Assignment #2 - Design of Everyday Things

My Reaction to Design of Everyday Things

When I first began the course and opened the book, I immediately took a disliking to it as it was a book on technology that was written many years ago. This may seem like a bad habit to some people, but I like to stay up to date with technology and usually try not to look back and analyze older technology. But as I continued reading, I found more of a psychological view on the objects he was writing about that were issues that I could relate to. He also gave many examples of basic and simple objects that he knew would remain the same for years to come and that really helped establish a feeling of relation. He gave examples of light-switches, tools, and appliances and not examples of products I never heard of. I really liked the fact that he took the time to find discussions that everyone reading could relate to.

But if I had to find something I really liked the most, it would most definitely be the psychological sides to things. Chapter five when the author talked about dealing with human error was probably the most interesting chapter that I could relate to. I like understanding how people work and like having a process to things that are usually unstable or hard to understand. Usually when I notice people around me have issues with things, people, or subjects in general, I naturally always try to find out the deeper reason why they took a disliking to it. The author states that many items aren't designed well and says it's because people forget the key elements to balancing having a good design with good functionality. Most of the time one of those areas are sacrificed for another.

In my own life, I have often found myself making the same mistake when trying to operate a product. Some of the times I can never get a light switch correct when attempting to turn it on in the dark. The same process applies when I try to turn on my fan at night. Half of the time I pull the light cord instead of the fan. Examples like these are what the author mentions and I really do think it is a subject that could be further expanded upon.

In conclusion, I really liked the book. I was initially proven wrong when the book began a deeper and more thoughtful analysis over the things we do wrong and often overlook. These usually consists of small things that seem too insignificant to expand upon and attempt to fix. I think that the book is a good topic for this class and really helps people think about how their product will be seen and used by their end-user. Overlooking this area I think is a bad choice and is often the downfall of some really great ideas.

Chapter Analysis

Chapter 1 - The Start!

We were assigned to read the first chapter of The Design in Everyday Things. The book was written by Donald Norman and was a very interesting read for such an old book. The author began telling the story by giving plain examples that we see in our everyday world. The things listed were everyday encounters we see in our lives but never really think about.

The most dominant example he gave on how technology is worked by others is a simple door. A glass door had the person behind it confused as there were no instructions or visible way to actually open the door. The way we interact with objects and the ease of being able to use it are highly dependent on a few key concepts the author mentioned. The conceptual model is how we think something should work. A affordance on the other hand is the actual properties and features of the object. In the case of the glass door, visibility is a key concept in that it has to convey the correct message to the user. Other important terms were feedback and mappings as well as an image. Feedback was the message sent to the user after operating the object. Mappings were an actual map and link between two objects. And a system image was how the object is shown.

In all, the chapter was a really interesting read and was important in letting me know that there are in fact simple concepts to keep in mind in getting an easy interaction between technology and a user.


Chapter 2 - The Psychology of Actions

This chapter was titled by the author as The Psychology of Everyday Actions. He began by talking about a situation where he had helped someone else open a drawer when she couldn't open it herself. She than began to blame herself falsely for not being able to do it herself. Donald Norman, the author, then went on to state that most people blame themselves for not being able to figure out something that they perceived to be easy. He countered that argument by stating that sometimes the product itself is usually at fault for not being able to convey itself properly and instead confuses the user. He talked about how humans think a certain way and try to find reason for the inability to perform.

The author then began to talk about society and humans themselves to try and explain why people had blamed themselves for a products poor design. He then talked about in length about seven stages of action. Perceive, Interpretation, Purpose, Intent, Action. He talked about how that is how it is a typical order people follow when something is performed. Another term I thought useful since it was on a quiz in class was Gulf of Evaluation. It's the gap between two actions that a user expects when he learns more about the device.

I thought this chapter was interesting as people do in fact find fault in themselves for their inability to surpass flaws of something else. They attribute that to themselves instead. I think that products should be better designed to help people, but there is also a limit to how much effort should be put into that. If too much is put into simplicity, it often sacrifices creativity and complexity some users desire.


Chapter 3 - Knowledge in Head and World

In this chapter, the author talked about different forms of knowledge and the processes usually used to learn about them. The title Knowledge in the Head and in the World seemed like a fitting title for it. To learn how to use a product, a user usually goes through a process of learning before he can fully understand and comprehend it. The author went on to say that there are different levels of 'knowing' information. The first is just memorization. Short term memory that usually fades away and is sometimes hard to make sense of. The next level is mapping or making sense of information based off of previous relationships or correlations. The final step of understanding information it that itself. Understanding or 'learning' information is key in truly understanding something and having it readily accessible. This stage of often harder to get through but is more of a long term process than the rest.

He also talked about constraints that help a user understand or fill in gaps when needed. If something had a physical constraint like he stated in the book, for example a LEGO set. Some pieces won't fit on other pieces and makes it easier to build when it only fits on a certain set.

I thought this chapter was interesting but not as interesting as the previous chapter. It talked about learning, but I think the more important questions were the psychology ones behind the problems. Thinking about how to learn about learning I think is slightly counter productive. I think it's best to let the mind do what it does best and instead think deeper about the problems to fix and understand them.


Chapter 4 - Knowing What to Do

This chapter was titled Knowing What To Do. In this chapter, Norman talked more about the constraints he did in the previous chapter. He went on further to talk about different kinds of constraints, logical cultural and physical constraints. Physical was talked in my previous summary and involved something physical that our mind filled in to make sense of. Cultural constraints are a bit harder to understand but involved using cultural  usuals or constraints to make sense of things. These things are learned and are a different form of constraint. The logical constraints he talked about was about using the previously learned experiences help make sense of what they were trying to do.

I liked this chapter because this was form of the learning experience he talked about in the previous chapter. It was a combination of that and actually went into a more in-depth look into understanding how people think.


Chapter 5 - To Err is Human

In this chapter, the author talked about error in more of a deeper way. This chapter seemed to ask the question why humans do what they do more than other chapters and I really took a liking to that. It was more of the psychological look that I like to view things in. I liked how the author suggested a few things in a way that designers should assume that users won't follow directions but instead do something wrong. Accounting for that would help with a few of his arguments.

I liked this chapter the most out of all the chapters and would indeed suggest the design recommendations he gave towards the end of the chapter. Assuming error is the most important concept I had gotten out of this chapter.


Chapter 6 - The Design Challenge

This chapter talked about more of the design process involved when creating a product and ways that can often be looked at in a deeper aspect to compensate for errors and better usability. The author had a lot of information that I found a bit hard to understand, but understood that he was trying to accomplish. I probably liked this chapter the least because I found myself re-reading parts just to understand it. The author seemed to jump around at times and concepts were a bit hard to follow at some points. It was an interesting chapter though as it seemed like he combined everything together into a process that can help with the design itself.

In the end, I jump back to my previous comments about the chapter being a bit harder to understand than the other chapters. A few of the examples I had a hard time relating to but I liked the design process he was getting towards at the end.


Chapter 7 - User Centered Drive

The thing that caught my attention most out of everything else it touched on all of the previous subjects he talked about as well as bringing in the design process to fix the issues at hand. He gave many examples of everyday things that I found myself relating to in order to understand the concepts. After coming form reading a chapter that was hard to understand, this chapter seemed more in focus and followed a path of explaining everything he had written about before (Users will almost always go through errors, designers problems, fixes, etc).

He talked about standardization which was on a quiz in class and explained that it helped overall problems. I agreed with this as Google and many other companies solve design problems with this very same standardization and process.

Items with a Good-Design

1.) The Galaxy S3 - Very Customizable




The Samsung Galaxy S3 pictured above I think is a very well designed phone. It has a lot of features a phone usually has and places the buttons in the right places that most other phones places theirs. Instead of putting the power, volume, and control buttons in other areas like a few other phones do, they follow what popular phones do and place them in separate and easy to access areas that users would know where to look. None of the buttons are close together that have totally different functions. The nicest thing I like about this design is that the software is open-source and highly customizable. Left handed users can set a specific setting to make it their own due to the accessabillity of the software and customizations. When you leave things open and include an API, it's easier to fix the things other people need.

2.) iPhone - Simple



Although I have an android and left the phone a while back, I applaud Apple for sticking with simplicity is usually best. Complicated things tend to well... complicate things and users often find themselves frustrated with the lack of ease with their devices. The iPhone is a concept that I believe really pushed the market further and convinced users to ditch their t9 phones and try a new technology. Even old users found themselves finding how to use an iPhone with ease. Although I don't like the lack of customization with the iPhone, a lot of users find the simplicity of this the biggest plus of all.

3.) Shoes - Simple and rarely difficult to use


Although there are some exceptions to shoes in general, shoes are usually the simplest of things to do. Learning to tie your shoe is probably the most complex a tennis shoe will give people. What I like about it best is that most people have become accustomed to not going through the process of doing and undoing your shoe. Most people wake up half awake, SLIP on their shoe, and go straight to where ever they need to go. It's simple, something most people don't think twice about, and is highly customizable. Nike for instance takes the cake in this aspect where it combines customization with ease of use.

4.) Musical Keyboard - Grouped and Ease to Use


I like the keyboard listed above the best because of it's design. It's made by M-Audio and is called an Axiom keyboard. I plugs into the computer and lets people control the music they make. In general, I think pianos are a really good way to learn how to play music. They have a note for the basic sounds and are not as difficult as guitars to use since each note is separate and you just press down to make a noise. Nothing complicated is required to learn a basic song. The hardest part would be to train your mind to play separately to play more difficult songs.

What I like about this design in particular though is that they group functions together. It has knobs, buttons, and even pads. It isn't jumbled all together and really helps people play perfect and not mis-hit notes while performing live. Because of all the options, it is highly customizable and usually never lets a user go desiring a feature that wasn't implemented.

5.) The Logitech Mouse - Fits to a User


The mouse is something I have found myself taking a strangely important liking to. It is often hard to find a mouse that fits my needs and I find myself returning mouses that make me uncomfortable. Because Logitech designs their mouses well, when one breaks and I have to use another cheap mouse, I find myself wishing my first one didn't break in the first place. They design their mouses to fit the user's hand instead of making a regular mouse round. They even place buttons in places the fingers would even rest and let the users decide what actions those buttons would perform. I find them highly customizable and comfortable to use, even hours on hours of usage. My hand never gets tired like it used to when computers had first come to the market.

Items with a Bad-Design

1.) Chopsticks - Can't easily pick up for most people



The above pictured chopsticks are an attempt a designer had in fixing what most people had issues with while eating. I'm still amazed how widely difficult it is for most people to try, while the other side of the earth uses with ease on a normal basis. Because a utensil is a utensil, documentation usually isn't provided. This is a perfect example in how users often get confused on the simplest issue. Most people fumble with their rice and can never get a good grasp when using chop sticks. With something as simple as eating, chopsticks make what should be viewed as a delight into something tiresome and difficult. Hard to use, Splinter-filled, and No documentation easily makes the chopsticks at my number one bad design object.

2.) The Door Lock - 50/50 Chance


The door lock is something I often found myself second guessing myself on. Most doors open by turning the lock towards the hinges, but other doors work by turning the lock towards the other way. When first entering a house or apartment, no one ever knows initially which way to unlock the door until they actually try it. Even while living at my place for many years, I have often found myself sometimes turning the key the wrong way to open the door, especially when other things are on my mind.

3.) Fan Switches - Also a 50/50 Chance



The fan is also another product that I believe can be better designed and standardized. Trying to figure out which chain is the light and which chain is the light is sometimes difficult, even after living years at a place that I have always lived at. Even the polarity switch on the motor is sometimes difficult to understand. Trying to figure out which direction the switch will make the fan turn is hard. You flip the switch, wait for the blades to slow down enough to actually see their direction, and realize you had it on the right setting in the first place. I find it funny how other people, especially at night, struggle with this as well.

4.) Water faucets - Sometimes Strange


The above water faucet is a faucet I have seen in person before. It starts at the Shut setting, but then has the next setting set at Scalding. I applaud the makers for actually letting the user know that it is a setting so hot you may burn yourself at, but I find it strange in general. In order to get a warm shower, you have to pass the super hot and potentially dangerous setting first (depending on the water heater), and then go to the setting you like. Having to risk burning yourself every time you shower may be something you want to re-think about.

5.) AC Thermostat - Varies depending on maker


The thermostat is something that I have found myself often wondering about. The unit at my house is very different than the unit at my apartment and I found myself setting the wrong setting when I first moved into my apartment. For some units, the temperature you set is the temperature you desire. For other units, it's the temperature you want the unit to turn the unit on at. Then you set another temperature at the temperature you want to stop at. On other units I have found that the heat setting is different than the cold setting. Other units have this combined together. The varied product really makes me think about how changing places is often difficult when you have to get re-aquainted with the unit again.

Book Reading #2: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 2 - The Psychology of Actions

This chapter was titled by the author as The Psychology of Everyday Actions. He began by talking about a situation where he had helped someone else open a drawer when she couldn't open it herself. She than began to blame herself falsely for not being able to do it herself. Donald Norman, the author, then went on to state that most people blame themselves for not being able to figure out something that they perceived to be easy. He countered that argument by stating that sometimes the product itself is usually at fault for not being able to convey itself properly and instead confuses the user. He talked about how humans think a certain way and try to find reason for the inability to perform.

The author then began to talk about society and humans themselves to try and explain why people had blamed themselves for a products poor design. He then talked about in length about seven stages of action. Perceive, Interpretation, Purpose, Intent, Action. He talked about how that is how it is a typical order people follow when something is performed. Another term I thought useful since it was on a quiz in class was Gulf of Evaluation. It's the gap between two actions that a user expects when he learns more about the device.

I thought this chapter was interesting as people do in fact find fault in themselves for their inability to surpass flaws of something else. They attribute that to themselves instead. I think that products should be better designed to help people, but there is also a limit to how much effort should be put into that. If too much is put into simplicity, it often sacrifices creativity and complexity some users desire.


Chapter 3 - Knowledge in Head and World

In this chapter, the author talked about different forms of knowledge and the processes usually used to learn about them. The title Knowledge in the Head and in the World seemed like a fitting title for it. To learn how to use a product, a user usually goes through a process of learning before he can fully understand and comprehend it. The author went on to say that there are different levels of 'knowing' information. The first is just memorization. Short term memory that usually fades away and is sometimes hard to make sense of. The next level is mapping or making sense of information based off of previous relationships or correlations. The final step of understanding information it that itself. Understanding or 'learning' information is key in truly understanding something and having it readily accessible. This stage of often harder to get through but is more of a long term process than the rest.

He also talked about constraints that help a user understand or fill in gaps when needed. If something had a physical constraint like he stated in the book, for example a LEGO set. Some pieces won't fit on other pieces and makes it easier to build when it only fits on a certain set.

I thought this chapter was interesting but not as interesting as the previous chapter. It talked about learning, but I think the more important questions were the psychology ones behind the problems. Thinking about how to learn about learning I think is slightly counter productive. I think it's best to let the mind do what it does best and instead think deeper about the problems to fix and understand them.


Chapter 4 - Knowing What to Do

This chapter was titled Knowing What To Do. In this chapter, Norman talked more about the constraints he did in the previous chapter. He went on further to talk about different kinds of constraints, logical cultural and physical constraints. Physical was talked in my previous summary and involved something physical that our mind filled in to make sense of. Cultural constraints are a bit harder to understand but involved using cultural  usuals or constraints to make sense of things. These things are learned and are a different form of constraint. The logical constraints he talked about was about using the previously learned experiences help make sense of what they were trying to do.

I liked this chapter because this was form of the learning experience he talked about in the previous chapter. It was a combination of that and actually went into a more in-depth look into understanding how people think.

Homework #3: Chinese Room

For this paper we were assigned to read, it asked a question that I believe won't be answered for a very long time. John Searle talked about a situation that involved a Chinese Room. This room was an experiment to help elaborate on the question on if AI can really understand translation if it were able to translate something as if a human would. If a computer could replicate everything a human could and produce the same or even better output, would it still be considered as being understood if it is just doing what it told? The computer in this case would just be translating symbols and matching questions with the appropriate response.

I think in this scenario, this is not understanding the material. I think it goes deeper than this simple experiment and understanding means being able to 'understand' or actually know what it means in depth. In a way, maybe a little emotionally involved in it.

I've heard a lot of other students in the debate in lecture today say that the question isn't important and that as long as it does what it's told, it doesn't matter. I in fact believe this to be false. I do believe that one day, computers will be able to replicate human thought process and possibly be able to take thought processes further than humans would. This is something that I believe won't happen for a very long time, but I believe it will eventually take place. If anything, the computers would design their own algorithm and 'learn' just as an infant would. In this case, there would be an issue of computer thinking being limited by their hardware, just as I believe humans are in a short way. I think it's an important concept to think about and will be very important in the future. Ideally, humans and machines would eventually become integrated in a way that the line is hard to see. Much like races started out as and how segregation is becoming a thing of the past.

In short, I liked the concept, but didn't like the article. I think he was too emotionally involved and not open to the bigger picture. There is no one answer to this question and I believe everyone's answer is their own correct answer. In the end though, I believe the machines will be the ones who have the final decision in this issue, not us.

Book Reading 1: The Design in Everyday Things

We were assigned to read the first chapter of The Design in Everyday Things. The book was written by Donald Norman and was a very interesting read for such an old book. The author began telling the story by giving plain examples that we see in our everyday world. The things listed were everyday encounters we see in our lives but never really think about.

The most dominant example he gave on how technology is worked by others is a simple door. A glass door had the person behind it confused as there were no instructions or visible way to actually open the door. The way we interact with objects and the ease of being able to use it are highly dependent on a few key concepts the author mentioned. The conceptual model is how we think something should work. A affordance on the other hand is the actual properties and features of the object. In the case of the glass door, visibility is a key concept in that it has to convey the correct message to the user. Other important terms were feedback and mappings as well as an image. Feedback was the message sent to the user after operating the object. Mappings were an actual map and link between two objects. And a system image was how the object is shown.

In all, the chapter was a really interesting read and was important in letting me know that there are in fact simple concepts to keep in mind in getting an easy interaction between technology and a user.

Paper Reading #6: Becoming-Sound: Affect and Assemblage in Improvisational Digital Music Making

Reference Information

Ben Swift. "Becoming Sound: Affect and Assemblage in Improvisational Digital Music Making." Australian National University, 05 May 2012. Web. 10 Sept. 2012.

Authors

Ben Swift- Studies at the Australian National University in the Research School of Computer Science Department.

Article Summary

 

Photo Credit: Becoming Sound Article

In this article, the author talked about the importance of 'affect', the process which something affects one another, has on the assemblage of the people 'coming together' to create music. To demonstrate this, the user talked about an application developed for the iOS called the Discotheque musical collaboration device. The paper then talked about how it was important to both visualize the gestures made on the device as well as being able to collaborate successfully between each other. Although the author talked about the process the users used when 'jamming' with each other, he mainly focused on the elements that 'affected' each user.

In conclusion, the author found  that it is important to understand the history of the devices that are used to innovate music collaboration as well as the importance of music itself. He talked about the ability music had to make the users themselves want to create the gestures needed to make music. He talked about music being a form of assemblage and the ability of that assemblage being able to create and become a part of another assemblage as well. All those parts worked together to form one single form.

Related Work

There were a few related pieces of work on this subject. They are listed below.

• Clay Spinuzzi. Describing Assemblages: Genre Sets, Systems, and Ecologies
• Jim Tuedio, The culture of Chaotic Synergy in Grateful Dead Improvisation and Music
• House of Blues Foundation, Creating an Assemblage
• Jeremy Wade Morris, Understanding the Digital Music Commodity
• Georgina Born, Distributed Creativity: What do we mean by it?
• William Murray Allison, The impact of improvisational musics on the creative processes
• Guderian Lois, Effects of Applied Music Composition and Improvisation Assignments
• Alvin Curran, Musicand Basics. What is improvisation? The Art of Becoming Sound
• Mercedes Pavlicevic, Improvisation in Music Therapy: Human Communication in Sound
• Andrew Stewart, Everybody to the power of one, for soprano T-stick

Most of the above papers talked about the ability assemblage has on the creation of music. It talks about being able to combine different things together (either humans or pieces of technology) to create one single body that can be used for creative entertainment. I enjoyed the topics related more than this piece of work. Assemblage is perceived to me as more important than the effects of affect.

Evaluation

The author in this article talked about the theory assemblage and affect had when creating digital work. The tests done and the data gathered were shown to us in a qualitative state as well as subjective and objective forms. Some areas of his study were fathered in a subjectively biased manner and the end result of the users creation was very objective. That data was qualitative as well. The data was gathered when asking the users to record their video and music and streaming it to the server.

Discussion

The subject talked about was a little difficult to understand, but I eventually understood the main idea in the end. I did not agree with his initial theory that designer's "capacity to build interactive systems continues to outpace our capacity to understand what we have built". I think he is misinterpreting the ability of the devices we create being able to be innovated for other purposes. I think he is taking a look into assemblage too deep and overlooks the aspect of creativity itself. The more time spent in analyzing the affect and assembly correlation, the less room there is for creativity. Creativity to me is the ability to express one self freely without the constraints this experiment put on the users.

Paper Reading #5: Intimacy in Long-Distance Relationships over Video Chat

Reference Information

Carman Neustaedter, Saul Greenberg. "Intimacy in Long-Distance Relationships over Video Chat." University of Calgary and Simon Fraser University, 05 May 2012. Web. 05 Sept. 2012.

Authors

Carman Neutaedter: Teaches at the School of Interactive Arts + Technology with a degree from Simon Fraser University in Surrey, BC, Canada.

Saul Greenberg: In the department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary

Article Summary

Photo Credit: Shutterstock - (http://shutterstock.com)

The authors of this paper talked about using technology to bridge the gap in a long distance relationship. Although it's been possible for years, the authors talked about the problem of a loss of intimacy when communicating through this way. Although widely done, especially among students, this form of communication slowly fades over time as the users become tired of it.

The studies talked about people who usually had video sessions, where users allocated one or two hours of their day of video chatting with their significant other. Depending on the type of communication needed, they found that users found it inconvenient to use video chats with uncomfortable conversations or quick messages. Users who routinely did it were often found to be less intimate with each other than users who used it for long periods of time or users who just used it as a one-time thing.

From users connecting at work to private conversations with a significant other, the authors found that it was best to have a constant connection with each other open over a long period of time. By convincing themselves and making it a routine part of their day, it would allow them to be more natural with each other. With this method, intimate gestures would be more comfortably done, and the message would be convened.

Related Work

This was a hard subject to find related work on, but I did find a few on the authors conclusion. A video window open up over a long period of time had different effects on users.

• Alexander, Ljung, Eric Wahlforss. Sensation: A Presence Enabler for Long-Distance Relationships using Skype and Visual Presence Representation
• Diana Mok, Barry Wellman. Does distance Still MAtter in the Age of the Internet?
• Scott Golder, Dennis Wilkinson. Rhythms of social interaction: messaging within a MMO Network
• Irina Shklovski, Robery Kraut. Keeping in Touch By Technology: Maintaining Frienships after a Residual Move
• Kately McKenna, Amie Green, Marci E. Gleason. Relationship Formation on the Internet: What's the Big Attraction?
• Shanyang Zhao. The Internet and the Transformation of the Reality of Everyday Life
• Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Patricia Greenfield. Online Communication and Adolescent Relationships
• Daria Kuss, Mark Griffiths. Online Social Networking and the Psychological Addicion
• David DeAndrea, Stephanie Tom Tong. Mediated Communication.
• Bonka Boneva, Robert Kraut. Using E-Mail for Personal Relationships

Evaluation

The authors of this study focused a little subjectively towards the issue as they tried to see what the best way possible was to keep the intimacy between two long distance couples. They measured using a quantitative approach in that they measured their data using the numbers and quantity of the people it concerned. The subject is not as novel as other ideas and the topic was unique in that it focused directly on the subject of intimacy instead of overall communication via an online service.

Discussion

The subject of a long-distance relationship has always been interesting to me. As technology grows and people have a ever growing desire to stay social through technical means, I think it will be more 'natural' to communicate with others regularly over some form of technology but to most people, this subject is a little weird. Why talk to each other online when they can do it through the phone or in person. I think that the idea of using what you're comfortable most and making the computer a second piece of themselves is key in getting people who use it more and keeping their connection alive between each other.

Paper Reading #4: Can a Community of Players be a Community of Practice

Reference Information

Jodi Asbell-Clarke and Elisabeth Sylvan. "Martian Boneyards: Can a Community of Players be a Community of Practice." Educational Gaming Environments, 05 May 2012. Web. 05 Sept. 2012.

Authors

Jodi Asbell-Slarke: Works at Educational Gaming Environments in the EdGE division.
Elisabeth Sylvan: Works at Educational Gaming Environments in the EdGE division as well.

Article Summary

Photo Credit: Case Study

This article focused on the effects a virtual community had on the players it cased. The the two author's case study worked on a game called Martian Boneyards, an experimental MMO game, and took a deeper look into the community of players itself. The designers of the game were mixed among the players themselves and set up a reward system as well for collaborating among the members in the game.

The game was modeled to closely relate to real life scenarios and skill sets. There were scientists, hunters, students, and even a pool of random volunteers. In the game, academic and accomplishments in skills were rewarded by visual enhancements. New players were shown to be drawn to the players with the most visual prowess, hopeful in being able to solve their need of leveling up their own characters.

The authors found that many interesting questions were brought up by users and found that the questions were separated by the type of person they actually were in real life. They found that many of the scientific questions and theories were largely popular with the science community and had a direct correlation with even their avatar type.

Related Work

A few related pieces of work were found on the effects a virtual.community had on a user.

• Pat Gannon-Leary, Elsa Fontainha. Communities of Practice and Virtual Learning
• Karen Swan, Peter J. Shea. The Development of Virtual Learning Communities
• Amrit Tiwana, Ashley Bush. Peer to Peer Valuation as a Machanism for Active Learning
• Computing Research Association. Cyberinfrastructure for Education. Learning for the Future
• Karen Swan. Relationships Between Interactions and Learning In Online Environments
• Gerhard Fischer, Masonori Sugimoto. Supporting Self-Directed Learning and Learning Communities with Sociotechnical Environments
• Joseph Tront, Brandon Muramatsu. A Community to Develop Materials for an Engineering Learning Environment
• Ruth E Brown. The Process of Community Building In Distance Learning Classes
• Linnea Carlson-Sabelli, Lous Fogg. The effect of a Virtual Community on Work-Life, Recruitment, and Retension among Nursing Faculty.
• Bunchball. An Introduction to the Use of Game Dynamics to Influence Behavior

Most of the above papers talk about the effect a virtual environment has on a specific community of academics.

Evaluation

The authors used very qualitative descriptions to talk about the experiences the users had within the community. Many users were described subjectively in groups such as scientists and engineers. The scientists usually felt a specific way towards something while the other types of users felt an entirely different way. The interests they talked about the users having taking a liking to were usually discussed subjectively by the users themselves. The designers took a far-away approach and listened to everything the users had brought up when being talked to. They tried to stay as objective as possible.

Discussion

The authors didn't look at the effects the game's community could have in today's world, but instead looked at the potential the game could have on the future. In the future, it's expected that virtual avatars would be a thing of common practice. With the increase in technology and the increasing desire for social experience, mixing a rewarding virtual community with the future could produce promising results.

I think in the future, virtual communities will be big practices and the largest communities will probably be the most popular. Taking advantage of that for the use of academics is a area I feel strongly about. I would be proud to be a part of developing that if I had to do that in the future.

Paper Reading #3: The Role of Challenge in the Gaming Experience

Reference Information

Anna Cox, Paul Cairns, Pari Shah, and Michael Carroll. "Not Doing But Thinking: The Role of Challenge in the Gaming Experience." University College London and University of York, 05 May 2012. Web. 03 Sept. 2012.

Authors

Anna L Cox - At University College London studying UCL Interaction Centre
Paul Cairns - Resides at Department of Computer Science at University of York
Pari Shah - Studies Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London
Michael Carroll - At the department of Computer Science at University of York

Article Summary

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This article looked into an important aspect of gaming, increasing the overall experience. It has previously been thought that the more challenging a game is, the more immersed and fun the game appears to a user. The authors instead looked at defining exactly which challenges are the most important and which gaming aspects are the most effected.

The authors created separate control groups with each it's respective study aspect. The first group they studied showed that increased actual involvement with the game did not result in a direct manner with an increased immersion. The gamer sometimes enjoyed the game while other gamers with the same interest did not enjoy playing it.

In other studies, they measured how pressure affects the users who play the games. The users who were playing campaign and experienced an increase in pressure while playing were shown to enjoy the game more and the rewards that followed. Sometimes they rewarded gamers for completing special tasks and other instances they set gamers against each other increase the pressure of playing.



The conclusion of their study, they found that the level of challenge in a game and the effect of immersion it had on the gamers was directly linked to the level of expertise of the players. It was important to note that the players had to also see a possibility of accomplishment with the game as well. Playing a game they know to be impossible decreased the amount of immersion the player had, no matter what pressure and challenges the game had programmed to have.

Related Work

Finding out what aspects of games interest gamers the most was a important widely talked about subject. I found a few papers that were related the same line of study.

• Jose Zagal. Novices, Gamers, and Scholars: Exploring Challenges of Teaching Games. 
• Wolfgang Kramer. What Makes a Game Good?
• John Hallam and Georgios Yannakakis. Capturing Player Enjoyment in Games
• Kyoung Jin Shim. Player Performance, Motivation, and Enjoyment in MMO Games.
• Jiming Wu. The effects of Trust and Enjoyment on intention to play online games.
• Nicole Lazzaro. Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story.
• Niklas Ravaja, The Psychophysiology of Gaming: Phasic Emotional Responses to Events
• Barbaros Bostan. Game Challenges and Difficulty Levels: Lessons Learned from RPGs
• Zhi-Hong Chen, Influence of Game Quests on Pupils Enjoyments and Goal-pursuing in Math
• Brendan Sinclair. Teens interest in gaming on the decline, habits and forms.

Most the the papers above studied the effect that certain gaming events or triggers had on gamer's emotional response, which is also like immersion within the game itself.

Evaluation

The authors of this study tried to study their subjects and control groups without a bias. They were merely looking to see if there was a direct link between certain gaming events and the responses the gamers had within the game. Quantitative descriptions such as the time in seconds the players showed signs of pressure and stress and also the amount of subjects immersion within the games as well. The idea of this subject is not novel and is a common topic of marketing employees for game companies.

Discussion

The subject is important and I feel most game developers often overlook this aspect when developing a game. They become immersed themselves with the art of the game and sometimes lose focus of what the gamers actually want in their game. I think having some sort of compensation increases the pressure while playing a game. This actually helps the gamer perform better and in the end (if he's successful), gets to reap the benefits of the rewards of win.

The authors were very quantitative in their study and it was interesting to see how not benefits, but pressure actually affected the gamer instead.

Paper Reading #2: Protecting Artificial Team-Mates: More Seems Like Less

Reference Information

Tim Merritt, and Kevin McGee. "Protecting Artificial Team-mates: More Seems like Less." Protecting Artificial Team-mates. National University of Singapore, 05 May 2012. Web. 03 Sept. 2012.

Authors

Tim Merritt - Pursuing his PhD at the NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering. 

Kevin McGee - Researching the development of partner technologies that increase human participation in life's interesting and important challenges.

Article Summary

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This article looked into the relationship between people's behavior toward human and AI in cooperative gaming. Both human and AI team-mates' beliefs about their behavior differed depending on who they thought they were playing with. In the past, it has been suggested that humans and AI agents in games both had different impacts on humans when being played cooperatively with.

After beginning with this initial idea, they recruited 32 participants and examined logged data of game performance when playing with an AI subject along with a human. Additionally, the emotions and playing style differed depending on who they were playing with as well. Taking all this into consideration, the team of two were trying to see if the participants could be tricked into thinking they were playing with an artificial teammate.

In the end, it was interesting to see that even when playing with an artificial teammate, as long as they think they were playing with a real human, the results would mimic that of a real player.

Related Work

When looking at work related to this specific idea, there were a few other pieces of work that were similar in nature. They focused on behavior and the human response in a cooperative interaction. Most of these studies also tried to deceive humans a bit to get the data they needed. Here are a few of the related work I found:

• Blascovich, J. A theoretical model of social influence for increasing the utility of collaborative virtual environments. 
• Nass, C., Fogg, B.J. Can computers be teammates?
• Oviatt, S. Designing and evaluating conversational interfaces with animated characters.
• Abraham, A.T. AI for dynamic team-mate adaptation in games.
• Kiesler, S. A prisoner's dilemma experiment on cooperation with people and computers
• Merritt, T. Did you notice? Artificial team-mates take risks for players intelligent v. agents
• Merritt, T. Choosing human team-mates: higher enjoyment and preference for humans
• Miwa, K. Analysis of human-human and human-computer agent interactions...
• Weibel, D. Playing online games against computers vs humans. Effects on presence...
• Williams, T. Agression, competition and computer games: computer & human opponents.

Most of the above work didn't expressively look into whether humans preferred AI or human teammates, but instead focused on thee effect it had on their playing styles.

Evaluation

The two authors evaluated the work with a slight bias. They had to deceive the participants a bit to make the players they were instead playing with someone of a different nature than themselves. They used quantitative words that played with emotions and described how the participants felt and behaved instead of numbers. They looked at the study group as a whole and went further in depth depending on the type of opponent they thought they were playing with. Both ways were combined and appropriately measured.

Discussion

This paper is important because it shows that perception has a lot to do with how people think they act. When being deceived, some users had the same reactions as they had when they thought they were playing with a real player. I think the analysis done on this subject is interesting and their evaluation was appropriate for this nature of work.

If human AI can eventually be at the level humans are at, then I believe that perception will play an important part in how humans respond to the game. I learned from this that although humans played better with AI, they had more fun with humans because of the peer aspect towards cooperation.