Sisters 2011 -- the legacy goes on

Sisters 2011 -- view at your own risk

The End is Near

This is my last semester at SF State--after 5 semesters I will graduate. However, currently standing between me and graduation victory is my ITEC 830 final project and my ITEC 894 culminating experience. Right now both seem rather daunting. As I look at the projects and think about what I would like to still add, it seems like a never ending list of tasks. Luckily for me the company I work for is closed for the entire week of Thanksgiving (cost cutting measures) so I have nine straight days to dedicate to the two projects. This certainly will be a Thanksgiving I won't soon forget.

Interface Design Critique of the Kindle by Amazon

Since my original Web 2.0 presentation was not strictly on a Web 2.0 tool but on the Kindle eBook reader by Amazon, I did my critique on the Kindle. Although I expected that the critique would be much different for a device than for a web page or web tool, I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did the critique outline fit quite well for the Kindle; but also it provided me with fresh insights into the design of the Kindle. After completing the assignment, I had a much better appreciation for the design and designers of the Kindle.

You can read my complete review of the Kindle on my Wiki.

The online community

The presentations last Thursday were quite impressive and what made them even more impressive is the fact that participants were scattered literally all over the World. One benefit of having almost everyone online was that it was much easier to hear everyone since everyone had his or her individual Mic to use. Also, since so many people were online, there was only a small group of people in the classroom and that kept the noise caused by side conversations to a minimum

By far the most impressive of all from that class was having a participant who was 15 or 16 time zones away! Dr. Foreman sounded as immediately present as those at home in San Fransisco. Truly the internet has shrunk the world.

The timeliness of daylight savings time

Daylight savings time was last night / this morning and it was a very timely event as we are reading Norman's article on Design of Everyday Things. A problem I have twice every year is resetting all of the clocks, watches, timing devices in our home. It should be a relatively easy thing to do as they all, for the most part, afford us the same things: the ability to read time and set timing events. And of course, the ability to adjust either the time of day or the timing events you set. The reason I find it so difficult--and sometimes frustrating--is that they mostly use different design mappings to achieve the same goal. And since I only do it twice a year, I tend to forget what I have discovered in between times.

As Norman points out, the design should tell (or at least hint) at what you need to do. And then you need to get feedback when you do something as to what you did. The timing devices I am resetting do a good job of giving me feedback. I can usually see immediately what the impact of pushing buttons is. However, it is often not intuitive. Sometimes a single button has multiple functions depending upon how many times you push it or how long you hold it in when you push it. Maybe it was because I read Norman's article about design and function--and malfunction--but this time I had the easiest time of all changing things. Usually I end up turning on the alarm on my watch when I only want to change the time. And I couldn't figure out how to adjust the time--only the alarm--for the bathroom clock. But not it is all right. I guess you need to go into thinking that things are going to non-intuitive and Viola! It all starts to make sense. Thank you Mr. Norman for the instights!!

Hubs and experts

Eugene's discussion on SocialText and its use in 'the real word' was very interesting--especially the concept of hubs. Like in search engines, if you map who references whom, you will find certain websites standout as being referenced more than others: the experts. In the SocialText paradigm, you look at how many followers people have. The assumption is that people with lots of followers can act as hubs of communications and information. Certainly the greater the followers, the more communications to that person will be 'heard' by others. Another useful measure would be who receives the most communications from others. If one could assume that a large percentage of these communications were queries of some sort; you might be able to conclude that this person is an information broker. Being able to identify such information brokers is a useful because these are the people who, as Eugene said, know who knows.

Everyone loves ice cream

I've always loved making ice cream (and of course eating it also). I think I like making it so much because it gives people such joy to eat it. I've tried to capture that joy with my photo essay.