4. Alternating Repetition

03 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

Tags

beauty, Design, diversity, HCI, human factors, order, repetition, UX

(This is the fourth post in a series of 15 which aim to examine the fifteen properties of natural order postulated by Christopher Alexander. I wonder whether the property of “Alternating Repetition” could be more frequently incorporated into User Experience and what the pros and cons might be).

4. Alternating Repetition

In nature, whether we look at clouds, waves, mountain ranges, forests, plants, the leaves of plants, or almost any animal, we see alternating repetition. Such natural repetition is almost never precise and complete replication. Just as every reproductive act of life introduces an element of recombination as well as the possibility of mutation, so too the repetitions we see in life are not mathematical. We indeed see patterns repeated in a line or in a circle, but the instances in living things show variation. Similarly, human artifacts made with the hands; e.g., weaving or poetry or rock walls or tennis strokes show repetition but with slight and subtle variations.

If you look at modern industrial society, you see many examples of exact repetition. It’s true that if you looked at 10,000 examples of the same brand and model pen, or notebook, or scissors, or streak knives under a microscope, you could likely find small differences. To the naked eye, however, they would appear identical. Seeing 10,000 pebbles, leaves, or waves you would always see slight to moderate differences. To me, it makes a difference in terms of beauty. Handmade items and human actions naturally show more variation than things produced by machines.

The various “elements” of a User Interface generally have the feel of something made by machine. The size of all the application icons on the tool bar for instance are the same. They are all almost the same exact shape and size. On my tool bar the icons for Finder, Launchpad, Mail, Safari, Chrome, FaceTime, Messenger, Maps, Photos, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, System Preferences, Keynote, Pages, Preview, and News are the same. However, the Kindle icon is slightly larger and more square. The Zoom icon is very slightly rounder and the icon for Facebook is circular. In other words, there is some slight variation, but mainly the icons are the same in outline, but different inside. But the set of icons on the tool bar has no sense of “harmony.”

Note that the tool bar is both abnormally homogeneous in terms of positioning and size but completely disconnected in terms of the images which differ in a random disharmony seldom exhibited in nature.

Instead, each icon seems to scream out its individuality without regard to its neighbors. (Which reminds me of things like masking, vaccinations, telling the truth, etc.). Anyway, the layout of the toolbar, to me, it’s reminiscent of driving down the highway and seeing a sequence of billboards, each advertising some random product or service in no particular order. Often, each billboard is the same size but they are independent of each other. The one exception I can think of were the “Burma Shave” signs along the highway. Each sign was a small rectangle with several words on it. About a quarter mile down the road, another sign would appear. They were meant to be seen in a specific order and together, they made a kind of “story” which usually rhymed. Typically, the signs touted the joys of the product — “Burma Shave” — or, provided public service announcements about safe driving.

In the early days of computing, putting in “variation” would have been insanely wasteful of space and processing time. This is no longer true. Yet, the “look and feel” of User Interfaces remains, for the most part, quite “mechanical” or “mechanistic” rather than “natural.” Sometimes modern computer games include naturalistic looking variations in how repeated plants, rocks, clouds, etc. are represented. Look at the palm trees and you will see variations among the trees that are reminiscent of the real palm trees I see every day. In addition, each tree contains a number of fronds that repeat a generic theme; yet, each front is somewhat different. The fronds themselves each contain alternating repetition, just as do real palm tree fronds.

We might consider whether it would make sense to put more natural looking alternating repetition into the more utilitarian aspects of user experience. For example, could it be both more beautiful and more useful to allow more variation in the way files are represented visually? Will Hill, James Hollan, Dave Wrobleski, & Tim McCandless suggested (in a CHI ’92 paper) that physical documents such as manuals naturally show wear in places where they are most used. They suggested that the visual representation of computer documents might be altered slightly to show which documents have been used or edited more and also that such cues within a document might also be useful.

Hill, William; Hollan, James; Wrobleski, Dave; McCandless, Tim; “Edit Wear and Read Wear,” Human factors in computing systems: Striking a balance. Proceedings of the 9th annual conference. SIGCHI ’92 Proceedings (Monterey, CA), Addison-Wesley, 1992, pp. 3-9.

One of the few cookbooks I use with some regularity is entitled, Fat Free and Flavor Full. The recipe I’ve used many times is the black bean salad. If I open the physical book, it naturally falls open to that particular recipe. “Open Recent” I find a very useful features of the Pages application, but I don’t see a way to look at files based on overall frequency of use. It could be the case that there are some applications for which you would want specific files to be easily found depending on the season or the date. The authors of “Edit Wear and Read Wear” were mainly talking about the utility of encoding information about a file into its visual representation. There might well be aesthetic reasons to do so as well.

The wooden blinds shown below exhibit alternating repetition in several ways. First, there is the matter of perspective. Some variation almost always presents itself simply by virtue of the fact that I typically view the blinds at an angle and some are closer to me than others. This means that the size, and the retinal shape are slightly different. Second, there is variation caused by slight changes in the angle of the slats relative to vertical. Third, each slat is made of wood. The wood itself shows rings (or more commonly a planar projection of the concentric cylinders.

The wooden blinds, because they are illuminated from the outside by tree-filtered sunlight also show further variation; however I don’t think that is typically “alternating repetition.” Perhaps not coincidentally, although I find it a little interesting, I can’t say I find that source of variation to be beautiful to me. The other three all add to the aesthetics, at least to me.

Is it feasible to introduce alternating repetition with slight variation into User Interfaces? Would it be desirable? What negative side-effects might arise? Do you even agree with Christopher Alexander that Alternating Repetition is an aspect of natural beauty and beautiful design? One thing that occurs to me is that if some element of the UI is more variable in outline etc., it may mean that the actions upon that object must deal with that variability. If designed greenfield, that might not be too difficult. But if, for example, the code for dragging and dropping was written under a presumption of zero variability, that might be problematic. What do you think?

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Discussion of Alternating Repetition with additional visual examples can be found here:

https://onluminousgrounds.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/the-fifteen-fundamental-properties-of-living-structure-4-alternating-repetition/

Use Diversity as a Resource

The Tree of Life

Life is a Dance

Take a Glance; Join the Dance

Fifteen Properties of Natural Beauty & UX/HCI

22 Thursday Jul 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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Tags

Design, HCI, human factors, UX

Photo by Dominika Greguu0161ovu00e1 on Pexels.com

This is an introduction to a series of blog posts on the “Nature of Beauty.”

Christopher Alexander was an architect and city planner. In his MIT dissertation, Alexander took a very mathematical approach to design. In our studies at IBM Research on the “Psychology of Design” I first ran across that work (Notes on the Synthesis of Form). Later in his career, however, he took a quite different approach to design. With an international team, he visited many different parts of the world to see what “worked” in terms of architecture and city planning. The results were documented in the form of a “Pattern Language.” In this sense, a “Pattern” is the named solution to a recurring problem. A “Pattern Language” is a connected lattice of Patterns that together, “cover” a field.

Others (including me) have emulated his approach for other fields such as pedagogy, organizational change, object-oriented programming, software development processes, and human-computer interaction. A few years ago, I suggested such Patterns for collaboration and teamwork. Here’s a link to the introduction of that effort. Here’s a link to the index of those Patterns.

Still later in life, Christopher Alexander embarked on a project called The Nature of Order. This work is documented in a series of four books. In the first book, he proposes fifteen properties of good form in nature — and in beautiful artifacts. Explication and example will be needed to appreciate what these properties mean. In this post, I list the fifteen and will attempt to explain the first one with respect to UX and Human Computer Interaction.

First, you might be wondering what relevance these fifteen properties of nature might have to interface design. After all, can’t the designer just test out their ideas empirically until a UX design is shown to be usable, learnable, and perhaps enjoyable as well? Well, sure. Ideally, every possibility could be explored and tested empirically.

But how many possibilities are there? Without any guiding principles, there are not only more possibilities than can be tested by you. There are more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe. Imagine a very simple interface on a small mobile device. Let’s say there are only ten screens in your whole application. The iPhone 12, for instance, has nearly 3 million pixels. 24-bit color allows over 16 million colors per pixel. If you literally tested out every possible arrangement, this would mean 16 million to the 3 millionth power for each of the ten screens!! The number of atoms in the universe is estimated to be between 10**78 and 10**82. Obviously, this is far less than 16,000,000**3,000,000 !!

Of course, I’m not suggesting that anyone would attempt a pixel by pixel test of an interface, but the general point remains: you need some way to limit testing to reasonable alternatives. The notion of using these fifteen properties is not that they dictate a particular design nor that you don’t need to do any empirical testing. Rather, the fifteen properties could be used to help guide design. The properties could be thought of as reducing the search space.

Here are the fifteen properties:

Levels of Scale
Strong Centers
Boundaries
Alternating Repetition
Positive Space
Good Shape
Local Symmetries
Deep Interlock and Ambiguity
Contrast
Gradients
Roughness
Echoes
The Void
Simplicity and Inner Calm
Not-separateness

Perhaps the names themselves might resonate with your own sense of aesthetics for design and composition, but let’s review them one by one.

The first is “Levels of Scale.”

When it comes to natural beauty, a few moments reflection may provide you with many examples. Christopher Alexander claims this property is also present in traditional art and architecture across many cultures. As you see something such as, e.g., the Taj Mahal or the Parthenon in the distance, you see a beautiful shape. As you approach it, you will see more and more levels of scale. By contrast, many modern buildings are largely featureless between the overall shape and the texture of the building material.

If your design has multiple levels of scale, it will be easier for your user to orient themselves; to know “where they are” in the application and therefore easier to take appropriate action. It’s something to keep in mind with respect to your design — whether hardware, software, documentation, or a building.

How could you use or see “Levels of Scale” as a desirable property of what you are doing right now?

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Some references to Pattern Languages in HCI.

Pan, Y., Roedl, D., Blevis, E. and Thomas, J. (2012), Re-conceptualizing Fashion in Sustainable HCI. Designing Interactive Systems conference. New Castle, UK, June 2012.

Thomas, J. C. (2012). Patterns for emergent global intelligence. In Creativity and Rationale: Enhancing Human Experience By Design J. Carroll (Ed.), New York: Springer.

Thomas, J. (2012). Edging Toward Sustainability. CHI Workshop Position Paper for Simple Sustainable Living. CHI 2012, Austin, Texas.

Thomas, J. (2012), Enhancing Collective Intelligence by Enhancing Social Roles and Diversity. CSCW Workshop Position Paper for Collective Intelligence and Community Discourse and Action. CSCW 2012, Bellvue, WA.

Thomas, J. (2011), Toward a pattern language for socializing technology for seniors. Workshop position paper accepted for CSCW 2011 workshop: Socializing technology among seniors in China, Hangzhou, China, March 19-23.

Thomas, J. (2011). Toward a Socio-Technical Pattern Language for Social Systems in China and the World. Workshop position paper accepted for CSCW 2011 workshop: Designing social and collaborative systems for China. Hangzhou, China, March 19-23.

Thomas, J. (2011). Toward a Socio-Technical Pattern Language for Social Media and International Development. Workshop position paper accepted for CSCW 2011 workshop: Social media for development, Hangzhou, China, March 19-23.

Bonanni, L., Busse, D. Thomas, J., Bevis, E., Turpeinen, M. & Jardin, N. (2011). Visible, actionalble, sustainable: Sustainable interactin design in professional domains. Workshop accepted for CHI 2011. Vancouver, B.C., May 7-12.

Thomas, J. (2011). Focus on Ego as Universe and Everyday Sustainability. Workshop position paper accepted for CHI 2011 workshop: Everyday practice and sustainable HCI: Understanding and learning from cultures of (un)sustainability. Vancouver, B.C., May 7-12.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2242380_A_Pattern_Approach_to_Interaction_Design

Click to access dearden-patterns-hci09.pdf

https://www.mit.edu/~jtidwell/common_ground.html

Thomas, J. C. (2018), Building common ground in a wildly webbed world: a pattern language approach. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 16 (3), 338-350.

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“The Psychology of Design”

08 Thursday Jul 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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creativity, Design, HCI, human factors, IBM, leadership, research, UX

“The Psychology of Design”

I worked at IBM, all told, about 28 years. During that time, management put more and more pressure on us to make our work “relevant” to the business. In fact, the pressure was always there, even from the beginning. Over the years, however, we were “encouraged” to shorten evermore the time gap between doing the research and having the results of that research impact the bottom line. This was not an IBM-only phenomenon.

I was a researcher, not a politician, but it seemed to me that at the same time researchers in industrial labs were put under pressure to produce results that could be seen in terms of share price (and therefore payouts to executives in terms of stock options), academia was also experiencing more and more pressure to publish more studies more quickly — and to make sure “intellectual property” was protected to make sure the university could monetize your work. This was about the same time that, at least in America, increasing productivity and the wealth that sprung from that increased productivity stopped being shared with the workers.

In the late 1970’s, the “Behavioral Sciences” group began to study the “psychology of design.” For the first few months, this was an extremely pleasurable & productive group, due mainly to my colleagues. Over the next few blogs, I’ll focus on some specific techniques and methods that you may find useful in your own work.

In this short story though, I want to focus instead on some broader issues relevant to “technology transfer”, “leadership” and “management.” Even if you are or aspire to be an expert in UX or HCI or design, I assure you that these broader issues will impact you, your work and your career. I wouldn’t suggest becoming obsessed with them, but being aware of their potential impact could help you in your own work and career.

It is telling that, almost invariably, whenever I told someone inside IBM (or, for that matter, outside IBM) that I was studying the “psychology of design,” people responded by asking, “the design of what?” So, I would explain that we were interested in the generic processes of design and how to improve them. I would explain that we were interested in understanding, predicting, and controlling these processes to enable them to be more effective. I would explain that we could apply these findings to any kind of design: software design, hardware design, organizational design, and (see last post about IBM) communication design. I would explain that design was a quintessentially human activity. I would also explain that design was an incredibly leveraged activity to improve.

Looking back on it, I still think all these things are true. I also see that I missed the “signal” people were giving me that, while I thought of design as something that could be studied as a process, that most people did not think of it that way. To them, it was never the “psychology of design,” but only the design of something.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree that somewhat different skills are involved in designing a great advertising campaign, a great building, and a great application. I agree that different communities of practice treat various common issues differently. I still think it’s worth studying commonalities across domains. For one thing, we may find an excellent way of generating ideas, say, that the advertising community of practice uses that neither architects nor applications developers had ever tried. Or, vice versa.

My own academic background was in “Experimental Psychology.” We were forever doing experiments that we believed were about psychological processes that were thought to be invariant regardless of the domain. It was an axiom of our whole enterprise that studying memory for any one thing shed light on how we remember every other thing. Similar studies looked at decision making or problem solving or multi-tasking. We came to understand that there were some interesting exceptions to being able to separate content from process. For instance, it is much easier to multi-task a spatial task and a verbal task than it is to multi-task two independent spatial tasks or two independent verbal tasks.

We used a spectrum of techniques to study “design” from laboratory studies of toy problems, to observing people doing real-world design problems while thinking aloud. After about 3-4 months of very productive work, we were told that we had to make our work relevant to software development. That should be the focus of our work. We were told that this command came from higher-ups in IBM. That might have been true, or perhaps partly true.

It might also be relevant that someone in our management chain might have been the recipient of a grant from ONR which was specifically focused on software development. So far as I can tell, nothing had been done on that grant. So, our past, present, and future work could have been co-opted to be “results” done under the auspices of the ONR grant.

In any case, regardless of the “reasons,” the group began to focus specifically on software design. In one study, we used IBM software experts as subjects. Each person was given information that was geared toward a specific transformation that occurred in software development. One person was presented with the description of a “situation” that included a number of “issues” and they were asked to write a requirements document. In real life, I would hope that this would be done in a dialogue (and, indeed, in other studies, we recorded such dialogues). Absent such dialogues, what we found was that different software experts — all from IBM research — and all given the same documentation about a set of problems generated vastly different problem statements and overall approaches.

In other parts of the study, other experts were variously given requirements documents and asked to do an overall, high level system design, or given a high level design and asked to design an algorithm, or given an algorithm and asked to code a section. There was always diversity but the initial showed the greatest diversity. The initial stage is also the one that can cause the most expensive errors. If you begin with a faulty set of requirements — a misreading about how to even go about the problem — then, the overall project is almost certain to incur schedule slip, cost overruns, or outright failure.

While the vital importance of the initial stages of design is true in software development, I would argue that it is likely also true for advertising campaigns, building designs — and even true for the design of research programs. We designed our research agenda under the assumption that we had a long time; that we were studying design processes independently of specific communities of practice or the nature of the problems people were attempting to address. We assumed that there was no “hidden agenda.” Although we believed we would eventually need to show some relevance to IBM business, we had no idea, when we began, that only relevance to software design would be “counted.”

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Some of our studies on the “Psychology of Design.”

Carroll, J. and Thomas, J.C. (1982). Metaphor and the cognitive representation of computer systems. IEEE Transactions on Man, Systems, and Cybernetics., SMC-12 (2), pp. 107-116.

Thomas, J.C. and Carroll, J. (1981). Human factors in communication. IBM Systems Journal, 20 (2), pp. 237-263.

Thomas, J.C. (1980). The computer as an active communication medium. Invited paper, Association for Computational Linguistics, Philadelphia, June 1980. Proceedings of the 18th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics., pp. 83-86.

Malhotra, A., Thomas, J.C. and Miller, L. (1980). Cognitive processes in design. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 12, pp. 119-140.

Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1980). Presentation and representation in design problem solving. British Journal of Psychology/,71 (1), pp. 143-155.

Carroll, J., Thomas, J.C. and Malhotra, A. (1979). A clinical-experimental analysis of design problem solving. Design Studies, 1 (2), pp. 84-92.

Thomas, J.C. (1978). A design-interpretation analysis of natural English. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 10, pp. 651-668.

Thomas, J.C. and Carroll, J. (1978). The psychological study of design. Design Studies, 1 (1), pp. 5-11.

Miller, L.A. and Thomas, J.C. (1977). Behavioral issues in the use of interactive systems: Part I. General issues. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 9 (5), pp. 509-536.

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Blog posts about the importance of solving the “right” problem.

The Doorbell’s Ringing. Can you get it?

https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/13/reframing-the-problem-paperwork-working-paper/

Problem Framing. Good Point.

https://petersironwood.com/2021/01/16/i-say-hello-you-say-what-city-please/

Problem formulation: Who knows what.

How to frame your own hamster wheel.

The slow seeming snapping turtle.

Author Page on Amazon.

I’d Like Sauerkraut on the Ice Cream

14 Friday May 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

A/B testing, experiments, HCI, human factors, psychology, Study, UX

Which is Better? A or B?

Nearly everyone in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (related fields are known as Human Factors, and User Experience) has heard of A/B testing. How should we lay out our web pages? Should we have a tool bar? Should it be always visible or only visible on rollover? What type fonts and color schemes should we use?

Clearly A/B testing is useful. However — there are at least two fundamental limitations to A/B testing.

First, for almost any real application, there are way too many choices for each of them to be tested. This is where the experience of the practitioner and/or the knowledge of the field and of human psychology can be very helpful. Your experience and theory can help you make an educated guess about how to prioritize the questions to be studied. Some questions may have an obvious answer. Others might not make much difference. Some questions are more fundamental than others. For instance, if you decided not to use any text at all on your site, it wouldn’t matter which “font” your users prefer.

Second, some decisions interact with others. For instance, you may test a font size in the laboratory with your friends. Just as you suspected, it’s perfectly legible. Then, it turns out that your users are mainly elderly people who use your app while going on cruises or bus tours. In general, the elderly have less acute vision that the friends you studied in the lab. Not only that, you were showing the font on a stable display under steady conditions of illumination. The bus riders are subject to vibration (which also makes reading more difficult) and frequent changes in illumination due to the sun or artificial light being intermittently filtered by trees, buildings, etc. Age, Vibration, and Illumination changes are variables that interact by being positively correlated. In other cases, variables interact in other and more complex ways. For example, increasing stress/motivation at first increases performance. But beyond a certain point, increasing stress or motivation actually decreases performance. This is sometimes known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes–Dodson_law)

The story doesn’t stop there though. How much stress is optimal partly depends on the novelty and complexity of the task. If it’s a simple or extremely practiced task, quite a bit of stress is the optimal point. Imagine how long you might hang on to a bar for one dollar, for a thousand dollars, or to save yourself from falling to the bottom of a 1000 foot ravine. For a moderately complex task, a moderate level of motivation is optimal. For something completely novel and creative, however, a low level of stress is often optimal.

The real point isn’t about these particular interactions. The more general point is that testing many variables independently will not necessarily result in an optimal overall solution. Experience — your own — and the experiences of others — can help dissect a design problem into those decisions that are likely to be relatively independent of each other and those that must be considered together.

Life itself has apparently “figured out” an interesting way to deal with the issue of the interaction of variables. Genes that work well together end up close together on the chromosome. That means that they are more likely to stay together and not end up on different chromosomes because of cross-over. By contrast, genes that are independent or even have a negative impact, when taken together, tend to end up far apart so that they are likely to be put on different chromosomes.

So, for example, one might expect that a gene for more “feather-like skin” and more “wing-like front legs” might be close to each other while a gene for thicker, heavier bones would be far away.

Clearly, the tricky way variables interact isn’t limited to “User Experience Design” of course. Think of learning a sport such as tennis or golf. You can’t really learn and practice each component of a stroke separately. That’s not the way the body works. If you are turning your hips, for example, as you swing, your arm and hand will feel differently than if you tried to keep them still while you swung.

Do you have any good tips for dealing with interactions of variables? In User Experience or any other domain?

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Some experiences in UX/HCI

Chain Saws Make the Best Hair Trimmers

In the Brain of the Beholder

Study Slain by Swamp Monster!

Buggy Whips to Finger Tips

https://petersironwood.com/2018/07/12/chain-saws-make-the-best-hair-trimmers/

https://petersironwood.com/2018/07/17/in-the-brain-of-the-beholder/

https://petersironwood.com/2018/07/19/study-slain-by-swamp-monster/

https://petersironwood.com/2018/07/26/buggy-whips-to-fingertips/

Career Advice from Polonius

20 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

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career, HCI, human factors, usability, UX

Career Advice from Polonius: To Thine Own Self be True

“To thine own self be true.” This advice comes from Polonius who is giving advice to his son in Act I, scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Polonius says: “This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Let’s focus on the first part.

One of the dreams of education is to customize teaching to the specific learning style(s) of individual students. This was a hot topic when I was in graduate school.

Around 50 years ago.

Some day, your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren may be the beneficiaries of learning experiences that are individualized to their specific styles. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but it could happen. It isn’t only a question of research on what various styles are and how to present material that resonates with these various styles. There is also the question of priorities and dollars and personnel.

But meanwhile, here’s the good news. You don’t have to wait for another 50 years of research and a reshuffling of priorities so folx spend more money on education and less on, let’s say, cosmetics and professional sports. As I say, don’t hold your breath.

But let’s get back to the good news. The good news is that you can discover for yourself how to maximize your own learning as well as what your particular talents are.

One cautionary note: Don’t be a jerk about it. If you’re in a group dealing with grief, don’t say, “Well, I learn best if a subject is reduced to a few hundred polynomial formulae. So, let’s start right there. Let’s reduce grief to three dimensions. Later, of course, we can do a proper multidimensional scaling exercise to determine the optimal number of dimensions.”

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

No. Don’t say that. Of course, you’re free to suggest that approach, but chances are, in this situation, and in most realistic group situations, you will be treated to information in the same manner as many others who have different styles from yours.

However, in many situations, you are, far and away the main important stakeholder. You can use your knowledge of how things work for you in order to strategize and plan how you will learn about things. You can organize and arrange your work so you’ll be more productive.

Here’s a trivial example. I have learned that my eyes have a wisdom of their own. If, for instance, I’m going out for a walk around the garden to take some pictures of the sunset on the flowers, I grab my stuff and find myself turning and staring at the hat-rack on the way out the door. When I was younger, I would ignore this. But what I have learned is that my eyes are really good at knowing what to look at. So, even if I’m in a hurry, I take a moment to reflect on why my eyes are looking there. And, then, it comes to me. I’ll do better if I wear a brimmed hat to keep the sun out of my eyes while I look at my iPhone.

By paying attention to this little quirk, I’ve saved myself a lot of grief over the years; e.g., not left the house without my wallet, etc.

Here’s another example. I’m very good at seeing “patterns” emerge from a small number of examples or when there is considerable noise involved. This serves me well as my hearing diminishes because I can use top-down processing. Generally, but not always, I understand what people are saying. If I try to listen to a foreign language tape that is only isolated audio words, I have no hope of knowing what they are saying. “Key” “Tee”, “Pea”, sound exactly the same.

Seeing patterns easily is generally a nice capacity. However, I’m horrible at finding my own typos immediately after I write something. I actually “see” what I meant to type. A week later, I’m pretty good at catching the errors. If I had more patience, I would wait a week to proofread for every blog post, but being patient isn’t a strength either. I do go back over old posts occasionally and fix the typos (which I never saw at the time).

When I go to the movies — remember when we used to go to movies? — anyway, if I went to a comedy, I was very likely to laugh too soon. I “hear” the punchline two lines earlier than it actually occurs. There’s no benefit to my laughing early! But that’s when the punchline hits me. I do keep it soft so as not to disturb the others in the audience. On the other hand, I’m pretty good at “discovering” the playing patterns of my tennis opponents and anticipating what they are going to do. Naturally, I don’t always guess right, but I do way better than chance.

I bring up these examples to illustrate a generality; that most of these individual differences have an upside and a downside. Mainly, learning about my own styles and capacities is something I learned well after leaving high school. That makes sense. In school — or at least, the schools I went to — everybody got the same instruction in the same way almost all the time. But as an adult, you often have a lot of control over your own timing, flow of information, etc. I think it’s worth your while to look back at your experience and discover what you have difficulty with, what you’re OK at and what you are exceptionally good at. When you have a choice, use the approach you’re really good at.

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More background on “knowing yourself”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself

History of Know Thyself

I Say: Hello! You Say: “What City Please?”

16 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

efficiency, HCI, human factors, problem framing, problem solving, UX

In the not so distant past, people would often call directory assistance operators. These operators would find a number for you. For an additional charge, they would dial it for you. In fact, this was a very commonly used system. Phone companies would have large rooms filled with such operators who worked very hard and very politely, communicating with a hostile and irrational public.

Customer: “I have to get the number of that bowling alley right near where the A&P used to be before they moved into that new shopping center.”

Operator: “Sir, you haven’t told me what town you’re in. Anyway…”

Customer: “What town?! Why I’m right here in Woburn where I’ve always been!”

There were so many operators that the phone companies wanted their processes to be efficient. Operators were trained to be friendly and genial but not chatty. The phone companies searched for better keyboards and better screen layouts to shave a second here or there off the average time it took to handle a call.

There are some interesting stories in that attempt but that we will save for another article, but here I want to tell you what made the largest impact on the average time per call. Not a keyboard. Not a display. Not an AI system.

It was simply changing the greeting.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

Operators were saying something like: “New England Telephone. How can I help you?”

After our intervention, operators instead said, “What city please?” It’s shorter and it’s takes less time to say. But the big change was not in how long the operator took to ask the question. The biggest savings was how this change in greeting impacted the customer’s behavior.

When the operator begins with “How can I help you?” the customer, or at least some fraction of them, are put into a frame of mind of a conversation. They might respond thusly:

“Oh, well, you know my niece is getting married! Yeah! In just a month, and she still hasn’t shopped for a dress! Can you believe it? So, I need the number for that — if it were up to me, I would go traditional, but my niece? She’s — she’s going avant-garde so I need the number of that dress shop on Main Street here in Arlington.”

Photo by Tuu1ea5n Kiu1ec7t Jr. on Pexels.com

With the “What City Please?” greeting, the customer is put into a more businesslike frame of mind and answers more succinctly. They now understand their role as proving information in a joint problem solving task with the operator. A typical answer would now be:

“Arlington.”

“In Arlington, what listing?”

“Dress shop on Main Street.”

The way in which a conversation begins signals what type of conversation it is to be. We know this intuitively. Suppose you walked up to an old friend and they begin with: “Name?” You would be taken aback. On the other hand, suppose you walk up to the line at the DMV and the clerk says, “Hey, have you seen that latest blog post by John Thomas on problem framing?” You would be equally perplexed!

Conversation can be thought of partly as a kind of mutual problem solving exercise. And, before that problem solving even begins, one party or the other will tend to “frame” the conversation. That framing can be incredibly important.

Even the very first words can cause someone to frame what kind of a conversation this is meant to be.

Words matter.

The Primacy Effect and The Destroyer’s Advantage

https://petersironwood.com/2018/02/13/context-setting-entrance/

Essays on America: Wednesday

Author Page on Amazon

Getting Into (the “right”) Shape

07 Monday Sep 2020

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cats, consumer products, Design, form, function, HCI, human factors, kittens, usability, UX

A truism we have all heard is that “form should follow function.” I tend to agree with this as a good general principle, but only if the designer has given more than 30 milliseconds of thought about what the actual function is. Even better is to observe function being used in practice. Below, I give examples of how form may look like function but not actually follow (actual) function.

The first comes from the complex and technical domain of nail clippers. My nails are tough and I actually need to use toenail clippers to cut my fingernails. But the same principle applies to both fingernail clippers and toenail clippers. I see many many examples where the designer has attempted to curve the surface of the nail clipper to “match” the curve of nails. This is a brilliant idea, but only if every nail on every human being on the planet has the same curvature. A priori, I would tent to think this is not the case, but being empirically oriented I decided to test it out by actually looking at real nails. I looked at my thumbnail and the fingernail on my little finger. Sure enough, my hypothesis was borne out. They are NOT the same. What this means is that a nail clipper that is curved so that it fits my pinkie will wreak havoc when applied to my thumbnail. I am probably going out on a limb here, but I suspect that if one were to include fingernails from other people in this sample, one might find an even wider variation in curvature. What are people thinking when they make curved nail clippers? I can only speculate that they have never looked at the fingernails of more than one person and that, indeed, they never looked at more than one fingernail on that one person.

If only there were a solution. Sigh. Oh, wait! There is a solution. Make the cutting surface of the nail clippers flat. This enables the person to clip nails of any curvature. It does, of course, require multiple cuts. It has the added advantage, that if you so wish, you can sharpen your nails so they resemble cat claws.

Cats bring me to my second example. When we moved to California amid a large garden, we wanted to let our cats to spend most of their time outdoors, partly so litter box cleaning would be at a minimum. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that while the outdoors here offers many opportunities for cats to be hunters of lizards and mice, it also offers even more opportunities for them to be prey for bobcats, cougars, eagles, and especially coyotes.

Now, here is a beautifully shaped litter box (a gift). It even has a place for the cats to clean their paws before they track litter back into the living room. Nice. Unfortunately, this is a beautiful shape by someone who has never cleaned a litter box, at least not by litter box shovel. Perhaps they clean litter boxes with their bare hands? Anyway, this curved shape does not jibe well with the typical litter box shovel. Of course, the cats could choose to do their business along the gently curving side of the litter box. And, of course, they never do. They choose instead the places along the edge of the litter box where there is maximum curvature.

The idea that there is a place for the cats to clean their feet before venturing back out into the living room or pouncing up on the kitchen counter is a sweet idea. It is an idea that would never occur to the owner of an actual cat, however. Here are two cats we obtained from a shelter (Tally on the left, Molly on the right).

They are cute, but defective in that they do not speak English, nor so far as I have been able to discover, any other language. So, despite my explanations that they are supposed to wipe their feet on the way out of the litter box, they do not. Instead, they do their business on the foot-wiping section of the litter box. So, apart from the annoying high curvature, if you are unlucky enough to get a cat who either does not understand complex sentences or just doesn’t care, this is probably not the litter box for them either. It might work for cats who: 1) speak your language fluently and 2) are cooperative. (Recent estimates indicate the total number of such cats is zero).

The third example comes from health care and is a bit more abstract. On my insurance ID card is a field which is labeled: “Identification number.” In order to use this, I have to go to their website and “register.” In order to register, the website says I need to enter my “identification number.” But in actuality, that does not work! No. Instead, I am supposed to leave off the first three characters in what is labeled my identification number. The website doesn’t say this. But the help desk is quite familiar with the issue and will happily explain it to you after you listen to musak for three or four hours. This is not so much shape not matching real function, but label not matching function.

The fourth example comes from some of our “bookcases.” Why, I hear you ask, are there scare quotes around bookcases. I will tell you why. I put scare quotes because although the shelves are flat and just the right size for books, and although this piece of “furniture” is sold as a bookcase, in fact, it is a nick-knack shelf. My wife and I foolishly tried filling it with books and it collapsed. So, in this case, the label and the shape lead one to believe it serves a particular function but the underlying functionality is insufficient to fulfill that dream of ours (that the “bookshelf” would actually hold books).

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The fifth example comes from my experience with companies who want to simplify things for their customers. That sounds worthwhile. So, they launch major efforts to make their products “consistent.” But they soon learn that making products behave consistently years after they were independently developed is way too expensive. So instead, they focus on making them look the same and using consistent terms across products, while leaving the underlying functionality behave quite differently. To me, this is quite akin to the bookshelf case. Making things look the same while continuing to have them act differently is actually worse for the user than having things that act differently also look different!

The moral of the story? It’s fine to have form follow (and signal) function, but you need to understand how users actually behave. They won’t necessarily behave as you imagine they are supposed to any more than a cat will read your mind in order to please you. Of course, if you see yourself, not as a partner of your users, but rather out to deceive them into thinking they are buying and using something different from what they really are…

—————————————

Introduction to Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation.

Index for Collaboration Patterns

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Using Stories and Storytelling

What do you do when the client insists you solve the “wrong” problem?

Cars that Lock too Much

20 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by petersironwood in America, driverless cars, psychology, story, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

AI, anecdote, computer, HCI, human factors, humor, IntelligentAgent, IT, Robotics, story, UI, UX

{Now, for something completely different, a chapter about “Intelligent Agents” and attempts to do “too much” for the user. If you’ve had similar experiences, please comment! Thanks.}

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At last, we arrive in Kauai, the Garden Island. The rental car we’ve chosen is a bit on the luxurious side (Mercury Marquis), but it’s one of the few with a trunk large enough to hold our golf club traveling bags. W. has been waiting curbside with our bags while I got the rental car and now I pull up beside her to load up. The policeman motioning for me to keep moving can’t be serious, not like a New York police officer. After all, this is Hawaii, the Aloha State. I get out of the car and explain, we will just be a second loading up. He looks at me and then at my rental car and then back to me with a skeptical scowl. He shrugs ever so slightly which I take to mean an assent. “Thanks.” W. wants to throw her purse in the back seat before the heavy lifting starts. She jerks on the handle. The door is locked.

“Why didn’t you unlock the door” she asks, with just a hint of annoyance in her voice. After all, it has been a very long day since we arose before the crack of dawn and drove to JFK in order to spend the day flying here.

“I did unlock the door,” I counter.

“Well, it’s locked now.” She counters my counter.

I can’t deny that, so I walk back around to the driver’s side, and unlock the door with my key and then push the UNLOCK button which so nicely unlocks all the doors.

The police officer steps over, “I thought you said, you’d just be a second.”

“Sorry, officer”, I reply. “We just need to get these bags in. We’ll be on our way.”

Click.

W. tries the door handle. The door is locked again. “I thought you went to unlock the door,” she sighs.

“I did unlock the door. Again. Look, I’ll unlock the door and right away, open it.” I go back to the driver’s side and use my key to unlock the door. Then I push the UNLOCK button, but W’s just a tad too early with her handle action and the door doesn’t unlock. So, I tell her to wait a second.

Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com

“What?” This luxury car is scientifically engineered not to let any outside sounds disturb the driver or passenger. Unfortunately, this same sophisticated acoustic engineering also prevents any sounds that the driver might be making from escaping into the warm Hawaiian air. I push the UNLOCK button again. Wendy looks at me puzzled.

I see dead people in my future if we don’t get the car loaded soon. For a moment, the police officer is busy elsewhere, but begins to stroll back toward us. I rush around the car and grab at the rear door handle on the passenger side.

But just a little too late.

“Okay,” I say in an even, controlled voice. “Let’s just put the bags in the trunk. Then we’ll deal with the rest of our stuff.”

The police officer is beginning to change color now, chameleon like, into something like a hibiscus flower. “Look,” he growls. “Get this car out of here.”

“Right.” I have no idea how we are going to coordinate this. Am I going to have to park and drag all our stuff or what? Anyway, I go to the driver’s side and see that someone has left the keys in the ignition but locked the car door; actually, all the car doors. A terrifying thought flashes into my mind. Could this car have been named after the “Marquis de Sade?” That hadn’t occurred to me before.

Photo by Dom J on Pexels.com

Now, I have to say right off the bat that my father was an engineer and some of my best friends are engineers. And, I know that the engineer who designed the safety locking features of this car had our welfare in mind. I know, without a doubt, that our best interests were uppermost. He or she was thinking of the following kind of scenario.

“Suppose this teenage couple is out parking and they get attacked by the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Wouldn’t it be cool if the doors locked just a split second after they got in. Those saved milliseconds could be crucial.”

Well, it’s a nice thought, I grant you, but first of all, teenage couples don’t bother to “park” any more. And, second, the Creature from the Black Lagoon is equally dated, not to mention dead. In the course of our two weeks in Hawaii, our car locked itself on 48 separate, unnecessary and totally annoying occasions.

And, I wouldn’t mind so much our $100 ticket and the inconvenience at the airport if it were only misguided car locks. But, you and I both know that it isn’t just misguided car locks. No, we are beginning to be bombarded with “smart technology” that is typically really stupid.

man in black suit sitting on chair beside buildings

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

As another case in point, as I type this manuscript, the editor or sadistitor or whatever it is tries to help me by scrolling the page up and down in a seemingly random fashion so that I am looking at the words I’m typing just HERE when quite unexpectedly and suddenly they appear HERE. (Well, I know this is hard to explain without hand gestures; you’ll have to trust me that it’s highly annoying.) This is the same “editor” or “assistant” or whatever that allowed me to center the title and author’s names. Fine. On to the second page. Well, I don’t want the rest of the document centered so I choose the icon for left justified. That seems plausible enough. So far, so good. Then, I happen to look back up to the author’s names. They are also left-justified. Why?

Somehow, this intelligent software must have figured, “Well, hey, if the writer wants this text he’s about to type to be left-justified, I’ll just bet that he or she meant to left-justify what was just typed as well.” Thanks, but no thanks. I went back and centered the author’s names. And then inserted a page break and went to write the text of this book. But, guess what? It’s centered. No, I don’t want the whole book centered, so I click on the icon for left-justification again. And, again, my brilliant little friend behind the scenes left-justifies the author’s names. I’m starting to wonder whether this program is named (using a hash code) for the Marquis de Sade.

On the other hand, in places where you’d think the software might eventually “get a clue” about my intentions, it never does. For example, whenever I open up a “certain program,” it always begins as a default about 4 levels up in the hierarchy of the directory chain. It never seems to notice that I never do anything but dive 4 levels down and open up files there. Ah, well. This situation came about in the first place because somehow this machine figures that “My Computer” and “My hard-drive” are SUB-sets of “My Documents.” What?

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Did I mention another “Intelligent Agent?”…Let us just call him “Staple.” At first, “Staple” did not seem so annoying. Just a few absurd and totally out of context suggestions down in the corner of the page. But then, I guess because he felt ignored, he began to become grumpier. And, more obnoxious. Now, he’s gotten into the following habit. Whenever I begin to prepare a presentation….you have to understand the context.

In case you haven’t noticed, American “productivity” is way up. What does that really mean? It means that fewer and fewer people are left doing the jobs that more and more people used to do. In other words, it means that whenever I am working on a presentation, I have no time for jokes. I’m not in the mood. Generally, I get e-mail insisting that I summarize a lifetime of work in 2-3 foils for an unspecified audience and an unspecified purpose but with the undertone that if I don’t do a great job, I’ll be on the bread line. A typical e-mail request might be like this:

“Classification: URGENT.

“Date: June 4^th, 2002.

“Subject: Bible

“Please summarize the Bible in two foils. We need this as soon as possible but no later than June 3^rd, 2002. Include business proposition, headcount, overall costs, anticipated benefits and all major technical issues. By the way, travel expenses have been limited to reimbursement for hitchhiking gear.”

Okay, I am beginning to get an inkling that the word “Urgent” has begun to get over-applied. If someone is choking to death, that is “urgent.” If a plane is about to smash into a highly populated area, that is “urgent.” If a pandemic is about to sweep the country, that is “urgent.” If some executive is trying to get a raise by showing his boss how smart he is, I’m sorry, but that might be “important” or perhaps “useful” but it is sure as heck not “urgent.”

All right. Now, you understand that inane suggestions, in this context, are not really all that appreciated. In a different era, with a different economic climate, in an English Pub after a couple of pints of McKewan’s or McSorely’s, or Guinness, after a couple of dart games, I might be in the mood for idiotic interruptions. But not here, not now, not in this actual and extremely material world.

So, imagine my reaction to the following scenario. I’m attempting to summarize the Bible in two foils and up pops Mr. “Staple” with a question. “Do you want me to show you how to install the driver for an external projector?” Uh, no thanks. I have to admit that the first time this little annoyance appeared, I had zero temptation to drive my fist through the flat panel display. I just clicked NO and the DON’T SHOW ME THIS HINT AGAIN. And, soon I was back to the urgent job of summarizing the Bible in two foils.

About 1.414 days later, I got another “urgent” request.

“You must fill out form AZ-78666 on-line and prepare a justification presentation (no more than 2 foils). Please do not respond to this e-mail as it was sent from a disconnected service machine. If you have any questions, please call the following [uninstalled] number: 222-111-9999.”

Sure, I’m used to this by now. But when I open up the application, what do I see? You guessed it. A happy smiley little “Staple” with a question:

“Do you want me to show you how to install the driver for an external projector?”

“No,” I mutter to myself, “and I’m pretty sure we already had this conversation. I click on NO THANKS. And I DON’T WANT TO SEE THIS HINT AGAIN. (But of course, the “intelligent agent,” in its infinite wisdom, knows that secretly, it’s my life’s ambition to see this hint again and again and again).

A friend of mine did something to my word processing program. I don’t know what. Nor does she. But now, whenever I begin a file, rather than having a large space in which to type and a small space off to the left for outlining, I have a large space for outlining and a teeny space to type. No-one has been able to figure this out. But, I’m sure that in some curious way, the software has intuited (as has the reader) that I need much more time spent on organization and less time (and space) devoted to what I actually say. (Chalk a “correct” up for the IA. As they say, “Even a blind tiger sometimes eats a poacher.” or whatever the expression is.)

Well, I shrunk the region for outlining and expanded the region for typing and guess what? You guessed it! Another intelligent agent decided to “change my font.” So, now, instead of the font I’m used to … which is still listed in the toolbar the same way, 12 point, Times New Roman … I have a font which actually looks more like 16 point. And at long last, the Intelligent Agent pops up with a question I can relate to! “Would you like me to install someone competent in the Putin misadminstration?”

What do you know? “Even a blind tiger sometimes eats a poacher.”

7B292613-361F-4989-B9AC-762AB956DECD

Author Page on Amazon

Start of the First Book of The Myths of the Veritas

Start of the Second Book of the Myths of the Veritas

Table of Contents for the Second Book of the Veritas

Table of Contents for Essays on America

Index for a Pattern Language for Teamwork and Collaboration

Symmetry

23 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by petersironwood in management, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Business, Design, HCI, human factors, Human-Computer Interaction, politics, truth, UX, Web design

{Something went wrong with WordPress the first two times I tried to post this. I tried to track it down. As best I can tell, my problems came from trying to cut and paste pictures from my Pages file. Even though it looked fine in the editing interface, it appeared blank in the actual viewing interface.}

Symmetry

(Original, free-hand drawing by Zoe Colier).

There are many varieties of symmetry. In many cases, symmetry exists rampantly in nature and symmetry is incorporated into many human designs as well. In this short essay, I want to remind people of several varieties of symmetry and then show how symmetry may also be used as a tool of thought to help solve problems by simplifying the space of possibilities that must be considered.

Symmetry is a concept with far broader application than cutting out paper snowflakes or choosing a nice looking Christmas Tree, Menorah or other Holiday decoration. It is fundamental in logic, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and even in social science. Symmetry exists at many different scales as well. Planets are generally roughly spherical and their orbits are roughly circular.

The human body, along with most other animals, exhibits rough bilateral symmetry in external appearance. If you examine your own fingerprints or the pattern of your moles, for instance, you will see that one side of your body looks slightly different from a mirror image. If, like me, you are a righty who play tennis, you will find the forearm muscles on your right arm are slightly larger than those on the left. What is remarkable to me is not that there are slight variations between left and right but just how slight those variations are! And, we are not alone. Fish, insects, flatworms, roundworms, snakes, turtles, lizards, horses, dogs, cats, apes, and humans are all roughly bilaterally symmetrical in appearance. I say “in appearance” because our internal arrangement of organs is not at all symmetrical.

External Appearance and Internal Organs

In general, it seems to me that most animals possess more complete or “perfect” bilateral symmetry than do most plants. I suspect that this is because animals generally move through a physical environment. Since we can move around, the environmental forces are generally symmetrical and so our ability to react to those environmental forces is also symmetrical. A tree, on the other hand, may have a genetic “blueprint” to be bilaterally or (more likely) radially symmetrical, but it may be subject to strong asymmetrical forces such as wind, a water source, or sunlight versus shade.

Our designed objects are also most often (at least) bilaterally symmetrical, and particularly for those objects which must interact and move through the physical world. Cars, boats, motorcycles, busses, trains, trucks, bikes, skis, surfboards, roller skates, ice skates, snowshoes and tennis shoes all tend to be bilaterally symmetrical. On the inside, however, again just like us, there are often some irregularities. The arrangement of controls of the car, for instance, are asymmetrical. (Each control in itself often does show symmetry. In some cases, this makes it easier to use, especially without looking. I suspect that the symmetry may often be for aesthetic reasons, for ease of manufacturing, for ease of maintenance or replacement or some combination.) The asymmetry of arrangement “works” because the arrangement of displays and controls does not interact with the natural world the way that the car body and wheels do. The controls are designed to interact with a human being. There are also rough conventions for where controls are laid out, how they operate, and what each type looks like. Asymmetry of arrangement is also evident under the hood. However, some of the components such as the engine, the battery, the radiator have symmetry within them. The radiator, which arguably has the most interaction with the outside world, is symmetrically placed though its plumbing is not.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

In the design of User Interaction and Experience, an argument can be made for certain kinds of symmetry. For example, in the Mac editor Pages, which I am using to write this, if the B for bold button background turns blue when bolding is turned on, I expect the background will turn back the way it was (white) when bolding is turned back off. I also expect that italics and underlining will behave the same way, especially because all three are in the same toolbar.

Where possible, it also generally makes sense, I believe, to design so that the functionality of a system is symmetrical. This isn’t always possible. Some actions are necessarily irreversible. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone who has toddlers or who has cats as pets. In the real world, if you shoot someone dead, you cannot “unshoot” them. Unlike a computer system who asks, “Do you really want to delete all your files?” before doing so, guns do not ask that. If you are designing what can be done with a toy robot however, if you can make it go forward, you want to make it so it can go back as well. If it can turn right 90 degrees, you would like to enable it to turn left 90 degrees. Saying, “Oh, yes, but don’t you see, you can, in effect, make it turn left 90 degrees by making it turn right 90 degrees three times?!” does not cut it, IMHO.

Typically, you not only want the functionality to be symmetrical, you also want the control functions and appearances to mirror the symmetry of the functionality. For example, if you can issue the command: “MOVE ROBOT FORWARD THREE PACES” you want the symmetrical function to be evoked this way: “MOVE ROBOT BACKWARD THREE PACES” and not, “THREE PACES BACKWARD FOR ROBOT MOVE.” If you decide to give auditory feedback for the first command that says, “ROBOT MOVING FORWARD THREE PACES” you do not want the reverse command to provide feedback that says, “ROBOT THREE PACES BACKWARD MOVING.” (Oh, by the way, if you cannot provide symmetrical functionality, please do not pretend to do so with a facade of symmetrical looking commands that actually behave asymmetrically!)

Photo by Matan Segev on Pexels.com

A lack of symmetry (or consistency) in the functionality, command structure, or visual appearance often arises because of a lack of communication within the development team. If different functions of the robot are to be implemented by different people, then it’s important that those various people use an agreed upon style guide or Pattern Language or that they communicate frequently. Of course, this is not the only cause of asymmetry. Even if your team communicates really well, they can’t design an effective gun with an “unkill” function.

There are, of course, various types of symmetry. Bilateral (mirror) symmetry is what the external appearance of our bodies has. There is also translational symmetry, where the same shape is repeated along a line. The string ABCCBA shows bilateral symmetry while ABCABC exhibits translational symmetry. Most human factors people now agree that hot water faucets (usually on the left) and cold water faucets (usually on the right) should both be turned off by turning to the right and turned on by turning to the left (translational symmetry) as opposed to having the faucet on the right turn off to the right and the left faucet turn off to the left. But you will definitely experience both types.

In both music and poetry, at least in the culture I am most familiar with, translational symmetry is more common than mirror symmetry. It does sometimes happen that musical composers experiment with playing a tune backwards or even with the staff turned upside down. But this is far less common than repeating a theme or melody. Similarly, a rhyme scheme like ABCABC is much more common than is ABCCBA. {In this notation, ABCABC means that the first line rhymes with the fourth line, the second line rhymes with the fifth line and the third line rhymes with the sixth line.}

black and brown millipede on a green and brown branch

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

In biology, we also find translational symmetry or something close to it. The segments of a tape worm, the segments of the body of a millipede or centipede, the small legs of a lobster, and even our own vertebrae and ribs show translational symmetry. In social structures as well, we find both mirror symmetry and translational symmetry. For instance, the Golden Rule says to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In addition, as it happens, if we are nicer to other people, then, generally speaking, they are also nicer to us. This is not always true, however. Some people simply take advantage and view all of life as a zero sum game. Whatever you gain, they lose and vice versa. This is a very limited, inaccurate, and self-defeating attitude in most social situations. Most social situations, are, of course, much more complicated. Generally speaking, there are a great many situations that both you and your “opponent” or even your “enemy” would agree are good and a great many others that both of you would agree are bad. If you are playing tennis or golf outdoors, for instance, you may be fiercely competitive but both of you would probably find a game that brings out the best play is better for both of you. Both of you would probably also agree that being rained out is a bad outcome.

men in black and red cade hats and military uniform

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

In the military and in many industrial settings, there is a great deal of translational symmetry. The “ideal” set-up is to have many groups at each of many levels and each group is meant to be as similar as possible to all the other groups at that level. The marching that military groups learn is both symbolic of this translational symmetry and practice in behaving as a unit composed of identical parts. Whether or not this is the best way to run a military is debatable. To me, it’s undeniable that this management style has been imported into a huge number of organizations where it is definitely not the best way to organize.

The last thing to note is that symmetry also pops up in design. There is often a whole series of information exchanges from people who have quite different areas of expertise. These exchanges can result in mutual learning, solutions that work, and often patents, and occasionally, some really cool, transcendent, game-changing designs. In my experience, it is much better to have a design process based on symmetrical relationships founded in mutual respect than to have a design process based on having someone in a hierarchical power relationship make decisions that are to be implemented by an identical set of “underlings.”

Photo by Egor Kamelev on Pexels.com

The Takeaway

Symmetry is everywhere. There are many forms. If you start looking for symmetry, you will find examples in nature, in mathematics, poetry, art, music, machine design, the military and even in design problems and design processes. Thinking quite consciously about the types of symmetry that exist in a problem space and what could or should exist in that problem space, can lead to novel solutions.

——————————————-

Author Page on Amazon.

Fraught Framing: The Presumed Being-ness of State-ness

17 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, creativity, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#therapy, framing, fun, HCI, human factors, innovation, learning, politics, problem formulation, sports, UX

Fraught Framing: The Presumed Being-ness of State-ness

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As I understand it, in Spanish and Portuguese, for example, there is a linguistic distinction between current state of being and habitual state of being that is signaled by the use of different verbs. In English, we say, “That is an angry dog” to mean “That is a dog who is generally and habitually angry” and also to mean, “That dog is in an angry mood right now.”

woman and man wearing brown jackets standing near tree

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But, regardless of what native languages we write and speak, we humans often make statements about something and treat something according to the unstated and untenable presupposition that what is true about the current state of affairs is true about eternity.

This habit of mind, reinforced by language, is often incredibly useful. For instance, near me right now are a table, and on the table, among other things are a coffee cup filled with coffee and a checkbook. The table is mainly composed of wood and marble. For many purposes, this is an adequate description. Of course, none of these so-called objects were always in their current state. Once, the wood was part of a tree. And, before that, the material in the tree was mainly rainwater and dirt. It was transformed into a tree by a mere seed of information using energy from the sun.

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Meanwhile, even the marble portion of the table was not always in its current state. At one point, in the distant past, this marble was limestone. The limestone was transformed by temperature and pressure into marble. Before the limestone was limestone it was mainly the shells of tiny animals living in the ocean. If we trace the table back far enough we will come to the “Big Bang” that started the universe as we know it. The transformation of the table from one sort of thing into another did not end when it became a table nor when I bought the table. Some day, it will no longer be a table. Eventually, the material nature of the wood, and eventually even the marble will be different. The checkbook and the coffee cup will likely cease to be a checkbook and a coffee cup long before that.

For the purpose of drinking my coffee, it is just fine to think of this cup as being a cup. It holds my coffee and keeps it somewhat warm. The table works just fine as a place to hold the coffee cup. I don’t need to think more deeply about the lifecycle of the table or the cup or the checkbook.

Usually.

But sometimes, it is useful to deconstruct these categories. A fairly common test of creativity, for example, is to think of alternative uses. What could this table be used for besides a table? It is a pretty sturdy looking table, so I would say it could be used as a seat by one or two people pretty safely. It could be used as a deadly if awkward weapon. The bracing cross-piece could be detached and used as less awkward weapon. It could be used as a barrier. The wood part could be used as firewood. The thing that I habitually use as a coffee cup could be used as a container for many types of liquids or solids and even, with the help of the checkbook, could be used to hold gasses though not very effectively. The checkbook can be used as a weapon against a mosquito. In a very different way, the checkbook could be used as a weapon against a person or even as a weapon against a nation; e.g., by writing checks to steal an election.

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While all of these “objects” have histories, they also have futures. Generally speaking, the people I know give little thought to the future of the objects that they interact with. But slowly, and likely too slowly, this is gradually changing. We often now recycle or reuse objects. Thinking about the future of an object also influences my choices about what I buy. This kind of thinking is particularly important to when it comes to radioactive material which can pose very long term hazards or it can be stolen and used to cause fairly short term mayhem. Collectively, the plastic that we use gets discarded and then, does not vanish into nothingness. It finds its way into the air we breathe and the water we drink. Now that the population of the earth is 7 billion, we can no longer afford to ignore how the objects we interact with were created and we cannot afford to ignore what becomes of them. What we call a “table” or a “cup” or a “checkbook” is really only a “table for now”, “a cup for now” and a “checkbook for now.”

The fluidity of things also applies to human beings. It should be pretty obvious to most adults that someone we call “a toddler” or a “teen-ager” is not in that category forever. Most people evolve over time both physically and mentally. The change from “toddler” to “teen-ager” takes many years. Physically, the person usually seems stable from one hour to the next (even physical stability is an illusion; we create over 200 billion new cells a day!). Socially and psychologically, however, we are unstable even at a macro level. A sixteen year old, for instance, may act very much like a mature adult in hundreds of different circumstances. Yet, if they are overly influenced by “friends” or under the influence of alcohol for the first time, their behavioral self-control may easily revert to that more like a ten year old or even a two year old.

girls on white red jersey playing hand game

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We Limit Others by our Categories

It is human and common but not useful to observe a small slice of someone else’s behavior and thereby make inferences about their habitual behavior. Even if we know about someone’s habitual behavior, it doesn’t mean that they always behave that way and it doesn’t mean that they can’t change over time. When we say, “Oh, don’t pick Chuck for the baseball team; he’s such a spaz” or “No, I’m sure Sally wouldn’t like to join us; she’s really a loner” or “You can’t count on Jim; he never follows through” we are almost certainly over-generalizing. Perhaps Chuck never learned baseball as a kid and he simply needs to learn and practice basic skills. Maybe Sally has no real friends precisely because no-one asks her to join them because everyone thinks she’s a loner because she’s always alone – because no-one ever asks her to join them. Or maybe her idea of a good time is hiking and she’d be happy to do that, but has no interest in going clubbing and getting drunk every day. Maybe Jim is completely overworked and/or needs to learn better time management skills.

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“How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.”

People may be changed by circumstances but therapy often works too. As the joke implies, it won’t work very well if the main reason the “light bulb” goes to the therapist is to feel better rather than to get better, it’s an opportunity lost. Others who frequently interact with the “light bulb” often hold views and use names that subvert therapy. For example, a person who is never assertive and wants to change that may find that when they do so, their family and colleagues at work, who have been taking advantage of them for their own purposes may say things like this: “Oh, you used to be so nice!” {Translation: I used to be able to manipulate you for my own purposes so much more easily}.

We Limit Ourselves by our Categories

While we unwittingly define others into boxes that may serve to limit what they can do, we humans are generally “equal opportunity destroyers” and also limit our own potential through self-talk as well. I like to play golf and have therefore asked many people over the course of my life, “Do you play golf?”

Take a guess what response I have heard at least two dozen times. “Golf? Oh, no. I tried that a couple times. I’m no good.”

silhouette of man playing golf during sunset

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After picking myself up off the floor, I try to explain as nicely and politely as possible that if you’ve literally tried it a couple times, you have no idea whether you would be any good at it. You very likely have no idea whether you would like it either. The same goes for painting, writing poetry, playing video games, eating healthy food, exercising regularly, and so on. In each case, your initial level of skill and your initial level of enjoyment are very poor predictors of the long term. It is most often, not our ability, but our self-definitional boundaries and self-talk that limits us.

Exercises for Flexibility.

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Life is complicated and complex so I understand that many folks may be reluctant to expand the scope of what they and others are capable of. But if you do want to become more flexible in your behavioral repertoire, there are several things you can do.

First, you can become aware of your statements about yourself and others. When you find yourself thinking, “Jim never follows through,” try to restate that in terms of empirical evidence. It could be: “Well, once I asked Jim to help plan the office party and he never showed up for the first meeting. Another time, he said he would help teach my daughter how to parallel park, but nothing ever came of it.” You might immediately see that you have precious little evidence to back up your claim that Jim never follows through. You might also ask yourself whether you ever asked Jim about these incidents. There may be hundreds of legitimate reasons that he didn’t “follow through.” His name might have been left off the distribution list for the party planning meeting. And so on. Generating these alternatives is explored in more detail in “The Iroquois Rule of Six” which basically says before acting on an explanation that is inferred you should generate five alternative explanations.

Second, you can read fiction, watch movies, attend stage plays, do some amateur theater or even answer a questionnaire from someone else’s perspective. In working with Heather Desurvire at NYNEX, on a usability evaluation of a prototype, we did a variation on heuristic evaluation in which we had people look for issues and offer suggestions from a variety of different perspectives; e.g., a behaviorist, a cognitive psychologist, a worried mother, a physical therapist and so on. With the total amount of time controlled for, people found more issues and offered more suggestions when they looked at the application from the perspectives of many people.

Third, and my current favorite, is “Attitude Dancing.” I’m not sure this is what Carly Simon and Jacob Brackman meant by their song title, but when I turn on music while I am cooking or cleaning, I spent part of my dancing time dancing as though I were in a completely different mood or even as though I were a completely different person.

Give it a try!

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Author Page on Amazon.

Desurvire, H. and Thomas, J.C. Enhancing the Performance of Interface Evaluators Using Non-Empirical Usability Methods. In the Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 37th Annual Meeting, October, l993

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~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

Tag Archives: human factors

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