Reads: Sarah

Reads:
Emotional Designs, Donald A. Norman
Chapter 6: Emotional Machines


- decommissioning Hal - 2001: A Space Odyssey
-future machines will need emotions to use in survival, social interaction, cooperation, and learning
-designers have to decide how they will interact
--charm-is in the way they display their limitations (c3po, r2d2)
-emotions need to appear as natural and ordinary as human emotions because we can detect fake emotion

Typing on flat glass: examining ten-finger expert typing patterns on touch surfaces.
Leah Findlater, Jacob O. Wobbrock, and Daniel Wigdor.


Common methods for entering text pale in effectiveness compared to typing on a physical key board and I think this will be a long struggle until a solution on how to make the tactile ability of a screen change to fit the objects which appear on it; Perhaps a static charge or temperature shift could allow the user to feel where to reposition their hands.

Skim reading by satisficing: evidence from eye tracking.
Geoffrey B. Duggan and Stephen J. Payne.


-Skim reading is a rapid selective reading strategy to compensate for shear volume of text presented in online format; to maximize information gained.
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Skimming can improve readers understanding given a fixed period of time. They arranged pages of text in a hierarchical Website-like structure and varied the links between pages to manipulate the ease with which participants could navigate through the text.
-The advantage for skimming over reading at normal speed was dependent on the ease with which readers could navigate between pages.


Gestural interfaces: a step backward in usability.
Donald A. Norman and Jakob Nielsen

Since screens are much smaller on smartphones it is necessary for developers to think of button size (click vs tap) in the design phase of their projects and not wait until the test phase to discover the flaw.

Shipping an untested product can result in failure but will the quality become second string to the need to get products out more quickly due to the public demand or should public opinion be the deciding factor to make the product the best it can be no matter the wait time.

Usability of iPad Apps and Websites. Nielsen Norman Group.

-assess the state of iPad application design and understand where the user interaction pain points are.

- I don’t believe the current ipad could replace the functionality I obtain from a laptop but I can see where it would be very beneficial to people who use their laptops to perform more simplistic functions like surfing the web or reading email. -From the research most say the ipad is not as personal and compact as the iphone so it doesn’t have the same mobility but when comparing it to a laptop it most definitely supersedes the bulkiness when it needs to fit into small spaces and with weight being a more important factor of travel (now that most airlines are charging per lb)