Week Seven: Reading Week

I did not need to attend class this week, as it was a pseudo reading week for our interaction design laboratory. I used the time gained to conduct a questionnaire for my research project. My research project is based on the question: “Can ambient intelligence technology be designed and employed in an office environment to aid an individual with a moderate autistic spectrum disorder?” This subject interests me greatly and I have been enjoying the tasks thoroughly.

In the lecture we went through different methods of finding research material online. This should prove useful for researching ambient intelligence and autistic spectrum disorder. I also learnt about the evolution of the television and the increasingly prevalent use of second screens. The use of a second screen allows viewers to interact with the content they're viewing in real-time. Lastly, I received my coursework results; I managed to get 88% and am happy with that result.

Whilst I have been studying human-computer interaction, I have stumbled upon a variant of this study called human-environment interaction. This involves ambient intelligent devices and a principle called the ‘disappearing computer’. The computer is hidden from the user and integrated into ‘smart’ environments. One way to achieve this would be to study existing physical objects and to augment their physical properties with computers that extend their functions.

Week Six: My blog

As I entered the lab this week I was given a sheet of paper with comments about my blog. I was initially happy with my comments as their weren't too many negative statements; however it was a trap of sorts. My blog was used as an example for the rest of the class, where it was their job to find the faults. Although it was an ordeal, it did help me discover all of the mistakes I have made with this blog. After that we went through the research and design coursework and we found out that we do not have a lab next week.

With the help of the class, the faults with my blog have been exposed, these included: too much writing for each post, the lack of titles, and the absence of ‘home’ and ‘about me’ pages. I now intend to edit the design and content of this blog to take on board everything I have now learnt. In the lecture we compared dedicated devices with multi-purpose devices such as smart phones. I learnt that while most multi-purpose devices can perform their jobs admirably, they don’t normally compare favourably with devices built for a specific purpose.

It’s interesting to think about user's requirements and how they’ve evolved as time has passed. This shows that individuals don’t really know what is possible. Just under ten years ago, individuals would not have wanted portable music players, but now a large majority owns them. As a designer, it is important to realise that user requirements are forever evolving and what was once so important to individuals can one day become undesirable.

Week Five: Research proposal

In the lab this week we began by discussing the blog we have been asked to create. We examined what constitutes good and bad design and how we can incorporate this into our blog. Coursework two, a research and design project, was also briefly discussed. As I have already decided on my question, the overview of the different topics within Interaction design was not needed, but interesting nonetheless.

There are many different mistakes that individuals make when creating a blog, the most common include having inconsistent and confusing menus, unreadable text, and spelling and grammatical errors. Over the following weeks I hope to improve the design and content of my blog to make sure that it does not contain any of these common mistakes; I will also be improving the design so that the blog is more aesthetically pleasing and unique.

This week I have to been reading through many books on Interaction Design and I’ve come across a particular field that interests me. I spoke about it briefly last week, and that is Ambient Intelligence. If these devices were wide spread, then we could have a world that learns and adapts to how we live our public (and possibly private) life. This is an immensely fascinating prospect but also equally terrifying, important questions would need to be answered before such a system could exist, including:

• Who would have access to these systems and the data they collect?
• What limits would be placed on that data?
• What security measures would be in place to protect our most sensitive data?