The 19th Century Surrogate Travel

While reading the second chapter of Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion I witnessed with pleasure that my thoughts of surrogate travel discussed in my earlier post connects delightfully to the history of painted illusions by Oliver Grau. From frescoes and wall paintings in historical buildings the story gets to the development of giving stronger illusional effect. In the end of 18th century the panorama view was invented by Robert Barker.

By the means of traditional painting the panorama has been the most sophisticated 360 degree illusion space crated forming an optical illusion. The first on purpose Panorama (1972) showed publicly in London was a two-storied circular house built for illusional experience. Inside the building there was 360 degree painting with upper and lower edges not to be seen to the observer, as well as the light from above which was illuminating the picture in a way that it seemed to be the source of the light itself. The Panorama became enormously popular among the citizens and a new job was started - panorama painters. (Grau, 58, 62)

Painting panoramas from cities became so popular that patents were released and industrial production started. The panoramas toured in several cities in Europe and North-America and depicted great scenery, well-known, distant or exotic places. The fact that the panoramas were touring around and were reachable for the entrance fee that was a fraction of what a travel would have cost, made them "economical surrogate for travel" (Grau, 69, note 178) or a "travel with the eye." (Grau, 69)

In the end of the 18th and at the beginning of 19th century travelling to distance places and other continent was extremely time consuming in comparison to nowadays, as well as expencive and therefore unthinkable to great part of the population. The invention of circular painting and panoramas gave the citizens surrogate travel feeling being in their own town. The illusion of being in another place may be compared to the effect that Google Streetview gives us in the 21th century - no cost, no time spent to get to another geographical point in the World.

Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion

Artists, scientists, scholars and researchers that present innovative discourse on the convergence of art, science and technology - MIT Press publishes their texts and has published a book called Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion, written by Oliver Grau. Computer graphics, video, interactive art, animations, Internet art, sound installations, digital poetry are some disciplines of the genre called media art or new media art. With the tools available today dazzling illusions and feeling of immersion can be produced.

Interactive media has given new dimensions to the idea of an image; what looks like an image on the first glimpse may give a "multisensory interactive experience with a time frame." It is often complicated to make difference between the original and an illusion of it while the time and room parameters are subject to manipulations. The latter makes the environments excellent for experiences and simulations. (Grau, 7)

Using new design and technological capabilities, virtual reality can be composed with unique feeling of time and space, producing the illusion of really being in another place at another time, being immersed. I agree with Grau that virtual art is not always directed to being illusional, nevertheless it does "operate within the energy field of illusion and immersion - the paradigm of this medium" (Grau, 9).

The goal of virtual artist is to achieve for the viewer the strongest possible feeling of being in the picture. The picture the artist has created with strong cognition of reality bounded together with illusion. For example the illusion of changing distances between the objects is a technical solution that works as an immersive effect thanks to human imagination. To maximize the experience multiple human information channels can be manipulated through sound, odour, movement, change in temperature and many more.

The world of design and virtual reality is delightful. Simply looking at some photos of virtual art projects brings sensuous pleasure. For example an interactive virtual-reality project Osmose (1995) by a Canadian artist Char Davies. Osmose combines 3D computer graphics and interactive 3D sound, a head-mounted display and real-time motion tracking based on breathing and balance.

Oliver Grau gives more facsinating examples of the image development through the history. I go on exploring his writing and the various aspects of design on behalf of illusions and virtual world.

Colour appeal II

As discussed before colours in web design have strong impact on user's trust, satisfaction and resulting e-loyalty. This could be generalized for any kind of coloured graphical user interface - how pleasing it is to learn and use one and which effect it gives to the mind through eyes and perception. Certain combinations may result in illusions that when created on purpose can make great art but in the wrong place at the wrong time can decrease user's trust and lower the user experience level.

The authors of 'Techniques and Tools for Using Colour in Computer Interface Design' (Wright, Mosser-Wooley, Wooley. 1997) make distinction between two important parts for achieving successful colour interfaces - Human Visual System and Colour Display System - and give theoretical overview. This short paper includes several guidelines for selecting suitable background, foreground and text colours. Being more than 10 years old the ideas about colour combinations for successful web and interface design may not be fresh enough for applying in todays' projects, but the theory behind it is still valid. Not to mention the facts about anatomy of human visual system that origin from diversity of used literature dating back even as far as 20 or more years.

Very important aspect the authors (Wright et al. 1997) mention is certain colour combinations and organizations that create illusions as a result of the eyes' anatomy. While blue suits very well on the background, it is complicated to focus on the foreground as text or other small graphics. The sharp edges are lost when having side by side the colours differing only in the amount of blue and having the same level of green and red. Uneffectively chosen colours can cause eye fatigue, strain and stress.

Designers should help users develop mental models in order to better learn, understand and manipulate the system by taking use of colour effects on the mind. Wright et al (1997) suggest colour choice guidlines as follows: simplicity, consistency, clarity, and language of color. By simplicity they mean the number of different colours on the site to be used (human short term memory 7+/-2). Consistency counts for assigning meanings to colours, for different concepts different colours should be used. Clarity makes it easier and faster to interpret the meaning of elements, for example green for 'go' and red for 'warning' not vice versa. And last the intriguing language of colour - which mental models do people have in that certain cultural space and how does our brain translate the information coming through our eyes?

One aspect of colour appeal is the learnability and usability of the application, but much intriguing one to match the aimed audience, their already developed mental models and the right colour combinations and organization in order to influence them in desired way. Another theoretical base giving directions for further research in design of human-computer interaction field.

Reference:
Wright, Mosser-Wooley, Wooley. 1997
http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds3-3/color.html#4

Colour appeal in web design

Colours have an effect on mood and feelings of people. There are several studies carried out to specify the impact colours have on human psychology and behavior; The results are used for therapy and for example interior design. Colours also have an important role to play in the web design and the designers should take advantage of the effects different combinations have. Still, loads of strange solutions are there to be seen online. On the one hand it might be poor knowledge on design, on the other hand it could just as well be an approach from different culture. The research carried out in Canada amongst three cultural groups - namely Candada, Germany and Japan - tried to specify the impact colour appeal has on user's trust, satisfaction and e-loyality using experiment, survey and previous research.

In todays web, with the variety of web 2.0 solutions available, catching attention, gaining and keeping the users by providing them with trustworthy and satisfactory environment has crucial role. Dianne Cyr (2009) states that little research has been done to reveal the effect of online applications' colours on the users of different cultures. For this study an experimental environment was created based on an e-commerce site for purchising electronics.

The site was redesigned in three versions - grey, yellow and blue, representing respectively the hypotetical preferances of canadians, japanese and german users. These preferances were found browsing through 30 municipal websites from each country. The authors expected to get confirmation to the hypotesis through the experiments and survey among 30 students from each country. However, it is rather radical to expect japanese to prefer yellow, germans blue and canadians grey design. The results were in this direction but did not meet authors expectations fully.

Nevertheless, the results showed that colour appeal does have effect on the user's trust and satisfaction towards the site and these implicate the e-loyality. For these questions, the results of the eye-tracking experiment and survey were used. All participants browsed all three webs ites with different colour schemas. The authors are rather unsatisfied with their results but find that the research gives good impulse and beginning for further studies in the field. The knowledge of colour appeal in web design, the way colours affect user behaviour, mood, reactions and perception will benefit the designers as they put it into practics.

Reading the material given leads to discover more on the relationship of colours and human-computer interaction, successful interface design and perceptions among different cultures. One very interesting tool used in given research was eye-tracking. A great tool to evaluate the reactions person has in a fraction of a second, where is the most catchy point in the design, for how long the eyes stay there before finding the next point etc. Many ides to be followed from this readig. Until the next post.

Reference:
Cyr, D., et al., Colour appeal in website design within and across cultures: A multi-method evaluation. International Journal of Human Computer Studies (2009),
doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2009.08.005

Successful online community development

In the article on online community success the authors point out the metrics for success evaluation and integrated success factors for different life-cycle stages they have discovered from various literature, research and practitioners experiences.

Integrated and orderly guidelines for initiating and developing a successful online community are of great importance to the developers, but it had not been studied earlier. Previous research only shows the impact different components have on communities separately and not depending on the life-cycle stage it is in.

The success factors of online communities derived from previous research in different disciplines that are not integrated to a certain stage are:

• Management: Customer loyalty, business models, organizational knowledge
• Sociology: Identity, physical community, social capital, collective action
• Psychology: Sense of community, uniqueness and motivation
• Computer Science: Internet technology
• Information Systems: Life cycle and Web development, user needs - sociability and usability, privacy and safety etc.

In the article the authors integrate most important success factors found by researchers and practitioners to stages. The life-cycle stages in this research are labeled as inception, creation, growth, maturity, and death. The authors reason the choice by following the widely known concept - the stages in the information systems life-cycle, which is highly reasonable as the intended readership belongs mainly to the group of information technology practitioners.

The online community success factors by life-cycle stages are as follows.

Inception:

• Purpose (transparency of goals)
• Focus (target audience; focusing on one target group)
• Codes of conduct (establishing codes of behavior to contain conflict potential; facilitator to monitor and control behavior)
• Trademark (building a strong trademark; tag line)
• Funding/revenue sources (defining sources of revenue as a starting condition for building a virtual community; advertising and subscription fees)

Creation:

• User-centered design and evolution (focus on the needs of users, design with users in mind)
  
• Interface usability (ease of use, intuitive user guidance)
  
• Security and privacy (handling member data sensitively, authorization)
  
• Anonymity (discretionary levels of identity disclosure)
  
• Identity persistence (identification and history viewing of other members)
  
• Reliability (stability of the site, interface)
  
• Performance (fast reaction time of the Web site)
  

Growth:

• Attracting members
• Growth management
• Integration of new members
• Up-to-date content
• Content quality
• Interaction support
• Trust building
• Neutrality/non-partisan offers
• Reaching critical mass
• Transparency
• Personalization of portal
• Personalization of offers
• Offline events and meetings

Maturity:

• Regular online events
• Sales and offers
• User tools
• Permeated management and control
• Recognition of contributions
• Subgroup management
• Recognition of loyalty
• Member satisfaction management

From maturity the community may continue to grow on and succeed or face the termination. Determinants of online community termination:

• Under-supply of content
• Poor participation
• Unorganized contributions
• Transient membership
• Members with week ties
• Willingness to share information
• Lack of anonymity
• Concerns about privacy and safety
• Shyness about public posting
• Time limitations

The authors have reviewed great amount of different databases and literature and used it throughout the article. The result has practical value and is worth reading for developers and other researchers. The practitioners probably do not see much new or surprising in the results but the list is rather useful to keep in mind as a guidance and checklist for developing an online community.

Online protest

An online protest against Ongoing Animal Killings in Kerala.

Having in total 65 signatures to support the protest.. not exactly a success.

Interaction design

I appreciate finding interviews with different professionals from the field in "Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction". The first interview is with Gitta Salomon who has over 20 years experience as a practicing interaction designer. It is nice easy reading getting to know her practices and experience on how to reach the best results in communication between the client and the team. I would like to state out something that has been a topic also in our lections - the principle of sharing vocabulary well-known to all participants. In case of (and mostly it is so) not having clear idea of the terms used, they have to be made clear and understandable so that the following conversations and cooperating will be carried out using these terms. Miss Salomon evaluates her success with clients also based on the development of information exchange quality. If her clients easly start using incommon terminology, she has met one of her goals.

I will continue with this book, so maybe following opinions are soon to appear here.

Surrogate travel

I have used GoogleMaps for some years now to find the best way reaching a destination - will I be on time on foot? Should I take public transport? Which alternative way to choose? Some time ago I discovered GoogleMaps StreetView functionality and became a huge fan of it as I can '"walk around" in the places I have been to or where I will be in close future and look around as if I was really there. I have become familiar with the house, streets and the surroundings of my future home. I find paths to prefer for walking from one point to another. Maybe I will choose to avoid it in the future to let the new places surprise me and introduce themselves to me in live but at the moment my excitement over the application exceeds the will to wait for getting there.

I have introduced this great novelty to many of my friends and family members. And now I read over the history of hypertext and must admit: there is nothing new in this world, also not StreetView by Google. In 1978 Aspen Movie Map developed by Andrew Lippman and his colleagues at MIT Architecture Machine Group was introduced and said to be probably the first hypermedia system whereas the hypermedia aspects of the system come from accessing these pictures not as a traditional database but as a linked set of information.

I find it better to quote to give the overview of the technology used: "The Aspen system was implemented with a set of videodisks containing photographs of all the streets of the city of Aspen, Colorado. Filming was done by mounting four cameras aimed at 90° intervals on a truck that was driven through all the city streets, each camera taking a frame every ten feet (three meters)." The system also allowed the user to choose the speed of moving around in the city up to 110 km/h and to step into the buildings as they were also filmed from inside. The city was also filmed in different seasons of the year allowing the user to switch the time of the year of "visiting" Aspen.

Visiting different locations of the world like that gives the possibility of surrogate traveling and reaching the best travel target. It can also be an excellent educational environment or used for training soldiers in hypothetical locations.

More on the GoogleMaps StreetView (the original google site for it is not working for some reason):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View

The history of hypertext:
http://www.useit.com/papers/hypertext-history/

Complexity == Unreliability

The text by Vannevar Bush was an interesting reading. First of all the moments of surprise or amaze how at that time he described his visions for future developments. And secondly I find it quite amusing to read "... picture a future investigator in his laboratory..." and then the ideas of Bush, because for us it is no question of imagination, we just think of some processes close to which his thoughts had reached but we now relate to as something usual.

I loved this sentence, it just made me laugh and read it over again: "..for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous." I am happy this has changed.

Living in multilingual environment and facing from time to time some problems with misunderstandings has made me think of 'one-language-fits-all' environment.. But I never thought of having one 'transmitting and recording fitting' language. Bush did. I find it also a remarkable idea for his time. Has anyone produced it yet?

Assignment: Locative media

Assignment:
Find Internet hot-spots in Tallinn

We went to Kadriorg with a group of course mates and spotted several open Wifi areas on Narva street, Weizenbergi and at Kadrioru Park.

Assignment: Bike trails

Assignment:
Web site design mock-up for biking trails

Persona:
Interested in sports, likes active life-style, goes often biking after work, takes family to tours in other cities and country side. Would like to find trails and additional information online.

Features:
User profiles - users can join, secure their profile with password, connect with other users, share photos and information (can use their already created profiles and openIDs)
Community - discussions, events, etc
Map adding, editing, sharing (based on GoogleMaps)
Interactive maps (with illustations of scenery, hot spots, bike rentals, bike shops, train stations, etc)
Photo adding, naming, sharing, removing
Bike site (bike parts, fixing, designing, driving rules, bike ettiquette, etc.)

Thoughts on the 'cocktail party effect'

If I am listening to someone but not paying much attention to it and suddenly understand that there was a question asked, my first reaction often is - 'what did you say?". But before hearing the question again I already answer, usually at the same time with the repeated question and then we both can ask - 'what? what did you say?' as neither of us was listening any more. I always thought that I suddenly understood what I had been asked. Now I found out that it is my temporary memory acting out and helping me reproduce the information and bringing me the understanding of my partner in conversation.

We have all attended numerous lectures given by a variety of lecturers. I am sure I do not speak for myself alone if I say that it is rather exhaustive to sit an hour and a half in a lecture if the voice of professor is silent, monotonic and the text far from dynamic. I have always thought it is just boring. Now I know that trying to get that information has just been silly optimism. I simply do not receive it as my ears and consciousness can not work that message out.. the signal has been weak. While hearing text spoken in monotonic voice and having little clue about the meaning of the text it becomes technically difficult for the receiver to get the message.

On the other hand, we can perceive a voice and message even if it has strong background noise and other voices around it. It is the cocktail party effect that lets us selectively hear one voice and get the message. This is human capability that is researched to develop into computational application for speech user interfaces - hand-free, eyes-free applications. The conclusion of given paper introduced me to another angle of user interfaces that I now wish to explore a bit more.

Thoughts on:
http://pubs.media.mit.edu/pubs/papers/arons_AVIOSJ92_cocktail_party_effect.pdf

Good night.

"Viewers" against "Users"

I have found some nice questions and comparisons while reading the chapter ''Who was dissatisfied with old media?' in the 'New media: a critical introduction.' As it says, it is critical.. It really is a critical approach and no celebration to the arrival of new media. For sure interesting reading, great volume and density of text offers a variation of viewpoints and discussions.

In class we have discussed a variety of terminology that has to do with knowledge sciences and consciousness. Also this chapter discusses psychoanalytical aspect of new media reception.

Did we need the 'new' media to overcome the limitations of the 'old' one? - the culturally dominant analogue media? The dominant media that was followed by a number of inactive viewers.. even masses. In case of new media we can speak of users instead of viewers (so called 'couch potatoes') and expect them to be active. From here on we can ask if media was something negative in pre-digital days or if just something better was sought.

For the closer framing of the concept the development and reception of new media are considered. I like the idea of the 'technological imaginary' that stands for 'dis-satisfactions with social reality and desires for a better society are projected onto technologies as capable of delivering a potential realm of completeness' (Lister)

I will return this critical approach book to TLÜ library and go on with 'A Review of The Cocktail Party Effect' by Barry Arons...

In search of up-to-date articles on interaction design

My interests are mostly connected to user experience and therefore the user interface or interaction design issues. I have searched the scholar.google.com and read some from there but I must admit, in search of up-to-date problems in field I could not find what I was hoping for.

Still there was a simple quality criteria paper for effective interaction design that I found compact and helpful for starters and good to use as a checklist when going through the process of planning and designing an interface or user application. It is composed for The ACM interactions Design Awards that are the awards acknowledging quality in interaction design, as distinct from software engineering and research. The paper rounds up the essential questions to be asked for understanding the level of the quality of user experience.

I am sure there is good material on the topic to find online. I will be glad to receive your suggestions also for more deeply going into the technical aspects of it. Just for the purpose of academic reading I was trying out the given sources. I now hope to find some good chapter from a book and try to share my thoughts next time.