Individual Reflections
I am so grateful for meeting the 10 minute time limit on midterm presentations. It was a great experience to have Luke, Maxim, and Nicole all present for my presentation. Luke didn’t have any feedback but was interested in hearing more about the Bio-1 Helmet for essential workers. Maxim understood the nature of gathering API information and also suggested I refine the color mapping sequence going from Red to Yellow to Green. Nicole gave me feedback that I should also include numerical signifiers so color cues are not solely relied upon. I have started to adjust the color mapping and have added larger numerical signifiers for people who may be color-blind.
Team Reflections
I met with my previous team to discuss midterms on the following Monday. I shared that I was really motivated and encouraged by the midterm presentations. I am grateful for being able to work independently from my original group because it allowed for an autonomous and immersive learning experience. The strengths of my project seemed to be the precedents of competitive research and the likelihood of my concept implementation. My next steps are to finish the concept poster, prototype some scenarios in XD and set up times to follow up with my user-test participants to test the prototype.
After 3 world wars in a 5o year time frame, society has collapsed into two Post-American organizations. Humankind is wealthy with money, but near the brink of extinction. Earth’s average temperature is 115 degrees and the air is unbreathable.
People have limited access to electricity, internet, clean air, or water. The population has dwindled to 800 Post-American Anti-Fascist’s and 21,000 Fascist Post-American’s.
Anti-Fascist people live above ground in the wild wasteland and suffer from acute carbon-dioxide poisoning. They don’t have access to Frump lasers and cannot clean their air from carbon dioxide.
Fascist Post-American’s live in vast underground cities where they have access to clean air and water because of Frump Lasers. Fascists can’t breathe outside their bunkers, and Anti-Fascists can’t get inside the bunkers to breathe the Good Air.
ACT 1: Laximus Frump is the 34 year old grandson of former US President Ronald Frump who is now a 124 year old Transhumanist laser inventor, and leader of the Fascist Post- American society. At his birthday party, Laximus becomes overwhelmed with shame for himself and his family's contributions to Fascist Post-Americanism. He leaves the party early to give away his secret stash of 10,000 new prosthetic breathing devices called “Good Lungs” to the Post-American Anti-Fascist society.
“Dear Delora, anybody from the Post-American Anti-Fascist Society. These are the plans to the Good Lungs Version 2. There are 1,000 units at my secret Moon base. I also set the password to 0000 so anybody can access them remotely. I hope this helps the Anti-Fascists finally get clean air. To use the device, just pull the bubble over the head until the neck seal is comfortable. Say ‘Ok Good Lungs’ and they will give you CO2/02 readings. Or you could just press the button near the filter. The app is how you can find and chat with other Good Lungs. The green dots will be PA-AF and the red will be FPA’s.”
His mother Karen Frump intercepts the email and takes over her son’s not-so-secret Moon base to steal all of the Good Lungs and sell them to F-PA’s. She reports Laximus to the Space Force and they put out a bounty for Laximus to be captured dead or alive.
Laximus finds out from his robot Gobi about the bounty and the Good Lungs being stolen so he changes the password to the Good Lungs app and sends it to Delora and the Anti-Fascists.
ACT 2:
Delora initially rejected Laximus’s first email offer to help the PA-AF society. That night, Delora is visited by Mother Earth in a dream. She wakes to another email from Laximus and shares the new password on Pirate Radio. Immediately, PA-AF’s begin to hack and snatch the Good Lungs from F-PA’s; who are using them on earth during vacation.
Delora responds to Laximus’s email and suggest her and non-leaders of the PA-AF society hack a rocket ship to the Moon base to steal back all the Good Lungs.
ACT 3:
On the Moon base, Karen Frump intercepts her son’s email about stealing back the Good Lungs. Karen has an army of Covid-Zombies waiting for Laximus and Delora to arrive.
Laximus tries to Hack the Covid-Zombies but it doesn’t work. At the last second, Delora uses her robot powers to reverse the attack on Karen Frump instead. Karen bails and takes her one set of Good Lungs with her.
Laximus opens the locks to the bunkers and releases the code for Good Lungs and Frump Lasers. He begins working with Delora as a non-leader of the PAAF society to distribute Good Lungs and help people move into the Good Air bunkers.
This week's assignment is to post three responses to quotes in the text “Storytelling for User Experience” by Whitney Quesenbery & Kevin Brooks.
The first quote is from Annette Simmons, where she describes a vision story as one that “raises your gaze from current difficulties to a future payoff that successfully competes with the temptation to give up, compromise, or change direction.”
I appreciate this message from Annette about telling a vision story that helps us look past current difficulties to future payoffs. The example about the iRobot named “Scooby Doo” was a powerful vision story because it showed how the work of the engineers to build a robot saved a life when the robot was exploded by a bomb. I liked how the soldiers collected Scooby Doo’s pieces and sent them back to the engineers. Having the robot in the lobby of the headquarters tells a vision story of why they do the work of building robots to save humans from unexploded bombs. This story about the iRobot is one they tell to new employees and people at conferences because it uplifts the spirits of people and inspires them to think beyond their current circumstances. The Annie song “The sun will come out tomorrow” is another vision story that comes to mind.
The next quote is a long story of short experience with a cat. “ In the context section of the class, I would tell a story about my cat when I was a kid. The main part of the story described an event that took all of about three seconds in real time, but I surrounded it with explicit and implicit context, which made the whole story last about 12 minutes.”
This quote is interesting because the author points out that when he is done telling the story, he asks about the house and everybody who had listened had different perspectives about what the house looked like based on their own upbringing and what country they were from. This is a story about physical context, and how leaving some details out of the story lets people fill them in with their imaginations.
The third quote I will share is in regards to the value of user stories. “One of the reasons stories are so useful in user experience design is that they add specificity and texture to the one-dimensional views of users that we often see.”
I agree that user experience stories are quite effective at adding texture and specificity to a one dimensional user. It goes on to mention how important it is to craft our characters based on real data gathered from people, and not a whimsical decision to be interesting. It also mentions a screenwriting concept called “dictio” where a character will make a statement early in the film that later proves untrue to provide a full circle experience. This is like when Ronald Frump said he was going to hire the best people, and then a bunch of them ended up in prison; including his lawyer.
My favorite quote is from a story about blind people sharing their perspective on an elephant. “No you’re all mistaken, the elephant is like a rope.” This shows how our given perspective does not always take into account the entirety of the situation. The blind person who thinks the elephants tail is a rope, differs from the other blind people that think the elephant is a wall, a spear, a snake, or a tree; because they are feeling different parts of the elephants body and only have that as a reference.
The main takeaway for me personally is to understand and use the given elements to craft a user experience story that lifts people from the current circumstances into a place of hope. The elements are Perspective, Characters, Context, Imagery, and Language and they are all necessary parts to creating well-rounded personas. These elements of storytelling if done well, can add up to a rich and detailed emotional experience.
Bruce Tognazzini’s 5 Principles of Human Interface Objects have been developed over decades of working with major brand products . Bruce, who is lovingly known as Tog, worked at Apple for 14 years as their Human Interface Evangelist and now is a principal at Nielson and Norman group where he has worked for the past 20+ years. He wears suspenders to support the weight of his 56 patents in radar tech, aviation, eye tracking, GPS, and others.
Tognazzini’s 1st principle states that objects should be seen, heard, felt, or perceived like screens, alerts, or VR haptic suits.
Objects should be operated in a standard way like keypads, joysticks or light switches.
Objects should have standard resulting behaviors like ringtones, play buttons, or brightness adjusters.
Objects should be understandable, self-consistent and stable like these icons for close program, full screen, or zoom-in features.
We should use new objects when people need to interact with it differently, or if it results in a different behavior.
For a quick example, we might use a shredder icon instead of a trash can if the feature immediately deleted files.
The Playstation controller has endured 25 years of road tested scrutiny and multiple interface upgrades. The first upgrade to the UI was joysticks, then wireless control, haptic feedback, mic/speakers, and then touchpad. With the unreleased Playstation 5 controller, we will have motion sensors, adaptive triggering, and changeable joysticks. These innovations empower the human interface objects to be seen, heard, felt and understood.
This is the Sphero educational Robot. In the middle image, we see a UI with a joystick driving feature. It’s paired with an adjuster for speed, sound, and color. Sphero is good for sighted people, but for people with visual impairments who use screen readers, there is a struggle with the operation of a joystick control, or code block programming; seen on the right. Based on Tog’s principles, a new interface object would be needed to empower new results and behaviors.
Fortunately, researchers at University of Washington saw these challenges and developed the Blocks4All prototype to remove three barriers of block coding for people with visual impairments. The barriers they removed are the drag and drop challenge, the awareness of coding structure, and the order of code operations. Regarding Bruce’s Principles, these solutions empower the perception and understanding of a consistent coding system.
David will take over from here to share the remaining good and bad examples.
Since 1981 when Xerox introduced the hamburger menu, it has allowed users to access their preferred content directly, instead of everything at once. With only a few clicks, billions of users can quickly get to where they are going, without getting stuck searching though every link or block of text.
With Uber, the main goal of this app is to order a car. For this reason the majority of the screen’s real estate is dedicated to booking a vehicle. Uber uses a hamburger menu in a passive way by hiding content that is not crucial to the primary goal. For things like records of past trips, receipts, and payment settings, users will have to click the hamburger menu to access these non essential buttons.The hamburger menu obeys the principle that objects should have resulting standard behaviors. It is also good example of consistency, visibility, and stability in understanding how it works. Either by providing crucial navigation or getting out of the users way.
And now for the Bad Examples.
We found a study that showed how screen readers cannot detect a chat or invite feature that is nested behind the menu. If Siri could scan the menu source code, she could say “Click Participants to Invite people to this meeting.” Zoom could also put the Invite Link and the Chat feature on the dashboards so screen readers can support people with visual impairments.
This is the food delivery service I use in long beach, however their site's primary navigation has one huge issue. This navigation is challenging for customers due to low color contrast and tricky to understand their delivery zone. A customer must know what zone their order is coming from as well as the zone the order is going to. That is why the primary navigation fails the principle that objects can be seen, heard, felt, or otherwise perceived.
Our solution is a clear primary navigation, where delivery zones are managed internally on the administrative end. Customers should only be offered delivery options from restaurants based on their delivery zip code, much like how GrubHub or DoorDash operates. This updated solution follows the principle that objects should be understandable, self-consistent, and stable
I always wonder, why can't I login with the email address associated with my airline account? Airline logins have created a new type of object unnecessarily; while this is a new convention it is not a unique experience. If I can log into my Amazon or Bank account with my email address, I feel like I should be allowed to do the same with the airlines. I believe these logins have failed the principle that objects should result in standard behaviors.
Our solution allows customers to sign in to their airline account with their email address and password, and for additional security purposes, we would implement 2-factor authentication. This login would reflect traditional conventions by following the principle that objects should have a standard resulting behavior.
Thank you all for being with us to learn about Tog’s 5 Human Interface principles and our next slide provides sources and the link to our preparation notes.
Sources
Icons by the Noun Project
https://wdww.good.is/articles/using-the-noun-project-s-iconic-design-tools-for-social-change
Bruce Tognazzini Blog https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/
Sphero accessibility research https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10063855
Sphero accessibility https://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/C2LC/Examining+Sphero+for+Accessibility
Blocks4All paper https://.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10063855
Blocks4All solutions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HBYrarjSRo
Zoom Accessibility https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/06/accessible-video-conferencing-tools/
Zoom accessibility tips article https://mosen.org/zoom/
Hamburger Icon https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/an-oral-history-of-the-hamburger-icon-from-the-people-who-were-there/
Full list of sources and preparation noteshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1p26yRDsSxtPnI8IartThTB2xCG2T2v9JVWG4O68kXI0/edit?usp=sharing
The main takeaway from reading pages 3-23 from The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler is that while the “Hero with a 1,000 faces” is a more intricate model for storytelling than the “Hero’s Journey”, it is still only a model. These frameworks vary to suit the needs of the audience and the storyteller. The framework acts like house-building fundamentals, not like the blueprints of the house which must be followed exclusively.
Here are my responses to three quotes from the reading.
“Stories built on the model of the Hero's Journey have an appeal that can be felt by everyone, because they well up from a universal source in the shared unconscious. It's these emotional journeys that hook an audience and make a story worth watching.” [5]
I agree that stories built on “The Hero's Journey” framework are universally appealing due to the archetypal emotional journeys of our collective consciousness. Everyone can relate to having an ordinary world that is disrupted by an incident that challenges us. Everyone can relate to being supported by a mentor of some kind to help us get across the threshold of uncertainty to a place of purpose, passion, or even waning confidence within ourselves. Everyone can relate to entering a cave of uncertainty within their life and emerging with the solution to our challenge and a path towards peaceful resolution.
“The images of the basic version — young heroes seeking magic swords from old wizards, maidens risking death to save loved ones, knights riding off to fight evil dragons in deep caves, and so on — are just symbols of universal life experiences.” [19]
I agree that the imaginary scenarios described above are symbols or metaphors for something more personally relatable. Seeking a magic sword from a wizard is like when Maxim helped me exchange my wooden sword; Dreamweaver and Chrome development tools, for a magical sword; Visual Studio Code and Firefox. With my new magical sword and encouragement, it’s easier to face a challenging coding problem that might present themselves as an evil dragon in a dark cave. This metaphor also works for college as a general magic sword, and our teachers and peers as the mentors that empower us to face the uncertainties of life with the magic tools of education and experience.
“Changing the traditional sex and relative ages of the archetypes only makes it more interesting, and allows ever more complex webs of understanding to be spun among them. The basic figures can be combined, or each can be divided into several characters to show different aspects of the same idea.” [20]
This is a cool idea that I am exploring in my storytelling project. Initially, I conceived the story based on real events from the perspective of the antagonist Ronald Frump. I noticed something happening when I was doing my emotional journey shape, and how the low points weren’t Ronald Frump’s low points but the audiences. I quickly realized that it didn’t feel right to be telling the story from the villain’s perspective. Instead, it feels better to tell the story from the perspective of the greater good. I see how the greater good could be a group dynamic or a composite of characters based on real life. Now I feel better about telling the story from the perspective of those impacted by the antagonist; such as Mother Earth, my late brothers Marty & David; who were visually impaired with chronic disabilities, champion of gender equality, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Antoinette D. Carroll; who is a black equity designer and the mother of a victim of police brutality. As I continue to learn and grow, I understand how crucial these marginalized voices are in the resistance to Fascism and how amplifying their stories can create healing and more support towards the peaceful resolution of equity and equality.
Here is a video I found elaborating more on the hero’s journey.
Citation Sources:
[5, 19, 20] The writer's journey : mythic structure for writers / Christopher Vogler. ~ 3rd ed. (1998)
Image and Video: https://indiefilmhustle.com/chris-vogler-writers-journey/
Exercise 2.1
Exercise 2.2
"Once upon a time there was a fascist loving president named Ronald Frump. Every day he dreamed of taking over the world.
One day he tweets out his sharpie edits to the constitution and declares a 2nd Civil War against Americans. Because of that, Americans formed a flash dance mob. Because of that, Ronald becomes invincible and builds a prison on the moon .
Until finally he loses the 2nd Civil War and is sent to moon prison.”
Exercise 2.21
“Once upon a time there was a kind and empowering black woman named Frantoinette . Every day they dreamed of justice, fairness, and equity for their local community and the world.
One day Frantoinette is asked to lead the American’s in the 2nd Civil War. Because of that, millions of people vote and they create viral dance. Because of that Ronald tries to change the constitution and Twitter deletes his account and he loses the election.
But he refuses to leave the White House, until finally Biden & Harris take office and send Ronald Frump to moon prison.
Exercise 2.23
Act I - Setup: Exposition, Inciting Incident, Plot Point One
EXPOSITION
In a dystopian world, not unlike our own, Ronald Frump is a sitting U.S. president that has fallen into a love triangle with two autocratic dictators, Bladimir Flutin and King-John Urn. (1)
INCITING INCIDENT
(1). In an effort to prove his love to both of them, he conspires to hack the upcoming election (goal), (2) orders mail sorting machines and postal boxes to be dismantled (obstacle), (3) on the eve of election night he rewrites the constitution in sharpie that the President shall serve unlimited terms and tweets it out (obstacle),
PLOT POINT 1
(4) as a result Twitter deletes his account, every other social media platform follows suit (obstacle), (5) he loses the election by a mudslide, holds a press conference stating the election was a fraud and uses military force to remain in power (goal), (6) invites right-wing militias to attack and declares a second civil war against American citizens that are storming the White House (obstacle), (7) from the safety of the White House bunker, he forms an emergency military alliance with Iran, Russia, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia (goal),
Act II - Confrontation: Rising Action, Midpoint, Plot Point Two
RISING ACTION
(8) nukes all the hurricanes (obstacle), (8.5) drops plane loads of paper towels into the California forest fires (obstacle), (9) mandates bleach vaccines as a treatment for COVID19 (goal),
MIDPOINT
(10) fast tracks a pop-up prison on the moon for his political opponents (obstacle), (11) swaps all American flags with Confederate flags (goal), (12) dynamites his face over all four presidents of Mt. Rushmore,
PLOT POINT 2
(13) raises Zombie Hitler from the dead and promotes him to Secretary of Defense (goal), (14) strikes a deal with Satan and Thanos to become invincible (goal),
Act III - Resolution: Pre Climax, Climax, Denouement
RESOLUTION
(15) loses Civil War II due to COVID19 and bleach vaccine related deaths (obstacle),
PRECLIMAX
(16) gets indicted for treason and crimes against humanity (obstacle),
CLIMAX
(17) gets extradited to the pop-up moon prison (obstacle),
DENOUEMENT
(18) and lives for eternity without access to a hairstylist or makeup artist (obstacle).
Exercise 2.3
My response from User to Character was that it was a challenge user experience to simply use the document to do the exercise. In the article, it shares the value of shifting our focus from persona’s to a well rounded character put in scenarios. This helps us create a more clear picture of a character’s common traits, motivations, needs, and obstacles. A scenario is described as a character that is using software to achieve some kind of goal. If I was the protagonist, the scenario might be trying to do this exercise, but several distractions are at play and the document itself is confusing and difficult to navigate.
Use controls below to advance the next slide or scroll down to see individual slides with presentation script at the very bottom.
Margaret Hamilton’s Contributions:
Presentation Script
On July 20, 1969, NASA’s Apollo 11 lunar module was preparing to land when error code 1202 began to flash! One of the radars was feeding unnecessary data into the system causing the computer to overload and reboot.
Thankfully, the Apollo Guidance Computer system was designed to be asynchronous. Rather than abourt, Margaret’s “Forget it” software alerted Buzz and Neil to cancel the radar function and continued its more important mission to land on the moon. 650 Million people witnessed one of the greatest achievements in human history.
Margaret Hamilton was born in Paoli, Indiana where she studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Michigan and Earlham College. She planned to pursue graduate work in mathematics, but while her husband was in grad school she took a temporary position at MIT where she developed weather prediction software.
Hamilton and her team were critical in the success of the Apollo mission because of their remarkably advanced software. The software interrupted the astronaut’s display notifying them of the computer overload and provided them with emergency-related options to choose from.
The interface allowed the astronauts to communicate with the computer using program codes. Hamilton designed a man in the loop concept that allowed software to communicate asynchronously in real-time with the astronauts. This is a revolution in Human-Computer Interaction. With this new interface the astronauts, system control, hardware, and software became a system-wide solution that worked together.
When Margaret Hamilton was hired at NASA, she was given an instruction manual of the computer systems and was told to make it all work together. Knowing she would need to program the computers to function in unique life saving ways, she coined the term “software engineer”.
After the success of Apollo 11, and decades of missions after it, Margaret incorporated Hamilton Technologies. Over many years she perfected her greatest contribution to human computer interactions: Universal System Language. USL is made possible by her mathematical automation called 001 Tool Suite. USL is based on her philosophy of Development Before The Fact. Rather than fixing problems as they come up, Margaret’s philosophy is to prevent problems from ever happening.
Margaret’s USL innovations have been utilized by some of the world’s largest companies like AT&T, IBM and many others. Here’s an example of how Margaret’s innovations inspired a system of systems to help you get to where they are going. Imagine you are self-driving a Tesla. The battery is low, so you use the car’s built in Ai to find a local charging station. Along the way, your car recognizes other cars and the rules of the road, but when you get to the charging station, you still have to get out of the car to plug it in, once the battery recognizes the charge it tells you how long you need to wait. Soon you are back on the road and heading to your destination. This is the language of a universal system of systems working together.
Margaret is an inspiration to millions of women around the world and even entered the mainstream when Lego released its women of NASA set. Because of her software development on the Apollo missions, Margaret was given the highest honor to a civilian, the Medal of Freedom award.
“Margaret’s love of exploration and innovation are the source code of the American spirit and her genius has inspired generations to reach for the stars.”
Exercise 1
The film Dumb & Dumber leaves me with a silly peaceful feeling. After all their adventures and misfortunes, Lloyd & Harry would prefer to be walking together along a lonely highway than be oil boys for a swimsuit competition. In the animated classic Jungle Book, the story leaves me with a feeling of peaceful inspiration knowing that Mogli has been adopted by a human family while Baloo and Bagheera launch into another rendition of the song “Bare Necessities.” For the ending of the book Way of the Peaceful Warrior there is a feeling of peaceful hope as Dan sees the death of his mentor Socrates as an ever expanding spirit unto all things. I suppose the emotion that my favorite stories evoke is a sense of peacefulness achieved through some kind of resolution. I guess it hasn’t really changed over time, and I still feel a sense of peaceful resolution from my favorite stories.
The way that these three stories feel similar to me is that they all created a sense of peace within the world by achieving a resolution of the struggle, conflict, or drama. They are similar in that Dumb & Dumber and Jungle Book both end with the two many characters walking away. In the case of Jungle Book, they are singing, and in Dumb and Dumber, they are playing an elaborate game of tag. In the story of Way of the Peaceful Warrior, the main character Dan is getting married and this too is a way of them walking down a long path together. They are all different in that the tone is unique given the circumstances and the method of resolution.
Here is a trailer for Dumb & Dumber as an Oscar worthy drama that I found interesting
Exercise 2
I imagine that if the characters Harry & Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber were to be placed into the world of Way of the Peaceful Warrior they would accelerate Dan’s spiritual growth by serving as adequate examples of “living in the moment”. I think Lloyd & Harry would really get on the nerves of the main character Dan, but they would embody the message of Socrates that life has three rules, “paradox, humor, and change.” They would probably cause a lot of confusion, and mishaps along the way too. They would no doubt try to recruit Dan into their hijinks adventure of returning Mary Swanson’s briefcase and end up creating a lot more levity against the backdrop of a more serious and angst ridden story.
Exercise 3
What if Ronald Frump made America a Fascist Dictatorship?
In a dystopian world, not unlike our own, Ronald Frump is a sitting U.S. president that has fallen into a love triangle with two autocratic dictators, Bladimir Flutin and King-John Urn.
In an effort to prove his love to both of them, he conspires to hack the upcoming election (goal), orders mail sorting machines and postal boxes to be dismantled (obstacle), on the eve of election night he rewrites the constitution (obstacle) in sharpie that the President shall serve unlimited terms and tweets it out as a new law (goal), as a result Twitter deletes his account and every other social media platform follows suit (obstacle), he loses the election by a mudslide, holds a press conference stating the election was a fraud (obstacle), and uses military force to remain in power (goal), invites right-wing militias to attack and declares a second civil war against American citizens that are storming the White House (obstacle), from the safety of the White House bunker, he forms an emergency military alliance with Iran, Russia, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia (goal), nukes all the hurricanes (obstacle), drops plane loads of paper towels into the California forest fires (obstacle), mandates bleach vaccines as a treatment for COVID19 (goal), fast tracks a pop-up prison on the moon for his political opponents (obstacle), swaps all American flags with Confederate flags (goal), dynamites his face over all four presidents of Mt. Rushmore, (goal), strikes a deal with Satan and Thanos to become invincible (goal), raises Zombie Hitler from the dead and promotes him to Secretary of Defense (goal), loses Civil War II due to COVID19 and bleach vaccine related deaths (obstacle), gets indicted for treason and crimes against humanity (obstacle), gets extradited to the pop-up moon prison (obstacle), and lives for eternity without access to a hairstylist or makeup artist (obstacle).