SAP DESIGN GUILD

CHI 2001 – A Collection of Very Subjective Snippets

By Gerd Waloszek, SAP AG, Product Design Center – 04/27/2001

This article is one of three articles about the CHI 2001 in Seattle, Washington. The CHI's motto was "anyone. anywhere." Let's see what mottos three of SAP's user interface designers found for themselves.

 

 

My CHI Strategy

This was my third visit to the CHI (I was there in 1997 and 1999). So I drew on my experience and decided to visit mostly the panels. There you can see the "bigwigs" in the field and listen to discussions of "hot" topics, like "What's in for HCI" or the "Impact of Mobile Technologies." Paper sessions are typically very special. Many speakers run out of time and and flash a succession of slides as if they were presenting a film. Actually, this typically doesn't matter much - the slides aren't readable anyway, because the print is so small. Links CHI 2001 Website Official photos from the conference

Figure 1: Seattle with Space Needle (from CHI 2001 Website)

 

Computing as Simple as Reading

The opening plenary was held by Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft Corp. With Redmond so close, this was, of course a "home game" for Bill Gates - no pie throwing by cheeky French "tarteurs" as was the case some years ago in Belgium. Gates admitted that today's operating systems and computers in general are far from the goal "computing as simple as reading":

• "There's no doubt that even the PC itself is still fairly difficult to use. If you think how many different concepts do you have to learn. ... The number of commands and overall concepts to deal with a full set of applications is simply way too large, and there has to be a way to clasp that down to a very, very small set." (Taken from transcript of Gates' speech.)

But Gates and his colleagues demonstrated two impressive prototypes heading in this direction:

• Microsoft Reader 2.0: A screen reader application (for handhelds and laptops) that does not bother users with lots of icons and control elements - most of the user interface is hidden.
• The Tablet PC: A DIN A4-size computer, more looking like a tablet, with a high-resolution LCD screen, a few switches and levers, and a pen for operating it; of course it can read your handwriting and translate it into ASCII text (using Microsoft's "electronic ink" handwriting recognition software).

Both use Microsoft's ClearType technology for improving font legibility on LCD screens. With this technology, each pixel on an LCD screen is comprised of three sub-pixels (one red, one green, and one blue). Obviously, Microsoft is not the only player in the screen reader and eBook field. There is tough competition from Adobe's Acrobat eBook Reader (the current version is 2.1), which uses the CoolType technology - the equivalent to Microsoft's ClearType.

Figure 2: The Tablet PC (from Microsoft)

Figure 3: Bill Gates seemed quite enthusiastic about the Tablet PC

A third issue in this speech was adaptive notification; this is especially important for Bill Gates himself:

• "Certainly I think I get my fair share of junk mail as well. Generally about three or four thousand pieces a day, and so that's really prioritized the Microsoft Research on filtering technology." (Taken from transcript of Gates' speech)

Links

• Transcript of Bill Gates' Opening Speech (Microsoft)
• Microsoft's Reader Website (Microsoft)
• Article on Tablet PC (Microsoft)
• Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader 2.1 (Adobe)

 

Ten Minute Design...

In the Internet age time moves so fast that you get older than the oldest trees if you apply this rule to your own life. No wonder that one of the panels featured a competition where usability teams had to solve a design problem in ten minutes. The panel was organized by people from Microsoft and included one interviewer. Three experts had to rate the teams' performance according to some criteria, such as the process and the quality of the design. The three teams who competed for the design award were Cooper Interaction Design (CID), IBM, and Trilogy (with CID having the smallest team and Trilogy the largest). The teams were asked to design a device for controlling a toy dump truck. After some minutes the following complication was revealed to the teams: the "child persona" had a broken right arm.

Figure 4: The Cooper Interaction Design team at work - the expert raters sit at the table

In short, to my disappointment CID came in last, Trilogy second - in spite of their show effects -, and IBM first. There was some dispute with the audience with respect to this rating. Finally, it was decided that the audience could also determine a winner by acclamation. This time the CID team won - so much for expert opinions.

The more interesting question to me is whether such a competition is a model for the future of user interface design. Will our schedules be so tight one day that we have to design in, say, one hour? My second question is whether design should be "democratic." Obviously, there seem to be cultural differences between the US and, for example, Germany. In the US the "democratic" approach is much more popular. People seem to believe that the more people that are involved in the process, the better the design. When talking with colleagues in Germany, many of them feel - like me - uncomfortable with this approach. For example, I do not have my best ideas during a brainstorming session, but maybe the next morning before I get up. Ideas cannot be produced like goods in a factory; they are processed unconsciously in my brain and at some unknown point in time surface. Design ideas should of course be discussed and evaluated in a team; but creating ideas may require time and a period of rest. If you do not agree, but also if you agree, send me an e-mail, and I will collect your answers. If there are enough responses, I will come back to this issue in a future article.

 

Mobile Phones and an Anti-Usability Phenomenon

The CHI 2001 motto was "anyone. anywhere" Therefore, mobile computing was the main theme of many panels, papers, and events - the second main theme was, of course, the "evergreen" Web. I visited the panel "The impact of mobile technology on everyday life" where mobile phones were one of the issues. Many Americans are surprised by the European phenomenon of teens sending millions of SMS messages (short message service) per year to each other. The industry expected that only business people would use SMS messages; nobody had thought of teens quickly adopting this technology and using it widely for sending secret messages.

One of the panelists, Richard Harper from the UK, drew the audience's attention to some interesting phenomena:

• Mobile phones are often not used in mobile situations; they are used in the bedroom or bathroom, instead.
• SMS messages are often one-way communication; they are a kind of self-exposure and serve for ego-reinforcement: sending a message and telling something about oneself is the important issue; a response is typically not expected.
• Sending SMS messages is very cumbersome, but teens quickly learn this - it is like a sports game. The important kick for teens, however, is that parents typically are not able to send and receive SMS messages.

Thus, teens have found a realm where they can express themselves and where they can keep the adults out. The anti-usability of SMS messages is the key to its success with teens.

Figure 5: The mobile panel - Richard Harper is the one with the tie

References

• CHI 2001 Extended Abstracts, p. 227-228

 

Ethics In HCI - To Bluff or Not?

Carolyn Snyder asked whether it is ethical if usability people bluff, that is, if they overstate the importance of usability problems in order to get them fixed. While bluffing may be very effective in the short run, most participants agreed that this eventually undermines the credibility of the usability people.

One of the panels that I visited discussed the role of ethics in HCI (the panel was organized by Rolf Molich from Denmark). Brenda Laurel, for example, asked, whether you should set boundaries for online communities. She thought of girl communities with respect to boys, but the SAP Design Guild tries a establish a community as well. So, one might ask "Is it for UI people and graphic designers only,or for developers, too?" Figure 6: People from the audience queuing in for posing questions to the panelists

Links and References

• CHI 2001 page on Rolf Molich's Website
• CHI 2001 Extended Abstracts, p. 217-21

 

Designing on the Wrong Side of the Brain

Figure 7: My left hand drawn by myself

In order to improve my drawing abilities and my creativity in general, I attended Brian Blomeislers tutorial "Drawing on the right side of the brain." Betty Edwards, his mother, had invented the drawing method taught in this tutorial. She is the author of the famous book, Drawing on the right side of the brain. Based on her insights gained from teaching drawing, she also wrote, Drawing on the artist within: An inspirational and practical guide to increasing your creative powers. So, in this course I not only had to draw my left hand (see figure to the left), but was also encouraged to think about a specific problem that I had pondered for some time without finding a solution. Regrettably, I was not very successful with thinking about the problem, because the drawing activity required too much attention. The basic rule for learning to draw is, draw what you see (lines, angles, light and shades, ...), not what you know (e.g. "symbols" for eyes, the nose, the mouth etc.). I'm not so sure whether this approach transfers well to UI design. However, a "holistic" view (which the method tries to foster) is always a good idea.

Link & Books

• Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Inc.
• Betty Edwards (1999). Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. J. P. Tarcher.
• Betty Edwards (1987) Drawing on the Artist Within. Fireside.

Remarks on Jared Spools Remarks

Jared Spool finally made it: the rebel found his place among the "gods" in the HCI Olymp. I visited his evening tutorial and heard three interesting statements:

1. There seems to be a negative correlation between the number of user interface designers and usability, that is, the more usability people working in a company, the worse.
2. The more you outsource the less usable the product will be.
3. The larger the number of complaints, the sooner will a company be out of business.

Actually, the first statement seems to be well known to many software companies for a long time. It must be the reason why they hire so few user interface designers. The second statement is to my experience both true and wrong. It is true that outsourcing of services, such as usability, implies the danger that wonderful designs may never be implemented. It is wrong because influences from outside bring new ideas and impetus into a company. The third statement may be plausible, but is hard to verify because no company will make the number of complaints it gets public.

 

Finally, a Screen Close to Matching a Book

Figure 8: The IBM high-resolution LCD monitor (from IBM paper)

More by accident than intention, I found an impressive piece of hardware at the IBM booth - something I had dreamt of for a long time. But surely it will not be affordable for the rest of us for a while to come: IBM demonstrated a high-resolution 22-inch LCD monitor with a resolution of a little more than 200 dpi (3,840-by-2,400 resolution, which translates to 204 pixels per square inch, or 9.2 million pixels overall). Though this is not quite the 300 dpi that Xerox once said is required to make reading on screens as comfortable as on paper, it really comes close. The images presented showed amazing detail, and text display was well-defined and crisp. IBM can deliver this screen, but so far it does so only in very small quantities.

Currently, there is a tendency to use smaller and smaller fonts, especially for Websites. This move tries to catch up with paper. On paper, letters can be much smaller than on screens because of the high resolution that paper offers. On screens, however, this tendency makes reading even more strenuous and in some cases may even violate legal accessibility requirements for the disabled (however, nobody seems to care about this). A screen like the one presented by IBM would resolve all these issues.

Links

• Link to IBM Research

Conference Usability and Reception

Wouldn't you expect that a conference on usability is surely well-organized? Surprisingly, this is not the case in every aspect. For example, the CHI 2001 Website did not offer much information for a long time. On-line registration required the use of a certain version of the Internet Explorer, and I had to restart the registration process several times.

Due to the distribution over the fourth and the sixth levels of the conference center, attendees had to squeeze themselves onto narrow escalators - one going steeply up and the other going steeply down. Only after a while, I discovered a "secret" elevator which helped me to have more time during the breaks.

And what about the conference reception? Well, one free drink may not be that stunning, but Seattle's Museum of Flight where the reception was held certainly was. I entered Air Force One and found in a secret corner one more usability highlight, a "Swiss-army knife" for transportation: a flying car from the sixties:

Figure 9: The Aerocar Model III from 1968

Links

• Museum of Flight (Seattle, WA)
• Page for Aerocar Model III (Museum of Flight, Seattle, WA)

The Visible and the Invisible Ones

Each year, the CHI has sponsors, divided into champion sponsors and contributing sponsors depending on their contributions. The sponsors are mentioned during the opening and closing plenaries, are listed in the proceedings and abstracts, and typically have booths in the exhibition hall. Of, course, all the big companies were among the sponsors, such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Motorola, Oracle, HP and Nokia. Even consultants, such as Cooper Interaction Design and Jared Spool's company User Interface Engineering were among the sponsors and had booths. On the other hand, there were notable exceptions. Among of the invisible ones was the longtime innovator Apple Computers Inc., another was a large software company, located in Walldorf, Germany. Hopefully, the latter will change its attitude in the future. Distributing Design Guild flyers will not suffice to make this company better known within the HCI community.

Final Words

Figure 10: Is it the flying car?

Visiting the CHI is always like being in "trance" for me. They keep you busy from morning to night for a couple of days, with only little time left for taking a breath. Not that I discovered tons of new things and ideas that will change my future work, but once again I felt I was at the central nerve of usability. That's reason enough to queue in for one of the next CHIs. The last day - finally - I had some time left to see Seattle. A colleague of mine and I walked to the Space Needle, rode the elevator to the top (184 m) and took a couple of awesome photos.

Later, we strolled through Pike Place Market (also known als Public Market Center) and bought presents for our families. Luckily, the flight back was not as rough as announced - one colleague of mine who flew earlier had a really rough flight. Sorry, Sylvia.

All photos, unless noted otherwise, by Gerd Waloszek (taken with Nikon Coolpix 990).

 

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