Adaptive Path Blog

It’s a sad but common sight in modern society – a person walking around in the world, utterly disengaged, head buried in a mobile device – a victim of the visually greedy mobile interface.

Sure, one might argue there’s more to blame than the interface, like our growing Pavlovian response to phone calls and messages and the “always on” expectation, or our strange and ravenous human need to consume more and more information and media.

But as designers, how much control do we really have over those issues?

What we do have some semblance of control over are interfaces and it is curious that we rely so heavily on the sense of sight to guide users through technology experiences. Ask anybody with a vision impairment who uses a computer or a mobile phone, visually-driven interfaces dominate the technology landscape.

On the PC, we can get away with it. But the dominance of visually-driven interfaces become especially problematic in the mobile context. Design principles and conventions like WYSIWYG and GUI become brittle and broken on small devices. The screens are simply too small and the requirements of the mobile context too great to support interfaces that are visually demanding. Even the lauded and successful iPhone demands we disengage with the world and worship it’s visual luster during use.

The thing is, humans are actually pretty good at knowing where things are even when we can’t see them. The sound of the fire truck, the smell of the garbage, the vibration of an earthquake… our senses are tuned to innately tell us about the world around us. Unfortunately, these instincts haven’t been finely tuned with regard to our behaviors around information and technology. We rely heavily on sight.

How do we break this pattern?

Swing for the fences when thinking about senses. Leverage context, gesture, haptics and sound to convey information.

Admittedly, thinking about interfaces that engage our sense of touch, smell, and hearing can feel wonky, weird … preposterous even. It’s largely unchartered territory without the guideposts and maps of the typical, visually-driven approach to interface design.

However, it feels like letting ourselves explore the land of the senses is the only way to start to break the dominance of the greedy, visually-driven interfaces and deliver mobile experiences and interactions that - as Adam Greenfield says - dissolve into behavior.

In the spring of 2007, I co-lead a project that explored Internet access on mobile devices. At that time, uptake for mobile Internet content in the U.S. was dismally low. Recruiting participants that engaged with the mobile Internet for more than a few minutes once or twice a week proved extremely challenging. In order to collect the type of data needed to inform the design process and improve the user experience, we designed a PC Internet deprivation research study. Eight lucky participants used only their mobile phone to access the Internet for four days.

I co-wrote this case-study about the project with Mirjana Spasojevic of the Nokia Research Lab in Palo Alto and Pekka Isomursu of Nokia Design and presented it recently at CHI in Florence, Italy. The case study describes details of the research methodology as well as design insights and implications for development of mobile applications and services.

A lot has changed in the year since this study; the release of the iPhone in June of 2007 and Google’s Android platform in November 2007 were watershed moments for the mobile Internet – improving the experience and opening up opportunities for usage that simply didn’t exist before.

Despite these advances, I still believe most Internet experiences on mobile devices are broken and compromised, overburdened by interaction models and metaphors from the PC that simply don’t work on small devices. Yet so much of how we understand the Internet – and computing – is based on the PC legacy.

What has been exciting me most about mobile these days is that exact challenge… figuring out what metaphors and models to keep and what to leave behind as we try to prism Internet content through a myriad of devices.

They Call it Surfing for a Reason: Identifying Mobile Internet Needs Through PC Deprivation (pdf)
Copyright ACM

Nicholas Chen of the University of Maryland presented an interesting talk on navigation techniques for for dual display e-books. Unlike the Kindle, Nicholas and his colleagues wanted to experiment with a form factor that was similar to a book or magazine. So they built a prototype with dual screens. The form factor allowed them to experiment with embodied interactions, like opening and closing the device (he referred to the interaction as “clapping”) or folding the device so that the cover and back are facing and turning it like we do a magazine (he referred to the interaction as “fanning”). They tested the device with users and came up with some interesting pros and cons.

Some of the benefits of a dual display:
Easy to read the content
Better for assessing length of the content
Helpful for finding new articles

Downside of dual displays:
Clunky - he device was heavy so opening and closing the cover was awkward as an interaction
Confusing - the single screen was simplier and less confusing
Restrictive form factor - grip required to hold device was awkward

Nicholas’s conclusion was that dual displays are better for serious reading but one display is more convenient.

Since I am from a rural town in Iowa, Eric Gilbert’s CHI paper/presentation about social media in rural life was of special interest to me. The U.S. census bureau defines rural as towns with a population less than 2500 people and lacking a direct connection to a metropolitan area (i.e people can’t commute to a city for work). Some social indicators of rural populations are that they tend to be older, with less education and lower income. Approximately one-quarter of the U.S. population is rural. However, as Eric pointed out, there is very little research on this segment of the U.S. population with regard to how they use technology.

Eric started out his presentation pointing out that rural people adopted America’s first widespread social technology - the telephone -very enthusiastically. People thought the device would reduce isolation and bridge social distance, which it did. However, rural people adopted the technology differently than their urban counterparts. Eric pointed to the telephone feature of, “party lines”, which proved successful in rural areas while highly unpopular in urban environments and sited the deep social ties as a perhaps the reason why.

Eric used the qualitative work of sociologists like Falk and most specifically the work of K.A Larson, “The Social Construction of the Internet: A Rural Perspective”, who conducted a qualitative study of internet use in the rural US. A particularly interesting finding from Larson’s work was that they found women to be the guardians of the internet in rural US communities.

From these studies, Eric created five hypothesis about how people in rural communities would use social media differently than their urban counterparts. He sampled data of 3,000 public MySpace users to test the following hypothesis:

1. Rural users will have far fewer friends and comments than urban users

2. Females will account for a greater proportion of users than urban users

3. Rural users will set their profiles to private at higher rates than urban users.

4. Rural users’ friends will live much closer than urban users’ friends

5 As compared to urban users, rural users’ distribution of friends will preference strong ties over weak ties.

At this point in the presentation Eric shared a slide of the United States in which he had randomly picked 50 urban and 50 rural users and plotted the distance of their friends. The map looked eerily like a red/blue map of the U.S. His point — rural and urban people don’t tend to mix when using social media. He pointed out that it is distressing that a nation politically divided along rural and urban lines has replicated itself online.

All of Eric’s hypothesis were proven correct using quantitative analysis of the MySpace data.

Eric’s conclusions were that both rural and urban people use social media, but they use it very differently. He found that rural social networks span other rural social networks, creating limited access to social capital for rural people. Borrowing from Larson, people in rural areas say they want to reach beyond their communities, but in practice, they don’t.

Eric’s design implications for the HCI community:
1. Build for incremental trust
2. Introduce urban and rural people to each other through social media. Online has the opportunity to introduce people… something that telephony did not.

He closed the presentation with the assertion that a rural perspective could she new light on technology use. He also wondered out loud if wireless networks are so different than party lines.

Eric’s study made me wonder if his findings were unique to the US population or if they could be extrapolated to rural/urban communities throughout the world. Paul Dourish made the comment that many of the dimensions that define “rural” populations mirror how we define class and that he could potentially substitute the world “rural” with “class” — meaning that rural could actually be a socio-economic class. Danah Boyd has also gleaned some interesting insights around how issues of class have played out in online social networking. Through this lens, Eric’s paper proves that socio-economic behavior patterns in the real world are replicated in the online social media space — classes don’t tend to mix.

Evangeline Haughney from Adobe Systems gave a great talk on using comics to communicate qualitative research findings. She noticed that readers of research reports are usually skimmers and get bogged down with traditional research reports. She wanted to find compelling way to communicate findings and was inspired by Kevin Cheng’s work on creating comics as a design tool. She figured if comics could communicate design, they might also be able to communicate research findings.

Evangeline admitted that like many of us, she is not a skilled drawer. But a $20 software tool, Comic Book Creator and the help of a graphic designer allowed her to overcome what she lacked of drawing skills.

Some of the structural attributes of comics proved helpful:

Evangeline took cues from Manga comics and included reading directions in the comic.

Comics generally start with some context setting — “It was a dark and stormy night…” this narrative device proved helpful in setting the context for the research findings.

The design language of comics expresses emotions of joy, anger, frustration — communicating the emotions of users from research is part of what gives research reports their power.

Comics also provide a format for layering complex data — which is something that is often the output of research studies.

The result:
Evangeline hand delivered all the comics to stakeholders within Adobe and a typical response was, “Wow! This is really cool.” Not something most researchers are accustomed to hearing after presenting research findings.

Initially Evangeline thought the research comic books would be viral and people would pass them around. Instead, like the comics we know and love, people tended to hoard them. As a result, she wished she had printed more.

Comics as a research report format probably aren’t the best choice for every culture, but it’s definitely a creative format idea for communicating research.

Elaine Huang of Motorola Labs presented my favorite paper at CHI so far — Breaking down the Disposable Technology Paradigm for Sustainable Interaction Design for Mobile Phones. She vividly illustrated the built in life cycle of mobile devices by walking the audience through a scenario where a user bought a new phone whenever their contract with a carrier expired or a new stylish phone was released. One of the research participants from Elaine’s research study said it best, “I didn’t really want a new phone, but I got one anyway.”

Why are we disposing mobile phones so quickly? Elaine pointed out this is a growing sentiment around all personal electronic devices, not just phones. She referenced the work of Mark Weisser, whose research supports the idea that that devices that don’t have a strong sense of ownership get left around.

The result:

A disposable culture around mobile phones
We perceive mobile phones (as well as many personal consumer electronic devices) as disposable and don’t understand the impact of our decisions on the environment.

We don’t know how to dispose of mobile phones
We know what to do with a car when we are done with it (sell it), but we don’t know what to do with a mobile device. Most of the participants in Elaine’s study kept their old phones — some with as many as five.

426,000 mobile phones are decommissioned daily in the United States, which is a truly astonishing number. Elaine shared some interesting design ideas for both helping users understand how to dispose of their phones and designing phones to be more reconfigurable so that users would keep their mobile devices longer.

Elaine added that mobile business models reinforce this disposable perception.

The real challenge is business reform. Volume allows mobile handset manufacturers and carriers to remain profitable. While horrible for the environment, the built-in replacement life cycle drives handset sales. Although almost all handset manufacturers are making moves to be more reliant on software and services for profit, whether or not those strategies will lead to profitability remains to be seen.

Elaine believes there is a market for high-quality phones that will last exists, and I certainly think that markets like India reinforce her idea. However, it is clear that business reform and the creation of new business models will be necessary to help solve this problem.

In the meantime, if you are like me and have 1, 2, or even five “decommissioned” mobile phones lying around in drawers at home, here are some ways you can dispose of them:

Contact the Manufacturer
Nokia
Motorola
Samsung
LG
Palm

Re-sell on eBay or Craiglist

Donate
Collective Good
Charity Guide for Donating Mobile phones

Susan P Wyche of Georgia Institute of Technology presented a paper Re-Placing Faith: Reconsidering the Secular-Religious Use Divide in the United States and Kenya. The presentation focused on a study she conducted in Nairobi, Kenya. She referenced compelling statistics about the growth of Pentecostal Christian faith in Africa. Using compelling growth statistics, she made the case that in order to understand emerging markets, it is necessary to understand the role faith and spirituality play in the lives of people in these markets.

She also shared how the use of sketching in her fieldwork proved helpful in the questioning process. One audience member explained it best in that we often view design as a method or a process to inform system building. However, in this case, design proved a useful method in deciding what should and should not be designed.

The sketches Susan used in the field opened up a dialogue with the the research participants. They provided an opportunity for participants to reflect and discuss how the depicted ideas would fit into their world view.

I’ve heard of sketches being used in the field to provide insight into acceptance or perceived usefulness of a concept. Susan’s paper provides evidence of another use: sketching as a method for gaining cultural understanding.

Allison Woodruff of Intel Research presented the findings of an extensive contextual research study of people throughout the US who had made significant changes to their home in order to support a green lifestyle. She noticed most research to date focused on activism so the goal of her study was to understand the daily practices of individuals committed to green living in order to understand how HCI could help promote positive personal behavior. Her presentation contained compelling video clips of participants from the study who relayed the “why” of their daily practices in relationship to their home and their desire to be more green.

Some of her findings were:

Living in a green home is like living on a ship
People in this study developed an immediate and physical relationship with their home. The green friendly homes were like a ships — participants needed to remain aware, make constant minor adjustments in order to maximize efficiency. While at times burdensome, participants in Allison’s study also spoke a kind of fulfillment this consciousness provided.

Continuous Computation
Participants in the study enjoyed the modest mental challenges that result from their lifestyle choice. They felt that green was about being mindful — and engaged. This engagement wasn’t viewed as a burden, but a pleasurable puzzle that engaged their mind.

The Path
Allison spoke of how the participants in her study acknowledged the commitment required to being green — that it was not a single act but a lifelong relationship to change. Their relationship to the lifestyle had grown from an ardent hobby to an organizing principle for their life.

Individualism as a driver
Allison pointed out that the participants expressed a strong drive for uniqueness and a desire to differentiate themselves from the rest of society. These folks were proud and viewed themselves as independent thinkers.

Implications for the HCI community
- Provide people with tools for personal action.
- Provide focus. It’s easy for people to get overwhelmed with all the choices and often recommendations about how to be more green are confusing and/or conflicting. Provide people with the tools to focus on one or two things and provide depth — breadth will grow from a feeling of success.(depth vs. breadth learning)
- Engage people mentally. People like the modest mental challenges that come with the mindfulness of being green.
- Provide people with the tools to debate and decide for themselves. Support the complex decision-making process by helping people understand trade-offs.
- Change the circumstances. Directly target large-scale corporations and government.

I’m attending CHI 2008 , the international HCI conference this week in Florence, Italy.

On Thursday morning, I will be presenting a case study I wrote with Mirjana Spasojevic, of the Nokia Research Lab and Pekka Isomursu of Nokia Design, They call it Surfing for a Reason: Identifying mobile Internet needs through PC Internet deprivation.

If you are attending the conference, please drop me a line at hinman at adaptivepath dot com.

I have been following the story of Carol Gotbaum, the 45-year mother of three who died in a Phoenix airport holding cell two weeks ago and feel both sadness and anger.

Sadness for Carol’s family and their senseless loss.

Anger at the people we become inside airports.

Sure, we all complain the experience of air travel can really suck. However, Carol’s story indicates there is something more amiss and sinister happening to us and the experience inside airports than basic human frustration at long lines and poor service.

I think back to a recent trip to Europe and recognize my own culpability - my annoyance at fellow travelers who stood too close to me in line and kept hitting me with their rolling suitcase, passing judgement at people who had the audacity to try and bring a bottle of water through the security checkpoint, contempt for the security guard who confiscated my expensive face moisturizer because it exceeded the 3oz limit for carry on luggage.

What has happened to us?

How is it that the social rules and expectations around air travel have plummeted to a place where someone like Carol, who was so clearly in need of help and compassion is instead arrested, locked up and, within a matter of minutes, dead?

Why has our fear of terrorism turned airports into some strange alternate universe where are willing to check our dignity at the door? How is it that we tolerate being herded through security gates like cattle in stocking feet, and are more interested in making sure our hair gel and hand lotion are in a zip-lock bag than showing patience and empathy for our fellow passengers?

If experiences are a reflection of what we value, what does Carol Gotbaum’s story have to teach us about ourselves and the people we become inside airports?