For the next couple of months I will be traveling across the United States, and have set up a blog to document my travels!  Please check it out at:

bzroadtrip.wordpress.com

A couple of weeks ago, I saw first hand the destruction of the late blight fungus while harvesting crops near Lebanon, Vermont.  Willing Hands is an organization started by a Dartmouth College professor that distributes wholesome and organic fruits and vegetables to needy locals in the area.  On that orange Thursday evening a handful of volunteers stood around an old pickup truck waiting for orders from the leathery tan farmhand, Will.  After a firm handshake and polite introductions Will announced, “well, the tomatoes have the blight.”  I had heard about the blight before, but it seemed like something that was only in the news, a minor nuisance reported on a slow day.  “Salvage any green tomatoes that look like they are about to turn red.  Putting them face down on a window sill will likely ripen them.”  A group approached the wilted, blackened tomato plants that bowed to the ground in submission to this horrible fungus.  “Pick as many as you can.  I’m tilling these under tomorrow.”  And with a smile, Will went on his way while the rest of us gingerly began to pick at the droopy tomato plants.

I plucked as many green tomatoes as I could.  I didn’t discriminate based on color, but did throw aside any tomatoes covered in muck or with a large split or gash.  As I got down on the ground and shoved tomatoes into my pants pockets and my t-shirt folded up at the bottom, I thought of my own tomato plants at home.  Apparently the tomato blight can be traced to a seedling wholesaler in Alabama that provided seedlings to places like Wal-Mart, Lowes and Home Depot.  I had bought one of my tomato plants from Home Depot…and the fact that it had only produced three adorable red cherry tomatoes in the past couple of months made me nervous.  Would I actually be impacted by the late blight?  Would I be a part of this news?  My other two tomato plants were gifts from a friend who had thinned them from his own garden.  I knew his tomato plants were grown locally at a garden center on the South Shore.  Would they be safe?  Would the Alabama plants ruin the others?

The mind drifts when picking tomatoes from a dying row of plants, and all of a sudden I was thinking of horrible daytime infomercials.  I find it funny–looking back–that I thought of this while volunteering on a picturesque farm on a beautiful day that ended with sweet lemonade and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.  My mind specifically drifted to the Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter (don’t click on the link unless you want to see an embarassingly ridiculous commercial).  This rebel of plant physiology is claimed to be an effective holder of tomato plants.  Rather than straining your back and knees by bending over to water your plants, you can simply dump water in from the top.  Not only can you not see how much water is being added to the planter, but the weight of holding a heavy watering can is probably more straining than a minor squat.  Put your tomato plants on a table or something.

I haven’t done the research to find out what actual users of this product think.  My guess is that there have been some issues not only with the ergonomics of the process, but also the fact that tomatoes this summer, especially in New England, are struggling.  I have wondered if Topsy Turvy might take a dive because of this untimely and rare botanical event.  Will Topsy Turvy be cruelly judged for the lack of successful urban garden tomato plants?  I sure hope not.  Although I am boggled by how the plant actually stays rooted into the soil…upside down…I do not wish it any bad tidings.

The ethnography discussion at the Boston UPA Conference went great.  Well, let me start around 2 hours before showtime.  Martha Kam (who was the other presenter) and I, found a place to finalize our lovely PowerPoint slides, and practice exactly what we would say.  The structure of our presentation was to present some definitions of ethnography, state why we felt discussing its use in user-centered design is important, and then presenting some debates on ethnography in the source disciplines of Anthropology and Sociology.  We made it a point never to say “I think…” rather we attempted to keep the discussion as Socratic as possible, stating from the beginning that we would be neutral in the discussion, and presenting previous debates that we feel are applicable to our field today.  For example, this question of proper training in ethnographic fieldwork.  According to Malinowski (who is considered the father of ethnography), fieldwork prior to his rigorous approaches were deemed to have been conducted by amateurs like missionaries and colonial administrators.  We presented a quote of Malinowski’s stating this, and inspired a discussion.  Some members of the audience played devil’s advocate–we are amateurs–while others found the word “pegorative” and an incorrect representation of user researchers conducting ethnography.  If you are interested in seeing our presentation, feel free to email me at zarlashtah.ludin@gmail.com.

The ethnography poster went well.  Despite being $90 poorer (and I don’t even want to remember how much I paid for the entire trip/conference), the experience was great.  Many conference attendees approached me while I stood at my poster, commenting that they liked the visual presentation as a timeline, and the lovely green colors.  Aaron Marcus approached me and complimented me on the poster, then offered me an Altoid.  Jakob Nielsen came up to me as well, I awkwardly mentioned that his face looked familiar “from the internet.”  And others who had actually conducted ethnographic fieldwork all liked my poster.  If you would like to see my poster, visit my website www.zarlaludin.com.  It’s under my updates.

OK, no more ethnography for now.  On to my favorite things:

1.  www.moo.com. Christina Wallace (JSTOR) gave an interesting talk at the UPA Conference on how to get the user-centered design process going using some effective design approaches.  My favorite was her approach of creating a mock-up, but omitting one major aspect of the functionality, and asking designers to critique the mock-up.  Leaving out this one important aspect, she found, would get the ball rolling on critiquing the entire design.  At the end of the day, I approached her and thanked her for her talk, as well as the great poster she made (which might one day hang up in my cubicle), and she gave me her mini-card.  I told her how Jakob Nielsen had chided me for not having a business card at a professional conference and she suggested I check out moo.com.  For around $20 I got 100 mini cards with my own custom images and text on the back.  I thought it was a great alternative to a large business card.  Being unemployed, it seemed to self-important to have a large card, so these mini cards are great.  Google discount codes for this site too…I got $4 off my order!

2.  Home remedy to get rid of aphids. In an attempt to have an organic vegetable containter garden, I was chagrined to come home from Oregon to find aphids on my white eggplant!!  After some Google searches, I found a home remedy that is 2 parts water, 1 part vegetable oil, and a couple drops of Murphy’s Oil.  After only 2 days of some light spraying on affected areas, I am seeing these little bugs shrivel up and die.  I can’t wait for some white eggplant.  The other stuff in my garden is going strong; used some basil last night in my pasta, and some green tomatoes are sprouting!

3.  Usability Rockstar t-shirt. Thank you Ovo Studios for sponsoring my conference admission fee to last year’s UPA Conference.  I have been wearing your t-shirt since then.

Recently, my colleauge Martha Kam and I have been doing research on ethnography’s major debates and controversies for a presentation we will be giving at the 2009 Boston UPA Conference.  We hope to spark a lively debate on the applied use of ethnography in our professional field of user-centered design.  We feel that in order to use a term such as ethnography–that has so much baggage to it–UCD practitioners need to know about ethnography’s “dark side” or rather the major aspects of it that have been disputed, debated, and settled.

We are not aiming to argue that ethnography is NOT good for UCD, rather, we want to spark a debate on it much like Alan Blackwell’s discussion on the reification of the term metaphor as a design tool.

As I was researching debates in ethnography, I came across an anecdotal example of how problematic ethnography is even within the field of anthropology (from which is originates).  Despite decades of debates and controversies, ethnography’s baggage is no more lighter than it was 40 years ago.  Because of this, I question why a field such as UCD would adopt such a concept.  I believe that UCD should reconsider their adoption of ethnography, understand the core concepts behind ethnography, and then question whether this is what is being practiced or if the name is simply being used because it is a recognized term in qualitative research.

Because I don’t feel it’s my right to name names on a blog, I am going to keep this anecdotal example very vague.

Someone who I am very close with is studying in another country, and recently went to see a venerable professor of anthropology speak on his latest ethnography.  This anthropologist is reputed as the most famous anthropologist in this country, has studied around the world, and is just all around a champion of this concept.  The ethnography he was presenting was on field work he had conducted over the past nine years on a group of immigrants to this country.  The final product of the field work was this ethnography, which outlined the anthropologist’s experience having lived among the male group of this population.  In addition to this narrative/diary/autobiography of the anthropologist’s experience with the male group of this population, he included a document analysis of primary documents written by the women of the population, which were not assembled for the purposes of the ethnography.  Essentially, the representation of the female population was simply the ethnographer’s analysis of these documents, and later I found out he did not even offer back the manuscript of this analysis to the women of this population.

I am curious what people think of this?  I would love to get some responses on where the major pitfalls are in this ethnographer’s work, or if anyone has critiques on the methods used to create this ethnography.

If I don’t get feedback, I will be posting part II later.

2.  Conferences are expensive, and are so because organizers know that I will go.  My proposal got accepted (a poster on a brief history of ethnography in anthropology and user research).  I now have less than two weeks to decided if I want to shell out around $900 to fly out to Portland and present my poster.  If I don’t, I will be throwing away a huge opportunity.  If I do, I am out $900 and am potentially exposing myself to major criticism for presenting an amateur concept at a massive international conference.  Networking is a plus.

3.  Baggage claim never takes 15 minutes.  And taxis are the most ruthless at the airport.  None of this looking at their side view mirrors for them.  What are they there for?  Clearly decoration and symmetry.

I have always had an interest in reified terms (such as the term race, my honors thesis was centered around the reification of the term race), so I was curious to see how the term metaphor is reified as a design tool.

Below is a timeline I put together with information taken from Blackwell’s article.  It outlines the origins of metaphor in HCI (Human Computer Interaction) beginning in the 1960s (when computers started becoming a metaphor for human cognitive processes).  The gold curve represents the level of concreteness of the use of metaphor as a design tool.  The low parts of the curve represent times when metaphor is seen as a theoretical concept, and high parts of the curve is when metaphor is seen as a valid design tool.  The golden bar represents the “Golden Age” of the use of metaphor as a design tool (will get into that later).

1960s

Before computers, metaphors for human cognitive processes were clockwork and hydraulics; computers then became a metaphor for human cognitive processes.    During this time, computer users were highly specialized domain experts.  Computer users were in fact those who were researching computer science, therefore HCI metaphors during this time reflected the generalized concepts of computer researchers and designers.  A popular metaphor during this time is that computers represent human mental processes—clearly only people who researched human mental processes (like cognitive psychologists) could grasp this metaphor.

1970s

Art has an impact on metaphor, and visual metaphors start to become popular in HCI.  HCI is also impacted by cognitive theories in education, which starts to look into creative mental processes (mainly the cognitive processes that depict images/pictures).  Therefore computer metaphors are starting to be represented using pictures, images and icons.  Metaphor is also starting to become more of a design tool because of these pictorial representations.

1980s

Metaphor starts to become even more of a design tool.  This comes after a major shift in primary computer users to office workers.  Computer developers came to the realization that computers need to be understood by novice users like office workers.  Computer developers needed to come up with metaphors that resonated with a different type of user in that user’s own world.  The desktop metaphor is released in the mid-80s, and is highly successful, and to this day is arguably the most successful computer metaphor.  Metaphors during this time became the core of designing (the “Golden Age” of metaphors begins in 1985).

1990s

Metaphors start to become problematic after many failed attempts to use metaphor as a design tool (such as Microsoft Bob).  The problem here was that metaphors were becoming too literal and less subtle.  This presented a problem because novice users tended to attempt to interpret too much from the metaphor, or it didn’t match their mental model of the metaphor exactly.  Expert users felt the use of metaphors was condescending.

2000s

The debates continue on the use of metaphor in HCI.  It starts to revert back to a theoretical foundation for design, rather than a design tool.

A timeline of the use of metaphor in HCI (click for a bigger image)

I am curious what people think.  Is there still a place for metaphor as a design tool in HCI?  I would like to argue that there is no place for it because computers themselves have become a real world entity to many novice and expert users, and there is no need to relate our relationship with computers or our interactions with computers to other real world objects.  Does anyone have another good example of metaphor as a design tool, that may rival the desktop metaphor?

I have updated my website (www.zarlaludin.com) with some additional portfolio items and some changes to my resume.  In the portfolio section, I have added an Anthropology page to demonstrate my background in that field.  I have focused my studies in the biological realm, but have also dabbled into cultural anthropology, and still find archaeology imensely interesting.  If any of you have the time, take a look at my honors thesis defense (or the actual thesis).

In my resume, I have added my experience as an Art Tutor at Urban Scholars.  That was probably one of the most challenging jobs I have had because I had to work with teenagers, and I–for some reason–thought it would be a good idea to start a drama troupe.  Turns out, I don’t know how to act, or how to get people to think like an actor, so I just helped the kids generate ideas on what they wanted to make their play about.  It was a biographical play, and such a hit with the rest of the kids in the program.

I also added my experience working in a psychology lab at CU.

Enjoy!  I have 2 posts in progress:  one on searching for jobs in this tough economic climate, and the second on design influencing behavior (case study:  Ford’s new dashboard console).

It was interesting, and made me think about some of the stories that really stuck out in my head.  The two stories in my life that have stood out did so because of the vivid imagery within the story, and the mystery of what isn’t said in the story that allowed me to imagine.

A few months ago, sitting around the dinner table, my roommates and I were discussing books from our childhood.  When my turn came, I already had a book in mind.  I had forgotten the title and the author, but I did remember that it was written like a poem, and that it was sort of a dark tale about revenge and the mob.  Ravi, my roommate’s boyfriend chimed in, saying that he knew exactly what story I was talking about, and we discussed some of the elements we remember from the story.  I remembered the bright colors of the illustrations (the main characters in the book were fish), and how horrible I felt that this fish mob was infiltrating this fish town.  He remembered that there was a crime, and a touching love story between a goldfish and a lobster (odd to us as adults).  We both remembered the imagery the best, and because of that were able to effectively and accurately explain this story to a friend of his whose father is a specialist in children’s books.  We finally found the title and the author and I quickly purchased the book.  It is called Sign of the Seahorse by Graeme Base.

The next story I am going to describe, I still don’t know who wrote it, but I do know the title has the name Ishmael in it.  This book was written in such an artistic, minimalist and convuluted way, that I still struggle with what it was actually about.  In my head, despite the fact that it is probably not about this, I imagine it’s about a man with a terminally ill wife, and the emotions he is feeling battling between his sadness at her loss, and wanting to be free of her.  Of course, this imagined premise is derived from the lack of words in this book that allowed me to imagine for myself what it was about.  I had to read it for a French literature class my junior year of college.  The only line I remember from it (and this is only an approximation), is from a scene where the protagonist–in his head–is remembering his love for his wife, and says “The road to you is always safe, even when it leads me into oceans.”  I have always LOVED that line, or rather my interpretation of what the line is supposed to mean.

The only danger with this minimalist approach is that if you leave out too many details, the listener may completely misunderstand what the story is about, which can lead to wrong design conclusions (in the case of user experience design).  There is a fine line.

So how does this relate to user experience design?

First of all, the imagery in Sign of the Seahorse was so strong that in a few words I could relate to another person who had read this story nearly 2 decades ago.  We could so expressively explain the images in this book that despite not knowing the title and author, we got this information.  In user experience design, relating the user’s story, or the story that will inform design needs to be compelling enough to be used in the design process.

Second, the lack of information provided in my French literature book allowed me to explore the protagonist’s world without having information shoved down my throat.  Storytelling in user experience design should be just like that.  You tell just enough to designers so that their imagination and their gift of innovation can fill in the holes.

I would suggest purchasing this book once it is in print.  You can visit the book’s website at:  http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/storytelling

I recollected my early days studying Anthropology (before I abandoned the Cultural sub-set and moved into the Biological realm), when I was learning about ethics in fieldwork.  I am comparing what I learned back then–and what I am learning in a current Ethnography course at Bentley–to what I feel is reflected in the Mark and Olly show.  The verbal narrative provided by Mark and Olly, can be described as some form of ethnography.  They draw conclusions and make inferrences about what they see as a result of observation and participant (ethnographic-based) field research.  My question is then, do some of the ethics that apply to field research in Anthropology, apply to a show on the Travel Channel?

First and foremost, if we intend to work with human subjects, it is our duty to avoid treating participants as a means to an end.  In the case of the Mark and Olly show–as with all TV shows, despite the Travel Channel’s quality educational programming–the primary goal of the show is to get viewers.  The Machiguenga can arguably be seen as a means for the Travel Channel to gain viewers.  Viewers aren’t attracted to pure facts, academic inferences, and complicated conclusions.  What brings viewers are often more sensational rather than mundane daily events in Machiguenga life.  The selection process of what is shown on the show is the choice of producers, and this selection process is based around the idea of getting viewers, not demonstrating the reality of Machiguenga life (whatever that may be).

The idea that research participants should not be treated as a means to an end, forms the basis of ethical arguments in ethnography.  To determine whether or not participant exploitation is taking place, we have to determine the potential harm and benefits the research and result of the research will have on participants.

Research is ethical if the benefits of the research will outweigh the potential harm it might cause to participants.  In biomedical research it is often easier to determine if the benefits of the research will be greater than the risk of harm, however in ethnographic research, the definition of harm is more subtle and often hard to determine.  Harm can mean the participant will experience guilt, anxiety or stress well after the data collection period.  In other words, the determination of harm and benefit in fieldwork is derived “from the participant’s unpredictable response to the interactions rather than from the researcher’s intentions” (Handbook of Ethnography, 340).  I am not sure when the Machiguenga episodes were filmed, however I wonder if the benefits and harms to them were discussed and debated.

Another concept I have been grappling with is that of recording the Machiguenga.  If anyone has any insights on this, I have been wondering how anthropologists with film crews explained this concept to people who had never been exposed to a video camera or device/concept like it.  How is the idea that people around the world can potentially see these episodes at anytime (through the internet) communicated to them?

Finally, another ethical issue to consider is that sometimes ethnographies increase others’ knowledge of the adpative behaviors of the participants, and how they have been able to survive (Burgess, 1985).  When Mark and Olly were searching for the Machiguenga, people from neighboring groups of people spoke of the ruthless Machiguenga warrior, Jacinto.  They warned Mark and Olly not to go near those tribes or onto their land because Jacinto would surely kill them.  Sure enough, Mark and Olly defy these warnings, find the tribe, and are reluctantly accepted by the tyrant Jacinto.  I wondered if this would impact the notoriety of Jacinto.  Was this legend–his ruthlessness–a way to protect Machiguenga land and resources?  Will the loss of Jacinto’s legend render their land and resources vulnerable?  If anyone has thoughts on this idea as well, I would love to hear them.

In 2003, a Madera, CA officer–Marcie Noriega–shot and mortally wounded Everardo Torres, a suspect who, after being seized by officers, was attempting to kick out the cop car windows.  Noriega reached for her M26 Taser in an attempt to stun Torres, but instead grabbed her Glock and shot Torres once in the chest, killing him.  Torres’ family then filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Madera City, which prompted another lawsuit against Taser Internationl (the makers of the M26 Taser).

Taser International was sued for designing the M26 to look too similar to a standard issue weapon (the Glock), and for not training officers to holster the Taser on the opposite hip of the gun holster.  Madera City lost the lawsuit, despite these claims.

As someone interested in user-centered design, I decided to explore how Taser International could have won this case, despite Noriega’s partner claiming that she was in fact intending to reach for her M26, that the design of the M26 is explicitly meant to have the look and feel of a Glock, and that Madera officers did not receive training advising them to holster the Taser on the opposite hip.

First of all, the design of the Taser is very similar to the Glock.  The M26 has a similar size and weight to the Glock, and both weapons have a laser pointer to help aim.  Therefore one of Madera City’s claims against Taser International was that the design of the M26 was negligent.  Taser International countered this claim stating that “A product is not negligently designed so long as ‘the manufacturer took reasonable precautions in an attempt to design a safe product or otherwise acted as a reasonably prudent manufacturer would have under the circumstances’” (Torres vs. Taser International).

In fact, it seems as though Taser International had conducted some user research:

Here, the only evidence regarding Taser’s decision-making process on the M26′sdesign is that it developed a variety of different prototypes for the M26, presented these prototypes at “one of the largest training conferences of police . . . officers in the country,” determined that the handgun-shaped design “was significantly better in terms of accuracy” than the other prototypes, and received “overwhelming feedback” from training officers that they preferred the handgun-shaped design to the others (Torres vs. Taser International).

In Human Factors classes I have learned that user preferences are trumped by issues of safety.  Designing the M26 to have a similar look, feel, and attribute as a Glock was negligent, in my opinion.  I wonder if Taser International conducted any other kinds of rigorous testing that would have made designers realize that the user preference of having a Glock-shaped Taser should not have been considered.

Another claim Madera City made against Taser International, was the lack of training.  With training, they claim, Noriega would have been advised by experts to holster her Glock and Taser on opposite hips, potentially reducing the amount of misfires.  Noriega however had accidentally drew her Glock instead of her Taser in an incident prior to Torres’ death, brought her worries to her supervisor, who then, perhaps, advised her to holster the Taser on the opposite hip.  Because of this, Taser International claims, proper training would have been moot as Noriega was already aware of the solution to her error.

If we, as user-centered design folks, believe that human error is never really human error when design is involved (it’s always design error), can we agree with the verdict of the Madera City vs. Taser International verdict?