A close reading of WoW tear-jerker

So I decided to look at a bit of machinima made from WoW clips set to the song “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down. It has been an interesting journey. It is incredible to think that some clips from World of Warcraft set to a cheesy late 90’s love-rock song could make me misty-eyed. I dare you to watch this video multiple times and not be moved at least a little bit.

10/GUI critique outline(updated)

My phenomenology account of critique is on this concept design called 10/GUI, reinvent desktop human-computer interaction design.

I found it interesting that there are already many critiques going on in the comment area, and someone even wrote a post to exclusively critique this concept. I think it would be better to write my own before taking a look at others’ critiques, which will be an interesting read.

This video contains both the design and design rationale. So I guess I am going to critique both, but focused on the design. I have so much to say about this proposed new interaction, but I feel I am not there yet. Just post this as a place holder and will come back later.

Here are the clusters I came up from watching the interaction and reading one of the comments regarding to the video. I am not sure if they are good clusters or not. You don’t have to look at the video to tell me that, so here they are,

with ten fingers rest on the pad, the design let me think of playing piano, and I did feel a sense of freedom of operation

but with further examination, I found this design asks a high requirement for the hand/fingers (branches listed below)
• full use of fingers, I cannot as eating as operating for some tasks (ignore the accessibility issue)
• the fingers have to be clean and dry, but my hands (and the commentator’s) are most of the time sweaty, so worried about the pointer “jump” issue
• it could not meet the gamer’s need,
• it is good at general target but bad at small/precise target
• since ten fingers are on the pad, there could possibly be unexpected use (i.e. different finger position, finger joints touch…).

Instead of free, the design restrict the hands (explain)
when use a mouse, the hands stay separate, the design throw the mouse away but also sacrifice the hands position. It bring two hands together in a restricted manner(and it doesn’t have to be that way), to feel naturally, I see “break” the pad while still keep the function would be a better choice.

These are some of the first clusters, and I have some more clusters regarding to the software solution. I know it is too much for now, but there must be some that are not good clusters,

Mind Barf – just sharing

My selected interaction follows:

Still working on refining my argument–here’s the mind barf:

My Claims:

- This interaction is successful at being entertaining/stimulating to the intended audience
- The designers were able to understand the lifeworlds of the fans/audience and hold true to the ‘rules’ of the world of the series
- The dialogue spoken in the actor’s voices (Bruce Campbell, Ted Raimi), the humorous interaction of the player abusing the sidekick, and the fact that the game holds true to the mise-en-scene of the film series all together holistically create a pre-ontological experience for the player that allows them to act and do things with the controls ready-at-hand, which therefore allows them to become fully engaged in this particular game world.

Argument?: One of the more prominent interactions designed into the video game “Evil Dead: Regeneration” where the player, who assumes the lead role of Ash (Bruce Campbell) from the Evil Dead series, is encouraged and able to “use and abuse” his companion sidekick Sam, is an interaction designed for the life-worlds of a specific audience, and through a phenomenological understanding of their audience’s life worlds, and through an understanding of the intersubjectivity for what is funny and entertaining to this specific audience, the designers were able to successfully create a fun and enjoyable experience for fans of the series and players of the game.

Ok, thanks for replies,

-Joe

Using ‘clickers’ as an interaction critique

Turning Technologies Student Response System

Evaluating the most effective and efficient ways technologies can be integrated into classrooms to promote learning is an essential responsibility of any instructional technologist designer. A relatively new technology I am particularly interested in is the Student Response Systems (aka clickers). As you may know, Indiana University ended the contract with the clicker company eInstruction on August 31, 2009 and started a new contract with Turning Technologies just last month. It seems that one of the main reasons for switching clicker providers was the integration of this technology with Oncourse, which means that professors now have the potential to easily grade participation and attendance of big groups through the click of a button.

For the phenomenological aspect of the critique, I am planning to use a similar approach to Kickasola about focusing on a feeling or emotion to explore the interaction design. I plan to use the feeling of “social inclusion” which is purportedly experienced by students using clickers, especially in big groups.

Unfortunately I do not have any experience using these devices and I was wondering if some of you might have already used them either as a professor or as a student. Even though I will particularly focus in the Turning Technologies brand to write the critique outline, I will greatly appreciate any ideas, insights or suggestions about any other phenomenological approaches that could be applied when using clickers of any brand.

By the way, now that I think about it, I’m not sure if my critique should be from the student’s point of view or the professors’ or both… hhhmmm

phenomenological approach to design critique

I  have to some thoughts here, and please tell me if I’m right or wrong and how.

If phenomenology is concerned with the things situated in consciousness, which is situated in life-world, a phenomenological approach should be concerned with the same things.  So when you take a phenomenology approach to understand visual culture, you are concerned with the life-world of the creator.  And you might even need to reconstruct the life-world of the creator.  We cannot really become concerned about the life-worlds of the viewers because there are viewers during that time when the visual culture is produced, viewers share similar life-world with the creator, viewers 10 years later, viewers 50 years later, viewers in another culture, different age, and so on…We cannot really concern with them all…  However, if we take phenomenological approach to interaction design critique, we can not only concern with the life-world of the creator, but also the users, because the users share more intersubjectivity than the infinite broad range of visual culture viewers…but..users are still kind of a LOT.

My question is:  when we take a phenomenological approach, what are we concerned with?  Do we need to take viewers or users’ life-worlds into considerations?

I feel like it is a weird question to ask….:P

Embodied Jet Force Gemini and RE4

Talking about game semiotics last thursday, along with the new readings on embodied interaction made me think of one of my favorite games ever, Jet Force Gemini. I’ll try and explain some of the tacit knowledge of being a gamer that semiotics has given me, along with trying to briefly being able to describe the embodiment I find in this game.

Quick Backstory

This game is about three space travelers who are fighting against the evil bug-robot Mizar. Our protagonists are Juno, Vela, and Lupus, and this game was originally on the N64. The story so far is that they have seen the evil Mizar enslave a happy set of bear-people, called the Tribals, into doing his evil bidding. The video here places the player at the first “level” of Vela, on the starship Sekhmet. The video also starts halfway through the level, as well.

The Tacit Knowledge

So here’s where the gamer and the tacit knowledge take part. The first room the video takes place in is a “safe room”, as there are no baddies. This is due to the fact there is someone the player has to talk to in order to get a key and some important weapon pickups in there. It’s also a plain square room that doesn’t feature that much else as well, which communicates that the room is just to be used quickly and just for the items (even though the player needs to come back here).

Then the player goes back through some small tunnels to get back to a large room (the tunnel’s purpose is just a connector, and some fighting occurs here). This large room was the scene of a lot of fighting, as the different walls in the room afford cover for the player and the baddies. This room also is a springboard to other areas of the level, but only if the player has the jetpack accumulated later in the game. This is communicated through the small tunnels at the very top and back of the screen, which tells the player: “haha – I’m here but you can’t get to me yet!”.

The next room affords a lot of information for not only the player, but the viewer. A ton of baddies come flying in from the top of the screen and from in front of the player. This speaks to the player that they need to enter first person mode and shoot them all. When this happens, the player moves the targeting crosshairs over the targets, which then make a sound every time. This indicates to the player that he/she is locked on to a target and can begin to fire. When the player successfully removes a target, the baddie makes a sound, whether it be an explosion or a death scream. This indicates to the player that he/she can move on. When all the baddies are removed, the door at the end opens (because it’s green, and the camera centers on it, and it has been a mechanic the player has gotten used to by now).

Once done, the player moves into the next area, which has a maze on top of the boiling lava. This immediately tells the player that not only a physical challenge is needed to traverse this lava, but also that there might be more trouble ahead, since there are almost always baddies in every room, unless the music changes or there is an NPC in the room. Once completed, the player moves in the next room, which has a walkway. This immediately connotates to the player that it is meant to be walked on and followed through the whole time to get to the next area, even though there are jumps to complete and elevators to use as well. Other cues in this puzzle are from Floyd, your robot friend, who alerts you to baddies in the area – he makes a sound and glows red (and is accompanied by red arrows on the side of the screen to tell you where the baddies are). All of these help to make the challenge easier.

Also, I didn’t mention that the elevators move up and down, which also tell the player you are meant to use them in that fashion. The tribals in this room on unreachable platforms also tell the player that he/she needs to come back with something that will make this area accessible. There is also the usage of a blue glowing corridor to help point out to the player where the goal to get to is. Without the color, it makes it a little harder to figure out where to go. The music also spurs the player on, since it is epic and awesome, that action is needed to keep the story and the action going, too.

Then there’s another small room again where the player has to destroy a lot of baddies to move on, but this time they move faster and shoot back a lot more, which tells the player that this type of challenge will have to involve accuracy and sidestepping/strafing. But the player also sees the cue that if this challenge is completed well, this is actually a rewarding encounter, as there is a lot of life (the pink gems) and ammo boxes around. The next areas also feature the same type of cues (long hallways full of baddies, and small rooms full of items and respite). These are the types of cues gamers can pick up on, and really utilize them in crafting an experience that will let them be a better player.

For me, this type of reading makes for me a full embodied interaction with the game, as not only am I literally in the game, but I am also reading it and making a conversation about it. I may be talking to the designers through the game, or with other people about the game, but I just really like how these things can truly “get me into the game”. And that’s the embodied experience I go for.

Epic Rant

Unlike the following:

This is the much hated and loathed Krauser fight in Resident Evil 4. (Start at around 2:20, and this is not the GameCube version that I know, but it’s still roughly the same game). Heidegger has finally given me the words I needed to explain why I hate this:

He argues that the mouse exists for us as an entity only because of the way in which it can become present-at-hand, and becomes equipment … only — through the way in which- it can be ready-to-hand.

Resident Evil 4 is a game through which all of the action looks like a cutscene. It is in letterbox, a long time cue to the player to take a break and enjoy the story. This game takes the opposite view, and makes all of the action only available through this type of view. The fight that you see is the hardest in the game, in my opinion, as the player is not only being exposed to story, but has to have lightning-fast reflexes to get through the 6 or 7 challenges to press buttons in order to survive and see the story (and also, why does a knife kill him instantly, but zombies can’t?). The point here is that the cutsene makes me think it is time to take a rest, the present at hand view of gaming that I have. But, no, they like to force me to realize the story IS the game, and then the game forces me to take it as ready to hand (hope i got that right). Anyway, the combination of being forced to do this challenge, while transforming the current notion of story as (instead of) being present at hand, where I can enjoy it, to something as ready-to-hand, where I have to confront it in a way that makes me really really really really really really angry. I will always try to skip by and pray I get through this part due to this type of change in the game and the style of gaming.

Looks like it’s time for another post to be done.

a quick thought on HCI design phenomenological-approach critique

Barnard mentioned in his book that when the designers are anonymous, besides approaches other than hermeneutics, reconstruction of intentions is required in order to understand in a hermeneutic way.

As for HCI design, it is often the case that too many people are involved in the process of design, or designers are anonymous.  Does it mean that when we do critique in a hermeneutic way, we need to often reconstruct the intentions, life-world and horizons of the designers like what we did to the French song in class?  If so, do you guys have any tips how to reconstruct this in terms of HCI design so that the reconstruction can be more helpful for critique?

Another quick question: are hermeneutics and phenomenology just two terms for the same thing? Are structuralism and semiotics the same thing?

Quick Veronique Critique!

As I was not fully quenched by Kickasola, I read the user comments on IMDB, a few other critics and blog posts. Here are a few things that I found interesting.

Roger Ebert:
Roger Ebert is no Kickasola but I found a few things interesting in his critique of the movie. It starts with the sentence “Here is a film about a feeling.” Then he talks about Kieślowski’s style as below.

“He is drawn to coincidence and synchronicity. He is little interested in focusing on a character hurling from point A in the first act to Point C in the third. He is fascinated by Point B, and the unseen threads linking it to past and present. His films can be mystical experiences. He trusts us to follow him, to sense his purpose, to leave the theater having shared his openness to a moment. The last thing you want to do after a Kieślowski film is “unravel” the plot. It can’t be done.”

Slavoj Žižek:
For the few of us who cannot sleep unless we unravel the message, I found that this small snippet almost paraphrases it. It’s an excerpt from an essay titled “The Forced Choice of Freedom” written by Žižek.

“The perception of our reality as one of the possible, often even not the most probable, outcomes of an open situation, this notion that other possible outcomes are not simply canceled out but continue to haunt our reality as a specter of what might have happened, conferring on our reality the status of extreme fragility and contingency, implicitly clashes with the predominant linear narrative forms of our literature and cinema.”

Joseph G. Kickasola
I am pretty sure this guy was stalking Kieślowski. I am absolutely stunned by both by the quantity and quality of nuanced observations and interpretations he provides us. He situates his interpretation based on the author’s previous works (references to The Decalogue), life (French and Polish politics), lifeworld (Kieślowski’s attitude towards old people) and through his own judgements as well. This, we all agree, is by no means a simple task and Kickasola has done a kick-ass job. (Sorry couldn’t resist it!)

And here is where I start whining. I have one huge issue with this article. He beautifully states of what I think is the paradigmatic glasses we need to be wearing while watching Kieślowski’s movies.

“… the essence of the film hinges on the experience of watching it, not simply on an understanding of its story, characters, and use of metaphor.”

After stating this, he does exactly the opposite – explains the story and provides rationalistic explanations to the characters’ traits by contextualizing them with respect to the metaphors and motifs of religion, spirituality, politics and philosophy. It does help us understand the movie better but aren’t Kieślowski’s movies meant to evoke? Does one need to have a rational understanding to “feel” it better? If Kickasola is trying to do that, then he is essentially at logger heads with Kieślowski.

Kickasola paraphrases Kieślowski’s attitude towards this by saying
“This type of abstract, nonverbal “rhetoric” can be very persuasive…”

In other words, to me it feels like Kickasola attempts to help us understand a movie that the director did not want us to understand in the first place.

All said and done, I do not deny the fact that knowing about the director’s life, his works, his beliefs, the metaphors and motifs used in the movie and Kickasola’s interpretation of them have definitely enriched me to understand the movie. But the answer to the question whether it has helped me to feel it better is NOT a big resounding yes!

PS: I wonder how Pauline Kael would have critiqued this movie!

When is a movie just entertainment and not social discourse?

So I’ve been struggling with this issue in my head since the Mulhall article on Aliens. And now after reading another film critique, I have to ask myself. “When is a movie just supposed to be a movie?”. I found myself several times when reading Mulhall underlining things and saying to myself, “No, that’s just how horror films work.”

Now this is not to say the same for the Double Life of Veronique and it’s review. But why do we as critics have to always find something? I guess I see it like if you’re looking for trouble you’ll find trouble. Are we really finding things the director put in to make us think about life and philosophy? Or, and this is what I think too often, are we creating that narrative for ourselves, and ignoring the true intensions of the author.

Again, I don’t want to take anything away from the Kieslowski’s work or his intensions, because I believe some of the metaphors mentioned in the Kickasola article where in fact intentional. But where do we draw the line between someone just trying to make an entertaining horror flick and someone trying to make social commentary about feminism. I don’t know many feminists, but I don’t remember them lining up to go see Alien. I do remember a bunch of Sci-Fi geeks with half beards and pony tails outside the theatre though. Hmm…

Maybe if there was a film that was just an empty room with a clock ticking and the second hand was moving backwards. Now there’s a film with MEANING!

..jaMEs

Understanding vs. Meaning

When I was reading for today, I started to wonder, “Is understanding really that important if I find a meaning that isn’t grounded in the artist’s or designer’s intentions?”  I like the idea of interpretation based on life-worlds, but the concept of understanding bothers me.  If I find meaning in a painting that is personally relevant to me, what does it matter if I took the artist’s intentions into account.  Sure I’m not exploring the history of the painting and, therefore, I can’t necessarily infer what the artist meant, but what if I’m not interested in what the artist meant.  In some cases I can see where this is helpful, such as art history, or learning from a designer’s solution to a design problem, but that’s not always important.

Also what happens when the meaning of something changes over time based on context?  Like in the fashion article, it talked about how the meaning of blue jeans have evolved over time.  If I don’t know the entire history of blue jeans, does that mean that I don’t understand that blue jeans are to be interpreted as casual wear in this day in age?  If I don’t know that the first person to make blue jeans intended them for rugged-wear, does that mean I am not expressing myself when I wear a pair because I ultimately don’t know what that pair of jeans means?

I also considered writing a post about traveling in a time machine and how understanding anything would be difficult because my life-world would be drastically different than the life-world of a person living in that time.  Including that traveling in shorter periods of time would be easier to understand because the context is closer to the context in which my life-world developed.  <– But I didn’t for times sake and there’s the gist anyway