Sample Paper Outline

Many of you wrote really good outlines, but I suspect a lot of people wouldn’t mind seeing an example of a really good outline that they can use as a model moving forward.

I am attaching to this post the outline that Dane submitted (with his permission). Of all the good outlines in the class, I wanted to share this one as a model because I think it is actually very easy to emulate. It’s structure is actually very typical of an essay, and so it isn’t overly particular to his topic.

Notice how the introduction builds up to a clear thesis statement and summarizes 3 primary supports for the thesis (Section I.E). Then notice that 95% of the rest of the outline is divided into 3 sections that correspond to the three supports specified in I.E.1-3.

In a way, Dane’s outline is a lengthy spin on the structure that many of us learned in high school: the “five paragraph essay.” In the five paragraph essay, the first paragraph is the introduction, and the last sentence of it is the thesis statement. The next three paragraphs each offer 1 point in support of the thesis. The fifth paragraph is a conclusion, which ideally looks forward and doesn’t just repeat the thesis (this is one area Dane’s outline could be stronger, but this is not a big deal). By “looks forward,” I mean that usually the paper says something like, “OK, now that I have shown [thesis], here are some next steps to move this agenda forward and to develop its contribution: [a][b][n]….”

Anyway, for those of you really struggling even to know where to start, the five paragraph essay framework offers a good starting strategy to organize your ideas. Please note that it is not the only strategy, so please don’t feel obligated to use it!

OK, I have added Dane’s post the “Gallery” of this blog, but I am not smart enough (yet) to get a link to it directly in this post. UPDATE: I think it will appear below.

dane-petersen-outline

Practical Suggestions for Semiotic Approaches

So, some of you seem interested in semiotic approaches, but also are uncertain as to how to pursue one. For example, Yujia writes in her blog post,

I don’t see how camera angle, depth of the field and montage can be applied to interaction

More generally, Yujia writes that she is not quite sure how to use some of the semiotics readings to do her own. I suspect that she is not alone in this, and so what I want to do in this post is maybe shed some light on how you can use those papers as models for your own thinking. I’ll start with Yujia’s point about some of the film theory.

Those aspects of film she mentions all have an effect on the way (or style with which) reality is presented. A low camera angle (looking up at the actor) magnifies the actor, making her or him look bigger, more imposing; a high camera angle likewise diminishes the actor. Thus, decisions like that establish a relationship between the audience and the actor–of superiority or inferiority, in the case of vertical camera angle.

How do interactions present reality? How do they structure users’ relationships with their reality? What paradigmatic alternatives could have been chosen that were not? (Example: every shot of an actor must have a camera angle; there is no such thing as no camera angle at all. But among all the possible camera angles–close, far, low, high, etc.–that could have been chosen, why was that one chosen for that shot?)

Notice what I am doing here. I am not trying to directly apply a concept from film semiotics to interaction in a literal way (though I would say that you can apply some film theory directly to interaction in the case of cinematic interactions, e.g., contemporary video games). Instead, what I am doing is asking, “what does this semiotic theory actually do for film?” Then I ask, “what could fill the same kind of role for interaction”? Thus, instead of trying to apply camera angle or depth of field to interaction, instead I ask, “given that camera angle and depth of field get at issues of ways that cinema presents reality in certain ways to viewers, how do interactions present reality to users, and what are the techniques and options interaction designers use to present reality in certain ways?”

We can apply a similar approach to other readings.

Let’s look at Entwistle’s power dressing paper, which looks at ways that clothes are enmeshed in discourses that construct subject-positions for people who wear them. If a woman wears a feminine uniform, she is constructed as a “laborer” with no upward mobility. If she wears a power suit, she is constructed as a “professional” and even an “entrepreneur.” (We talked about this in class last week.)

How might that apply to interaction? Well, what are the ways that interactions construct subject-positions for people to inhabit? Example: OneStart and Oncourse look different for students and faculty. What views, data sets, and operators are available to faculty but not students? And vice-versa? How are these two types of users constructed as subjects by the system? To what extent do these discursive constructions align with the empirical reality/needs of actual users (to rephrase: what is the difference between Oncourse users-as-addressees and Oncourse users-as-recipients)?

Another example.

In the resume cover letter example we talked about weeks ago, the phatic relationship between addresser and addressee was one of polite, formal submission. The addressee was constructed in a position of power–to decide who gets a valuable resource (the job)–and the addresser is constructed as a candidate seeking both the job itself, and more immediately, the approval and interest of the addressee. The point here is that the cover letter establishes a phatic relationship between addresser and addressee that is inscribed with a power relation.

Can you think of a software application that just by using it puts people in phatic power relations? I can imagine, for example, project management software differentially empowers managers and employees. I can imagine even a calendar application in which some types/classes of users publicly post their entire calendars for all colleagues to see, while other classes of users do not, and the latter class signs themselves up for meetings with those whose calendars are always available. There is a surveillance aspect to such calendars, and while one person (the latter) is always able to take the action of signing up to meet the other (the former, whose calendar is always posted online), the former cannot sign up to meet with the latter, because the latter’s calendar is not available to view!

So these are some examples I just made up. The point is that I encourage you to abstract a little from your readings in order to apply them to interaction; don’t try to apply them directly. Instead, ask the question, what does the semiotic approach get for a film/fashion critic, and then seek to get that same thing for yourself for an interaction.

Quadriplegic Elite WoW Player

Here is something you don’t see every day: a quadriplegic WoW player who’s among the elite (progression raiding is sort of the top of the food chain in WoW–it takes months if not years to get to the point where you can even start doing it; RL issues notwithstanding, this guy is good).

Besides its human interest and inspiration for all of us, this kind of computing at the extremes can be a very informative case study. Obviously, this is a great example of emergent uses of technology.

But from a phenomenological standpoint, it is really amazing how similar this player’s experience of WoW is to any other elite player’s. I mean, other than the physical mechanics of how he plays, he talks about raids like I do. That says something not just about him, but it also says something about WoW as a technological environment: it is able to create similar–and very successful–interactive experiences for an incredibly diverse base of users. And phenomenological theory can help us explore and articulate the characteristics of those felt experiences in rich ways.

I Totally Kicked Chad’s @$$ at Driveway Hockey

It was awesome. I haven’t seen this kind of domination since Michael Jordan went to the Olympics.

Short Introduction to Phenomenology

I was reading a book on hermeneuticist Paul Ricouer (you don’t need to remember this name), and I came across a sidebar that introduces phenomenology both concisely and lucidly. I thought you might enjoy seeing this. The author is Karl Simms, and the book is Paul Ricoeur: Routledge Critical Thinkers.

Yes, Casey, You Are a Critic

I don’t want to belabor this conversation about the critic’s authority forever, but people keep writing about it, so I feel that it is appropriate to respond. The concern seems to pertain to the special status of the critic, and what that means, and whether you students get to (or would even want to) say that you share in that special status. Alongside these questions has been some resistance to critic “arrogance” (though no actual examples of this have actually been provided).

I think it will help this conversation to make a few distinctions.

1. There are (so far only hypothetical in this class) examples of actual critics who said arrogant things. No one in the class likes these critics. No one wants to be like them. And several seem to favor tearing them down in favor of a populist “everyman” notion. To me this is no more than a stereotype, unless and until someone can actually come up with an example of such a critic and say why that example is an example of this notion of a critic.
2. There is a notion of a critic as someone who holds a job with “critic” in the title, as in a newspaper film critic. OK, I’ll grant that as far as I know, none of you are this kind of critic. And, frankly, I don’t think that any of you will ever become this sort of critic. So I bring it up only to dismiss it again. Forget about this critic.
3. There is the notion of a critic that I am trying to teach, which is to say that criticism is an epistemological position. Whether a critic is nice or rude is a secondary, after-the-fact issue. All I am hoping to communicate is that to do a critique, one essentially offers and attempts to justify one’s point of view about a design or cultural artifact. If you have a point of view, and if you bother to defend or explain it, then in a sense you are acting as a critic. You do not have to assert a Final Judgment (this is “good” or this is “bad”) to be a critic. You do not have to assert that you have the “best or “correct” or “most valuable” point of view; all you need to establish is that you have a legitimate point of view. You don’t have to be snooty, say mean things, use fancy vocabulary, or any of that. You do not have to work for the Times Literary Supplement or hold a fancy degree.

Lopate on Kael

Philip Lopate, a film essayist whom we will be reading in a couple of weeks, has an essay on Pauline Kael, whom we read last week and who offended some of your sensibilities. I just thought you might like to read a little bit of Lopate’s introduction, just to get a sense for how Kael is seen in the community.

Pauline Kael has just turned 70…. Can this pleasant, obliging grandmother in sneakers, who is fixing my lunch and who reminds me uncannily of my aunts, really be the scourge of film distributors, the storm center of a dozen controversies, the acute and sometimes acidic critic whom Meryl Streep said she would kill if she could? …

Lopate talks about her fans and detractors, positions himself as one of the rare people in the middle, before going on to comment on his perceptions of her strengths and weaknesses. Among her strengths, for Lopate, is her power of metaphor, her quick wit, and her bang-on descriptions.

I raise this also to stress that as professional qualities, we do not generally describe good scientists in these terms (at least not inasmuch as they are doing science, though of course they may have these qualities as individuals). Yet these are key qualities for a critic. Just some food for thought on a Saturday afternoon.

Categorize Your Posts

When you post to this blog, please categorize your posts!

Categories are presented as a series of checkboxes in the lower-right portion of your screen when you are composing the blog, as shown in this screenshot:

Categorize your posts!

If you have already posted and forgot to categorize, please go back and Edit your post to add these tags.

All those posting blogs without categories will have to sing a paragraph of Derrida in front of the entire class! (Not really. But categorize your posts anyway.)

Clarifying What G. Smith Means By “Language”

There has been a flurry of activity surrounding Chad’s post on G. Smith’s final call for a “language true to HCI.” I think there has been some misunderstanding about that, so I am stepping in to offer some clarification.

NOTE: I could not offer this clarification unless you folks had explored the ideas here, so for those of you who participated in that–especially Yuebo, Dane, and Chad–you have made a significant contribution not just to your own understanding but also to the whole class!

When Smith talks about “language,” she is using the word in a special sense. Those with the right training will immediately pick up on what she means, and those without it will remain confused. In that sense, perhaps her article should be criticized for not being clearer.

But fear not! I will step in and try to make this all clearer. I start with something Yuebo wrote:

Language is the thing that we all know so we can communicate. And the language in HCI field is the one that we all understand so that we could use to communicate the issues in this field more accurately and precisely.

I think you are confusing language *about* HCI (our professional discourse and vocabulary on HCI–prototyping, usability, etc.) with a language *of* HCI (that is, a systematic collection of units of interaction that can be combined in various ways). To make clear what I (and G Smith) mean by a language *of* HCI, let me give some examples from other fields.

The language of poetry is words and phrases, rhyme and alliteration, meter and diction. Poetry uses special words in special ways. We use these elements and follow special rules to create certain kinds of poems, such as sonnets and villanelles. A sonnet has to have 10 syllables per line, it has to have 14 lines, and the final word in each line must rhyme in a certain pattern. Otherwise, it is not a sonnet. What kind of special things can be expressed in such a format is why we have the sonnet–Shakespeare was particularly good at this form.

The language of fashion is necklines, a-lines, straps, prints, solids, gauze, silk, leather, cotton, closures, inseams, shoulder pads, draping, etc. Out of those elements, we can create a suit for work, a bathing suit, a pair of sandals, a wedding dress, a t-shirt, and so on.

The language of film is shots, cuts, camera angles, superstar actors, soundtracks, props, special effects, narrative strategies, genres, and so on. Out of these pieces, people create movies: romantic comedies, blockbuster action films, French New Wave films, Italian neo-realist films, Disney animations, etc.

So the language of HCI is, of course, um …..

And THAT is G. Smith’s point. We don’t yet agree on an answer to that, the way we do for film, fashion, poetry. Surely all of us could brainstorm candidate elements for such a list, and candidate rules about how to use these elements. But as a field, there is as yet no consensus. Smith is calling for the community to work on an answer to that, and part of the goal of this class is for YOU all to begin to respond to that call.

A Simple Example of Criticism

I just posted on Interaction Culture my critique of a 2-minute trailer for a film on virtual worlds. It is an example of a critical interpretation of a very short film. Notice how I get my reading by looking very closely–almost line-by-line. That’s a lot of particulars!

Now, it’s not a very scholarly critique and it’s not ready for a real paper–it’s just a blog post! But it’s a start, and I might at some point down the road revise and update it for a scholarly paper. For now, then, it’s just a draft of an idea. In other words, it’s me practicing my critical skills through casual writing.