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Is there the slightest possibility of final paper deadline (safe) extension to Monday 15th?
Would any of you like to request an extension of final class paper to 15th Dec, Monday?
Ever fretted over burnt, over-toasted bread slices in the mundane toasters ? Here are two different toaster designs that attempt to solve that problem… although both of them are more or less transparent toasters, they differ in their form and function. The first one is stylish, uber cool and chic but unfortunately would toast just one slice. I was wondering how easy would it be to take the toast out of the slot. Cleaning this seemingly expensive stylish appliance is another worry! The other one is bulky, shows off the heating coil inside but can toast two slices at a time. Popping out the toasted slices seems much more easier in this toaster and so does the cleaning. It also very closely maps the mental model the potential users may have of how a toaster should be used. The addressee in the first toaster example would be some person who would like to make a fashion statement through his/her gadgets whereas in the second example, the addressee is a homemaker who wants something advanced as well as equally functionally efficient.
As designers its essential to strike a balance between form and function of a design based on the phenomenological understanding of the potential users of that design product.
Cooliris (formerly known as PicLens) is an online application/ browser add on that transforms a mundane image/video search into a magnificent visual experience for the user!
Some prominent Signifiers and signified concepts:
The Wall:
The wall metaphor used in Cooliris presents to the viewer a graphical visual treat that transcends the experience of searching images into a interactive experiential one. The free flowing image thumbnails on the Wall refer to the plethora of thousands of images obtained from a search made by the user. Thus the image thumbnails are contextual to the image search the user performs in the search bar.
Search bar:
The search bar represents a paradigm of various image search engines namely youtube, google, flickr, picasa, smugmug, photobucket and so on. The microscopic lens icon used in the search bar is an interesting metaphor for the activity of looking up something in a sea of large number of items.
Discover tab:
The discover tab is a paradigm that categorises different arenas like ‘travel, music, sports, news, lifestyle, etc. The icon used in the discover tab is also quite apt. It is several nodes connected to each other which alludes to the act of finding different items that are interlinked.
Shopping tab:
The shopping tab is a paradigm that clubs together different online shopping vendors like amazon, ebay, iTunes, Macy’s, etc. The shopping tab is allocated a shopping basket that is a fairly common example of synecdoche. The shopping cart is used synecdochically for the concept of shopping.
The scroll bar:
The scroll bar is particularly interesting. The ’scroll bar marker’ is represented by a highlighting of blue dots over the scroll bar which is full of grey dots. The highlighted blue dots in the marker signify the several image thumbnails currently focussed on in the wall.
The discover tab, shopping tab and search button are all different paradigms of the cooliris application. The placement of the login tab at the left top most corner below which discover and shopping tabs are placed imply that they follow a syntagmatic pattern. The Login tab has to go first no matter what.
referential (content)
A browser add-on that makes video/image search interactive for users.
metalingual (code)
The sticky comments when the application loads serve the metalingual function of telling the first time user which tab performs which function and how they should be used.
formal (form)
The form is a browser application made by using AJAX and flash. It consists of visual elements like image thumbnails, and tabs for different paradigms.
expressive (addresser)
The addresser is the Cooliris company that is providing this free application to users that may conduct image/video search.
phatic (contact)
There is a launch cooliris button on the browser that installs the application in the browser.
conative (addressee)
The primary addressees are people who use this application to do image/video search, do online shopping, or simply surf the net through visual images. The companies ebay, amazon, macy’s, etc. and the search engines google, flickr, smugmug, photobucket, etc. can be considered as subordinate addressees that can be leveraged through this application.
contextual (situation)
The usage of this app occurs in the context of a searching or shopping activity that primarily occurs online through an internet browser.
…more to come in the 10 page paper … 
In this video, Tim Brown speaks of how some IDEO employees act out scenarios while designing for complex design problems which we all know as ‘Role Playing’. I clearly perceive ‘role playing’ as a great phenomenological approach towards design exploration. A design method capable of milking the creativity of designers working on ‘wicked problems’. We used ‘Role playing’ for ‘Designing a museum experience’ project in Jeff’s class last sem and I am sure most of us not only learned from it but had tonnes of fun as well! It’s exhilarating to know that everything we are learning at our design program has popular manifestations in the design industry!
Design exploration, role playing and prototyping are priceless activities every designer should indulge in and learn from! Get playful, get naive, get creative!
I read Don Norman’s article ‘Signifiers, Not Affordances’ in the vol xv.6 Nov + Dec 08. In the article, he mentions that he appropriates the meaning of affordance in context of HCI as the ‘perceivable’ actions by an actor interacting with the artifact. In his book ‘The design of everyday things’ he tells us that the term affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties that determine just how the thing could be possibly used. He also says that affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things.
As an interaction designer, I would judge an artifact as well-designed if I can use it intuitively and effortlessly without having to struggle around it or having to pull out a manual for the most prominent tasks I wish to accomplish. So, as an actor, being provided with a set of strong clues in the artifact (signifiers), will facilitate the affordance of an artifact.
However, in the interactions article, Norman gives designers a strong message to ‘Forget affordances, provide signifiers’. I am unable to contemplate why he has made a clear rift between the two. I think high affordance is a pleasing consequence of insightful and imaginative use of several signifiers by understanding the relationship between those signifiers with users’ tasks. Affordance is the resultant of the usage of a group of signifiers (both contrasting and complimenting) that will make the artifact perceivably effortless to use for its intended user. A good designer should not only look to provide signifiers but also take into consideration how they are placed in context of the activities the user wishes to perform with it, with a profound understanding of the user groups’ past experiences, beliefs and expectations.
An article that would give insights about an interesting way to place signifiers in order to bring high affordance to a design would have been more enlightening to me that providing a rift between affordances and signifiers.
I wonder how others felt about the article.
From my current understanding of metalingual function these are a few examples of metalingual function I cam across in Interaction design.
In the above example, the sentence ‘ to continue click next’ is a metalingual function since it explicitly tells us that the Wizard is a series of steps and in order to go to the next step we need to click on ‘Next’.
In the above example, there are 2 egs. of metalingual function.
1. the displayed key board short cuts alongside the functions (Play F5)
2. the message in the status bar that says ‘ Start the audio playback’ when we hover on Play option.
Any thoughts?
Finally watched Idiocracy this Fri…the ‘exaggerated-dumbing down of the world in 2505-cheesy-funny-at-intervals’ movie and as expected was disappointed. the sarcasm did manage to tickle my funny bone in scant bouts.
watched TRAINSPOTTING this weekend. liked the objectivity about addiction portrayed in the movie..the dark humor got to me at times; movie had a fair amount of shock factor that was more gross than shocking actually.. i did LOL at puny toilet scene though! convincingly well made movie! McGregor added life to his character.. spud ’s demeanor cracked me up..luved the groovy techno playing in the background…i wud rate this movie 9/10 much more well made and gripping than Pulp Fiction.
BIG FISH: another mcgregor starring movie. A charming fantasy..ideal for viewing with bunch of act smarty adolescent cousins who suddenly start believing fantasies (not those raunchy ones ofcourse) is uncool…reminded me a lot of feel good types movies Amelie and Finding Neverland. liked the vibrant colors of the movie 8.5/10
THE RIGHT STUFF: considerably long movie but worth watching once…funny at times and adored some of the protagonists in the movie… esp if astronauts/fighter planes is your type of thing… go for it!
illustrious sound effects and flying scenes.. i wud give it 10/10
Saw SALAAM BOMBAY last night since i wasnt getting any sleep…movie was depressing for most part, and being aware of the harsh reality of mumbai slums already,movie was quite predictable, what floored me was the brilliant acting in the movie by the child actors/most of them actual dwellers of the slums off-camera..movie reminded me a lot of ‘city of god’… 9/10
p.s. this post may sound more opinionated than judgmental and i apologize for that… but couldn’t afford 4 long posts for each movie review 
After 2 helpful sessions of pre-writing and sound advice from Jeff, I came up with my own little framework I am using for my phenomenological approach for interaction criticism. It’s basically everything Jeff mentioned in class during pre-writing. Hopefully over the weekend, I will finish my phenomenological article and post it at the blog…
Please add to it, in the comments if I have missed out on anything that needs to be there.
A school friend of mine shared this video link with me recently. The video showcases a dialogue between a tourist and a self-employed ‘peacock hand-fan’ seller on the streets of Mumbai (specifically Hanging Gardens – a tourist spot in Mumbai). What struck me after watching this video is how language could be picked up or taught without formal education through human interactions outside of a typical classroom. The boy in this video, I believe, has consciously learned his ’selling act – dialogue’ in different languages. He uses those languages as a tool to connect to his potential diverse tourist customer base. While learning these languages, he must have definitely made a conscious effort to master them through learning the suitable spoken accent, phrases and tone and expressions. A possible ‘breakdown’ (as proposed by Heiddeger) and an incentive as well as motivation for the seller to learn all these different languages, would be that he might be losing out on a lot of foreign tourists as potential buyers of his selling artifact. That may have caused him to learn new languages that would enable him to connect to his non-Hindi speaking foreign audience. However, once he mastered that lingo act, he uses it effortlessly without thinking twice about the corrective usage of those language constructs; all he does is engage in the act of selling the peacock handfans with the hope of earning a few extra bucks.
Would be interesting to know how you guys felt about the video…
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