CCS (Participation Research)

There is software that is specifically made for the building and maintaining websites that handle social networks. Many of these websites offer blog hosting services. Some of the most popular social networking sites are Myspace, Blogspot and Facebook. Most of these social networks allow users to create a unique profile where they upload pictures and enter information about themselves, e.g. likes, dislikes. Some of them have privacy controls where only friends who are added in their profile are allowed to contact them or make comments.

One of the biggest social networks is MySpace. It is currently the world's sixth most popular website. It has over 100 million accounts registered. It was founded by Tom Anderson in July 2003 and was bought for $580 million by Rupert Murdock's News Corporation. Another very large social network is YouTube, which allows users to upload videos and share them to the world. This was founded in 2005 by three former employees of Paypal. Videos of almost anything can be found, from trailers of films, amateur films, old cartoon series etc.

CCS (Sustainability Research)

Sustainability is an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future. It relates to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment.

One of the critically important issues in sustainability is that of human overpopulation combined with human lifestyle. A number of studies have suggested that the current population of the Earth, already over six billion, is too many people to support sustainably at current material consumption levels. This challenge for sustainability is distributed unevenly. According to calculations of the ecological footprint, the ecological pressure of a US resident is 13 times that of a resident of India and 52 times that of a Somali resident.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has identified considerations for technical cooperation that affect three types of sustainability:
Institutional sustainability. Can a strengthened institutional structure continue to deliver the results of technical cooperation to end users? The results may not be sustainable if, for example, the planning authority that depends on the technical cooperation loses access to top management, or is not provided with adequate resources after the technical cooperation ends. Institutional sustainability can also be linked to the concept of social sustainability, which asks how the interventions can be sustained by social structures and institutions;
Economic and financial sustainability. Can the results of technical cooperation continue to yield an economic benefit after the technical cooperation is withdrawn? For example, the benefits from the introduction of new crops may not be sustained if the constraints to marketing the crops are not resolved. Similarly, economic, as distinct from financial, sustainability may be at risk if the end users continue to depend on heavily subsidized activities and inputs.
Ecological sustainability. Are the benefits to be generated by the technical cooperation likely to lead to a deterioration in the physical environment, thus indirectly contributing to a fall in production, or well-being of the groups targeted and their society.

BRIEF 3 - UCI Visit - Analysing an Arcade Machine

When I entered the UCI centre there were lots of arcade machines with flashing lights and bright colours. I suppose this is to catch the public's attention to come to their machine and spend money. As it is an amusement centre, the main objective of the machines is to make money by gettng as many customers as possible and the way to do this is to attract them to the machine, and then have sustainability to keep their attention and want to play even more. The more enticing a machine is, the more likely people are to see it and use it. As I observed the machines that were available, the majority of them were either based on a popular film (Fast and The Furious, House Of The Dead, Adamas Family), or resembled something in the real world (e.g. Gun, Motorbike, Car Seat and Gears, Basketball Net). I suppose people are more likely to want to play these games if they already have a knowledge of the game or can relate to it in some way.

I eventually chose 'Super Bikes' arcade machine. This is a motorbike game based on the bikes from the 'Fast and the Furious' films. It offers many features to attract the user's attention. There are flashing lights, and a funky arcade stand. It boasts realistic to life features. The object you use to play the game is shaped like a real motorbike, and operates in pretty much the same way, as it uses the handle bars to change gears, and lean into the bike to turn corners, unlike one of the other bike machines in the centre that stood still and had a swivel base to turn corners. Almost everybody is familiar with how a motorbike works, and would take this into practise when using the game for the first time. Experienced motorbike riders will have more of an idea of how to ride the bike though, as it is based on the functions of a real bike. On the bike there is an electronic speed dial, which is the feature on most modern motorbikes. Onscreen features offer a rev counter and gear changes.

The user starts the game by inserting a £1 coin into the slot that is hidden down at the machine in front of the bike. The game then starts by asking you to select a bike and any extras you want to add. You are then placed at the start of the race track at the starting line. There is a count down and when the lights go green, you have to turn the gear knob on the handle bar to accelerate, and steer by rocking in the direction you want the bike to tilt onscreen. It is a battle to finish in the highest position and in the best time. There is a best time table at the end where you can add your name to if you get a good enough time. This gives the game longetivity as it gives people incentive to come back and play the game to get a better time and fight the best place.

I believe this game to be aimed mostly at teenagers that might be interested in the film or into bikes or computer games in general. Young users may be too small for them to sit on the bike and have their feet touch the floor. It is more of an entertainment based machine than an education machine like at Techniquest.

At the start of the game, the machine is controlling you, prompting you to pick from the available options, but when the race starts you are in total control of the game, controlling what happens onscreen by the actions you do.

VIDEO - This is a link to the video of me playing on the game:

BRIEF 2 - MOBILE PHONE

For this brief I was required to find a product that involves interaction between the user and the interface. The product I chose was the Samsung SGH-D500 phone, launched in late 2004. I chose this product as it was easy to bring into the lab to analyse, had a multimedia interface with many features, with hopefully some of them being poor so I could improve upon them or re-design them for the next module. I had owned the phone for a while before writing this review, so I was quite up on how the phone operated and had prior knowledge of the functions it was capable of.


DESCRIPTION OF THE PRODUCT AND ITS FUNCTIONALITY:

The Samsung SGH-D500 phone is a small lightweight phone with a variety of buttons, a reasonable sized colour screen, and a slide feature to protect some of its buttons and to make it more compact when not in use. It is easy to use and could be operated with a single hand without fear of it dropping as it fits in the hand quite snuggly, and has a rubber grip feature for your thumb to help hold it. The phone boasts many features, which is handy for anyone who likes to use their phone a lot:

MEMORY: It has an internal memory capacity of 96mb which can be used to store any multimedia content you wish. This capacity includes 1,000 high quality pictures, 60 minutes of video/speech recording, or 20 mp3 songs.

CAMERA: It comes standard with a 1.3 Mega pixel (1280 x 1024) digital camera with flash and zoom capabilities. The built in flash is great for taking pictures in the dark or badly lit places. There are many effects that can be added to the pictures you produce such as Black & white, negative, sepia, emboss, sketch, orange, aqua, red focus, yellow focus or blue focus. Many of these effects would only normally be achieved by uploading them onto your computer and using a program such as photoshop to edit them further but this phone seems to do it all! It also has a frames feature that allow you to add frames to the edge of your photo as if they were in a photo frame.

VIDEO RECORDING: This can be put on a timer and you can choose from two different qualities: normal or economy quality.
TFT-Display 176 x 220 pixels, 262,144 colours

BATTERY:
Talk time: 10 hours
Battery standby: 400 hours
Up to 6 h 30 min talk-time

If you don't use this phone at all, you can go weeks without charging it, but once the phone starts being used then the power is eaten up very easily.

MP3 Player: This is great for playing and listening to real tones. It comes with many polyphonic ringtones, but you can just as easily send mp3s from your computer and listen to your songs on the go.

Bluetooth: This is quite a good feature that allows you to send and receive information from another person who also has bluetooth. Swopping pictures, ringtones, videos etc. becomes easy and it is a free service.

Send and receive text messages, email and multimedia messages. There are pre-set templates in the multimedia messages for you to send, but you can also add your own pictures, video or sound to the multimedia messages

EXTRAS:
Java world - You have 3 games already here.
Games - Free kick, football game, Forgotten warrior, platform adventure game and Arch Angel a fighter plane game.
Alarm
Voice recorder
World Time
Calculator
Converter
Timer
Stopwatch

You can store up to 1000 names in phonebook, put them into different groups i.e. friends, family or work, or make your own. You can see the last 20 missed, received and dialled numbers. There is also an organiser on the phone. The phone can light up quite bright so can be easily viewed even in the dark. These are just some of the features that I have come across whilst using the phone. There are extra input devices for the phone which include a speaker for the hard of hearing, and a phone charger for charging up the phone's battery when the power gets too low.

I believe the product to be intended for use by teenagers/young adults. It has a fun layout, games and many multimedia features which you would a young person to expect from a phone to make it more entertaining for them. It is not specifically made for a certain level of user as there are many features and the only way to find out what the phone is capable of doing and how to do it is to either by trial and error or by reading through the user manual. This product could really be used in any environement. The only drawbacks with regards to versatility on the go is that there might be a bad signal when trying to make phone calls or send/recieve text messages when in a rural area, or big building. Also, the user will have to make sure that the phone is well charged as it eats up the power quickly. There is also the obvious of not using it in the rain as this may damage the phone.


INTERFACE DESIGN

The look and feel of the phone is typical of most phones on the market today. There are directional buttons to navigate, buttons to accept/hang up a call, a numbered keypad to enter numbers and letters, and a screen to see visually what the user is doing. The phone looks stylish, especially with the slide feature, and the added sounds it make everytime you press a button. It fits nicely in your hand, and is sturdy (I have dropped it several times without it braking yet) while still being lightweight. The colour screen is a must nowadays, and this pulls it off quite well. There are also little animations which grab the users attention. This phone is extremely useful for what it does. As well as doing what it should do (make phone calls) there are many bonus features that make this a truly multimedia product. This is very useful as you could take pictures, listen to music or send messages to someone without the aid of an mp3 player, camera, or notepad! The menu system is fairly easy to understand and with the added bonus of having pictures, even a novice user should be able to navigate with ease.

In relation to the human cognitive processes I think that the phone does the following things:
* The phone has many little icons to give a clue to what that option is as well as having the text above, but this is not always obvious, and the phone has to be played around with before fully understanding what everything does.
* It grabs the users attention by having animated icons, a full colour screen, added sound/video, and a nice designed phone that makes you want to pick it up.
* Although there is text that says what each of the options is, it is not always obvious what subsection, the correct function is in, so the user will have to learn from process of trial and error to remember where everything is stored, especially if the user manual is not at hand.

In relation to Norman's design principles:
There are two main parts to the phone - One with a few buttons and the screen and the other with more buttons. These two parts are attached via a slide feature. You have small symbols on the buttons that symbolise the hangin up and picking up of a phone, and also the power symbol. There is an OK button as well as the numeric keypad. There are also two buttons that are next to the screen that relate to the text on screen.
The user is given feedback in the form of either an animation, text or sound. Normally the three are combined to make out what is happening easier.
There are not many constraints to the device as you know what the phone is capable of before you buy it. There are constraints, however, with other people's phones, as if they do not have various features such as multimedia messaging or bluetooth, they cannot interact as well as the phone's capabilities allow.
There is not much evidence of mapping on the phone apart from the two buttons that relate to the options on the screen that change depending on what task you are performing. On the menu, the way that you navigate showing arrows pointing in different directions could be considered as mapping.
As samsung phones pretty much all have the same style layout, I would consider it easy to use another samsung phone (older or newer) as I am already accustomed to the way in which it works. This is consistent throughout the different models of Samsung phones. All the menus are laid out all the same, and it is the same procedure to find what you are looking for. This shows consistency throughout, and it should be easy for a user to do many things once he/she has mastered the menu structure.


TASK ANALYSIS

When deciding upon a task there are three main parts to it. There is the goal which is ultimately what you want to achieve at the end of the procedure. There are subtasks, which are the milestones that you have to achieve in order to progress through the task, and then there are the actions that you will perform in order to achieve these subtasks. As this phone allows you to take pictures and send them via a multimedia message along with text to another mobile phone, I am going to describe the process of just that:

GOAL: SUCCESSFULLY SENDING A MULTIMEDIA TEXT MESSAGE TO ANOTHER MOBILE PHONE.

* First of all, if the phone is not switched on you must do so by pressing the red button with a power symbol until the screen lights up, a sound is played and an animation starts. This will then take you to the main screen.

* Press the left option button just under the screen where it states 'MENU'.

* This will take you to the menu where there is a screen where there are 9 small symbols. Each of these symbols animate when they are selected. Locate the picture of the message and select it.

* As we are creating a multimedia message, scroll down to 'MMS' from this list and select it.

* As we are creating a message from scratch and not viewing existing messages, select 'CREATE' from this list.

* There now should be a screen that has four different options to personalise your multimedia message; These being Subject, Picture & Video, Sound, and Message.

* Select the Subject option. Write in a subject that the message relates to in this text area (up to 40 characters). Press the 'OK' button when you are finished.

* Now select Picture & Video. From here you can either scroll through the pictures/video that are already stored, or create your own.

*Select the sound option and either record a sound or select a pre-existing sound.

* Finally, enter the text you would like added to the multimedia message (up to 250 characters).

Now you should be back at the same screen but now it shows you what multimedia you have added and how large the file is to send. If you are happy, select 'SEND' from the options menu. This will then bring up an address book list. You are now required to search through your address book and add all the people you want to send the message to. Once this is done you can confirm that you want to send. The send will then be in progress and show you this by having an animation of a moving letter on screen. The confirmation will pop up once this has been completed and the sending of a multimedia message is done. Although there is confirmation on the phone that is sending the message, the only real way to know that the task is done is to view it on the receiving phone.

CCS (Stars Of CCTV)

Within the last few decades more and more CCTV cameras are being installed. Due to the increase in crime and the need to feel secure, serveilance has been more and more demanding. If you walk through a city, you will be captured on many CCTV cameras. If you walk into shops or banks there are many cameras that provide security. Your movements can even be tracked on your mobile phone. Mobile phones are now able to record and play videos. The quality isn’t very good but it allows you to show the world something you have made. There are many ways to upload images and videos to websites for people to view and rate: • YouTube allows anyone to watch and share original videos online • Flickr allows you to upload and share your photos online either by sending them over the web or via camera phone • GoogleVideo – which allows you to upload video, provided you own the necessary rights. The television programme 'Big Brother' has about 50 different CCTV cameras in a house with 12 different people tracking their every move. It is a perfect example of what society is like today. The goverment want to know what we are doing all the time and make sure we are not breaking the law.

CCS (Wireless Networks Research)

Wireless networks are becoming more and more popular everyday. They are being used in many places such as libraries, universities, food restaurants and even in some sity centres. People can take along their laptop or any other device with a wireless network card and connect to the Internet. Macdonalds offer a free service for hand-held games consoles such as the Nintendo DS for customers to play multiplayer games over the Internet whilst they eat. The Government are trying to make the Internet accessible to everybody so they are trying to introduce schemes where people can bring along their devices and connect to the Internet from the City centres. Many reviews of the future of this technology believe that it will become so widespread that soon, people will be able to access the Internet from just about anywhere without the use of wires. A wireless network uses radio waves, just as cell phones and televisions do.

** Piccadilly Square in London, Times Square in New York and Shinjuku in Tokyo all have large public screens that are being used for commercial purposes. Imagine a futuristic setting where public interactive screens have developed into accepted forms of communication and expression between citizens: local broadcasting stations can become the norm. People will be able to use their portable high-speed data processor and interact with large public digital screens and display there own media content – text, pictures, sound and video.

People will be able to express their artistic intent, share opinions and participate in public opinion polls. Like the internet, the virtual space of data share and exchange created out of wireless telecommunication technologies can offer its users a platform for communication and community formation, this time in real urban space.**

BRIEF 1 - TECHNIQUEST

On Wednesday 3rd October we visited Techniquest as a group to perform a study on the devices that were available. I took time interacting and observing with most of the exhibits until I found one that would be a good device to write a report on. The device I chose was called 'Simon', which seems to be based on a computer memory game of the same name. Now I had chosen my device, I played with it and observed other people, and here is a result of my findings:


* The aim of the device is to test people's memory whilst getting them to learn about sequence and sound. It is entertaining, having visual and audible feedback, but it seems to have no longevity to it. It has one function, which I expect will make people bored after a little while.

* The target audience seems to be directed at the younger audience as there are no complicated procedures that would make it entertaining for adults. It seems more of a challenge for children as their memories may not be as well developed as adults'. There are instructions that are split between two screens that alternate every couple of seconds. Younger children may not be patient enough to wait for this. The device would be equally as interesting for male/female. The device is not very easy for people with visual or hearing difficulties. People who are visually impaired may not be able to read the small text instructions on-screen. Also, people who have impaired hearing might not be able to hear the added sounds with the game. There are no additional options to change the size of the text or the volume of the music. The design does incorporate flashing lights and sounds into the design which are suitable for the target audience (children). The process is controlled by the device and then the user has to interact and copy the order that the device has given.


LAYOUT

The device has a monitor screen along with 4 buttons controlling each option next to the screen. There is one that has no function. There is one that alternates between the English/Welsh language. Then there are two that explain the science and music behind the exhibit. The 'Why Science' button explains the science of how we interpret sounds, and the two different types of memory we have - short & long term memory. It explains how our memories need repetition of familiar sequences for it to stick in our minds and for us to remember it on a long-term basis. The 'Why Music' button explains the theory behind the music and why some tunes are memorable, sad/jolly etc. It automatically displays the instruction screen, which alternates between two pages when there is inactivity for 10 seconds. This is a handy feature as the instructions are always displayed when a new person starts interacting with the exhibit.


FLOW DIAGRAM

I have created a diagram below to show the flow of information when someone interacts with the device.





















OBSERVING A PARTICIPANT ON THE EXHIBIT

Not many people seemed to bother with the exhibit that I had chosen to research. It was out of view as it was on the first floor of Techniquest hidden behind some other exhibits. Many of the visitors (most of whom were children) walked straight past not giving the exhibit much attention. After waiting patiently for a while for someone to play the game properly, a child about 8-10 stopped by the device. After briefly reading the instructions on the screen he pushed one of the buttons. He seemed to get the gist of the game but only played up until the 4th or 5th sequence where he incorrectly copied the sequence, at which point, after realising he had lost, he moved onto another device. It was about 20 minutes later before someone else played the game. This time it was a girl who was a little older. She seemed more interested and took time to look at the instructions and look at the 'why science' and 'why music' sections. She started playing and seemed to really concentrate on not making a mistake. She won the game, and then won another without making a mistake.


ANY REPETITION IN SEQUENCE?

From studying and playing the repeatidly I have found there to be no random function in the game. The instructions ask you to press any button at the start. The computer then picks a predetermined sequence from the button that you press initially. The diagram below shows what sequence there will be from what button you press first:

BUTTON 1: 1 -> 3 -> 4 -> 6 -> 4 -> 7 -> 8
BUTTON 2: 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 8 -> 7 -> 6 -> 3
BUTTON 3: 3 -> 4 -> 6 -> 7 -> 8 -> 1 -> 2
BUTTON 4: 4 -> 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 7 -> 8
BUTTON 5: 5 -> 4 -> 7 -> 3 -> 6 -> 1 -> 2
BUTTON 6: 6 -> 4 -> 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 7 -> 6
BUTTON 7: 7 -> 3 -> 5 -> 7 -> 8 -> 1 -> 3
BUTTON 8: 8 -> 4 -> 3 -> 4 -> 7 -> 2 -> 1

From the realisation that there is no random function in the game and each of the buttons has the same number of buttons in the sequence, I have come to the conclusion that this game has no longevity to it. Once a player has played the game a few times and has realised that the sequences are the same all the time, and there is no difficulty setting or extra features they will become bored of it and walk away.

CCS (Peer 2 Peer Research)

A peer-to-peer network is a network that has lots of single computers of participants all sharing files amongst each other. Audio, video, programs or anything data is shared amongst all the partipants on the peer-to-peer network. There are equal peer nodes on a pure peer-to-peer network that act as clients and servers to the other nodes on the network. client-servermodel where communication is usually to and from a central server. Usenet news servers were probably the first widespread type of p2p network, which was used to communicate articles. Napster, OpenNAP, or IRC use a client-server structure for some tasks such as searching, and a peer-to-peer structure for others. Networks such as Gnutella or Freenet use a peer-to-peer structure for all purposes, and are sometimes referred to as true peer-to-peer networks, although Gnutella is greatly facilitated by directory servers that inform peers of the network addresses of other peers. The peer-to-peer structure embodies one of the key technical concepts of the internet. More recently, the concept has achieved recognition in the general public in the context of the absence of central indexing servers in architectures used for exchanging multimedia files.


The classification of a network is determined due to these criteria:

Pure peer-to-peer:
* Peers act as equals, merging the roles of clients and server
* There is no central server managing the network
* There is no central router

Hybrid peer-to-peer:
* Has a central server that keeps information on peers and responds to requests for that information.
* Peers are responsible for hosting available resources (as the central server does not have them), for letting the central server know what resources they want to share, and for making its shareable resources available to peers that request it.
* Route terminals are used addresses, which are referenced by a set of indices to obtain an absolute address.


For a peer-to-peer network to be successful all the clients that operate on the system all provide resources, including bandwidth, storage space, and computing power. The total capacity of the system increases with each participant on the system, offering more nodes. There is legal controversy over the sharing of files through a peer-to-peer network as many music and data files are subject to copyright.