for the love of Phenomenology!

This might be a li’l out of sync with the class since we are way past phenomenology and into semiotics now.  Nevertheless,  I’m excited  that I got to see this video on the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Ponty.  It seems to be an old talk show (70s or 80s )  with  Professor Hubert Dreyfus as the guest who explains the history of Phenomenology  from Husserl and Heidegger to Sartre and Ponty, how they differed and evolved, with huge emphasis on Husserl’s technical intentionality and Heidegger’s Dasein.  I wanted to share it with you all.

Note that the video has 5 parts. I see it as a more elaborate version of the paper we read for class [I think it is Dourish's Embodiment paper (?)] but it does not go deep into Embodiment.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

just for fun…

The Entwistle article got me thinking about clothes and identity and how the clothes one wears communicate a lot about the wearer, whether it be intentional or not. In particular it made me think of a Halloween party I recently attended where one of my friends dressed up as an undergrad. She wore tight black leggings, UGG boots and a low cut top, which of course everyone (only grad students were present at the party) found hilarious. But if there is a stereotype of what an undergrad dresses like (admittedly a certain type of undergrad female), surely there must be a stereotype of what grad students wear also. If an undergrad were to go to a party dressed as a grad student, what would she/he wear? Any ideas?

tube of vaseline equivalent?

I found the introduction to the Hedbige article that referred to Jean Genet’s experience of being stigmatized due to the tube of Vaseline really powerful and poignant. The idea that an artifact could be so revealing in terms of one’s identity or how one belongs to a certain group I found fascinating and so it got me thinking about what would be an equivalent artifact in the present day. My first thoughts were clothes (especially after reading Entwistle’s article) but that seemed too obvious and I tried to think of an artifact that exists in the media world we live in today that Genet never experienced. I was reminded of a story my friend told me about his friend who ‘came out’ to his friends and family recently and revealed that she was gay. If you look at her facebook page and did not know her on very personal terms then there is no way of knowing she is gay because she does not explicitly write it anywhere nor does she show on the ‘information’ tab on her profile page the female she is in a relationship with. However, if you look through her pictures, there is a photo that someone else has tagged of her with two other females with a caption that says underneath “our coming out party”.

There is the obvious connection of homosexuality in both the stories but perhaps there is something more; maybe the facebook viewer is the equivalent of the police in Genet’s story where if one digs a little deeper, a lot is revealed by making meaning and connections from given evidence that exists in our culture. Facebook is part and parcel of so many people’s lives nowadays that it is arguably the equivalent of Genet’s Vaseline and can be one of the “most mundane objects” that Hebdige refers to as it has a “symbolic dimension”. Just like Genet, the police and the viewer of my friend’s profile, we “must seek to recreate the dialectic between action and reaction which renders these objects meaningful” (p.2). This arguably in many ways sums up what we are trying to do when critiquing interaction design.

It’s Metal

So I took a look at one of the readings for this week, and it talked about how people use language in different contexts to connotate meanings within a community. I saw this as an opportunity to share some of the knowledge I know about the metal community by showing this music video (Arch Enemy – Revolution Begins). Please enjoy! (It’s a short post)

Basically this can only be described by the following phrase: “that’s metal”. Now, I am not just saying the obvious, but I am using the awesomeness described by Zach and Ron (of epic Metalscape fame), as something that is so imbued with the spirit and experience that you feel it through your body. This is exhibited in the following ways:

(from the video)

1. flames
2. walking (stance)
3. black and sepia colors
4. usage of few video filters
5. defiance and epicness
6. pretty built (physically – like Vin Diesel) people
7. clouds

(from the music)

1. epic fast (2 handed) solo
2. very full of power (volume)
3. high energy (speed)
4. the black and red for anarchy (color)

Present to Hand & Ready to Hand vs Transparency and Reflectivity?

So in the readings for Thursday (Bolter & Gromala, 369-82, “Transparency and Reflectivity: Digital Art and the Aesthetics of Interface Design”), I just wanted to ask if anyone noticed that (or agrees with):

Present to Hand & Transparency are the same thing.

Ready to Hand & Reflectivity are the same thing.

Transparency Def:
“… they usually assume that the interface should serve as a transparent window, presenting the user with an information workspace without interference or distortion. They expect the user to focus on the task not the interface itself.”

Reflectivity Def: “There are times when the user wants to be immersed in the data and to forget the interface, and other times when the user needs to step back and look at the interface rather than through it.”

Present-to-hand
You awareness is on the tool, not the task.

Ready-to-hand

You are using the tool, but your awareness is on the task.

————————————–

Do you agree? Yea? Nae?

Are the differences that I am not seeing/understanding? (If so, please make them “present-to-hand” for me!)

Thanks!

link from sequence analysis to task analysis

Thanks Yujia for finding the link in her last post. Today, when I was reminded of task analysis(TA) by sequence analysis(SA), I knew there are some similarities, but also some difference, but I could not articulate at that time. This paragraph from Jeff’s post helps me think,

“But whereas task analysis if often used as a means to measure efficiency to ascertain usability, sequence analysis in film is used to gain insight into the objective basis of a subjective phenomenon: the experience of a film.”

Here is a definition of task analysis from Dan Saffer’s book, Designing for Interaction,

“A task analysis is a raw list of activities that the final design will have to support.”

“[it] is especially useful later in the design process as a check to see whether the design supports all the tasks required. … the designer can make sure the design meets all the requirements.”

From Jeff’s analysis about the SA, I got the sense that it is to make the invisible visible, and the unconscious conscious by seeing the break down of a sequence from the film, and find out and analyze what exactly shape the experience. While TA is about logic, exploring all possibilities of an interaction. The purposes are different.

However if going further, by laying the two out, I can see the possible connection here. If TA could also be used to analyze the sequence of interaction, instead of just examining whether something is missing, but also exposing the elements that consist of the design, we could also make the invisible visible, in terms of finding out how they affect the user experience. Any thoughts?

Ha, it seems that I should explore Jeff’s old posts as supplementary class readings.

Notes from class on 11/10

What is sequence analysis:

• Picking out a piece of a film that seems cohesive as a part
• Look at it in parts to find the meaning or intention
• Sequence into parts to look at the pieces and distinct parts to examine the details for meaning
• Deliberate detail analysis, painstaking
• Language of film – allows you to identify elements and talk about them on different levels

Sequence

• Self-identified
• Has a beginning and end
• Analogous to a chapter in a book
• 7 – 12 minutes of film
• song/verse

Elements of sequence analaysis

• chart/camera angle/dialogue – transcription
• depth of field
• effects
• color
• articles of a film and reviews of reviews (source materials)

Why do we do sequence analysis?

• reflect on it, see meaning in the detail
• structuralist approach for symbols
• deep awareness
• fine points
• pinpoint issues
• important features of relationship
• determining how much intention the director or interaction designer used at this level
• Gestalt verses looking granularly.  Emergence
• Merging lifeworld of the creator of the film and yourself – how well they conveyed the meaning, what worked and what didn’t
• More than the individual – relationship between things, the small and the larger picture

Activity #1 – Sequence counting in a minute in a half:  World of Warcraft – Here Without You

• Ranged from 35 – 2
• Time, movement, location, scene, expressions, narrative, editing, transitions (how people in class determined sequences)

How do we pick a sequence for interaction design

• look at it from a particular ideal user
• look at it from several small sequences based on different individual users
• we want to situate and analysis from a particular lifeworld and experience
• ideal reader of the text in terms of film, should still be that way for interaction design (addresser and addressee) rather than one real person in the world

How do we do it in interaction design

• Key strokes – old style no necessarily reflecting of the end user
• Silverback, think aloud, eyetracking –> put these together for comparative sequences

Activity #2

• Short, simple and manageable interaction for sequence analysis, work on in class during Thursday to turn in next Tuesday, group of 3

Excuse to post a Ninja Turtles clip

So when I was doing my Outline last week I re-found this quote in the Prince True Lies reading.

“Spielberg’s dinosaurs made such a huge impact on viewers in part because they seemed far more life-like than the miniature models and stopmotion
animation of previous generations of film.”

But as I read this the first time and again last week all I can think about is how much I miss movies where the special effects were done without as much technology, and I don’t think technology always makes it more life-like. When some freaking ninjas had to wear 80 pound turtle costumes to do flips and jump kicks and stuff it was AWESOME.

And I’m not trying to say that the effects available today are not incredible too.

But too often I feel like I see movies that could do really cool stuff with live action or “old skool” miniature models that dont, and I wish more movie makers wouldn’t just settle for using technology for special effects.

Notes from class on 11/4/09

We watched several movie clips and discussed the ideas from the readings; also Chung-Ching made some awesome diagrams to help us with understanding and discussion of the films.

Cheat sheet!

If we were to create a cheat sheet for Interaction culture, what would it look like? (all the fancy terms, with a two line simple explanation and a bull’s eye example). I propose that all of us do this as a class.

Currently struggling to understand these three terms – structuralist view, hermeneutic view, phenomenological view! What’s the difference? How do they fit with each other? Please provide comments or feel free to add your own terms (with or without explanations). Let’s cheat!

Here is a video from one of my favorite movies – Ratatouille. For those of you who have not watched it yet (please do), Remy (the protoganist) makes ratatouille (a vegetable stew). Anton Ego is this big shot food critic who is a hard ass, extremely critical, hard to please and is very skeptical about the stew. The below scene is when he tastes it and is completely floored by the taste since it reminds him of his mother making him this dish during his childhood.

Now let’s try to put on different goggles and see this video again.

Structuralist goggles – The stew was good because it had tomatoes, carrots, beans, etc, cut and cooked perfectly. What is the ingredient? How do we identify it?

Non-phenomenological hermeneutic goggles – The stew is usually prepared during summer. This is because most of the standard ingredients grow during summer. No lifeworld involved.

Phenomenological hermeneutic goggles – The stew is considered as a poor man’s dish since most of the standard ingredients are not expensive.

Non-hermeneutic phenomenological goggles – Anton Ego’s experience is the perfect example for this. Tasting this stew transports him back to his memories.

Am I right? Please correct me if I am wrong.