just one form by which information can be shaped
-- people tend to overlook the policies and social norms that go on behind the running of these systems
* an interesting problem to consider:
-- trying to impose categories that's not reflective of reality but is useful instead
- systems like wikipedia don't manifest the fact that there is a subjective point of view

Are we smarter as groups?
- dictionary vs. folksonomies
- need a point of reference to build on
-- thus the need for consesus
-- e.g. dictionaries 20 yrs ago = words would have very different meanings
* the opportunity provided now is that we are provided with a window into waht people are thinking about in the world

Transtion from secrecy to transparency
- Paul raised the issue of tag death
-- political theory of disagreement by deletion (censorship) and disagreement by ... (i spaced out here)

Ways that we can design these systems?
Some examples were raised by the group
- geocaching vs wunderground?
- t-mobile coverage maps

"Knowledge as infrastructure for action"
- how do you connect these systems to ongoing real issues
- web 2.0 vs political theory?
-- what are the consequences of the wisdom of crowds?
-- sometimes crowds are not smart
-- there's a good - bad continuum

Discussion around information in health systems
- web 2.0 = affecting the value system = basis on which health system infrastructure was founded on
- medical info = tightly controlled categories to enter information
- web2.0 = stop the presuposition that we can categorize the world
- ability to add things that weren't anticipated
- The bigger problem is institutional change
-- tight coupling between the culture of the institution and the systems that are enmployed
- problem of instituional inertia
- how do we inspire change within an organization?
- incentive structure?
- disruptive technology?

notes from CHI 2006

2006-05-12T17:08:00.000-04:00

CHI2006: Social Tagging panel
Originally uploaded by jyew.

Here are some of my notes that I took during the CHI2006 conference, which may be useful to a number of people. Please feel free to add to my notes as I may have missed out on something or have misrepresented what was said. Also please excuse the notetaking skills as I found it rather difficult to keep track of the conversation during panels) In general, I thought that the tagging panel was interesting and raised the fact that much more thought and work needs to go into Social Tagging. To echo what Eric said about the panels, I thought that they may have dwelt too much on the fundamentals of tagging resulting in too little time for the meaty issues of the subtle differences that resul from making minor tweaks Social Tagging systems. But all in all it was good to have heard from the people whose articles I have spent the last couple of months reading. I have followed up the session with writing email questions to both George Furnas and Rashmi Sinha. There were a number of issues that I needed to investigate further about the cognitive aspects of tagging. What I learn from them will be posted here as well ... so stay tuned.

Panelists:
- George Furnas (U. of Michigan)
- Caterina Fake (Yahoo) absent
- Luis von Ahn (CMU) absent
- Joshua Schacter (del.icio.us)
- Kevin Fox (Google)
- Scott Golder (HP Labs)
- Marc Davis, Cameron Marlow, Mor Naaman (Yahoo)

The panel sessiong began with a discussion of the question "What is a tag?"
- no agreement with regular folk
- is it too technical a term?
(Shinha)
- tags are loose associations of words and objects
- could be culture based
- some kind of association comes to mind
(Fox)
- a rich way of describing something
(Furnas)
- history of tags = library of alexanndria could marked collections with metadata
- 1980s text based interfaces = looking at what is essentially taging
- tagging as creating new handles to get at something
- how much are those new handles helping?
- but people come with an unintuitive broad variety of words
(Schacter)
- distinction between tags and metadata = additional layer of attention
- more attention
- different proposition for recall
(Davis)
- why didn't tagging take off in the early days of the internet
- tags have always been around
- but community sharing aspect is the new thing
- different from tagging with the intent of recall

- by definition flickr is not tagging = for other people and not for yourself
- there's a spectrum of behavior in the system
- who the intended receipient of the tags in flickr?

What's the difference between tags and categories?
why do tags get adopted by so many people?
- because we've put more information on the internet
- more social usage of the web
- tagging has been adopted because the cognitive cost is low
- digital categorization is inherently difficult
- simpler way of storing digital information

Discounting decision making during tagging?
- large amount of decision making
- fundamentally categorizing

What are tags used for? And do they work?
- works well for personal recall
- ok for distribution
- works better with more people
- both for personal and social purposes
* that's why you have the long tail
* ref to wisdom of crowds
* when do things in front of others = not presenting true self
* but with delicious = initial decision is made alone

motivation to tag something that other people will find = digg spam
human component to creating the tags
personal aspect is very important = self-referential aspect (newcar, jobsearch)
these tags weren't for other people
task oriented nature of tagging

there is not communication within delicious, it mostly happens outside of the system = personal and small group

Schacter originally built delicious because he had thousands of links in a fun file
can have a small minority who are bulding roads for other users on the system

tagging is a fundamental part of the UI now
allows pivot browsing'
- the way tagging relates to search needs to examined more
- tagging something with the tags in the text is very different from tagging something that doesn't have the tags in the text

furnas: what is the ultimate value of tagging?
- access subsequently
- graphic = probability of recalling
- even when you have up to 20 tags, there will still be failures of recall
- want to work to diversity of tags for recall instead of consensus tagging
- Coases's penguin paper
-- analysis of common space peer production
-- theory: when human endeavours organize themselves into markets or firms
-- large number of people need to be organized
-- various aspects of information goods allows a diversity of motivations

is tagging going to make it outside of the community of computer users?

what are some of the incentives for people to use flickr or delicious?
- done around sharing = to get people looking at your photos (flickr)
- delicious is different = social function of tagging:
-- distribution
-- does the social network affect the linguistic effort
-- if you are connected to other people your terms are more common

looking for a specific item or a genre of items

localized dialects = for leveraing small groups with a specialized vocabularies
- no present tool to map between local and more generalized vocabulary
- tools and systems that help mediate between vocabularies

furnas = can imagine tags as collaborative filtering devices
- need to regress to the norm at the beginning before you can get specific information about particular issues

perceptual differene between calling it tags, keywords or labels

sinha
tagging is self-expression and social expression

when myspace has tagging = it's going to be commoditized
tags are going to be very differently used
tagging people is very differnt from tagging objects = difference between self presentation and real self
- going to be a lot more opportunity for tension

does tagging work for certain applications only?
- sinha thinks that its an interface and design issue
- it was too busy
what are the design choices to make to facilitate participation
too egalitarian?
it wasn't personal
tagging that is done through the normal task that someone has done

does tagging scale to more than one group?
schacter thinks that this is more about community making rather than ...
things like delicious needs to put in ways for groups with in the system to occur
too many users in the system
nature of humans = doesn't scale
need to put in some mechanism for social proximity
- motivation for introducing pools or sets
- people in close social or ideological proximity are in that group

- there is a fundamental tension between the individual and the social uses of tags
- for eg. photos on flickr tagged as tokyo = difficult to comprehend outside of the individual context

flat tagging space and that of architecture
get a very rich set of social relationships
question of scale
what determines the tagging terrain such that it is no longer flat

does anyone have data on the length of tags?
can media be used to tag other objects?