mix tapes vs. digital playlists (mediation, meaningful objects and sign values)

Last week, I conducted some user studies to learn about music libraries. One of the participants commented on how cool mix tapes were yet how rarely he creates playlists in iTunes.

I started to wonder about the differences between old and new music media formats. In particular, I was interested in the differences between mix tapes (cassette tapes created by the user from other cassettes or CDs) and digital music playlists (lists of current or saved songs in digital music players like iTunes or Windows media player). I found various theoretical concepts helpful in thinking more precisely about these differences and how we might improve the design of digital music technologies.

Perception

Awhile back I somehow got into a conversation with someone (I can’t remember who at this time) and he brought up a study he had read or heard about where an experiment was conducted on monkeys. I’m reiterating his reiteration of what the experiment was, so forgive me if it’s not accurate. Essentially monkeys were raised having only been exposed to vertical lines and edges, and over time after shown a horizontal line (a table edge, perhaps) the monkeys actually perceived a blurred edge or line, almost as if they couldn’t process horizontal lines completely.

When looking for that study, I came across this one, in which two people enumerated the frequency that the number of horizontal vs vertical vs oblique lines occurred in paintings from 20th century painters displayed in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. They suggest their findings support “the idea that stimuli like horizontal and vertical lines, which are preferentially processed by the visual system, are also aesthetically more powerful.” Coincidentally in their paper they reference optical studies done with animals (like monkeys), which is what I was looking for originally.

Think about applying this in our designs of not just interfaces but any product, because essentially everything (physical) is comprised of and contains horizontal, vertical, and or oblique lines. But what do they mean exactly by “aesthetically more powerful”? I haven’t read the entire paper, which I probably should have before posting, so I’m not sure if they more clearly define their implication. But powerful meaning placed in a group among other things, the one that utilizes horizontal/vertical lines will capture my attention first, will hold it longest, means I’ll be more receptive to the message you’re trying to convey, will more clearly convey a message to me, will imprint that message or the feelings resulting from it more deeply in my brain? And a bit frightening is applying these scientific methods of perception (assuming they are indeed “correct”) unknowingly.

And I think all these studies (though I haven’t read the animal behavior ones either) sort of support the notion of contextual laws/rules. So, would a study of a group of painters from a different era have the same outcome about lines? Perhaps there are other cultures (read groups of people) that may be more receptive to oblique lines. I don’t know, I’m not really looking for answers, I suppose, this just got me thinking and I wanted to do it “out loud” to you guys.

Does Facebook’s design change the way we take photos?

I did a structural and phenomenological analysis of Facebook’s people tagging feature.    Just today I was able to create a semi-coherent argument from the analysis.   I am curious what you all think of this:

My overall thesis for the paper is that the way that a social networking community (Facebook) is designed fundamentally changes the way that its members take photos.  Interaction designers should study and attempt to understand how social networking communities affect the way people act in the ‘real world’ and then design communities that encourage the users to act in desired, ethical ways.

Paradigm and Participatory Design

I have a bit of a rambling story to share with the Interaction Culture crew today!

As some of you know, I’m immersing myself in postmodern and poststructuralist theory. While google searching for some images describing postmodernism I came across the following comic.

Note: I know the comic is too big to fit in the page, so click on it for full viewing pleasure.

The dinosaurs sparked something in my brain from a story I read a few months back about the best online comics. Another google search revealed the Qwantz strip at http://qwantz.com/.

Qwantz is a comic that uses the exact same dinosaur graphics in the same order for every comic in the series. The dialogue changes with the release of each new comic. To me, these seem like pretty obvious examples of syntagm and paradigm.

I started to think, again, about the first dinosaur comic about postmodernism. You’ll notice that the Copyright section at the bottom of the comic is scribbled out because the author of Qwantz did not make the comic about postmodernism. Someone stole the Qwantz formula and “made a funny” out of it. [Extra Credit for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live action movie reference]

Now for the real leap. Someone appropriating the Qwantz formula reminded me of comicboarding from CHI 07. Comicboarding is a participatory design method for use with children in which a comic about some design situation is prepared with missing panels. The children are then asked to fill in the panels to complete the story. The researcher can then interpret the desire and intentions of the child through their completion of the story.

If you extend the notion of syntagm to the design process (yes, I know I’m breaking all sorts of rules), does paradigm then become a notion of choice with an area of constraint. In all participatory design, not just comicboarding, the designer is in ultimate control of the process and has designed some sequence of steps. Participatory design gives users a chance to enter that design sytagm and push for a paradigm of their choosing. Maybe.

Food for thought and an excuse to post a funny comic.

New Media Portfolio

I was looking at some portfolio sites for inspiration and came across this one, which I realized is a great example of Manovich’s principles of new media.

Notice the lighting effects and smooth cinematic transitions–evidence of transcoding from the language of film. The extensive interface options are a perfect example of the logic of variability.

structuralism account in design methods

I think I would like more think about things in structuralism approach. And from this account, I thought, there is no totally new things or innovative things.  Hypothetically,  human have 100 English words in total to compose a sentence in order to describe  an object. Based on the permutation and combination, there are definitely limit sequences of how we compose the sentences. If all the writers,  movie editors use those limited sequences to describe the world,  this world will become boring and tired. And we know, all language has limited words.

However, everything is changed since the time is always flying and you can’t just ask the God to freeze it; anything is also changed.  For example, when I am planning  to write down an entry to put what I thought in mind into a paragraph,   I open computer, and began to type; During this process of writing, I translate my mind into languages. When I finished this entry, I read the entry again and I found it is a little bit different from what I thought in the beginning. Then I realized that all the things in this world are design because of different situated space, time, and context.  You use a different body position to read a paper in bed is a design, even your body have this exactly same position before this moment, like when you are in bathtub.

When we first see a cell phone has  function of mp3 replay,  as a combination of communicator and mp3 player device, it is design. 

By the way, I think as the first step of design new thing, observation, imitation and thinking  is all necessary.  Da Vinci began his artist career from drawing eggs again and again. Because his teacher told him that every egg has different shape depending on when and how you watch it.  Further more, what is the second step of how a amateur becomes a pro,  I think is not thinking, instead, is imitation or copy.  Any design is a small  valuable improvement based on existing thing in the world; and before that, you have to study how the design of  iPhone is so popular. Multi-touch is not invented by Apple, just Apple use it very well.

 And thinking is the third step. 

Paper Topic

So…here’s the short version:

A structuralist/semiotic analysis of diegetic and non-diegetic sound in the game BioShock and how signifiers are decoded by users and how user experience is affected by whether or not they pick up on dated references.

Part of what makes BioShock such an incredible game is the setting/environment and sound is a huge part of this. BioShock takes place in 1960 in the underwater city of Rapture, a failed attempt at utopia by a strange and psychotic Nazi scientist. The soundtrack includes music fromt the 1950s and there are many other dated references that the user may or may not pick up on. If the user does pick up on these references, he/she has a particular experience. If the user doesn’t pick up on these references, he/she has a different experience. Neither experience is less significant or enjoyable than the other, just different.

If ’sound’ is not a large enough area to get a paper out of, I will consider looking at the setting/environment of the game as a whole as there are many dated references in other areas.

paper idea continued: mobile phone faceplates

I think more about my paper and try to narrow down the topic today.

For now, the rough title is: Design mobile phone faceplates: appearance as experience and interaction.

In this paper, I would like to focus on how mobile phone faceplates improve user experience. Mobile phone faceplates in Asia are designed by the following three groups of people (which are classified by me):
1. mobile phone company: Nokia, Motorola….

2. professional graphic designers (or in related field): the pictures in my last entry are belong to this category. They do not work in mobile phone companies. probably have own studios.

3. amateur. Here is an example( from Yinnimei Yahoo blog.):

In my paper, I am thinking to focus on the last two, especially the third one. I intend to explore general people create their own meaning when using digital products. Users design not only their own ways of using the product, but also the appearance of that. I would like to study the latter.

Besides the reading we have in the semester, literature review might also include: emotional design, ensoulment, experience design, waves of HCI……

Theories used: I am thinking of using structuralism to analyze one or two examples of mobile phone faceplates. What the codes and the languages suggest. Also, I found that people in Asia design their mobile phone faceplates in a similar way with other personal belongings, such as schedule book. I wonder if it is counted as “cultural logic.”

Do these make sense? I hope this narrowed down a little bit.

Q: What is the difference between authorship and use?

Manivich says that “Although more complex types of interactivity can be created by a computer program that controls and modifies the media object at run-time, the majority of interactive media uses fixed branching-tree structures.”

 He goes on to claim that we can choose one of two perspectives regarding the use interactive media:

 (i) Author

“…the user of a branching interactive program becomes its coauthor: By choosing a unique path through the elements of a work, she supposedly creates a new work.”

 (ii) User

 .  “…the user following a particular path accesses only a part of this whole.  In other words, the user is activating only a part of the total work that already exists.”

If we assume the second perspective, then, Manovich says that

 ”Paradoxically, by following an interactive path, one does not construct a unique self but instead adopts already pre-established identities.  Similarly, choosing values from a menu or customizing one’s desktop or an application automatically makes one participate in the “changing collage of personal whims and fancies” mapped out and coded into software by companies….I would prefer using Microsoft Windows exactly the same way it was installed at the factory instead of customizing it in the hope of expressing my ‘unique identity’ “.

But now I’m confused.  When does selection constitute authorship rather than use?  Under perspective (ii), couldn’t we view writing this blog entry as “activating only a part of the total work that already exists”, namely this sequence of characters amongst the set of all possible characters allowed by this wordpress blogging software? Doesn’t composition of a text have a fixed-branching tree structure (I select a letter, then another letter, etc.)  If so, where is the distinction between authorship and use?   Can’t we view all acts of creativity as selecting some subset from a pre-existing set?  When does a language become rich enough that we can use it to author new works?  Structurally, how do we differentiate an authored work from a work that was simply a byproduct of use?  Phenomenologically, how do we distinguish the too?

 

website

 From 1995 starting from selling books online, Amazon has broaden its markets from just books to digital comsumption forty big categories almost cover all we need in daily life even gourmet food, paper towel.(From a-z). No matter what they sell on their website, I am not like the interface of Amazon website. But Amazon recently has remodeled its website to a new one.

They can change interface of website easily within 1 or 2 minutes,  but actually the product sthey are selling are still same as those before they changed their website.  As an E-commerce website who don’t produce and design product itself, it has to play a super good role of agent/breaker to connect supplier and customer. According to formal successful and unsuccessful experiences , it can predict and approach the most convenient shopping style (online) that majority of people would like to interact with.  They are on their way now.

I would like to analyze the new webiste and take advantage of what we have learned in class. Also I want to make a comparison with old framework of Amazon website…if I can find the old Amazon website pictures in my mind as more as possible..