hello.

I just had one of those wonderful moments where a bunch of ideas that had been floating around in my head for a number of years came together and made sense, thanks to a section of Alva Noë’s book Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. In Chapter 4, he challenges the common metaphor for the brain as the “Mission Control”  of the body — the place where all stimulation comes in and is noted, processed, and responded to. Instead, he says, our perception, and even our reaction, is distributed throughout our body and even through our environment.  To counter this, he offers the example of a snail’s response to being touched. At first touch, the snail will recoil, but with repeated touches, the snail becomes habituated to the touch, and doesn’t recoil. The sensory neurons in the snail’s nervous system are linked to the motor neurons, and the response to the initial touch is to cue the motor neurons to move the snail away.  As repeated touches occur, the snail’s nervous system learns the pattern as “normal” and the connection between the motor neurons and the sensory stimulus is lessened over time.  There’s no central brain managing this — the change is a result of the connection between the neurons and the patterns of action in the environment in which the snail is embedded, argues Noë. It’s not just about the changing in the coupling between the sensory neurons and the motor neurons, because that change would not occur without the repeated pattern of touch that the snail encounters.  It all happens without a “mission control” brain to process it.

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The chances are good that if you’re reading this, you probably know how to ride a bicycle.  You probably learned so many years ago that you don’t even remember how you learned.  When you get on a bike now, it’s so natural to you that you don’t even think about it.  In fact, if you did think about it, you’d probably fall off. Bike riding is so commonplace that we use it as a cliche for learning and retaining new skills:  “It’s just like riding a bike,” we say, “you never forget.”

That’s easy for you to say.  You know how to ride a bike.  I don’t.  I never learned as a child.  I’ve tried a few times as an adult, and let me remind you, it’s not easy to learn.  You fall off, you scrape your knees, you get frustrated.  Eventually (they tell me), you master it, and then it becomes “intuitive.” Yeah, sure.

Designers and engineers (and users) often praise computer interfaces as  intuitive or natural. It’s commonly held up as the ideal for user interfaces.  But I think the terms are misused. Interfaces in general, and computer interfaces in particular, exist to connect people with technological systems or tools that require significant training to master.  They abstract complexity to make it easier to use. But in order to use an interface, any interface, you need to learn a little something.  You need to be given an idea of what it controls. You need to learn what you can manipulate and what you can’t.  And you need to learn what actions map to what results.  I’ll spare you the Don Norman-esque rant here, because Gibson, Norman, et. al. have already explained all of this just fine.  If you don’t know Norman’s stuff, just think about the bike. It abstracts a lot of physics and mechanics for you, takes advantage of your physical abilities (like your sense of balance and direction), and it amplifies your body’s ability to do something — once you learn how to use it. Many would argue that it’s a good interface.  As a non-bike rider, I might argue the case, but I know I’m in the minority.

When you refer to an interface as natural or intuitive, you assume it doesn’t need to be taught, that “you can just figure it out.”  The example in vogue is the multi-touch interface, particularly Apple’s pinch-and-zoom gesture.  It gets a lot of press as being intuitive, but the truth of the matter is, if Apple hadn’t done a fairly brilliant series of tutorials disguised as commercial ads when they launched the iPhone, there’d be a lot more iPhone users struggling with their phones.  I’ve seen a lot of people pick it up pretty quickly, sure; but I’ve seen equally as many struggle with it the first time.  It has to be learned.  It may only take a few seconds, but it’s still learning.

What bothers me about all this talk of natural interfaces or intuitive interactions is that it makes designers and engineers less symathetic to end users.  If the interface is natural, we reason, anyone can use it. We get impatient with users who don’t understand it.  Not understanding the interface is not natural! They must not have any intuition! Stupid users!

In contrast, if you see all interaction as something that has to be learned, you know that you have a responsibility to teach people to use the things you build. You have motivation to make it as easy to learn as possible, both for your own convenience and theirs.  My friend Bill Braine, paraphrasing any one of a number of cognitive psychologists (including Norman), put it nicely (and I’m paraphrasing him a bit here):

Intuitive interfaces draw heavily on earlier learned behavior, while unintuitive ones require distinct new skills or metaphorical connections. That’s why so many metaphors (cut & paste, gold stars, file folders) made their way into digital interfaces. An interface’s ‘intuitiveness’ or ‘naturalness’ is a measure of  the extent to which draws on existing learned behavior.

In other words, an interface’s ease-of-use isn’t a binary quality.  It’s not natural or unnatural, intuitive or unintuitive.  There’s a sliding scale, and the scale depends not only on the cognitive load the designer assumes is there, but also on the user’s experience. If you must refer to an interface as intuitive, ask how intuitive is it? Better yet, praise the interface as easy-to-learn.

You can never eliminate the learning curve, no matter how much you flatten it out. So next time you’re frustrated by users struggling with your intuitive interface, remember  learning to ride a bike.

I’m on the jury for SIGGRAPH Asia’s Emerging Tech this year, thanks to Lars Erik Holmquist. Looking forward to seeing some great submissions, so submit! Here’s the CfP:

Call for participation:

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: ADAPTATION

SIGGRAPHA ASIA 2009
Pacifico Yokohama, Yokohama, Japan
16-19 December 2009
/www.siggraph.org/asia2009/

SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 welcomes contributors and volunteers to participate in the 2nd edition of the annual SIGGRAPH Asia Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

ACM SIGGRAPH is now presenting two conferences each year.  The first SIGGRAPH Asia, in December in Singapore, quickly established SIGGRAPH’s new event in Asia as one of the world’s two leading annual showcases for the next wave of interactive technologies.  In Yokohama, SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 will present technological innovations that will change the way we work, live, and play. Let your work be experienced by thousands of attendees from throughout the world!

Emerging Technologies shares an overall theme with the Art Gallery: Adaptation. For SIGGRAPH Asia 2009, we are seeking works that show how digital technology adapts, or can help us adapt, to a world in flux. Adaptation can have many meanings, from machines that repair themselves under stress to technologies that help humans survive in adverse conditions. Adaptations can also be unexpected or unwanted. We are particularly interested in seeing examples of how computer graphics and interactive techniques are evolving to adapt to new conditions: technical, social, environmental, or something else entirely.

We are looking for creative, innovative technologies and applications in many fields, including:

• Audio
• Biotech and biologically inspired technology
• Computer graphics and animation
• Context-aware applications
• Design
• Displays
• Games
• High-speed networking
• Interaction technology
• Mobile technology
• Physical computing
• Robots
• Ubiquitous computing
• Virtual and mixed reality

Feel free to submit even if your work is not covered by the above list! If it is new, cool, and exciting, we want to see it at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009!

The main form of presentation at Emerging Technologies is live, working, hands-on demonstrations. It is essential that your work can be effectively demonstrated by the time the conference opens in December. To ensure this, the submission process requires all submitters to provide extensive technical, logistical, and practical documentation. Running an Emerging Technologies demo is hard work, but it is also very rewarding. Your work will be experienced by thousands of people, and thousands more will learn about it in international media reports.

We invite submissions from academic institutions, corporations, and individuals. All submissions will be reviewed by experts in relevant fields, and the final selections will be made by a jury. In addition to submitted works, a portion of the exhibition will be curated; please contact the Emerging Technologies Chair if you have suggestions for curated works! Juried and curated works will be clearly distinguished in the conference program.

The members of the SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Emerging Technologies Jury are:

• Mark Billinghurst, HIT Lab New Zealand
• Cynthia Breazeal, MIT Media Lab
• Paul Debevec, USC Institute for Creative Technologies
• Tom Igoe, New York University
• Jun Rekimoto, The University of Tokyo
• Kimiko Ryokai, University of California, Berkeley
• Albrecht Schmidt, University of Duisburg-Essen
• Annika Waern, Interactive Institute

Accepted Emerging Technologies works will be presented as on-going demonstrations throughout SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 in Yokohama. Technical support will be provided to make the most of each demo. If your work is accepted, you will have the opportunity to give a technical presentation, advertised in the conference program. Press tours and other media outreach will be organized to further increase awareness and publicity. A promotional video will be widely distributed, and a description of each exhibit will be published online and in a printed catalog. Additionally, we will seek to offer selected works the opportunity to be published as peer-reviewed papers in an edited special issue of an academic journal.

The submission deadline is 5 June, 23:59 UTC/GMT. The jury’s decisions will be announced in early August.
Full submission details can be found at: /www.siggraph.org/asia2009/for_presenters/etech/index.php

We look forward to seeing your submission for SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Emerging Technologies!

Lars Erik Holmquist
Emerging Technologies Chair
Swedish Institute of Computer Science and Södertörn University

A few people asked for the story of my visit to Tony Di Fiore’s research site in chronological order.  Here are all the posts in order:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• part 5
• part 6
• part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9
• Part 10
• coda

15 Jan 2009

There’s a group of howler monkeys voicing their opinions nearby as I type.  I can hear them through the window. It’s pretty quiet, so they’re probably several hundred meters away in the forest, I’m guessing.

Saw tamarind monkeys today on the way back from breakfast.  There’s a group that hangs out in the camp and I had never noticed them before, but Tony pointed them out.  It was a group of about 9.  They’re tiny, maybe the size of a large rodent.  They ran all through the trees from the stream by the dining hall to beyond the lab.

It’s a frustrating technology morning for Tony.  First, he downloaded nearly six days of data from his GPS only to find that the memory holds three days, and defaults to wrapping around. This means that the most recent three days overwrote the previous three days.  That sucked.  Then, we had planned to walk out to one of the camera traps by the river, about 2km, and replace the batteries and memory card on the camera.  We hiked out there, longer than we thought because one area was flooded out and we had to skirt around it, and when we got there, he realized the batteries were not in Tony’s pocket.  A wasted trip for him. But hey, I enjoyed the walk, and the spot is really beautiful, right by the river.  I didn’t get any shots though, too much foliage.

Update on José: we ran into him in the forest today, taking down his traps.  He told us it turns out there’s no room on the Friday plane from Coca (where the boat lands) to Quito is full, so he’ll have to stay a day in Coca before he gets to Quito.

Did another test with the GPS unit, this time on the dock of the river.  Results:  nothing.  Sigh. It was pleasant to sit out by the river while it collected data though.  Got through a couple more chapters of Moby Dick while butterflies landed on my legs.

The big generator went out this afternoon, so they’ve got the lab on a small generator.  Now we have the fragrance of gasoline exhaust wafting in the window.

The food here is pretty good. It’s simple, rice with most meals, and all the bread is the same sandwich buns (hamburger buns, basically). This morning we had French toast made with the buns, and tonight we had broccoli and cauliflower over noodles in a cheese sauce, with garlic bread from the same buns.  Lunch was a to-go pack for the forest, two ham and cheese sandwiches on, you guessed it, the same buns.  The folks cooking are pretty creative with a limited set of staples to work with.  We’ve also seen an amazing variety of uses of bananas.  Tonight they were poached in a sugar sauce, I think. Sometimes there are banana chips, or grilled bananas.  There are always mangoes and some other fresh fruits available, usually apples and passionfruit.

Tonight for fun, I explained how GPS works, and Tony played human evolution raps from his class. Now there’s a more serious conversation about how to identify individual monkeys from the coloration of their genitalia.

14 Jan 2009

Radio Tests and Camera Traps

Today was a day of camera traps and radio tests.  Tony and I  went out to replace two of the camera traps that are used to cover a mineral lick where the monkeys come to eat the dirt in a cave.  I guess it’s rich in minerals and bugs, so they get a lot of monkeys there.  It’s also rich in bats, and as we were working, one flew out of the cave.

Thanks to Younghyun Chung for the following note on Canon cameras that may be worth looking into for future camera trap development:

“CHDK, Canon Hack Developers’ Kit, seems worth to look at to take a picture of monkeys. I just heard about this and it includes “Motion detection – Trigger exposure in response to motion, fast enough to catch lightning.”

While we were on the trail to the camera traps, we saw a stinky phallus.  It’s a pretty mushroom, snow white with large holes in the side, and tubular. Got some pictures I’ll post when I get home.

We had some actual sunshine today.  The forest looks gorgeous in the sun, and gets much warmer. Rosser and Nataliya were happy because they finally got a few more dragonflies.

What’s the maximum range on active RFID?  Wonder if it’s worthwhile to give the monkeys the equivalent of EZ-Pass. I know, Charleton Heston would say the minute they can get over the bridges easily, it’s all over for Manhattan.

Radio tests:  We looked at whether we can tell the difference between 5m, 10m, 25m, all the way out to 75m. We typically lost signal between 57 and 75m, just as we did the day before.  The signal was very noisy, so I’d say it was inconclusive.  There’s definitely a difference between 5m and 10m, but less so beyond that.  However, I wasn’t plotting it on a log scale either, where the plateaus will show up more sharply.  Will look again later.  Tony had fun bounding down the trail like a monkey.

On the way back from camp, we ran across a group of wooly monkeys very close to camp. I was able to get my camera out and get some monkey shots, finally.  Most of my shots are useless, because I hadn’t yet been able to work out settings to shoot them, but at least I have an idea of settings now.  It was pretty exciting.  Of course this was the one time I went out with no pack, only camera, and it started to rain as we were out there.

Some of the cabins ran out of water this evening. Kevin had no water, so came over to use our shower. He had been processing monkey poop using a “DIY centrifuge” — aka tie the vial on a string and spin it around for a few minutes — when one of the vials popped open and sprayed him in the face with poop.  Hopefully no ill effects, but good to wash it off right away.

One thing I’m learning is how much of my life involves high bandwidth.  The number of everyday requests I’ve gotten via email from colleagues, friends, etc. that involve transfers of more than 1MB is a lot larger than I thought.  At home I wouldn’t even think about this, because I always have a nice fat connection.  Down here, every byte counts.  And not being able to do some of those everyday things inconveniences people I work with.  So if you’ve been inconvenienced, sorry.  On the other hand, if you design websites, try going back to 1995-era home connection rates and looking at your sites.  You’ll be amazed.  Even something as innocuous as an online application form has stopped me cold down here. Take a look back through your mail for the last day and see which ones were either greater than 1MB, or referenced a web page that was.  It’s higher than you might think.

There’s not a ton of sleeping getting done in our cabin, it’s a bit of an infirmary. I’m still up and down on the toilet every couple of hours, and our cabinmate José is very ill.  He’s been achey and had a fever for days, yet has still been out in the field chasing birds.  He says the aches are worse at night, and after consulting a doctor (conveniently, his mom is one), he’s afraid he might have malaria.  Though there is no malaria in this region, he was on the coast before this. He’s planning to take the Friday boat out and see a doctor in Quito.  He’s hoping it’s less serious, and that he’ll be able to come back on the Monday boat following. The boats only go on Monday and Friday, except in cases of extreme emergency, so those are his only choices.

This summer I got to assist on a project by artists Matthew Belanger, Sean Riley,  Ven Voisey, and producer Marianne Petit on a neat project called Lumens.  Actually, they did all the work, I just offered a little guidance to get things started.  It’s an installation of 160 networked lamps situated in two galleries in the towns of Adams and North Adams, Massachusetts, and the online arts organization turbulence.org.  The lamps in each gallery react to visitors walking through the space, as well as responding to movements in the other space. In addition, visitors online can turn on the lamps as well.

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Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things Donald A. Norman. Basic books, ©2005. ISBN: 0465051367.

In this book, Norman counters some of the points he makes in his first book, The Design of Everyday Things, by pointing out that we do make decisions about design based on emotional reasoning, and that design affects us emotionally.  He describes Human reaction to design on three levels: the visceral, or how it appears; the behavioral, or how it acts; and reflective, or how it makes us think and feel about ourselves through our association with it.

Michihito Mizutani is a researcher at School of Design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland.  His interaction design work is worth checking out…

Nortd have released TouchKit, an open source toolkit for making your own multitouch screen in OpenFrameworks.  It looks pretty good, and fairly easy to set up. For people interested in experimenting with multitouch surfaces, this seems like a good place to start.