Reading Response 8 Norman---We Are All Designers

When talking about designers, the first thing that comes into our mind is someone who is an expert that designs attractive or novel items that tend to be expensive. For example, designers who design couture and furniture often represent novel and modernism so breathe taken that it is beyond imagination. Both of these items seem irrelevant in our daily life and are unaffordable for most people.

          However, Norman argues that we are all designers---have to be and must be. The design Norman discusses about it is different from what we comprehend. According to Norman, when consciously, deliberately rearranging objects on our desks, the furniture in our living rooms, and the things we keep in our cars, we are designing (P225). Indeed, when we set things on a table consciously and deliberately, we have a purpose for the behavior. This purpose is to make the table neat and pleasant to look at, or for the objects on it to be convenient to use. We think about how to arrange instead of random placement. This is design. Just like Norman said: “Once this is considered and a selection made, you are designing.” (P225)

           In this chapter he also concludes the difference between personalization and customization. It is a trend that manufacturers try to provide products that suit for everyone. Some efforts are obviously seen such as various interfaces we can choose from software or the preference in an operation system. It is common that manufacturers offer different color options for the same product. Although efforts are made, manufacturers only reach the level of customization but come nowhere close to personalization. One thing is because of the expenditures including time, money and labor for personalization. The other thing is what Norman asserts---the emotion to an item. People love or hate an item because there is a bond between them, an experience or a story.  This is a process which requires time to accomplish. For example, a house can be customized; the owner can choose every piece of furniture and arrange it as he/she likes. Though the owner chooses and arranges the furniture, this is not personalization because the furniture is not especially design for the owner. What he/she does just chooses them from various options and makes them work in the house. Personalization in this case is, over time, the house becomes home for the owner that contains memories and stories.

    Apparently, nowadays manufactures attempt to insert customers experience or stories into a product. Carving a name or a motto on a product is most commonly seen. Jeans with holds and washing marks is an example. It is not likely to design a unique jean for each individual in the world, but in the future, on the level of emotion it may be a technology that can insert personal memories into a product which generates a connection between a specific product and a specific costumer.

         “We are all designers---and have to be. Professional designers can make things that are attractive and that work well......But they cannot make something personal, make something we bond to. Nobody can do that for us: we must do it for ourselves.”

         “We are all designer---because we must be. We live our lives, encounter success and failure, joy and sadness. We structure our own worlds to support ourselves throughout life.”

                                                                                                                            ---------Norman



Reading Response 7---Norman Chapter 7: The Future of Robots

In this chapter, Normal introduces Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics (or it is four, because he later on add a fundamental law as the zeroth law).

        

Zeroth law: A robot may not injure humanity, or, through interaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Asimov didn’t put forward this law in his early state is because at that time, robots are far from capable to harm humanity. And it is still a complicated social issue that we haven’t got there yet. But we need this law because it is fundamental and someday the robots are intelligence enough that may capable of injuring humanity.

First law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through interaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate the Zeroth Law of robotics.

The author states that this law could be labeled “safety”(P197). With this law, as the author illustrates with examples, nowadays machines, simple or advanced, are outfitted with safeguard systems. For example, the sensors that detect human or obstacle nearby to prevent machines run into human causing harm.

It is easy to understand the first part of the law; however, the patter part, “do not allow harm through interaction”, is a little bit difficult to understand. And, according to the author, is difficult to implement. This would be a reflective level implementation (P198).

Second law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the Zeroth or First law.

As author states, this is all about obeying people. The robots today are not advanced enough to possess independent mind to obey or object orders from its owner. When we press the remote control, it will perform but not “obey” at its literal meaning. It is just how it is programmed to do. Today if the machine is not function as human’s will, it is just considered something wrong with it and is sent to repair. But in the future, machines are likely to have self-awareness and emotions that really can obey or object. At the moment, we do not need to worry about the order being conflicted yet because the machines are not that intelligent. 

Third law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the Zeroth, First, or Second Law.

Unlike laws one and laws two, this law is really relevant to our daily life and machines are indeed designed to fulfill this law. Except for the examples of low battery shut down protection, we know that a machine will automatically shut down when it is overheat, for example, the hair dryer. However, again, these protections are only on its surface level.  It will more complicated in the future if robots have independent minds and emotions. And it is likely that that kind of self-destruction may harm human, for example, robots are decide to self-explode to destroy itself and this may harm the humans near it. And if it is happen in a large scale, or the bombs are nuclear, this will cause human extinction.

Asimov was ahead of his time or even nowadays. But as technology advancing, robots are likely to bring in ethical and moral issues. As in reality, the first concern is that the deployment of robots in more working position may cause unemployment for human. Indeed it is a social issue worthy to think over as unemployment may consequently cause social morale depress or even turmoil.  But the author offers a convincing evidence by saying that: Throughout history, each new wave of technology has displaced workers, but the total result has been increased life span and quality of living for everyone, including, in the end, increase jobs---although of a different nature than before (P207).

When talking about emotion affection for future robots, there is one movie particular I want to discuss. A.I. (artificial intelligence) is a movie about a robot boy (David) who love its mother (or owner) that want to become a real boy and be with his mother forever. Unlike other A.I. in the movie, David has the emotion of love, of which are considered the most complicated and acquirable emotion.  What triggers me most is the love emotion that David possessed.  I can accept and understand that future robots are intelligent, self-aware, super-power and emotional. But love? Scientists consider language is the attribute to distinguish human and animals. And I believe Love is the attribute to differentiate human and robots.  It they have the affection of love, then truly, serious social ethic problem will occur. I am not talking about the love between human and robot pats but the love between human and humanoid robots.

Robots are created to facilitate human lives. Look at where we are today, we indeed have a better life as pressing a button can safe times, labors. With advanced Technology robots can operate dangerous work field where human lives are at stake. But taking everything into account, I totally agree with the author that technology is a two-edged sword always combining potential benefits with potential deficits (P211).

Reading Response 6 Vicente Chapter 7 Management Matters: Building Learning Organizations

In this chapter, Vicente illustrates the human-tech ladder in organizational level, of which is the forth level of the ladder. Similar to the team level, organization acquire communications and corporations that insure the system operating effectively and efficiently. However, differ from other levels in human-tech ladder, the author found several new factors that are unique in organizational level. They are systems of incentives, disincentives, staffing levels, management structures, information flows across teams and organizational cultures. (P188) From this we can see the organizational level is an enhancement of team level which takes a higher level of communications and corporations.

Within an organization, according to the author, is made up by several teams that are responsible for different targets. In each team is the individual performance of physical and psychological level that keeps the task going. Meanwhile, the information travels internally within a team. If the operating role is a team then this is a standard procedure that guarantees the task accomplished successfully. However, as the author states, “organization as a whole can flounder miserably if the various teams pursue conflicting objectives”. (P189) This is why I said organization level is an enhancement of team level. Within an organization, the information flows need to go across teams---not only travel internally within a team, but also transfer externally among teams.

Giving the example of the Challenger explosion, the failure occurred because of the disagreement between managers and engineers had been compromised due to the “authority pressure”. Though the engineers are responsible to the technical part of the shuttle, but the final decision of launching is in the hands of the managers who are responsible to the whole project. In an organization, more than often, the engineers are only considered as the technical experts who are in the role of “advisors”. However, as we all known from our experience in business procedures, advisors are pretty much an empty word. Though they are expertise for a certain discipline but they are voiced are seldom head by the operating individuals. It is not difficult to imagine why this will happen. As in a business circumstance, the most important component is money that keeps the organization operating or more realistically makes benefits to the giants. In the Challenger incidence, the delay of launching may result in huge loss of capital, enormous reports and explanations to the public---all of these are the company endeavor to avoid. From this we can see it was not surprise the company decided launching the problematic shuttle on schedule. The unheard voice of engineers and the irresistible urge to escape responsibility contribute to the challenger catastrophe.

The challenger explosion reflects the fact that, in most technological organizations, management and engineering design are treated as if were two entirely separate things. (P189) The example of a engineer encounter difficulties when he step in higher level—management, of the organization best illustrate the embarrassment of the gap between engineering design and management. Jeff Skoll donated millions of dollars to his alma mater to initiate an innovative dual-degree engineering/management program for the reason that to bridge this gap. What I see in this case, the foundation of the problem may be solved by specially designed curriculums. However, this gap is not only exists in the technology field but also the others. For curriculum designer, this should be their responsibility to bridge the gap in every discipline.

Reading Response 5

In this chapter, Vicente emphasize the human factor on a team coordination level. He indicates that human behave a lot more different when they act as a team compared to an individual task. “When you bring two people together you get a new emergent phenomenon- in fact, a new system – that is made up of more than the sum of its parts.” (P155) I agree with Vicente. When people accomplish a task individually, the person himself is the only component within the operation progress; hence, he or she can fully take charge of the task. But a person’s competence of achieving a task is limited. Without communication and idea sharing, his/her brain, to a degree, is working isolated. Consequently, he or she may fulfill the task but not reaching for a best outcome. On contrast, when people working as a team, with communication and idea sharing, the mind will be more activated and when progress come to a bottleneck, the team can solve the problem out together instead of stucking in a dilemma. So to speak, team work magnifies individual competence.

However, when people accomplish a task as a team, the situation is different. People working as a team, any individual is not the charging role within this operating system. “When you have a team, key factors such as communication, authority, responsibility and priority-setting must all be taken care of, otherwise the team members won’t be able to coordinate their respective actions.” (P156) In a psychology aspect, people tend to depend on each other in a team. When problem comes out, anyone in a team will have the same idea that “maybe someone else will take care of it, not me”. As a result, actually no one is taking care of the problem. The consequence will be fetal if situation like this happen in a touch-and-go circumstance, for example, the cockpit conjuncture. That’s why it is so important to have effective communication, clear authority, firm responsibility and once again crystal clear priority-setting. People need to know what is their exact role and responsibility in a task, especially in a high pressure situation. With effective communication, there is a maximum chance to solve out the problem, especially in a split seconded situation.

After bringing up the team work problems, Vicente introduces us the “Cockpit Resource Management”. In a flight simulator, pilots are trained how to response properly in crisis and how to communicate with each other. In the CRM system, every action and every words of the pilot can be record. They can review their performance to discuss the possible operation and communication errors so that they can learn from it without losing their lives. “They learn it in a tangible, personal, and therefore memorable way.”(P167) I think this is one point that educator should take in mind. Students who have difficulties in remembering what their teacher had taught them because they are not engaged in the class. They are not the center role of the class and they do not experience. Without engaging and experiencing in the class, students become passive and not motivated. However, it is always the main issue of instructional design that how to make students a active role in the classroom.

Reading Response 4

The video above was recorded from CCTV.  It is one particular example demonstrate that how people react to a frustrating computer. (A digression: It seems that people tend to attack the monitor whereas the fault actually goes to the HOST COMPUTER. Poor innocent monitor.)

After reading Norman’s Chapter 5: People, Places, and Things. The “computer rage” images cannot get out of my mind. It is such a common phenomenon that office people have witnessed. Even I am not at work yet, how many times I saw my father banging the mouse when he is viewing the stock market trend and the computer seems dead and unresponsive. I know my father is pretty much a quiet “computer rager” when compared to the person in the video or those more extreme ones. Why people have such ridiculous behavior toward an inanimate objects. Norman demonstrates it in an insightful way and indeed gives thought to designer in whatever fields.

He indicates that human being has a tendency to read emotional responses into anything, animate or not and biologically prepared to interact with others (human being, animate objects or inanimate objects). Actually this ability to read and interact with people and things around us has become one of our instincts or biological heritage that we lose a clear view to examine how does this happen. People are born to react, response to the things around them and interact with it. This is how a society works as a organism.

As a designer, whatever type of designer he/she is, should note that, on one hand, if things work smoothly, fulfilling expectations, the affective system responds positively, bringing pleasure to the user, people will like it or even love it; on the other hand, when the things work frustratingly, the operating systems appears to be troublesome and annoying, people will show hatred towards it. What a conspicuous and logical principle. Somehow sometimes designers just simply forget it or ignore it. For example, a piece of oral language practicing software I used when I was in Junior high. It operates as a responsive partner that keeps on a conversation, so we can practice our oral language and develop a sense of western-thinking pattern in every communicating situation. It seems an amazing tool that help students enhance their English oral language but it turns out that did not work at all because it cannot recognize students’ verbal words and keep popping up “ERROR” windows. Does the designer forget students as English Language Learner has different accents? And just simply forget the fact that even the best English oral language speaking student at class might not speak standard English that the broadcast expertise have? If they just take a little thinking of this problem when developing this piece of software may not result in totally failure. As the consequence of the failure, on one hand the learning goal is failed, and on the other hand students’ have negative feelings for similar technology.

This comes to an issue of TRUST in technology. Norman stated that emotional attachment is based on trust that comes from experience. That means in our experience of using things (objects or technologies), we will develop a sense of trust when it performs exactly what we expected time after time and hence we will like it or even love it . I think it is another guideline for designers. Remember that people will definitely have a particular expectation to the product when it comes out. This kind of expectation comes from the advertisements and recommendations that can be interpret as a promise to the customers. Can the product fulfill the promise is essential to the manufacturer as it directly lead to the answer that customers like your product or not. If the manufacturer fails to fulfill their promise, they lose customer’s trust. “Trust has to be earned.”------Norman.

Reading Response 3

With the significant growth of technology in 20^th century, there is truly a new generation emerged. With the emergence of this generation, also known as the “Net Gen” or “Digital Natives”, numerous problems that related to education arise. This generation is surrounded by various technologies such as computers, PSP, Wii, Ipad even before they have developed a sense of right or wrong. So what should parents and teachers do about them? Do they just simply prevent these kids from touching any of those technologies until they grow to a certain age? Or parents and teachers should guide them to use technologies in a positive way? Those questions are worth to study. Once we develop an appropriate way to introduce technology to these young kids, I believe there will be a significant change in education and this generation will become the most productive and well-informed genius that brings benefits to our society.

In Andy Guess’s review of “Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives”, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser’s words indeed trigger me to deeper thinking.

“Technology is never a panacea. And technology on its own can do nothing; it's just a tool for teachers and students to put to work in support of how they want to teach and to learn. A realistic expectation is that technology may be able to help support your pedagogical goals, but it's not going to (nor should it) do anything on its own.” ----John Palfrey. With the new generation, their learning method differs from us when we only have teacher as a dominant role in the classroom and only material books for reference with homework. The children nowadays can access to internet way before they started school and they always can turn to internet for help if they need information for homework. So the teaching pedagogic needs to be changed. John Palfrey’s statement indicated that teacher should perceive technology in a whole new perspective to know the fact that technology cannot functions to reach a certain goal by itself and that teacher and technology should be integrated in class to help students comprehend learning contents. In a word, teacher should know how to combine technology to their teaching to help students yield maximum amount information from class.

To my understanding, educators and parents, the older generation, have a need to change their attitude and perspective of technology. Discarding the perception that technology is harmful in most learning environment or regards it as a distraction. They must face the fact that the new generation is growing up in a world dominated by internet and varying technologies and the issue should focus on how we guide them to use online information in ethically sound and lawful ways, to use technologies in a positive way to kindle and maintain their interest in learning and creative thinking, instead of preventing them from access to any of those technologies. As long as educators and parents have a correct view to technology, they will have a better understand of relations between education and technology and hence become a more instrumental guider to the Digital Natives.

Reading Response2

In Norman’s Chapter 4: Fun and Games, many intrigued examples are used to illustrate his major point of view: Why not have information displayed in a pleasant, comfortable way? (P101)

                            

There are so many data and information surround us via various forms or channels at present day. Can we grasp all of them? Or can we just take a glimpse at one of them? I would say no at this point and don’t mention that we can remember several pieces of them. People have an intention to just listen or remember what they need and leaves out all the others. It seems ok to do so, but what if we bring this subject to education? From my perspective as a student, I would unconsciously be absence-minded when I am having chemistry class or geography class (Especially when teacher putting their effort on telling us how to remember the topography in Africa. I mean, what is the point for deliberately remembering this? I might never set foot on this continent!). So what would teachers do? From those who are at undergraduate or graduate studies may know exactly what information or knowledge they want in certain courses due to their fully developed sense of studying. But how about those one who are in younger age? How should the teacher make sure that their students have absorbed what they need? (Or maybe this “What they need” it is an question itself.)

I might wander too far to the subject but it is a concern that first comes to my mind…

However, this chapter did catch my attention. When Norman describes the table tennis, he said: “Is this a good way to play table tennis? No, but that’s not what it’s about: it’s about fun, delight, the pleasure of the experience. (P100) The statement once remind me the Iphone App “ IdragPaper”. Here is the game description from official website: “Have you ever had the impulse to drag the whole roll of toilet paper at one go? Now you can realize your evil idea just in iDragPaper!” What is the point for this game? It’s not a motion game that makes you feel satisfied when you kill all the bad guys and save the princes at last and it’s not a wii tennis that exercise your body. There is no intellectual or physical objective in this game. But it definitely entertains people and they have fun!! I remember the boys are roaring to struggle pulling out the whole roll of toilet paper and the girls are screaming when I showed my friends this purposeless game. This game is definitely a ice-breaker when you have new friends sitting together not having conversation but stare at each other awkwardly. Maybe…Maybe this is the purpose of this game. The purpose is not what you get from the game but what it gives to you. Apparently this game lit up the awkward atmosphere and act as a conversation starter.

In this chapter he also put forward a question that how can we maintain excitement, interest, and aesthetic pleasure for a lifetime?(P110) If we pay attention to the world surround us, indeed we can find numerous examples that maintain excitement, interest, and aesthetic pleasure for a lifetime. In the field of Architecture, from ancient to present, we have Great Wall in China, Eiffel Tower from France, London Eye from England, Burj Al Arab Hotel from Dubai, etc. For music, there are Blue Danube, Clair De Lune from Debussy, etc. There fascinating architecture and enchanting music are imprinted in our hearts from generation to generation. At this point, the long lasting art trigger me to think of a question that can technology(website, application, device) related to education can do the same? I believe this question will bring myself to a dilemma because on one hand the education technology should maintain excitement, interest and aesthetic pleasure for its users in terms of knowledge acquisition, but at the other hand, knowing that teaching methods and the way students how to learn is ever-changing, it is hard to develop a classic software that influence people from generation to generation. I might not taking Norman’s question in a wrong way as I am not digging to much in educational field. But I think what we could do is continuously study students’ needs and keep improving the educational technology. I think that’s the purpose for inquiring in this field. The educational technology itself is a process of “discovery-learn—improve-solve-discovery…”.

RR1--- An Overall Impression on Vicente's Human Factor

The Vicente’s book is a mentor to me since I am a beginner is the field of Educational Technology. Before I laid my hand on this book I thought it was another “regular-boring-doctrine” text book that I always have during my sixteen-year’ study. But it wasn’t!!! While I reading this book, the author is not lecturing me (to my big surprised) rather to tell me facts and reasons as a parent or a friend. I can’t help nodding my head when I agree with the author’s opinion! With his vivid examples of everyday life or well-known incidents, I have a better understanding with the “Human Factor” conception.

At the very first chapter, Vicente does not advocate how important technology is to the human being (of which is a big surprise to me too! According to the conventional Chinese thinking pattern, the author must throw this kind of “reminder” at the table to catch reader’s attention) rather to illustrate how technology can be devastated and fatal. And once again to my surprise, Vicente take the Chernobyl disaster to demonstrate his point of which is exactly the event that always haunted my mind (I’m kind of pro environmental conservation and thus this catastrophic event would print in my mind once I read it). The author draws my attention successfully and I do enjoy reading this book.

Ok. Back to the subject matter then. As Vicente cited C.P.Snow :” the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups.”(“Science and Art”, as Vicente added.)(P31) I think this situation is not just happen in western country but all over the world. And it is not a concern but already a fact. We have science and art subjects separately at the very beginning of elementary school. People who learn science are geeks and people who study arts are sentimental. This impression is almost a inherent concept to everyone. That’s why when I told my friends and relatives that I will study Educational Technology in UC and nearly all of them ask:”Oh! Since when you do with computer science?!” What I tried to explain is that people will instinctively relate computes or machines to “Technology”. And it would be ridiculers to try to convince them working schedule and relationship is also “Technology”.

I have to admit that I have the same concept in mind. But after I started reading this book, my mind is having a revolution too. The book is definitely broadening my horizon. Meanwhile I can observe the Educational Technology in a whole new perspective. This is only the beginning…

PS: Background Information for Chapter 1

The Chernobyl Disaster Description

The Chernobyl Disaster Video( totally 6 parts)

Charlie Chaplin's Eating Machine Video

Combining Technology and Education to Benefit Students of All Kinds.

This blog is my web-based study reflection for EDER679.72----User Centered Design 1.

In this site I welcome the educators of whom possess professional knowledge on teaching (including principles, teachers and instructors the like in all levels of education). And students who are would-be teachers and as well as those who are interested in education. Of course the most important is people who are being educated because they are our "clients". Educational technology is a tremendous field for scholarly community and we need information and reflections from all over the world.

The major purpose for this web-based portfolio is to keep track of my insights, ideas,comprehensions and perspectives in the process of learning this course. As in my case, I am not yet set foot in the professional field in education. So in this site I will also express my not insightful views about education and maybe mostly are from a student's point of  view.And if anyone need a person to test their software of application, I am a willing volunteer.Also, because that I am from China, where the education is utterly different from western countries, I can also help people who want to develop an application which is worldwide used.

In the first class brainstorming I came up with an idea that develop a piano simulation application to help those who want to learn to play piano but do not possess one. To achieve this goals I definitely have a lot to think about. What I emphasize is not how to build the application but is what should be contain in this application.And I found Dr.Jacobsen's recommended text book "Human Factor" can help me broaden my horizon on technology or say it helps me to take a profound insight of "what is technology". Within this four months study, I will figure out how to develop this application and as well as supplement my knowledge on technology and education. Meanwhile, I will keep my mind open and may shift to another more useful or more urgent issue that need to be fix right away.

When comes to the long range plans...As for myself, First I need to read more books on education and need to access to the local educational web forum in order to get a clear view to the educational system in Calgary. And than I want to participate in education,to be a tutor or TA so that I would have my own insight in teaching.As for the application, I need to focus more on "client" needs and try to develop it in a more "human factor" way.

The subject is a big challenge for me due to the language and thinking pattern differences from my original education system. But I have faith in myself ... Hope I can do a good jor in this subject because I am really loving it!!!!

New Blog!!!

Open a new blog for EDER 679 User-Centered DesignⅠ.And it also symbolise my fresh new start in Uof C!
I hope we can share our ideas and minds in this site!Nice to meet you all and wish we all have a good time and achieve our academic goal!!

The amazing blue sky in Uof C!