2/22/07 - Right Brain Reading

Observations from this week's reading "A Whole New Mind":
Premium for High Concept Left Brainers:
Pink states that his “offshore” viewpoint doesn’t signal the end of L-Directed thinkers, it just puts a premium on high concept L-Directed thinkers.

I'm not sure I agree with that.

Going by the rules of supply and demand, from Pink's reasoning the demand for L-Directed thinkers is going to reduce, so to make it as one of the dwindling numbers, you will need to have distinguishing characteristics, like high concept thinking.

Is it a premium to have skills that are going to be requisite to be employed?

I wouldn't think so.

Humans performing repetitive factory floor jobs have been taken over by robots. The few human jobs left are for awkward tasks or stages where human observation are required (or cheaper than robots). Are the few factory workers left considered "premium" or "lucky"?

America is the Right Side and Asia is the Left Side?
There has been a lot of discussion in the last decade of outsourcing and how America will deal with it. Pink’s description seems to indicate that America will change itself to be a power-base of creative thinkers that then outsource the execution of their ideas to Asia where they will cheaply be realized.

Where does the average worker fit into that?

I realize that this globalization and outsourcing from America has happened in cycles before (from agriculture to industrial to electronic and conceptual) but can a country be predominately R-Directed thinking?

I suppose the L-Thinkers will move onto the next “Age” as they have always done.

In the “Technology Age” when Japan started to outstrip America in production of electronics, many American’s comforted themselves by saying that America is where the idea’s come from, its ok that someone else is producing them cheaper. And to a certain degree, they were right. We just moved on to the next "age".

The latest “outsourcing” could be seen as a continuation of that cycle.

2/15/07 - Everyday Thing: Book

Object: A Book

Object Example:
“The Design of Everyday Things” - Norman

Design Flaw:
The biggest design flaw that I can think of is the function of the book is very dependent on cultural experience.

• You need to know the language to orient the book up and down


• You need to know the culture to know if the book should be read left to right, front to back


• On the outside there are no clear instructions that you should open the book to read.
  

Why it works:
Affordances:
Paper – The book is constructed of paper whose primary property is to be flexible. Flexible items invite bending, flipping, and “TURNING”.

Visually:

• If the user does know the cultural markers (language/reading model), then the use of the book is very intuitive.


• It follows the standards used by many other items in the culture (all printed material).
  The design of the front cover (large inviting graphics and text) orients the user to begin there.
• In the case of the example “The Design of Everyday Things,” based on the visual weight and hierarchy of the cover design it must be assumed that the importance of the cover design elements are from most to least:
• Title
• Tom Peter’s quote
• 100,000 copies sold
• Author Name
• Author’s previous books


• The Table of Content correctly maps to the use of page numbering.
• The consistent use of font styles orients the user to chapter titles, emphasized words
• Copy correctly notes to diagrams via an easy to understand numbering system.
  

Mappings:

• The Cover tells us pertinent information that maps to content contained inside Story summary Author and author’s previous books
• i.e – Expectations are set at the cover that are fulfilled inside.
  

Constraints:

• The binding on the left hand side forces the user to open the read the book properly (if the book is being held in the proper position)
• The amount of content are large contributors to the size of the book (font size – which is set by legibility standards and page size – set by publishing standards determine the number of pages)

Feedback:
Once user begins to read the copy and then comes to the end of a page, when the user takes the action to “turn the page” the feedback that they have taken the correct action is finding that the copy continues on as expected on the next page.

Summary of 2/1/07

To give the class context into the Web 2.0 project, Dr. Foreman had students from last year's 830 class come in and present thier project summaries.

Jen: Podcasting
She wanted to find out :
Podcast Community
- What content is provided?
- How does the community administer/rate/ spotlight content?

Modularizing Podcasts:
- How does it add cast to the web?

She ended up using her class to related content about how Podcasts are created in the hopes of providing a tool to her fellow instructors.

Azure: Flickr
Her demo movie showed how to:
- Create and account
- Create Contacts
- Link to Blogs
- Link to RSS feeds

Moura: Vblogs
Her website is twopointoh.pbwiki.com

She showed examples of:
Feedburner
You Tube
Blip TV
as avenues to provide video content to the web.

She went over basic interface guidelines on the best way to promote your Vbogs.

Thurs, January 25th, 2007

A quick note of introduction:
My name is John Donohoe and this is my first semester in the ITEC program. My background is in interactive marketing/design (websites, cd-roms, browser based application interfaces, etc.). Over the last few years I have primarily been project managing but I got into the industry during the .dot boom as a designer/developer.

Case studies of some former work can be found at my resume website www.johndonohoe.net.

Currently it is my goal to step back from the project/client management side of interactive media and get back into the hands-on creative, specifically in user-centric and educational development.

During my time in interactive marketing I had many opportunities to work with “usability designers” and “information architects.” Seven years ago “information design” was a brand new profession that was born out of a need for user-centric thinking that neither designers nor developers came equipped to deal with. Many people in this profession organically grew into it with no real academic foundation. Many times their skill set was more in their ability to successfully argue their point-of-view rather than have a fundamental understanding of best practices on how to design for end-users.

I look at the ITEC program as an opportunity to concentrate on the theory/psychology of how to best serve the audience when presenting educational content online and in other media. At the end of my time with the ITEC program I hope to be equipped with a deeper understanding around the learning process and how people become engaged and absorb information.


Lecture Summary for Thursday, Jan 25, 2007:
Today was our introduction into the instructional multimedia seminar. The highlights of the session were:

• A high level review of the syllabus and course expectations
  
  
  
  • Need to review a variety of Web 2.0 technologies with the expectation that I will choose one specific function to research
  
  
  • Will have a group project later in the semester with the output of the work to be usable by a non-profit organization that the group will be collaborating with.


• A general discussion around interface design
  
  
  
  • What is Interface Design?
    
    
    
    • Usability
    
    
    • Accessibility
    
    
    • Visual Design
    
    
    • Information architecture
    
    
    • I was pleased to hear about the concentration of the course around usability design and human factors. This seems directly in-line with the subjects I wish to pursue. The required reading looks fascinating.
    
    


• An in-class exercise focusing on individual’s unique “word-to-image” perception.
  
  • Divided into teams, the first person in a line of people was given a word/phrase. That person was to then draw a visual representation of the text. The image was then shown to the next person in line without revealing what the original text was. The second person had to write down what word/phrase they thought the image was trying to convey. The next person received the text and drew an image that represented that text, and so on. At the end of the process we then lined up the progression of words to image to words and saw how based on individuals unique perceptions of words/images can alter the intention of they received from the previous person in the line.
  
  
  
  • Being aware of this phenomena should be applied to any aspect of user interface design (the decision to place a button in a certain piece of screen real-estate, or the color of a image, or the metaphor used to create an icon that represents a function) all could have different meanings to the end-user than what the creator intends.