complete thesis draft 2.2compress

DESIGNING FOR PEOPLE AND EFFECTIVE INNOVATION:

Introducing experiential factors as a toolkit for evaluation of interaction design and

interactive system.

Supervisor: Prof. Margherita Pillan

Controrelatore: Prof. Marco Maiocchi Author: Musstanser Tinauli

PhD candidate, INDACO. Version: Thesis draft 2.0

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS.........................................................................................................I

TABLE OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... V

LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................... VII

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................... 2 1.1 INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................. 2 1.2 INTERACTION DESIGN ................................................................................................... 2 1.3 EVALUATION OF INTERACTION DESIGN AND INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS ............................ 3 1.4 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES................................................................................................. 3 1.5 SCOPE OF RESEARCH..................................................................................................... 3 1.6 ORGANIZATION ............................................................................................................. 4

CHAPTER 2: INTRODUCTION TO INTERACTION DESIGN AND EVALUATION

STRATEGIES ......................................................................................................................... 6 2.1 INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................. 6 2.2 INTERACTION DESIGN ................................................................................................... 6 2.3 NATURAL INTERACTIONS .............................................................................................. 8 2.4 COLLECTION OF DAILY LIFE CASES .............................................................................. 9 2.4.1 COLLECTION OF DAILY LIFE CASES ........................................................................... 9 2.4.2 COLLECTION OF EVERYDAY OBJECTS....................................................................... 10 2.5 THE CONNECTIVITY OF THINGS................................................................................... 13 2.5.1 PERVASIVE COMPUTING ........................................................................................... 13 2.6 IMPORTANCE OF EVALUATION FROM A TRUE USERS PERSPECTIVE.............................. 14 2.7 METHODOLOGIES AND PROCESSES RELEVANT TO EVALUATION OF INTERACTION

DESIGN AND INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS .................................................................................... 14 2.7.1 REQUIREMENT GATHERING AND ENGINEERING........................................................ 14 2.7.2 CONSTRUCTIVE BRAINSTORM .................................................................................. 16 2.7.3 INTERVIEWS ............................................................................................................. 16 2.7.4 USABILITY ENGINEERING MODEL ............................................................................ 17 2.7.5 USABILITY METRICS ................................................................................................ 17 2.7.6 USABILITY FACTORS ................................................................................................ 18 2.8 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................... 18

CHAPTER 3: EVALUATION OF INTERACTION DESIGN AND EXPERIENTIAL

FACTORS.............................................................................................................................. 20 3.2 CONCEPT AND IDEA..................................................................................................... 20 3.3 THE INTERACTION DESIGN OBSERVATION MODEL AND THE EXPERIENTIAL FACTORS 20 3.4 THE METHOD .............................................................................................................. 21 3.4.2 OBSERVE.................................................................................................................. 21 3.4.3 CREATE .................................................................................................................... 22 3.4.4 EXPERIMENT ............................................................................................................ 22 3.4.4.1 OBSERVATION CYCLES.......................................................................................... 22 3.4.5 EVOLVE.................................................................................................................... 23 3.4.6 IMPROVE .................................................................................................................. 23 3.4.7 ANALYZE ................................................................................................................. 23

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3.5 EXPERIENTIAL FACTORS ............................................................................................. 23 3.5.1 LEARNABILITY ......................................................................................................... 23 3.5.2 USAGE...................................................................................................................... 23 3.5.3 ERROR AND FEEDBACK ............................................................................................ 23 3.5.4 COMFORT ................................................................................................................. 23 3.5.5 COLLABORATION ..................................................................................................... 23 3.5.5.1 CONSTRUCTIVE INTERACTION ............................................................................... 23 3.5.5.2 PARTICIPATORY DESIGN........................................................................................ 24 3.5.6 AFFECT (MOTIVATION TO LEARN)............................................................................. 24 3.5.7 GUIDANCE AND SUPPORT ......................................................................................... 24 3.5.8 ACCESSIBILITY ......................................................................................................... 24 3.5.9 SUSTAINABILITY ...................................................................................................... 24 3.6 APPLICATION OF INTERACTION DESIGN OBSERVATION MODEL AND THE EXPERIENTIAL

FACTORS............................................................................................................................... 24 3.6.1 APPLICATION ON EXISTING INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS................................................... 24 3.6.2 CREATION OF A NEW SYSTEM ................................................................................... 24 3.7 EXPERIENTIAL FACTORS APPLICABILITY AND SITUATED DEFINITIONS. ........................ 24 3.8 SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CONDUCTION OF SURVEYS........................................... 25 3.9 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................... 27

CHAPTER 4: DESIGNING A SCENARIO FOR THE USAGE AND EVALUATION

OF DIGITAL PEN AND PAPER IN A CLASSROOM .................................................... 29 4.1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................ 29 4.2 CONCEPT AND IDEA..................................................................................................... 29 4.3 GOALS......................................................................................................................... 29 4.4 DESIGN CHALLENGES.................................................................................................. 29 4.5 PROJECT DESCRIPTION ................................................................................................ 30 4.6 THE DIGITAL PEN........................................................................................................ 31 4.7 THE ESPECIAL PAPER .................................................................................................. 31 4.8 THE DIGITAL PEN AND PAPER SYSTEM (DPPS) .......................................................... 31 4.9 THE CONTEXT OF THE USE OF DPP .............................................................................. 32 4.10 THE SOFTWARE / ONLINE SYSTEM AND ASSOCIATED ACCESS RIGHTS...................... 33 4.10.1 THE GROUPS........................................................................................................... 33

Group 0 ........................................................................................................................... 34 Group 1 ........................................................................................................................... 34

4.10.2 ACCESS RIGHTS ...................................................................................................... 34 4.10.3 BLOCK NOTES WEBSITE .......................................................................................... 34 4.11 THE EMERGED SCENARIOS FOR THE USAGE OF DPPS ............................................... 34 4.12 THE APPLICATION OF THE PROPOSED STRATEGY ON THE USAGE OF DIGITAL PEN AND

PAPER 36 4.12.1 MEETINGS AND BRAINSTORMS WITH STAKEHOLDERS (UNDERSTAND).................... 36 4.12.2 INTRODUCTION (UNDERSTAND) ............................................................................. 37 4.12.3 THE SURVEYS (OBSERVE)....................................................................................... 37 4.12.4 TESTI USER INTEGRAIONE – TUI (OBSERVE AND EXPERIMENT)............................. 37 4.12.5 PEN KIT DISTRIBUTION (EXPERIMENT) .................................................................... 38 4.12.6 USAGE SURVEY...................................................................................................... 38 4.12.7 PROJECT COMPLETION SURVEY.............................................................................. 39 4.12.8 KNOW HOW SURVEY.............................................................................................. 40 4.12.9 SCENARIOS FOR THE USE OF DIGITAL PEN AND PAPER (EVOLVE AND IMPROVE)....... 40

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4.13 THE ANALYSIS PHASE............................................................................................... 42 4.13.1 THE USAGE SURVEY .............................................................................................. 42 4.13.2 PROJECT COMPLETION SURVEY.............................................................................. 42 4.14 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................. 43

CHAPTER 5: CREATING TRASH TRACK .................................................................... 45 5.1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................ 45 5.2 CONCEPT AND IDEA..................................................................................................... 45 5.3 GOALS......................................................................................................................... 45 5.4 DESIGN CHALLENGES.................................................................................................. 47 5.5 PROJECT DESCRIPTION ................................................................................................ 47 5.6 VISUALIZATIONS ......................................................................................................... 49 5.7 TRASH TAGGING SCENARIOS....................................................................................... 51 5.7.1 TRASH ORIENTED SCENARIO.................................................................................... 52 5.7.2 PEOPLE ORIENTED SCENARIO................................................................................... 52 5.7.3 TRASH TRACK DEPLOYMENT SCENARIO .................................................................. 54 5.8 TECHNOLOGICAL AND PACKAGING CHALLENGES ....................................................... 54 5.9 TRASH TAG ................................................................................................................. 55 5.10 THE TRASH TRACK SYSTEM...................................................................................... 57 5.11 PACKAGING............................................................................................................... 57 5.12 PROJECT DYNAMICS.................................................................................................. 57 5.12.1 TEAM DYNAMICS ................................................................................................... 58 5.12.2 PROJECT PARTNERS................................................................................................ 58 5.13 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................. 59

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS.................................................. 62 6.1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................ 62 6.2 A DISCUSSION ON PRESENTED EVALUATION STRATEGY ............................................. 62 6.2.2 CRITIQUE ................................................................................................................. 62 6.3 CRITIQUE ON TRASH TRACK........................................................................................ 62 6.4 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS............................................................................. 63

7.0 REFERENCES: ........................................................................................................... 64

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TABLE OF FIGURES

FIGURE 2.1, THE DISCIPLINE OF INTERACTION DESIGN ............................................................. 10 FIGURE 2.1, THE 2009 FAMILY OF IPODS .................................................................................. 7 FIGURE 2.2, CAVE MEN (ON THE LEFT) AND CAIRNS (ON THE RIGHT)........................................... 7 FIGURE 2.3, USABILITY (THE INNER CIRCLE) AND EXPERIENCE GOALS (THE EXTERNAL CIRCLE) 8 FIGURE 2.4, THE PROBLEM OF ENSURING THAT USERS MENTAL MODEL CORRESPONDS TO THE

DESIGNERS ......................................................................................................................... 9 FIGURE 2.5, SELECTION GROUP 1 OF EVERYDAY INTERACTIONS................................................ 10 FIGURE 2.6, SELECTION GROUP 1 OF EVERYDAY OBJECTS ......................................................... 10 FIGURE 2.7, SEGWAY................................................................................................................ 11 FIGURE 2.9, TWO SELLERS SHOWING CREATIVITY IN INTERACTING WITH VARIOUS ITEMS

SIMULTANEOUSLY. ........................................................................................................... 11 FIGURE 2.10, FUEL STATION WITH UNREADABLE DISPLAYS ...................................................... 11 FIGURE 2.11, TYPICAL ROADSIDE PUNCTURE SHOP IN PAKISTAN (NO BILLBOARDS NEEDED)..... 11 FIGURE 2.12 INTERACTIVE DISPLAYS AND SURFACES ............................................................... 12 FIGURE 2.13 MESMERIZING REALITY WHILE ENABLING UNIQUE OBSERVATION REALITY ........ 13 FIGURE 2.14, REQUIREMENT ENGINEERING PROCESS .............................................................. 14 FIGURE 2.15, TYPICAL PROCESSES FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS ........................... 15 FIGURE 2.16, BRAINSTORM ...................................................................................................... 16 FIGURE 2.17, ELEMENTS OF THE USABILITY-ENGINEERING MODEL ........................................... 17 FIGURE 3.1, THE INTERACTION DESIGN OBSERVATION MODEL AND THE EXPERIENTIAL FACTOR21 FIGURE 3.2, THE PLOT OF EXPERIENTIAL FACTORS ANALYSIS ................................................... 27 FIGURE 4.1, THE EXPERIMENTAL SCENARIO FOR THE USAGE OF DPPS...................................... 31 FIGURE 4.2, DIGITAL PEN AND PAPER....................................................................................... 31 FIGURE 4.3, DIGITAL PEN AND PAPER SYSTEM (DPPS) ............................................................ 36 FIGURE 4.4, SNAPSHOTS OF TUI EXPERIMENTAL PHASE ........................................................... 37 FIGURE 4.5, PROJECT MEMO..................................................................................................... 35 FIGURE 4.6, PROJECT DISEGNO................................................................................................. 35 FIGURE 4.7, PROJECT ESCURSIONISMO CONCEPT 1.................................................................... 36 FIGURE 4.8, PROJECT ESCURSIONISMO CONCEPT 2.................................................................... 36 FIGURE 4.9, DIGITAL PEN AND PAPER EXPERIMENT AND THE SUGGESTED METHOD OF

EVALUATION .................................................................................................................... 38 FIGURE 4.10, GRAPH OF THE IMPACT FACTORS OF THE USAGE SURVEY (US) ........................... 42 FIGURE 4.11, GRAPH OF THE IMPACT FACTORS OF THE PROJECT COMPLETION SURVEY (PCS) . 43 FIGURE 5.1, A CONCEPTUAL SCREEN SHOT OF MOVEMENT OF TRASH ....................................... 45 FIGURE 5.1, SERVICE DIAGRAM OF TRASH TRACK ................................................................... 50 FIGURE 5.3, CONCEPTUAL SCREEN SHOT OF TRASH ON THE MOVE............................................. 48 FIGURE 5.4, TRASH TAG PROTOTYPE 1 ..................................................................................... 48 FIGURE 5.5, VISUALIZATION SKETCH OF STARBUCK'S COFFEE CUP IN SEATTLE, WA, USA..... 50 FIGURE 5.6, VISUALIZATION SKETCH OF STARBUCK'S COFFEE CUP IN SEATTLE, WA, USA..... 50 FIGURE 5.7, DATASET OF THE TAG TESTING IN CAMBRIDGE, MA, USA.................................... 50 FIGURE 5.8, SAMPLE STREET VIEW OF THE MOVEMENT OF TRASH ............................................ 51 FIGURE 5.9, SAMPLE VISUALIZATION FROM BOSTON DEPLOYMENT ......................................... 51 FIGURE 5.10, TRASH ORIENTED SCENARIO ............................................................................... 52 FIGURE 5.11, PEOPLE ORIENTED SCENARIO ............................................................................... 53 FIGURE 5.12, TRASH TRACK SCENARIO ..................................................................................... 54 FIGURE 5.14. TRASH TAG PROTOTYPE 1, FEBRUARY 2009 ....................................................... 55

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FIGURE 5.13, AN ALTERNATE VIEW TO TRASH TRACK SCENARIO ............................................... 56 FIGURE 5.15, HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS ................................................................................... 57 FIGURE 5.16, INITIAL STUDY OF CITY OF SEATTLE.................................................................... 60

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LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 3.2, SITUATED DEFINITIONS OF EXPERIENTIAL FACTORS FOR DPPS............................... 25 TABLE 3.3, SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE, ASSOCIATED OBSERVATION CYCLED AND FOCAL GROUPS.

......................................................................................................................................... 26 TABLE 3.5, SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE, AND ASSOCIATED EXPERIENTIAL FACTORS..................... 27 TABLE 4.1, THE GROUPS AND ASSOCIATED RIGHTS.................................................................... 34 TABLE 4.2, TASKS OF TESTI USER INTEGRAZIONE (TUI).......................................................... 39 TABLE 4.3, USAGE SURVEY ...................................................................................................... 40 TABLE 4.4, PROJECT COMPLETION SURVEY (PCS) ................................................................... 41 TABLE 4.5, THE CALCULATED IMPACT FACTORS OF THE USAGE SURVEY (US) ......................... 42 TABLE 4.6, THE CALCULATED IMPACT FACTORS OF THE PROJECT COMPLETION SURVEY (PCS)42

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

The world at large today is equipped with technology, sensors, scanners and instruments and each entity continues to communicate with the other one, sometimes in a defined and known manner and other times in a more randomized manner which includes a lot of variables. It is probably not wrong to say this is the era of pervasive computing, a time when the concept of having a personal computer at home is some what becoming obsolete. There is also a growing trend of introduction of innovative, creative, natural and sometimes fancy interactions between humans, man-machine, machine-machine and between all sorts of artifacts. The interactions sometimes are so good that a even children could learn to communicate with the artifacts without prior training unlike the days when users were given detailed instructional workshops. The user of pervasive technologies has changed how we communicated with our world and has brought about a need to control the evolvement of interaction models and even more importantly the requirement to evaluate the interaction models that are being presented by various groups. This thesis attempts to summarize what is interaction design and presents a naive methodology for the evaluation of interaction design and evaluation of interactive systems. The thesis covers two distinct perspectives, i.e. how could the existing interactive systems be evaluated for certain scenarios; and how innovative systems can be designed while taking advantage of the pervasive technologies. The earlier is presented by creating a scenario for the use of digital pen and paper in a classroom scenario and the later is presented by the creation of a project titled trash track, which made tracking the trash a possibility and also provides useful insight to how trash disperses through a cities sanitation system. Trash track also presents us with a scenario of a waste free world, a world where 100 percent recycling would be a possibility. 1.2 Interaction Design

Design is often taken as the base of all disciplines, it’s a process that is present in the thoughts, process, in problem solving, defining of goals and perhaps in some ways in every facet of life. A designer has the capacity to look back in a moving train and predict what’s coming when every one else is eager to look forward. Interaction design (ID) is about behavior of things, how things work. The disciple too can be associated with numerous other disciplines, which involve definition of behaviors. ID adds a new dynamic and more defined perspective to generic design and is classed as one of the sub-disciplines of design. The discipline has understandably gained lot of attention during the last two decades. The detailed description of interaction design is presented in the earlier sections of Chapter 2. The importance of interaction has often been explained by the success of products such as an ipod and iphone. The gained attention can be explained very well with the success as this has introduced a new level of communication between the users and the interactive devices. Users of all ages have now been enabled to interact with these devices. The Figure 1.1 shows a kid, aged 2 years interacting with an IPOD in an unsupervised session.

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1.3 Evaluation of Interaction Design and Interactive Systems

The evaluation of any task, activity and process is critical for improvements and better understanding of the task at hand. Technology more than often has strong influences on people, particularly on how they behave, how they react and how they perform in a given situation. The way a user interacts with a given artifact also tends to have a strong effect on user. Even though the discipline of interaction design has grown exponentially, somehow the other the evaluation of such presented systems had not been equally focused. Recently however the importance and need of such evaluations has been emphasized. As lord Kelvin puts it, “When

you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know

something about it, but when you can not measure, when you can not express in numbers,

your knowledge is a meager and unsatisfactory kind”. Chapter two highlights the importance of such evaluations and a strategy for the evaluation is produced in chapter 3.

1.4 Research Objectives

The conducted research has the following objectives and goals:

- Designing of a strategy to evaluate interactive systems. - Application of the strategy on existing systems. - Attempt to use the similar strategy while creating new systems - Creation of new systems that are interactive, innovative and enable scenarios that did

no existed prior to the suggested system. 1.5 Scope of Research

The scope of research includes the development of a strategy that sets the guidelines for application on various interactive systems. The scope in this thesis is limited to the following:

- Creation of an evaluation strategy for evaluation interactive systems - Application of the suggested strategy on the use of digital pen and paper in a

classroom scenario

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- Suggestion of new scenarios for the use of digital pen and paper - Creation of trash track project that would make trash tracking a possibility while

enabling the following:

o Designing of a trash tracker o Real-time flow of trash in a Cities sanitation system o Initiating data gathering towards removal change on the contrary to

production chain o Introduce a new and dynamic connection between people and their trash to

have a behavioral change to achieve sustainability. 1.6 Organization

The following chapter briefly reviews the existing literature on interaction design and on different evaluation strategies that could be applied on the discipline. Chapter 3 presents a new strategy based on usability engineering to evaluate interaction design and interactive systems. The strategy attempts to presents key guidelines for evaluation of interactive systems. In chapter 4 a case study of the use of digital pen and paper is created which is followed by the application of the evaluation strategy as presented in chapter 3. Chapter 5 describes in detail the creation of the trash track project which made tracking trash a possibility and promises to change the behaviour of the people. The concluding 6th chapter examines the weaknesses and strengths of the presented strategy and projects. The chapter also concludes the work done and presents future works. !

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STRATEGIES

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STRATEGIES

2.1 Introduction

Interaction design is about behavior of things, how things work. In this chapter we present a background study on interaction design. A sequence of daily life examples as collection of cases is also documented in the thesis. Why interaction design is important, how it changes the success of a product is discussed in the later sections of the chapter. The pervasive use of technology seems to be getting attached to our everyday objects. It is crititical to ensure the famous promise of ‘technology for people and not people for technology’ becomes true. One of the subsections of this chapter is dedicated to why its important to evaluate all these fancy systems. Software engineers and evaluators tend to design complicated system and further complicated scenarios using various testing procedures. However the whole process lacks the process of a true user perspective. Our claim is that when at the end of the day, ‘only user uses the product’ hence he/she has to be one of the major actors in the evaluation process. A short summary of some of the usability evaluation strategies and importance of users perspective in the evaluation process is presented in the last section of this chapter. 2.2 Interaction Design

Interaction design has been on the rise for the last two decades and seems to have integrated to all facets of our lives. Designers often use the famous traditional examples of the success of IPOD and failure of jukebox to describe the importance of interaction design. Though what exactly is ID and what it includes and where it lies within a set of disciplines is still blur. ID is about behavior, about how things work. The defining of the behaviour on what would happen when a user does something with a particular device is the job of the

interaction designer (Saffer, 2009). Rober Reimann also defines ID in a convincing way, “Interaction Design is a design discipline dedicated to defining the behavior of artifacts, environments, and systems (i.e., products), and therefore concerned with:

- Defining the form of products as they relate to their behavior and use !.

- Anticipating how the use of products will mediate human relationships and affect human understanding !.

- Exploring the dialogue between products, people, and contexts (physical, cultural, historical)”.

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Interaction design is often associated with interface design or web design. Though the connections are certainly there but the discipline of interaction design certainly offers more. The possibility of defining next set of actions and fixation of behaviors by doing something is included in interaction design. This may require a screen where you click and something happens or this may simply be done via ‘shake of your hand/hear/fingers’, some kind of motion or perhaps your thoughts. Winograd (1997) describes it as “the design of spaces for human communication and interaction.” Apple has a history of leading innovation in smart interactions in its products. Various interactions are covered with the new additions of the apple’s ipod as can be seen on the right corner of Figure 2.1 below.

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The hidden use of technology has given a true birth to one of the core foundations of design and architecture, As Ludwig mies van der rohe quoted, “less is more”. Making simple and intriguing interactions seems to have a big influence on the success of products. This is one of the same reason for which the ipod in 2001 was a hit in the market when jukebox had failed to make any impact.!

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One of the key goals of interaction design is in establishing clarity on what are the key objectives of all the process that the team is going through (Rogers; Sharp and Preece, 2007). The systems that are to be designed could have two very different purposes, i.e. either they are designed to facilitate the user goals or built with some literal complications to support user learning. The two different goals could be separated as usability goals and experience goal (Rogers. Et. Al, 2007).

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The above-mentioned goals are closer to our view when it comes to evaluation of the interactive system. A detailed methodology for evaluation is described in the Chapter 3 of this thesis. Our methodology none the less focuses on the combined objectives and an integrated view of the both the usability and experience goals. The combined strategy is termed as experiential factors for evaluation and understanding purposes. 2.3 Natural Interactions

Don Norman brought the term affordances into major play when he wrote his book ‘The

design of everyday things’. It is basically a metaphor that allows people to know how to use certain technology. The terminology has been often misused in terms of its usage in physical artifact and digital interfaces. In 1999, Norman himself quoted on a HCI forum discussion, “I

put an affordance there,” a participant would say, “I wonder if the object affords clicking...”

affordances this, affordances that. And no data, just opinion. Yikes! What had I unleashed

upon the world? The introduction of natural interactions focuses on eliminating the differences in distinct contexts. The natural interactions is based on the view that the natural any form of interaction is the better or more understandable it would be. We humans as living being often form

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meaning to anything that comes out of nature as natural. A good example would be that of martial arts, quite a few varieties are based on how different creatures walk, fight, eating styles and etc. The principles of nature metaphorically are easy to communicate, e.g. what would be the best way to tell a user to keep looking toward the point that keeps moving? Perhaps a user could be asked to look at the sun as sunflowers do? Or a user could be told that the interaction model is that of a sunflower or that of the plant that closes when touched. The basic idea is to design the closest to natural form of interactions, may those be visual or interactive. The principle of natural interactions would follow conventions incase the natural form of interaction does not come to ones mind.

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!The Figure 2.4 had originally been used to signify a slightly different issue but the core idea is the same. Once a system has been designed, no user will have direct access to the designer. Hence the interaction model should be kept simple, innovative and closer to nature to ensure easy and meaningful interactions.

2.4 Collection of Daily Life Cases

The section below presents a collection of daily life interaction, interactive systems and situations where interaction design has either been successfully employed or should be employed more aggressively in future. 2.4.1 Collection of Daily Life Cases

Interactions are part of our everyday life. Public spaces especially are full of some defined and some undefined variable. The defined would be a theme park where user goes through certain experiences. Lot of studies go into making the theme parks safe for users, there is a whole system which makes every fun ride enjoyable. Then there are some undefined but allowed things which happen in these public spaces, such as dancing, skating, open air theaters and many more. A selected group of everyday selections are shown in Figure 2.4. The point here however is that interaction design is essential part of our life. The systems which are carried out all around us everyday do not need to be technology savvy but they

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certainly require the implementation of interaction design principles to ensure a better experience and understanding.

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2.4.2 Collection of Everyday Objects

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The Figure 2.7 shows the example of the new transportation product called segway. These have been quite successful and we do witness quite a few of them in central stations of bigger cities in Europe and America. These have a non-traditional way of interaction but it is more natural. The next sequence of images from Figure 2.9 - 2.11 were shot in Pakistan and some of which show excellent way of interaction using conventional and low-tech means.

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2.4.3 Collection of Interactive Displays and Setups

The figure 2.12 shows a small collection of thousands of displays that are in use by people and researchers of various labs. People strive to produce new and innovative applications for users. These displays have been placed in markets, shopping centers, technology stores and exhibitions. The users do get fascinated to see some of these but how useful are they in real life is a question that remains to be answered.

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The next sequence of images in Figure 2.13 shows an experiment that was conducted in Centro METID, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. The idea was to mesmerize reality while enabling users a very unique view of the objects that in normal situation would probably be ignored. The experiment included nine cameras, which were focused on people and the objects and three computer screens with each screen presenting distinct views of objects as well as the users in the surroundings.

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2.5 The Connectivity of Things

The way the things were connected has changed drastically over the last decade. The burst of internet created a dynamic connection between people and the growth of pervasive technologies has given birth to a new potential scenario where every thing is track able. This very idea essentially makes possible tracking everything that exists. A very similar concept is referred to as ‘internet of things’.

2.5.1 Pervasive Computing

Pervasive computing or sometime also called ubiquitous computing is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, someone "using" ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so. This model is usually considered advancement from the desktop paradigm (Hansmann, 2003). The pervasive use of technology enables the use of technology with a minimal technology interface. The main idea is that the central processing or the main processing stays apart from the devices or there is a shared way of utilizing certain fixed resources or from other fixed or portable computer resources such as memory, network, processor, etc. The two projects that are discussed in this thesis (chapter 4 – 5) are good examples of pervasive use of technology, where use of smart tags enables a scenario where 100 percent recycling is possible and on the other hand the digital pens enables a more useful model of learning.

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2.6 Importance of Evaluation from a True Users Perspective

The increasing trend of more and more user of technology, fancy displays and extensive use of pervasive technologies raises issues such as user comfort, feelings, skill set, likeness etc. Even though the systems are usually tested well by the software dependability and reliability methods, even though companies like Microsoft does extensive user testing before they launch their products but there is a strong need to evaluate all existing or in use system from a true user perspective to ensure that the end user needs are met and he/she is satisfied. 2.7 Methodologies and Processes Relevant to Evaluation of Interaction Design and

Interactive Systems

The discipline of interaction design lays down the basic guidelines of entering the domain, its connection with other fields, however the discipline lacks the methodologies to evaluate a generic interactive system. On the contrary many techniques can be observed and applied to evaluate websites and e-learning platforms.

Experience of the user is the ultimate goal of any product. A productive, stress-less or engaging experience generally leads to a successful product. Interaction designers define what happens when a user uses a product.

While talking about different evaluation techniques the usability techniques seem much closer to how interactive systems can be evaluated. The sections below present the techniques that formed the foundation of the proposed strategy for evaluation of interaction design and interactive systems.

2.7.1 Requirement Gathering and Engineering

Software engineering gives a lot of importance to requirement gathering and engineering process. The studies have shown that 80 percent of the projects fail due to not enough understanding of what is to be done. Engineers tend to spend less time in this phase and move on to implementation and other phases but doing so has proved to be a mistake time and again. The well accepted model of requirement engineering is shown in Figure 2.14 (SWEBOK, 2001).

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The SE discipline also defines various models for development of programs and software’s. These famous models presented over the years include models such as waterfall; prototyping, incremental, spiral and win win spiral models. Figure 2.15 presents the typical processes for software development projects. A notable omission is the value of user as is shown in the model. The user gets involved at the very later stages. The importance of understanding the requirements however brought the requirement engineering and requirement gathering processes in focus. The main goals of requirement engineering are to determine the goals, function and constraints of hardware and software system.

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2.7.2 Constructive Brainstorm

Brainstorm is a group a activity which is performed to generate a large number of ideas. The conduction of brainstorm however is a challenging task sometimes and greatly depends on the person who conducts the session as all stakeholders have to feel excited throughout the process. We have changed the name from brainstorm to constructive brainstorm to stress on the positivity of the process. There are four basic rules in brainstorming. These are intended to reduce social inhibitions among groups members, stimulate idea generation, and increase overall creativity of the group. These include ‘focus on the quantity’, ‘withhold of criticism’, ‘welcome unusual ideas’ and ‘combine and improve ideas’. Figure 2.16 shows a generic brainstorm process.

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2.7.3 Interviews

Interview is a good tool to get views of a third person. An interview generally has two important persons, the one who interviews and the second who gets interviewed (the interviewee). The interviewer is usually recommended to right down his/her questions and be prepared before initiating the interview. There is also a strong need to make the interviewee

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as comfortable as possible. This is very important if the interview is recorded with a camera/and or an audio recorder. The key goal however is to engage in a conversation to get as much information as possible from the interviewee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview). There also is another type of interview, called unstructured interview. The idea is to keep the conversation undefined and talk to the interviewee with an open mind and let them say what ever they feel like. This kind of interview should usually be audio recorded. 2.7.4 Usability Engineering Model

The usability engineering method is a practical method to ensure good user interfaces.It presents a process to achieve that and defined process is stressed to be considered before design, during the design and after field installation of a software product (Nielsen, 1992). Nielsen presents ten steps for achieving the above and it includes the following:

0. Consider the larger context 1. Know the user

Individual user characteristics The users current task Functional analysis Evolution of the user

2. Competitive analysis 3. Setting usability goals 4. Participatory design 5. Coordinated design of the total

interface Standard Product identity

6. Guidelines and heuristic analysis 7. Prototyping 8. Empirical testing 9. Iterative design

Capture the design rationale 10. Collect feedback from field use

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There is a suggestion by Nielsen in the same paper, where he suggests that designers should have access to a pool of users after the start of design phase. This is in contrast to designers guessing the users.

2.7.5 Usability Metrics

The evaluation of quantifiable thing or activity is possible if a metric exists. Measurement is an effective and essential component of all disciplines. “When you can measure what you

are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it, but when

you can not measure, when you can not express in numbers, your knowledge is a meager

and unsatisfactory kind”, Lord Kelvin, 1883.

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In the recent years numerous new metrics for sciences such as software engineering, astrology, astronomy medical science and all other fields have been formed. This is due to the fact that conferential measures like distance, time, and cost are some times not applicable or not sufficient to measure the newly formed processes, disciplines or problems. In complex systems or situations a direct representation in numbers is often not possible but it is indeed possible to represent certain situations and evaluations through various numbers. Usability factors (as explained in the next section) are used to quantify usability and are in a way the unit of usability engineering. 2.7.6 Usability Factors

Various usability studies keeping the focus of learning or generic usability have proposed and used various usability factors. Keeping in view the research context the most relevant usability factors were short listed, a few of them with their respective definitions are listed below. Along with other factors the importance of affect is one of the key factors for various usability studies. The importance of affect has been in highlighted in several papers (Zaharias, 2004). Some of the key factors have also been summarized in the same journal. A few most relevant factors from various studies (Zaharias, 2004; Zaharias, 2006; Nielsen, 2001 and Nielsen, 1992) are listed below:

- Navigation - Learnability - Accessibility - Consistency - Visual Design - Interactivity - Content and Resources - Media Use - Learning Strategies Design - Instructional Feedback - Instructional Assessment - Learner Guidance and Support - Participatory Design - Iterative Design - Affect

2.8 Conclusion

The chapter presented a wide range of interactive systems and showed the presence in our everyday life. The situated use of technology and the availability of ubiquitous computing, the access of networks has placed our life into a very dynamic and highly connected world. The situation has brought a need to have a strong input from user in and during the design phase and also in the evaluation phase. This is important because the biggest stake in this highly connected world is only of the end user. The later part of the chapter also highlighted some of the principles of software engineering and a few evaluation methodologies. The survey also brought up the fact that the software development process generally is software centers and so are the evaluation methodologies. This brings about the need to design new strategies and methodologies which are centered on the end user or which somehow better involve the end user for a more realistic evaluation of the interactive and connected system under observations.

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CHAPTER 3: EVALUATION OF INTEREACTION DESIGN AND EXPERIENTIAL

FACTORS

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CHAPTER 3: EVALUATION OF INTERACTION DESIGN AND EXPERIENTIAL

FACTORS

3.1 Introduction

The importance of Interaction Design (IxD) has been on the increase for the last couple of years. The success of Ipod and failure of Jukebox justify the significance of the discipline. This chapter presents usability like methodology to evaluate any given interactive system. The method here introduces guidelines for the evaluation of existing systems. The presented technique focuses the individual evaluation of nine key perspectives to allow an overall picture of the effectiveness of the system under observation. The later sections of the chapter enlist and discuss the application and results. The core case studies include the evaluation of digital pen and paper in a classroom scenario, trash track project and results of the application on various eLearning games and portals.

3.2 Concept and Idea

IxD discipline provides us with a lot of strategies and mechanisms to improve the projects before their release. However the evaluation mechanisms for interactive systems lack the gist at present. The core idea here is to provide designers and evaluators with a more structural and easy to understand approach that allows them to have a snapshot of the goods and bads of any interactive system under observation. The strategy focuses evaluation of nine key factors. These include Learnability, Usage, Error and Feedback, Comfort, Collaboration, Affect, Guidance and Support, Accessibility and Sustainability. Each factor is measured independently and the resulting numbers contribute to the overall evaluation of the interactive system under observation. The strategy is further explained by application on three different situations, which includes the following:

- application on existing interactive systems - potential usage while creating new systems

3.3 The Interaction Design Observation Model and the Experiential Factors

The model layouts the guidelines for the usability like evaluation of interaction design and interactive system. The model lays out the principle factors for evaluation; these factors are also termed as experiential factors. The experiential factors aim to provide sufficient knowledge about various aspects of an interactive system under observation. These factors included Learnability, Usage, Error and Feedback, Comfort, Collaboration, Affect, Guidance and Support, Accessibility and Sustainability. The generic definitions of each of them are provided in the Section 3.5. The generic model can be seen in Figure 3.1. Each factor may or may not be applicable in every interactive system. Each factor also has a situated definition, which is a slightly modified version of each factor for a clear understanding with respect to the context. The experience a user goes through defines how much the user like the product. People interact with products and these interactions give certain experiences to the people. The better the quality of interaction with respect to what was targeted to be achieved the better the

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3.4 The Method

The method presents guidelines to assist in the evaluation process. The method proposes the evaluation process in a spiral model like structure in the sense of iterations. Though unlike the spiral model, the defined flow of the sequence of phases is not essential. The main phases of the proposed method includes ‘understand’, ‘analyze’, ‘observe’, ‘improve’, ‘evolve’, ‘experiment’ and ‘create’. The model does not define any particular order but facilitates during brainstorm sessions, while creation or observatory stages of a given project. Each phase has been filled with tasks, which can be changed slightly from project to project and case to case. The phases in the steps are defined in Table 5.1. 3.4.1 Understand

This phase refers to a development of an understanding of what the interactive system under observation is supposed to achieve. The key here is to develop a consensus through brainstorm on which elements and perspectives could be observed. This is done by using the interactive system, interviewing the creators and repeated brainstorms. The focus is always kept on what the user of the system is expected to achieve or get from the system. 3.4.2 Observe

This phase recommends the fixing and nailing down of what will be observed. The candidate observations are carried on from the ‘understand’ phase. The nailing down process also include fixation of the timing of observation, i.e. what will be observed and when. The second task-set of ‘Observe’ phase includes the formation of initial survey questions and association of each candidate observation with one or more experiential factor.

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The third and conclusive task-set of this phase is that of forming the focus groups. Interactive systems may have various usages of the system at various stages. The idea here is to think of the possible groups that may exist in the project. 3.4.3 Create

This phase refers to creation of the desired interactive system. This may follow the understanding phase directly, i.e., the intent of the targeted goals that are supposed to be achieved while keeping the users perspective as the focal point.

Task set 1 Task set 2 Task set 3

Understand - Brainstorm observations

- Use the interactive system

-Interview Creators (understand concept)

-

Observe - Fix observations - Fix observation cycles

- Form survey questions

- Associate observations

and experiential

factors

- Form focus groups

Create - Interactive products - - Experiment - Form focus groups - Assign and evaluate

tasks - Conduct

observations (surveys)

Evolve - Interaction Schema - - Improve - Interactive products - Analyze - Survey results - Each impact factors -

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3.4.4 Experiment

This is the experimental phase of the proposed method. The focus groups that may have been pointed out in the observation phase are reviewed, refined and finalized. The details of the focus groups are listed out in the first task-set of this phase such as definitions of the focus groups, how many, which one, why, where and when would each of them be observed or experimented with. The second task-set of this phase targets to assign tasks to each defined group and form a strategy to evaluate them. The final task set focuses on conduction of the evaluation through surveys or naked-eye observations.

3.4.4.1 Observation Cycles

As an insurance to get sufficient data it is recommended that the observations be taken at the following stages. The conduction of the following observation cycles is recommended as a recommended practice. Before using the interactive system to be observed, after initial use, after initial training of how to use the system (with a set of activities to be done by the users) and finally at the concluding stage of the observation gathering.

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3.4.5 Evolve

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The simplicity of interacting with any product more than often plays a vital role towards the affect it creates on its user. The positive the affect or positive emotion, less frustration, easy learning, self explanatory process, prettiness of design and the better the ergonomics the more the users tend to like the objects. As Alan Cooper puts it, “Well-thought out designs are more successful. The experience a user goes through defines they very quality of the object for him/her. Considering these facts and usability studies which tend to evaluate more from the software side of things, a combination of nine key factors have been filtered out and have been termed as experiential factors. Each of them is explained below in the subsections of section 3.5. 3.5.1 Learnability

Learnability represents the positive learning effect on the users or the effects of the system on user’s learning regarding the targeted area. 3.5.2 Usage

This factor represents the level of difficulty in using the system. The level of difficulty in data transfers, usage of especial paper, data storage. 3.5.3 Error and Feedback

Error and Feedback is the real-time response from the technology when the user makes an error. 3.5.4 Comfort

This factor represents the level of comfort while using the interactive system; it may also present the agronomical comfort. 3.5.5 Collaboration

Collaboration represents the interaction between the users. The collaboration is observed with two different perspectives. 3.5.5.1 Constructive Interaction

This sub-factor represents the collaboration or interaction when two users work together.

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3.5.5.2 Participatory Design

This factor is used to measure the team effort when real users are involved during the process. 3.5.6 Affect (motivation to learn)

This is an additional parameter, which is taken out of the present usability factors. The motivation construct is composed of four sub-constructs: attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction (Keller,1983).

3.5.7 Guidance and Support

The training sessions, tutorial and the online material for learning the use of the system are covered under guidance and support. The name was changed from learner guidance and support to guidance and support.

3.5.8 Accessibility

The level of difficulty in setting-up/installing the system is called accessibility factor. The factor deals with the technical errors and requirements associated with the technology, such as driver installations, preparation of especial material (e.g. printing of especial paper). 3.5.9 Sustainability

This factor represents how sustainable the interactive system under observation. The sustainability factor may include the emission of CO2 when a system was used, may suggest if certain processes are better than others in terms of environment friendliness. 3.6 Application of Interaction design observation model and the experiential factors

The thesis attempts the application of the presented strategy on three unique cases that include the following categories: 3.6.1 Application on existing interactive systems

This is achieved by application of the recommended strategy on the use of digital pen and paper in a classroom scenario. The experiment was conducted in an interaction design course with the first year design students at Politecnico di Milano. The basic idea was to re-understand the digital pen and paper technology that has been striving to gain success for a decade, apply the suggested evaluation strategy and present with a better interactive model and possible scenarios on where and how the digital pen and paper system could be used. 3.6.2 Creation of a new system

This is achieved by participation in the design phase of an innovative project called Trash Track at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, USA. The project aims to change the behavior of people by introduction of a new invisible connection between them and their trash by providing them. The link is enabled by development of trash tags, which are attached to thousands of pieces of trash of people. The project also covers another aspect of getting useful information on how waste actually disperses in the Cities sanitation system. 3.7 Experiential Factors applicability and situated definitions.

The recommended experiential factors may or may not be applicable on all the systems and they would have to be redefined keeping the context in mind. Table 3.2 enlists the applicable experiential factors and the associated definitions.

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Learnability Learnability represents the positive learning effect on the users or the effects of the system on user’s learning regarding the targeted area.

Usage This factor represents the level of difficulty in using the system. The level of difficulty in data transfers, usage of especial paper, data storage.

Error and Feedback Error and Feedback is the real-time response from the technology when the user makes an error. This can be the vibration by the pen when the user moves out of the writing margins.

Comfort The design of the pen and usage is ergonomically comfortable. Collaboration Collaboration represents the interaction between the users. The

collaboration is observed with two different perspectives. Constructive Interaction

This sub-factor represents the collaboration or interaction when two users work together.

Participatory Design This factor is used to measure the team effort when real users are involved during the process.

Affect (motivation to learn)

This is an additional parameter, which is taken out of the present usability factors. The motivation construct is composed of four sub-constructs: attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction (Keller,1983).

Guidance and Support The training sessions, tutorial and the online material for learning the use of the system are covered under guidance and support. The name was changed from learner guidance and support to guidance and support.

Accessibility The level of difficulty in setting-up/installing the system is called accessibility factor. The factor deals with the technical errors and requirements associated with the technology, such as driver installations, preparation of especial material (e.g. printing of especial paper).

Sustainability This factor represents how sustainable the interactive system under observation.

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3.8 Sample Questionnaire for Conduction of Surveys

Table 3.3 below shows some a few questions similar to those used in digital pen and paper experiment. Survey type here means the relevant observation cycle; Group type suggest the under observation ‘focus group’. The acronyms FUS, GS and PS stand for First Use Survey, Group Survey and Project Survey. Please note the project cycles were not named exactly the same while the experiment was being conducted. The question are then further associated with experiential factors. Table 3.4 shows the sample association of above-mentioned questions. These could also be represented just via adding another column in Table 3.3.

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FUS/GS G01 1 Where did you keep the PenKIT (special place)? Please write:

FUS/GS G0123 2 Did you talk about the PenKIT with other students? yes no

FUS/GS G01 3 You started to use the pen after planning or it just happened spontaneously?

Spontaneous

Planned

FUS/GS G012 4 In the first two days, did you try to access the server and the digital pen features or you used it as a simple pen?

Simple Pen

Logged on server

FUS/PS/GS

G01 5 Do you think that use of digital pen facilitated and helped in data sharing.

FUS/GS G01 6 The digital pen supporting technology was able to recognize yours written texts.

PS G012 7 The use of the digital pen increased the level of interaction among the group members.

GS/PS G0123 8 The use of digital pen increased the level of interaction between the whole class.

FUS/GS G01 9 It is easy to learn to use the digital pen (installing the pen, writing on the paper, remembering the digital paper boundaries, storing on serve, retrieving data and seeking help)

GS/PS G0123 10 The digital pen technology facilitated in iterative designs.

PS/GS G0123 11 The improvement of the design was easier when you had initially used a digital pen.

GS G0123 12 The over all course was enjoyable and interesting GS G0123 13 Please write the most interesting activity during the whole

course here:

GS G0123 14 Please write the technological difficulties you had during the course here:

FUS/ GS

G0123 15 Did you use the Digital Pen

GS/PS G23 16 You have worked with groups of people who had digital pens.

GS/PS G23 17 You worked with groups who had digital pens and you found it productive.

FUS/GS/PS

G0123 18 Do you see the requirement of the especial paper for digital pens as a constraint?

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Question Numbers and Associated Experiential Factors

Leanrability Usage Error and Feedback

Comfort Interactivity Affect Learner guidance and support

Accessibility

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3.9 Conclusion

The analysis of the survey form concludes the suggested method for the evaluation of interactive systems. Along with the other observations the results of the applicable experiential factors are plotted in bar graphs. These represent the various strengths of the interactive system under observations. A sample graph to give the idea is shown in Figure 3.2.

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Affect 3,889

Accesability 3,389

Learnability 3,074

Guidance and Support 3,111

Collaboration 2,911

Usage 2,333

Comfort 2,333

Error and Feedback

Experiential Imact Factor of The Usage of Digital Pen and Paper on the students under observation

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4.1 Introduction

Technology more than often has strong influences on people, particularly on how they behave, how they react and how they perform in a given situation. The way a user interacts with a given artifact also tends to have a strong effect on user. This chapter presents an experimental activity that was designed for the first year students of interaction design class at the faculty of design in Politecnico di Milano. The activity aimed to experiment, evaluate and analyze the use of digital pen and paper in a classroom scenario. The usage scenario was designed to experiment with the existing interaction model among the Digital Pen and Paper System (DPPS) and the users. The study focused on generation of a usage scenario that would allow the evaluation of the interactive model and its usage with the application of experiential factors (as discussed in chapter 3). The other parts of the study were designed to facilitate in creation of new scenarios that would better suit the use of DPPS or similar interactive technologies. The end goal of the study was to present a better interaction model between the digital pen and its users for an enhanced efficiency. 4.2 Concept and Idea

It is often the case that technology adds on to the difficulties of problem solving. The difficult interactions also tend to limit the creativity of its users. The idea was to setup a scenario that would allow the evaluation of the use of a DPSS in a classroom scenario. The digital pen and paper technology had been in market for more than a decade; however the market value of the product with respect to the number of buyers or consumers has not been good. Time to market often triumphs first to market as the emphasis on the design part of the artifacts takes precedence over remaining issues (Alan Cooper). Even though DPSS seems to be a futuristic yet basic (interms of its appearance) but has not really made the rightful impact. The basic idea was to re-understand the technology, perform an evaluation on the interactive model and present with a better interactive model and possible scenarios on where and how the DPSS could be used. 4.3 Goals

- to understand if the digital pen and paper can be effectively used in a classroom scenario.

- to highlight inefficiencies in the existing system. - to suggest scenarios where digital pen and paper can be used more effectively. - to explore the sector of education/schools for the usage of digital pen. - the application of the experiential factors for the evaluation of the interactive digital

pen and paper system.

4.4 Design Challenges

The conduction of the experiment in an ongoing class required particular attention to insure the course was not disturbed and the workload on the students were kept minimum. There

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also was a strong need to make the experiment interesting and intriguing for the students. The following could be listed out as the challenges:

- Creating a scenario for the use of digital pen and paper in a class room scenario while insuring the following:

o Minimum disturbance to the ongoing lectures o Insuring the students remained intrigued and interested throughout the

experiment - Timely hands on experience for selected students to help them understand the

technology better while ensuring they did not get biased with the existing examples. - Innovative brainstorms and presentations to work along with students to come up

with new scenarios for the usage of digital pen and paper. - Designing a workable solution that would allow students to use the digital pen and

paper. This required programming and setting up of the servers from the technology providers.

o The setup had to be simple and such that it would allow us tracking of the use of technology with the consent of the volunteer users.

4.5 Project Description

The digital pen and paper had not been used in classroom scenarios or were not in our knowledge. This made it a challenge, as there was nothing available of the shelf that would allow the student users to use the digital pen and download the respective material. There however were a few examples of how IMC Consulting’s had used the DPP with various clients in Italy. The sequence of the activities that were created for the usage and evaluation scenario is shown in Figure 4.1. 4.5.1 The experimental scenario

The major activities that were carried out during the digital pen and paper experiment in the classroom are shown in Figure 4.1. The concept of Digital Pen and Paper was introduced in the first lesson. In the second lesson students were asked to submit concepts related to digital pens. The volunteer seeking started towards the end of the same week. The pens were distributed in the seventh week and the Know-How Survey (KHS) was conducted in the following week. The students by this time had become familiar to the system. TUI stands for Test Utenti Integrato, which in English is user integration/integrated testing. The TUI included a video recording. The students in the process were give four tasks, namely, Open, Write, Save, Share. The purpose of the activity was to understand and analyze the impact of such a system in a real life scenario (during the lesson). The Usage Survey was conducted towards the end the TUI. The Final Usage Survey (FUS) was conducted towards the end of the course.!C!03936;"58!54!"=2:30!54!.KH!"0!0/5B8!"8!L":7<3!&A&A !Towards the end of PCS the students were asked to work on the generation of new scenarios for the application of DPPS. The details of the performed activities and the method suggested in the chapter 3 is provided in Section 4.11. !

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4.6 The Digital Pen

The pen is the Logitech Io-1 version, used with a single paper license. The pen stores the content as a vector.

4.7 The Especial Paper

The system utilizes a special paper, which can be prepared by printing the provided post-script file. This post scrip file basically consists of a pattern that is recognizable by the camera in the pen.!!

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4.8 The Digital Pen and Paper System (DPPS)

The digital pen and paper involves a digital pen, an especial paper and a software installation on the system. The user is bound to initiate a new page by clicking a check provided on top of the paper. After start the new page the us er can write/draw as needed. The user then closes the page by clicking the provided space on bottom of the page. This helps the system to

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recognize different pages. All the text during the writing phases is stored in the Digital pen as vectors. The connection with a computer automatically initiates the transfer of these vectors to the IMC database. The personal computer is expected to be connected to the internet. After this stage the user can login to the IMC global notes website and this enables the user to download the images of the stored pages. The Figure 4.3 below represents the working of the complete digital pen and paper system.

4.9 The context of the use of DPP

The activity to evaluate the use of digital pen and paper in a classroom was co-organized by INDACO, Centro METID and IMC Consulting. The idea was to observe students (as users) behaviour and re-design of the device under analysis (i.e. digital pen). The students were given access to Logitech IO1digital pens and a website to be able to download the content in the digital pen.

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4.10 The Software / Online System and Associated Access Rights

The pen setup uses a specific ADHOC online application (http://80.22.37.172/notes_app/) for digital visualization of the content produced by the user. The users in this system were not allowed to directly download the content from the pen into their computers. The content was rather saved on the server. The users had full access to download all the relevant materials from the server.!./3!0>0;3=!7;"9"D30!2!0136"29!1213<M!B/"6/!628!?3!1<312<3@!?>!1<"8;"8:!;/3!1<5#"@3@!150;J06<"1;!4"93A!./"0!150;!06<"1!4"93!?20"6299>!6580"0;0!54!2!

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4.10.1 The groups

The students in the classroom were subdivided into four sub-groups, namely, Group 0, Group 1, Group 2 and Group 3. All the members of group 0 and 1 had access to a digital pen; where the first had two and the later had six members. The rest of the groups did not have a digital pen. The pen holders of each group were given a username and password to login to the IMC Website. The details of each group are listed in Table 4.1.

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Group 0 Group 0 consisted of 2 users and each of them had a digital pen. These two could see the content uploaded by each other.

Group 1 The members of group 1 could see the content uploaded by one another. This group however could not see the data uploaded by Group 0. The group consisted of 6 users.

Group 2 Group 2 consisted of users with significant interest in the digital pen and paper activity. This group was given the access to download the content uploaded by Group 1.

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4.10.2 Access rights

The groups with pens could not see the content uploaded through the digital pens of the other groups. The students in Group 2 however had access to the data which was uploaded through Group 1. The activity conduction team (teachers, tutors, etc) were awarded an administrator password which allowed them access to all the data on the website. 4.10.3 Block notes website

The block notes website (http://80.22.37.172/notes_app/) was an essential part of the system. The website had a login verification system through a username and password. The users could view, download and delete information on the website. 4.11 The Emerged Scenarios for the Usage of DPPS

The users in this case were design students and designers in general do no read instruction manuals of new products. This actually was beneficial to our study as we wanted the pen to be as intuitive as possible. The students were given assignment to come up with new concepts, applications and situations that would allow a better usage scenario of the digital pen and similar technologies. The students were provided with digital pen and paper as physical artefacts and were given training session, follow-up support on installation and usage issues. Training sessions on how to use it best given the contextual constraints followed this. Given the nature of the hybrid instrument (DPP) that has the capacity of being a pen as well as the digital features students were motivated to sketch the potential usage scenarios with better interaction models. This was done after the students had gone through the initial learning curve following the TUI phase. A few concepts that were produced by the students as a result of the activity included project ‘memo’, ‘disegno’ and two concepts of ‘escusionismo’. The supporting visuals of the projects can be seen in Figures 4.5 – 4.8 respectively. The designer / user not only becomes more aware of the functionality after the usage of the given artefact, but also creates his / her own cognitive path in evaluating the task – artefact cycle (Mantovani & Spagnoli, 2000).

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The results of the experiment showed a multitude of possibly successful environments that will be reported in the following part. The range of use context varied largely according to the attention given to the following: (1) the different digital options or (2) to the actual ergonomic aspects individuated while handling the pen. The digital options were correlated with form filling in institutional and didactical contexts where quantitative data had to be gathered and reported promptly. The proposed contexts highlighted digital systems in which the pen was placed as a communication tool that made reference to a database. In the same time the observations focusing on the tangible aspects and interface has been placed in a less formal context and took advantage of the size, shape and writing functionality. A good example of context identification in this sense was presented in the ‘memo project’. In this case the student pinpointed successfully how useful it could be have a double usage of the digital pen by writing a memo and share it with yourself and/or concerned personnel.

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The other projects such as the “Project Disegno” showed the benefits of changing the interaction to a more natural way. A pen/pencil is one of the most basic tools for designers for sketching like purposes. The project presented an advantaged scenario that enables users to attain the digital medium benefits while using a more known and/or familiar medium of interaction. There is usually less work on the evaluation testing on the products that have already been launched, however design professionals do spend significant time on strict evaluation test in the prototype phase of the development of products. Most of the recommended scenarios in this chapter present a good mixture of the design phase and redesign of the launched products.

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The other two projects related to tourism or rather a more natural way of tourism also presented a real-life scenario, which could be very useful in finding ones way around. What if the pen had a camera, it could send a short message to a fixed address? The scenarios present a way where you could edit maps, share your routes with the loved ones. The exercise was useful because provided insights on how an object is perceived by designers while using it, therefore detached from the affective relationship developed while working for a long period on the same product development project. From the didactical point of view it helped students acknowledge the critical perception that they have to acquire and apply on all the phases of the design project and helped them understand that the life cycle of an object starts only when the product is confronted with real usability contexts and might take a different shape from the one intended in the product development phase.

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4.12 The Application of the Proposed Strategy on the Usage of Digital Pen and Paper

The use of digital pen and paper in a classroom scenario is the most appropriate usage of the suggested methodology. Figure 4.9 represent how each activity was mapped on to the method presented in Chapter 3. The following subsections present the details of performed activities, evaluations and sequence of steps.

4.12.1 Meetings and brainstorms with stakeholders (Understand)

The activity started with a series of meeting with the stakeholders that included IMC consultings (the sole provider of digital pens in Italy), Centro METID (Metodi E Tecnologie

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Innovative per la Didattica) and department of Industrial Design and Multimedia Communications (INDACO). The technology of digital pen and paper had been market for quite some time but as discussed needed evaluation from a true user perspective to understand the potential flaws and learning about possible scenarios where such technologies could be used. The initial brainstorms and meetings resulted in a development of an understanding that engineering support to make the project happen would be provided by IMC consulting. It was also decided that a maximum of ten digital pens and sufficient paper would be provided to students and the use case scenarios would be developed with the support of INDACO and Centro METID. The activity fits well in the ‘understand’ phase of the strategy recommended. The result of the activity was the establishment of goals that were to be achieved through the use of digital pen and paper system in the classroom. The goals included the following:

- to understand if the digital pen and paper can be effectively used in a classroom scenario.

- to highlight inefficiencies in the existing system. - to suggest scenarios where digital pen and paper can be used more effectively. - to explore the sector of education/schools for the usage of digital pen. - the application of the experiential factors for the evaluation of the interactive digital

pen and paper system.

4.12.2 Introduction (Understand)

A set of introductory lectures to give valuable insight to users regarding the experiment was provided in the beginning of the course. Students were also made aware of the possibility of being able to use the digital pens. Students were encouraged to think about potential uses and applications of similar technologies. 4.12.3 The surveys (Observe)

The phase followed in ‘understand’ phase of the presented method. Three cycles for the observations were decided that included a ‘know how survey’, ‘usage survey’ and ‘project completion survey’. The usage survey was part of an observation technique in frequent use by Cento Metid titled Testi User Integrazione (as explained in Section 4.12.4). The surveys after refinement and finalization in the experiment phase are show in the later sections of the chapter. 4.12.4 Testi User Integraione – TUI (Observe and Experiment)

TUI stands for Test Utenti Integrato, which in English is user integration/integrated testing. The TUI included a video recording. The students in the process were give four tasks, namely, Open, Write, Save, Share. The purpose of the activity was to understand and analyze the impact of such a system in a real life scenario (during the lesson).

This phase overlapped the observed and experiment phases of the proposed strategy. The detailed chart of the processes and what was to be observed is shown above in Table 4.2.

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4.12.5 Pen kit distribution (experiment)

This was part of the experiment phase and the pen kits were distributed among the selected volunteers for the conduction of the TUI experiment. This was followed by know how survey, as explained below.

4.12.6 Usage Survey

The ‘usage survey’ was conducted as part of the TUI experiment. The idea was to evaluate the difficulties users faced while performing the assigned tasks and also to evaluate if the users were able to perform all of them. The survey also focused on getting the results of usage in a more controlled and supervised scenario. The highlighted answers below show the majority answers from the users.

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4.12.7 Project Completion Survey

The ‘project completion survey’ was conducted at the end of the experiment. The main goal was to have an overall view of the usage during the whole experiment. This survey composed of almost all the experiential factors. The carried out survey and the summarized results can be seen in Table 4.5

Open (task 01) Where he/she move the cap of the pen? How he/she Orient the paper?

When the “pigeot open” is checked? Any Title on the page?

User checked the battery status of the pen? Other object on the desk? (Such as normal pen, PC)

Where the color sheet is kept? If there is any. Record time

Write (task 02) Is the page already open? User checked the status of the pen?

User work near the border of the paper? Effect of the pen vibration on user?

Changing page user checked the “pigeot close” of the page?

The use of color sheet? What they write? (Only lecture notes? or personal

data?) They share the pen? (When they are busy for some

reason such as calling, short messaging, etc) They use to upload immediately the electronic paper to? (At the end of each page?)

Save (task 03) When they upload data? (Such as page by page?) How they upload data? (es: they own device or peer

device? private situation?) Where they upload data? (In the classroom?)

They use physical copy of the electronic paper? Share (task 04) They organize the idea on how to share (yes/no; if

yes detail on strategy). The students would be asked to share the data by choosing the method of their

preference.

This would be done while assuming that the person who they have to share the data with has no

knowledge about the interactive digital pen and paper system.

Additional Tasks

Ask the students to comment see their own video recoding and comment on their emotion

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4.12.8 Know How Survey

The ‘know how survey’ was conducted to gather regarding the skill set of the users. The idea here was to understand if users had any idea of the users familiarity with technology in general, with interactive technology and computers. The ‘know how survey’ is attached in the appendix. The conduction of the survey comes under the ‘experiment’; the short listing of procedures and question in the ‘observation’ and the analysis of respective surveys fall under the ‘analysis’ phase of the proposed strategy. 4.12.9 Scenarios for the use of digital pen and paper (evolve and improve)

After the completion of the experimental part of the usage, students were asked to come up with potential new and interesting scenario for the usage of DPP. A few selected scenarios and interactive models are listed under Section 4.11)

Experiential

Factor Survey Questions Responses from Users 1,2,3,4 and 5

Rating Questions (1 to 5;

Where 0 means NO) 1 2 3 4 5 Impact Factor

Usage and Collaboration

Please rate how difficult it was to find out whether a file has already been downloaded.

1 to 5 1 3 3 4 2 13 2.60

Accesability Clicking on a link always gave the expected results? Please rate.

1 to 5 5 5 2

1 4 17 3.40

Usage Please rate if the icons were representative of what they were supposed to represent.

1 to 5 4 4 4 1 2 15 3.00

Usage

The terminology used in the application site is immediately comprehensible (easy to understand)? Please rate.

1 to 5 3 4

3 2 4

16 3.20

Comfort Please rate the readability of the application screen.

1 to 5 4 5

4 4 3 20 4.00

Accesability

Please rate the level of difficult in navigating the website (i.e. identifying the buttons and links, etc).

1 to 5 4 2

3

4 1 14 2.80

Usage Please rate the overall use of the application site.

1 to 5 2 4 4 4 3 17 3.40

Comfort

Please rate the application site from an aesthetic point of view? 1-5 ranges from very ugly to most beautiful.

1 to 5 1 2

3

1 4 11 2.20

Usage The terminology used during the test (e.g. in the questionnaires) is clear?

1 to 5 * 4 3

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Experiential

Factor Survey Questions Responses from Users 1,2,3 …9

Two Choice (Yes, NO) Value Type 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Total

Impact Factor

Did you use the Digital Pen? yes(1)/no(0) 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1

Collaboration Did you talk about the PenKIT with other students? yes(1)/no(0) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Usage

You started to use the pen spontaneously(it just happened)? Yes for spontaneous and no if you planned yes(1)/no(0) 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0

Usage

In the first few days, You did not used any digital feaures of the pen, Rather you used it as a normal pen. yes(1)/no(0) 0 1 1 0 0 * 1 0 0

Rating Questions (1 to 5;

Where 0 means NO)

Collaboration and

Learnability

You have worked with groups of people who had digital pens?.If yes please rate the level of productivity. 1 to 5 3 4 0 5 2 4 3 3 3 27

3.00

Accesability Do you see the requirement of the especial paper for digital pens as a constraint? 1 to 5 3 3 5 3 4 3 4 3 2 30

3.33

Collaboration Do you think that use of digital pen facilitated and helped in data sharing. 1 to 5 4 3 3 4 2 5 3 3 4 31

3.44

Collaboration and

Learnability

The use of the digital pen increased the level of interaction among the group members. 1 to 5 3 2 3 5 3 5 3 2 4 30

3.33

Collaboration The use of digital pen increased the level of interaction between the whole class. 1 to 5 1 3 2 5 2 3 2 2 1 21

2.33

Guidence and Support

It is easy to learn to use the digital pen (installing the pen, writing on the paper, remembering the digital paper boundaries, storing on serve, retrieving data and seeking help) 1 to 5 3 3 2 2 4 3 4 3 4 28

3.11

Collaboration The digital pen technology facilitated in iterative designs. 1 to 5 1 4 3 4 2 4 3 3 2 26

2.89

Collaboration and

Learnability

The improvement of the design was easier when you had initially used a digital pen. 1 to 5 1 3 3 4 4 4 2 3 2 26

2.89

Affect The over all course was enjoyable and interesting 1 to 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 35

3.89

Accesability Rate the level of technological difficulties in installing the pen application. 1 to 5 5 4 4 5 4 4 2 2 1 31

3.44

Comfort and Usage

Rate the level of difficulties in using the pen (excluding software application) 1 to 5 1 3 2 4 4 3 1 2 1 21

2.33

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4.13 The Analysis Phase

The analysis phase of the presented method performed after gathering the results of all the conducted surveys and experiments. The calculated impact factors of both the US and PCS can be seen in the following subsections. 4.13.1 The Usage Survey

The results of the Usage survey can be seen below in Table 4.6 and Figure 4.10.

FACTOR IMPACT VALUE

Affect *

Accesability 3.100

Learnability *

Guidance and Support *

Collaboration 2.600

Usage 2.700

Comfort 4.000

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4.13.2 Project Completion Survey

The results of the PCS survey can be seen below in Table 4.7 and Figure 4.11.

FACTOR IMPACT VALUE

sAffect 3.889

Accesability 3.389

Learnability 3.074

Guidance and Support 3.111

Collaboration 2.911

Usage 2.333

Comfort 2.333

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4.14 Conclusion

The guidelines set by the proposed strategy were successfully applied on the use of digital pen and paper. The student in general felt positive about the use of the technology but the installation procedures and difficulties were the general cause of frustrations. The difficult interaction model was also not appreciated by the users of the digital pens.

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CHAPTER 5: CREATING TRASH TRACK

5.1 Introduction

The chapter presents the creation of the project titled trash track. The earlier sections of the chapter present an introduction to the whole concept of tracking trash. The following sections present the project with the help of images and diagrams and reveal the design challenges, which were essential to succeed in trash tracking. This is followed by the initial visualizations and working of ‘trash tags’. The last sections of the chapter provide insight to the project dynamics.

5.2 Concept and Idea

Nobody wonders where, each day, they carry their load of refuse. Outside the city, surely: but each year the city expands, and the street cleaners have to fall farther back. The bulk of the outflow increases and the piles rise higher, become stratified, extend over a wider perimeter. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.

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The multifaceted project that consists of a multidisciplinary team presents us with a futuristic use of pervasive technologies presents a scenario where 100 percent recycling could become a possibility. The project also initiates a new direction towards understanding how trash really moves in the Cities sanitation system and brings attention to ‘removal chain’. The project also promises a behavioral change in the consumption patterns by creating a new invisible connection between people and their trash. A service diagram of Trash Track can be seen in Figure 5.2.

5.3 Goals

The project had various goals including: - to enable a scenario where tracking the trash would become a possibility. - to initiate a learning process towards removal chain. - to create a dynamic connection between people - and to promote a behavioral change on how people associate themselves with their

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5.4 Design Challenges

The project had various design challenges at hand. To start with a technology that could track the movement of trash in real-time was not available in the market. The major challenges could be generically distributed into technological and implementation challenges. These included designing a device that would allow us to send a signal. There were a few things to consider when the trash tag was being designed. The tags had to be attached with trash, which would move around the city and there was a big unknown as far as the flow and handling was concerned. The nature of trash posed the quite a few challenges and the foremost ones include the following:

- battery life - signal strength in confined areas such as trash bins, trucks etc. - turn on/off mechanism - when to send location - accuracy - water resilience - robustness

The trash comes from people and sometimes certain trash has certain values in terms of association, affect, etc. Other times trash is just trash, people loose the value of items as soon as they throw them away. We focused on learning weather people would be intrigued to follow their trash and is this project going to bring a behavioral change in people? Perhaps by making them care more of what they consume and what they throw. There also was a need to know how sustainable certain object were, what was the cost of their movement. The idea itself was presented by a group of researchers working on the End of Lifecycle of object. The major implementation challenges included the following:

- Designing the scenarios for distribution of the trash tags. This included who will tag and how much attention would be given to those who are tagging.

- Designing a strategy on how to tag, i.e., how would the trash tags be attached to the various kinds of trash? The solution is discussed in a later section titled Packaging.

- A criteria for selection of trash objects to be tagged, this included input from the EOL experts at MIT.

5.5 Project Description

The goal of Trash Track is to reveal the disposal process of our everyday objects and waste, as well as to highlight potential inefficiencies in today’s recycling and sanitation systems. Trash Track involved people from different neighborhoods of large American cities including Seattle and New York. The deployment process is on the go and the SENSEable City Lab with the help of the project partners and volunteers have deployed thousands of active, wireless location tags on different types of waste products. The project was inspired by the NYC Green Initiative (www.nyc.gov/PlanNYC2030), which aims to increase the rate of waste recycling in the city to almost 100% by 2030. This is indeed an ambitious goal, as today’s recycling systems are far from optimized. In New York, only about 30% of waste is currently diverted from landfills for recycling, while in San Francisco 70% of garbage is recycled (the top rate in the nation). In trying to fill this gap

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between urban reality and urban vision we ask, how can pervasive technologies help expose the challenges of waste management and sustainability? And how can we suggest a future scenario where the same pervasive technologies can make 100% recycling a reality, thereby freeing urban land for uses other than landfills? Trash Track will tag different types of waste and follow these through the city’s waste management system to reveal the final journey of our everyday objects. The project aims to make the “removal chain” of goods as transparent as the supply chain. The products tracked included old computers, analog TVs, cereal boxes, glass containers, plastic bottles, and clothing. Tech or e-trash is of particular interest as its disposal is increasingly posing an environmental challenge.

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The project provides with real-time visualizations of trash moving through the city. It also enabled people to track the movement of their own trash in real time. The visualizations enabled people to perceive what happens to their trash on consumed object as they throw them away.

Trash Track relies on the development of smart tags, or “trash tags”, which are attached to different types of garbage in order to track each piece of waste as it traverses the city’s sanitation system. The project was only made possible by the creation of cost- and energy-efficient trackers, which could essentially be seen as a minimal cellular phone.

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The journey of waste objects are tracked by triangulating the signals emitted by the trash tags; these capture the spatial coordinates and time stamps for each piece of garbage at regular intervals. The triangulization of the data from trash tags provide a fine-grained perspective on each object’s end-of-life journey as it traverses through the cities sanitation system. The visualizations of the tracked objects’ trajectories through the city were available in exhibition in Seattle Public Library, Seattle and at the Architectural League of New York. The tracking is also possible via online access at http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/.

We hypothesized that different types of waste, originating in different areas of the city, will take radically different paths in their end-of-life journeys. We also believed that different classes of objects follow different “removal chains”.

The data collected from thousands of tagged after thorough processing with help to understand this dispersion of different kinds of waste and will facilitate finding efficient solutions for the removal/management of waste. The trash tags will provide information on the time and location of waste items being tracked but will allow us to create a database of objects that can then inform consumers about the environmental costs and the embodied energy of the products they are buying and throwing away.

The idea was to couple a high-tech application with a low-tech everyday human activity like waste disposal. We believe that by tracking garbage we can gain a deeper sense of responsibility for things that we usually forget after abandoning into the waste chain. Trash Track will make us face the consequences of our actions, hopefully helping us in making more sustainable decisions regarding the way we approach consumption and garbage.

Moreover, the same tracking approach developed for this project could be, in the not too distant future, implemented through a variety of other wireless technologies such as, Bluetooth, RFID, zigbee. WiFi, and more. This will effectively demonstrate a critical facet of a pervasive technologies utopia - that of an Internet of things which allows us to manage the environmental costs and the embodied energy of objects from production to consumption to end-of-life.

The team hoped that Trash Track will contribute to formulating more effective recycling policies and lead to a ‘supply chain’ approach to waste, which we are calling the ‘removal chain’, as a reverse symmetrical system to the already existing delivery chain. This is particularly important in the disposal of electronic products and other multi-component objects, where future tags could contain details on disassembly and reuse. Ultimately we aim to work toward a no-waste urban scenario. The project is a step towards the efficient use of mobile and communication technologies in understanding low-tech process such as waste management.

5.6 Visualizations

The visuals were an important part of the project as at the end of the day people required an effective and easy to interpret interaction and visualizations to keep connected with their trash as well as to continue to get intrigued about their trash. The sections below highlight a few initial visualizations, ideas and the actually implemented visualizations. 5.6.1 Screenshots of initial visualizations and ideas

The images below show a few visualizations that were discussed during the course of the trash track projects visualization phase.

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5.7 Trash Tagging Scenarios

There were two possible tagging scenarios for the tagging of the trash. These scenarios defined who, where and when will tag the trash and it also presented with the overall

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involvement of the stake holders. Two major scenarios emerged through intensive brainstorms including, trash oriented scenario and people oriented scenario.

5.7.1 Trash Oriented Scenario

The trash-oriented scenario as the name suggests was focused on the kinds of trash would be tagged. Different pieces of trash with high value to End of Life (EOL) experts and other objects of interest would be identified and kept in a registry (just as a wedding list). These objects were then to be found and tagged. The users would also have an access to the registry that would enable them to tag interesting objects to the list.

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The strategy would start a blog on-line with information about the project and modalities of participations for the people. Advertisements on the main newspaper and local television will be used for spreading the possibility of tagging of trash. A list of objects to be tagged will be setup by the team with input from EOL experts. The waste would be divided into categories (such as e-waste, yard waste, garbage, etc). Booths would be setup to provide tags to people along with online volunteering. The people would be asked to take photos of the trash and send them with the individual stories of the pieces of trash. The scenario involves a high number of people and is an open source scenario that permits to have an unpredictable merger of data from various cultures, ethnicities and ages. At the same time it would allow to decide, and control, typology and quantities of the objects to tag, escaping the risk to find only simple elements tagged. The scenario had room for the possibility of tagging any other objects of interest.

5.7.2 People Oriented Scenario

The people oriented scenario focuses on people. The main idea was to follow selective people and tag each or as many as possible objects they throw away to the garbage. The selection of people in this scenario would be based on the neighborhoods, cultural backgrounds and inputs from the waste management companies. H8!;/3!135193J5<"38;3@!0;<2;3:>!$-!12<;"6"128;0!B579@!?3!03936;3@M!2"="8:!45<!@"#3<0";>!"8!?5;/!6/2<26;3<"0;"60!54!

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5.7.3 Trash Track Deployment Scenario

The discussions and trial of the above scenarios pointed a way towards the merger of the two. The combined scenario is called as trash track scenario. The scenario proposes the selection of some of the key items with the help and suggestions of the EOL experts and also highlights the importance of people by seeking a few families for a more focused tagging process. The focus here is on families on whatever trash objects they may want to throw and way with a priority on what they would like to tag. Two different views of the scenario can be seen in Figure 5.12 and 5.13. !

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5.8 Technological and Packaging Challenges

The project addressed two major technological challenges. Firstly, The most suitable mobile and communication technology (MCT) that fulfills our application had to be investigated. The MCT devices are continuously shrinking in size, and can be easily obtained as mainstream commercial products. These are usually available in sizes of 1.5x1.5 inches and are 0.2 inches thick, but can be even smaller. However, existing devices did not serve other requirements such as low-energy consumption, water resilience, cost efficiency, etc. Thus

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this project required a minimal mobile-based technology with the sole motive of tracking objects. The compact dimensions of the developed minimal mobile phone/smart tag will allow us to tag many types of objects and embed the devices in a way that they are not visible from the outside. Secondly the project required a system architecture that would continuously collect the data emitted from the smart-tags in regular intervals. The setup further more required access to the telecommunication providers for retrieving the location at the time of data transmission. A database to store and process the incoming data along with the interaction design of the visualizations was also needed. The interactive part of the system allowed users to track the trails of different types of waste in real-time at will. !5.9 Trash Tag

The first prototype of our trash tag determines location using existing cellular infrastructure. The tag operates by periodically waking up and listening for beacons from nearby cell towers. It records the identity of each tower along with signal strength information, and queues it in flash for future transmission by SMS. Processing on the server side then receives these messages, logs and interprets them to estimate the location of the tag over time. We also plan to build a few experimental tags using a GPS-enabled GSM module to determine how well GPS works for this type of application. However, we are not counting on GPS, as we anticipate that in many situations GPS signals will be difficult to acquire.

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Our prototype is based on a common, off-the-shelf (COTS) GSM module: the GM862 manufactured by Telit. This module is a full GSM implementation in a self-contained module, with a serial modem interface. Our prototype tag couples this module with a low-power microcontroller, a battery, and a tilt switch. Software on the microcontroller will wake up the cellular module periodically to sense nearby cell towers and to send SMS reports. The software triggers periods of activity based on a combination of motion, battery charge, and timing. Two key problems must be addressed by this implementation: power conservation and accuracy of location tracking. To address power conservation it is important to keep the cellular module powered off most of the time, because even in its idle state it consumes 14 mW. !

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Our design uses an ultra-efficient microcontroller and a zero-power tilt switch to increase tracking resolution when the tag is in motion and decrease when it is static. We anticipate that our prototype will have a lifetime of at least one month, and with algorithmic tuning, possibly considerably longer. We intend to package the node inside a heavy weight, sealed poly-bag, which can be attached to an item either by foam tape or zip tie through a grommet. While the eventual packaging may change, this strategy should be inexpensive, flexible, and easy to assemble quickly. The second key problem to address is the computation of a viable track from the cell tower data. This will all be done on the server side, meaning that the algorithms to process the raw data can be honed over time with ease, and without changing the tags themselves. We anticipate beginning with algorithms based on simple triangulation and then applying various smoothing and statistical methods to improve the quality of the tracks. At this stage, the accuracy we will be able to achieve is still unknown, but we expect to be able to get results similar to or better than similar solutions such as the implementation in Google Maps for Mobile. One reason we expect to do better is that whereas Google Maps must provide data in an online (i.e. immediate, real-time) fashion, we have the luxury of retrospectively assessing the most likely track given the raw data. 5.10 The Trash Track System

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5.11 Packaging

Packaging of trash track was one of the intriguing challenges for the design part of the project. The trash tag had to be packaged with a material that would neither effect the electronic equipment on the tag and that would nor interfere with the signals or would ideally boost the signal. The packaging material used for trash track included sterol foam, epoxy and plastic. The various packaging and the way of production is shown in Table 5.1. 5.12 Project Dynamics

The trash track project faced several challenges including design, deployment, development and implementation of the issues at hand. The project was initiated by ‘SENSEable City Lab’

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at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA. The lab is itself diverse and mostly follows an Architectural approach towards the projects at hand. 5.12.1 Team Dynamics

The very requirements of the project required a dynamic team as well. The team was formed of people from various disciplines including design, architecture, engineering, information technology, computer science and sociology. The team was more over from different regions of the world including USA, Italy, Pakistan, Iran, China and UK. 5.12.2 Project Partners

The official partners and the collaborators at various stages of the project included the following:

- Waste Management Inc. - Qualcomm - Telecom Italia - Telit

5.12.3 Sterol (polyurethance) Foam

Item: AeroMarine 8# Density Foam Info: http://www.jgreer.com/Foam%20Page.htm http://www.jgreer.com/boat-foam.htm Mix Time: 1-2 minutes Cure Time: 10 minutes

Directions: Mix the resin and the hardener in equal parts.

5.12.4 Rubber

Item: AeroMarine Urethane Potting Compound, Shore 75A Info: http://www.jgreer.com/electronic-potting.htm Mix Time: 1-2 minutes Cure Time: 12 hours


5.12.5 Epoxy

Item: AeroMarine Epoxy #300/11 Info: http://www.jgreer.com/electronic-potting.htm Mix Time: 1-2 minutes Cure Time: 24 hours Directions: Mix the resin and the hardner in equal parts.


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5.13 Conclusion

The project created a phenomenal impact on the media, on people and on researchers from around the world. We were able to meet our defined goals as the development of the trash tag allowed successful tracking of the trash as it moved away from City. Certain pieces of trash were tracked as they left the country. The project after the first deployment was repeated on different scales in City of Seattle, London and in New York.

It is an ongoing project and has not yet completed. The data that has been collected after the deolpyment of tags is still coming in and will take couple of months to be analyzed properly. However the initial findings did fascinate people where they were amazed to how long their trash stays in the system. The behavioural change could not be calculated as the research would have like to, it can just be said that it’s a new beginning of a possible scenario where 100 percent trash would be recycled.

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CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS

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CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS

6.1 Introduction

This final chapter concludes the research undertaken and opens a discussion on the presented strategy for the evaluation of interaction design and interactive systems. The middle sections also present a critique on the trash track project. Finally, the chapter closes with future directions and recommendations for further research. 6.2 A Discussion on Presented Evaluation Strategy

We have attempted to present a much-needed step in the direction of some standardization of evaluation methods for interactive systems. 6.2.1 A Contribution

The presented strategy could be seen as a naïve contribution towards the available evaluation methodologies. A lot of usability evaluation methods for evaluation portals, websites and software’s exist today but there is a lack of standard methods that could be usefully employed on interaction design and interactive systems. Furthermore there are numerous testing procedures for testing how well a software works but none established technique to get a true user perspective on the designed or in use system. The suggested method can be seen as the first step to ensure the key stakeholder, ‘the user’ of the system is happy and was onboard during and after design of the system under observation. Hence we would like to see this as a naïve contribution towards establishing standard procedures especially for evaluation of existing interactive systems. 6.2.2 Critique

Even though the suggested technique sets a good direction for the evaluation of interactive system but it still involves a heuristic approach towards many problems. Perhaps it would be ideal to limit the required heuristics towards establishment of evaluation of an interactive sytem. The suggested approach also as it is was not directly applicable while creating new interactive systems. It was indeed helpful in the brainstorm sessions and to pin point generic issues the users may have but it could not be applied directly while creating new systems. Creating new systems perhaps rightly remains to be highly intuitive process. 6.3 Critique on Trash Track

The project stands out to be a promising tool that made a key challenge of tracking trash a possibility and it also contributed in gaining useful information on removal chain and contributed to initiate gathering of knowledge for the removal chain in contrast to production chain. The project at the moment however remains to be highly expensive where each tag approximately costs 100 dollars (USD) each. The project perhaps will have an impact on how user behave that was one of he key aspects of the project; however there was no way to evaluate the potential change in the short term. As Mary Catherine O'Connor writes in her article, “Our massive failure, as a society, to reap the value out of the stuff we use – once we’re done using it – is an infrastructure problem. People are lazy. If it’s not easy to properly recycle something, they will throw it in the trash.

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For that to change, throwing it in the trash has to be come the less attractive option. Or, at the very least, disposing of it properly needs to be as easy as disposing of it improperly. Telling the trash’s life story, I’m afraid, isn’t going to change enough hearts and minds to make a big difference”. However in the same article she thinks that the project would perhaps have an impact and we will be able to reduce trash by throwing trash. This anyhow is one of the extreme views, public at large loved the idea, the media attention and the public interest that was generated in a short period of few months is indeed intriguing and fascinating. 6.4 Conclusion and Future Works

The thesis sets the direction for extensive research in use of highly interactive systems in everyday life. It also presents a scenario where the use of technology takes the background and present a scenario where technology is truly for people and not people for technology. The positives from the use of digital pen and paper in the class room and the creation of a project to enable trash tracking both concluded successful integration of pervasive use of technology, especially trash track where a world where every thing is connected and addressable was conceived as a reality. On the other hand the thesis presented a methodology to ensure the evaluation of interactive systems from a true users perspective. This would enable a seamless integration of pervasive technologies into routine life. There was also a point when a question of who actually owns the trash was raised. It seems there are different owners of trash at different times and sometimes when its most important no one owns it. It suggested that trash can ultimately be declared a new common. The suggested methodology is just a step forward towards usability like evaluation of interactive systems, further research could be carried out in the direction of perhaps a more defined approach that minimized the use of heuristics or quantifies the heuristics in a more scientific way. Further research in the area of use of invisible technologies through the use of pervasive technology could also be carried out in various scenarios of everyday life. The thesis would conclude the following directions for future research and experimentation:

- The use of digital pen and paper like technologies that allow the traditional means of input for all sorts of low-tech users or the users who do not like to use technology could also be explored further.

- Further research on trackers that may allow low cost tracking - Further research on enabling tracking in the deep oceans? Mountains and difficult

terrain, which do not have good signal strength of the satellites and cellular towers. - Finally, and importantly work on further formalizing the suggested strategy for the

evaluation of interaction design and interactive systems.

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complete thesis draft 2.2compress

Technology

evaluation strategies

importance of evaluation

interactive systems

collection of daily

table of figures

collection of everyday

research objectives

scope of research