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Conceptual Design, Interaction Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Reference

Special Preview: Socio-Technical System Design

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Segway Tours in SF

Brian Whitworth and Adnan Ahmad contributed a chapter on Socio-Technical System Design for the free Interaction-Design textbook. This is a very interesting, if technical discussion of the subject. While reading it, I kept thinking about how I would love to debate some of the points raised in this Chapter in person. But lacking this opportunity, below are my ideas and thoughts on the subject of Socio-Technical System Design. First, let me give a quick summary of what is a socio-technological system paraphrasing a bit from Whitworth and Ahmad own words: Socio-technology is about technology and people. Technology is any device. IT system is then a combination of software AND device(s). Human computer interaction (HCI) is a person plus an IT system. Introduction of “person” brings physical, informational and psychological levels into the combined system. And finally, socio-technical system (STS) is merger of community and HCI(s). A Bit of Historical Perspective When my son was in third grade, he was given an assignment: compare some technology from today with that of 100 years ago. He chose transportation. Here’s his insight: 100 years ago, going from San Francisco to Berkeley took a very long time. There were no bridges. People had to drive their…

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Conceptual Design, Cultural Differences, Ethnographic & User Data, Interaction Design, Interface Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Reference

End-User Development (EUD) Educational Preview

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This is an interesting collection of videos and background materials on End-User Development — situations when end users design and develop software for their own use. If you’re old enough, you would remember BASIC and HyperCard — tools that let anyone develop simple games and applications. A great example is “Spelunking” game totally developed in HyperCard (these guys when on to develop “Myst”!). I’ve made a few games like this myself. And of course FileMaker is another system that allows application development by the end users — we have one for time tracking. There have been many many others, and unfortunately, many of them are now gone. The discussion on what happens when end users develop for themselves is fascinating. Most times, these users are experts in their own fields and are not software developers (some have no and some have little formal training). Thus there are cultural differences between “real” programmers and end users that take up programming to achieve their own goals, often because they can’t find what they need out in the world. These end-user designed products have strengths and they also have many weakness. In particular, these products are tightly focused on the needs of those…

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Background Knowledge, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Interface Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Reference

Evolutionary Theory of Beauty

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David Brooks: The Social Animal I just finished reading a book by David Brooks, “The Social Animal.” While initially hesitant, I really enjoyed reading it. The book, a fiction, bundles together a lot of interesting information on the latest (and not so latest) advances in our understanding of the workings of the human mind. So it’s easy to see why I would like it! While there are many ideas worth considering in the book, I picked a small detail mentioned in passing: the evolutionary pull towards the love of a “Hudson Valley Landscape.” The Hudson Valley Landscape has the following features: The landscape has lots of open space interspersed with tall vegetation. There’s a far horizon that defines the space: a valley, a glade, a river basin, a farm, etc. There’s a clear evidence of fresh water: a river, a stream, a pond, etc. There are a few large trees in the foreground, offering shade, fruit, safe escape, or all of the above. There’s a path from the foreground to the background. There are people and man-made structures visible somewhere. There are “safe” animals or birds visible: cows, ducks, deer, etc. Amazingly, all cultures respond positively to this genre of…

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Background Knowledge, Conceptual Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Reference

Micro Introduction to Crisis Mapping

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Crisis Mapping Crisis mapping is a relatively new field—there’s not much research, no journal, and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) and the Department of Political Science at John Carroll University (JCU) jointly hosted the first International Conference on Crisis Mapping only in October 2009. So this is a NEW field of study and practice, but there is a thriving group of practitioners with Patrick Meier (one of the developers of Ushahidi) being one of the leading members. Since I’m working on organizing a conference proceedings for ICT & Human Rights, it seemed necessary to define a few terms in this subject area filled with TLA (three letter acronyms). There are some important terms that are being developed to help parse the field and make sense of the different aspects of the problem. Here’s a breakdown: Crisis Mapping can be divided into three main components: Crisis Map Sourcing (CMS)—this is all about data point collection Crisis Map Coding (CMC)—refers to entering the data points by hand, based on analysis of news, police reports, blogs, and so on, but the person entering the data is a professional Participatory Crisis Mapping (PCM)—refers to data points entered by the population in crisis, requires people…

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