Book Reading #10: Opening Skinner's Box

Reference Information:

Title: Opening Skinner's Box

Author: Lauren Slater

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (2008)

 

Summary: In the second chapter of Opening Skinner's Box, Slater discusses Stanley Milgram's famous experiment on authority and obedience. By using actors pretending to be in a shocked violently after the study subject was ordered by shock them, Milgram showed how Holocaust like behavior can be exhibited in over half the population.

Discussion: I enjoyed this article a little more than the first article. The moral and ethical dilemmas presented in this section were very thought provoking. I hope that if I were put in this same situation, I would not behave like their typical test subject.

Book Reading #9: Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference Information:

Title: Coming of Age in Samoa

Author: Margaret Mead

Editors: Williams Morrow and Company (1928)

Summary: In this section, Mead discusses the early years of a child's life. When they are very young, the children of the tribe are taken care of by the older girls. Once they reach roughly the age of 5, the girls are given and education in childcare, so that they can look after those younger than them.

Discussion: It was interesting to see the early years of the Samoan women. The fact that children are given such important responsibilities at a young age surprised me. In our culture we give children responsibilities at a much older age, and they're usually small duties. To put 5 year old children in charge of child care is almost unfathomable by today's standards.

Book Reading #8: Design of Everyday Things

Reference Information:

Title: Design of Everyday Things

Author: Donald Norman

Publisher: Basic Books (2002)

Summary: In this section of The Design of Everyday Things, Normand discusses different aspects of information retrieval, and how people remember things. He talks about how physical objects can aid in one's memory, so certain things such as a keyboard's layout or a phone's keypad are hard to recall if the object is not in front of us, since that information is a purely procedural memory.

Discussion: This chapter was as interesting as the previous ones. I liked learning about the various aspects of memory. I was particularly surprised to hear that people can't remember the letters on a phone keypad however. Then again, once I gave it a try, I accidentally got some of the letter placement mixed up myself, so it makes sense.

Dr. Celine Latulipe Reading

Title: The Creativity Support Index
Reference Information:
The Creativity Support Index
Carroll, Erin. Latulipe, Celine.
CHI 2009, April 4 – 9, 2009, Boston, MA, USA


Summary: In Latulipe's article, The Creativity Support Index, she discusses the difficulties behind quantifying creativity. Since creativity itself is hard to define, creativity tools are equally as hard to create, due to a lack of data.

Historically, scientists have either chosen to use a custom, context specific index, or they have used the NASA Task Load Index Survey. The NASA survey however is very open ended and general, so it does not often apply to creative works.

The Creative Support Index that Latulipe and Carroll have designed is specifically created to quantify creative works. It works on a +/- 10 point scale in the areas of Exploration, Collaboration, Engagement, Effort/Reward Tradeoff, Tool Transparency, and Expressiveness.

Discussion: Latulipe's Creativity Support Index was very interesting to read about. It seems like a significant improvement over the NASA standard, and an excellent addition to the field.

The concept of quantifying creativity seems interesting to me. By definition, everyone's standard of creativity is subjective, so it seems that the scale would vary drastically by personal taste.

Paper Reading #5: Connect 2 Congress: Visual Analytics for Civic Oversight

Comments: Chris Kam, Vince Kocks.
Reference Information:
Title: Connect 2 Congress: Visual Analytics for Civic Oversight
Authors: Kinnaird, Peter. Romero, Mario. Abowd, Gregory.
Venue: CHI 2010, April 10–15, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Summary: Human beings love making order out of chaos, and there are few things more chaotic than the US political system. The authors of Connect 2 Congress have developed a website aimed at making the actions of congressmen and women a bit easier to make sense of, and follow ofter time. Using Congress's publicly available role call data, the authors worked with existing political anayalsis models, as well as designed their own.

Congress's role call data is very simple. It shows how people voted on a bill, Yes, No, or the impartial "Present", along with the bill's sponsors. Using this data alone, the system's designers can extrapolate a politician's political party, and show you just how far left or right they lean. The role call data is not the only information provided however. Using NPR's records, users can look up dates for politically motivating events, such as the Virginia Tech shootings, or drastic rises in gas prices.

The system was designed with four groups in mind, social scientists, political strategists and politicians, journalists, and informed voters. Social Scientists immediately recognized the usefulness of the system, as well as politicians. The system gives an immediate visualization of traditionally hard to examine data, and allows people to make more informed decisions. Journalists enjoy the system because it allows them to quickly fact check information, or to find interesting, previously unreported trends. Finally, the authors of the article believe that the system is a bit overkill for the average voter, but that it can give unique insights for those motivated enough to learn to use it.

Discussion: For anyone who's also been assigned the same last few articles I have been, I'm sure you can agree with me: Finally, something with Computers in it! This article was a very interesting read. One would think that something as simple as a yes/no vote would be rather easy to quantify, understand, and research. However, the obviously turned out not to be the case.

It's a shame that more projects like Connect 2 Congress do not exist. It was particularly admirable of the authors to stay as politically neutral as they did, such as their choice to use the government funded NPR instead of arguably biased news sources such as Fox New or MSNBC. Most political websites seem to be stuck in the 90s design wise, so thew newer "Web 2.0" style sites usually have an obvious agenda one way or the other behind them.

Tenative Ethnography Proposal

For our ethnography, we've decided to take a look at the college town coffee shop culture. Coffee shops are a prevalent all across the united states, but college towns have become famous in particular for their lively and active coffee shop scenes. Our ethnography is going to look at the type of people who spend their time in coffee shops, and what they do once they're there.

In particular, we're going to view whether or not coffee is the central focus of the coffee shop goer. When they sit down after buying their drink, are they simply enjoying their beverage, or are they diligently studying, hunched over a laptop or book? Furthermore, do coffee shop goers generally come alone, or do they socialize in groups?

This project will offer a many different opportunities for data collection. We can passively sit by and observe the people in the coffee shop, or we could actively gather information by passing out short surveys (with the coffee shop's permission of course). The number of locations we could gather information at is also varied, thanks to our college setting. We'll most likely focus our sights on three different coffee shops: Poor Yorick's, a large shop centered in the middle of campus, the North Gate Starbucks, a small cooperate coffee shop within walking distance of campus, and finally, Sweet Eugen's, a large independent coffee shop located within driving distance (but not walking distance) of campus.

Our group would be comprised of:
Stuart Jones
Derek Landini
Joshua Penick
Lukas Kuhr

Book Reading #6: Coming of Age in Samoa Microblog

Reference Information: Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. Williams Morrow and Company (1928)

Chapter 2:
Summary: The second chapter in this book, the first real chapter about the culture of Samoa itself, describes the everyday life of the people in the village Mead is staying in. Each group has their own predefined roles. The men do the jobs requiring physical strength, such as hunting or carpentering, boys spend most of their day fishing, and the women car for the children and do house-keeping and cooking type chores.
Discussion: This chapter did a good job of establishing what a normal day in the village would be like, while still giving some details to what might happen when a person is born or dies, or if a visitor were to arrive.

Appendix II:
Summary: In this section, Mead describes her general techniques of studying the women in the Samoan culture. She decided on doing a cross section of the culture, focusing on girls not near puberty, girls about to enter, girls in, and girls recently out of puberty. By using a cross section strategy, she can analyze the different portions of the culture all at once, and make generalities about them and the transitions between them.

Discussion: I'm surprised how much she had to argue her case for the cross section method. Today it seems like a relatively normal thing to do. It's unreasonable to expect someone to study a culture for an entire generation just to see how a group of young women develop.

Appendix V:
Summary: Mead continues describing the various groups she separated the sixty eight women into in this section. One portion which she goes into in particular in this section is the intelligence test she administered. While there were a few standouts, she found that for the most part the girls were all of similar intelligence.

Discussion: I find it very interesting that in a cultural study, she would pay so much attention to their intelligence. Regardless the test's usefulness however, it did act as a good tool to spend time alone wit the children.