Yu Centrik

I recently returned from a month-long foray through India.  As the country from which both of my parents immigrated to Canada, the trip was enlightening in many ways.  Among the countless revelations lay a few economic and technological insights which I thought might interest our readers.  Are you a global traveler?  These thoughts are obviously anecdotal and I welcome your comments from your own experiences in other parts of the world.

While the major cities of India have become increasingly “westernized” and the country’s reputation as a hotbed for technology grows, the proliferation of technology has reached beyond the cities into rural villages and remote farmland.  Let me paint you a picture: imagine a young indian farmhand, shirtless, his legs draped in a cloth dress.  He’s riding one of his family’s bulls, slowly bringing it to the other side of the village.  He’s got a stick in one hand, which he’s using to whack the bull for navigation, and a cellphone in the other.  Despite my limited understanding of the language, he’s clearly discussing farm work.  This was a bold image I witnessed first-hand on a rural farm village in northeastern India.  This is a sugar plantation with no consistent residential electricity, no water pipes or hot water, and two small mobile phone towers.

The third world is collectively skipping 100 years of technological development.  While we painstakingly iterated from basic gas-guzzling cars, rotary phones and vaccuum tube computers to the current technological world, the fruits of our advance have globalized.  This child went from having no phone or communication lines whatsoever, directly to a mobile phone.  In the near future, I can imagine these third-world children engaging with technologies that access e-mail and web browsing (perhaps the iPad is a step in this direction as a simplified internet interface?).  Many talk of the “digital divide” as an emerging problem in our already-imbalanced world.  I would argue that this gap is destined to be filled through the globalization of our most modern, efficient and cheap technologies.

What does internet access mean to rural villages and third-world citizens?  Despite attempts to create structured and organized education systems (I visited several rural Indian schools), there is a clear lack of dedicated teachers with international-level skill and knowledge.  However, stories of intelligent people emigrating out of the third world have spawned a generation of young rural kids with intelligence and a passion for education which is simply unparalleled in the developed world.

The fire I saw deep in the eyes of an 8-year-old village girl who studies english and biology textbooks twelve hours a day of her own volition is a testament.  Her clear and firm intention to “become a doctor and move abroad” is in stark contrast to what interests the 8-year-olds I’ve met in the developed world.  Her smooth conversation with me in a self-taught english represents a calculated move from her remote village to the world stage.

As mobile technology develops and these young rural children get access to the wealth of information on the internet, it seems possible that this feverish appetite for education will be satisfied through self-directed learning.  The untapped potential of the intelligent-yet-uneducated workers I met at the nearby sugar mill could cease to be a reality with the advent of information technology.   Especially in the midst of this past decade’s collapse, the economic implications of a techno-savvy, self-educated and passionate third world are astounding.

How can we prepare for this onslaught of new talent?  First of all, the selfish question: how can we stay competitive by highlighting what makes our skills and experiences unique?  More importantly, how can we alter our economic systems and requirements to evaluate and embrace these talented people, knowing that they might be able to help solve major global problems despite not having an official degree or diploma?

In the design of social media, our task is to provide a medium and context for human interaction.  With this power, the behaviour of our interfaces can be interpreted as the behaviour of our human colleagues, friends and family.  Considering this fact, we run the risk of creating unnatural, awkward or even hurtful social situations for our users - in other words, a terrible experience.

An example.  I was recently conducting business out of town when a peer and I agreed to keep contact via text-messaging.  At the time, I hadn’t yet realized that my network provider was not stable in this part of the world.  As it turns out, everytime I tried to send a text message, my phone was sending numerous duplicates.  Not only was the service assaulting the receipient with messages, but it was also giving me errors saying that it couldn’t complete message delivery.  So there I was, trying to re-send a message which had actually already been delivered twice; my recipient ended up receiving almost 10 identical text messages.  Needless to say, she was frustrated and annoyed, but most importantly, she was attributing the technical errors to me and drawing social conclusions (when we discussed this error later, she said I had seemed overeager and tactless).

As another example, consider a recent addition to Facebook which displays those friends you haven’t interacted with lately, reminding you to send them a message.  Unfortunately, this feature has been the target of a recent wave of complaints from users who automatically recevied such requests from recently deceased friends or family.  This is a clear example of an emotionally hurtful user experience directly resulting from Facebook’s attempt to socially-integrate their interface.

Embodying an interface within human social norms also allows users to understand and interact as if it were a social being.  If you’ve ever used voice response systems which attempt to use human language to engage in a natural conversation (”at the tone, please tell me what you’re calling about”), then you’ve likely felt a little frustrated, uncomfortable or confused.  In some cases, these interfaces greatly simplify the process, yet in others they are frustrating and strange.  In such novel interfaces, we move closer to the re-emergence of a principle introduced in the field of robotics by Masahiro Mori known as the “uncanny valley”.  Mori used early philosophical work on the ‘uncanny’ to demonstrate that overly realistic robots can result in a negative reaction from human observers.  The implication here is that while modest social embodiment of our interfaces can improve the user experience, we should be careful in more extreme applications of this principle, as we run the risk of making our users feel uneasy.

Considering the social role of your technological designs is a valuable technique.  However, designing for a more intimate realm of human experience also introduces new risks.  Our penetration into the emotional lives of our users has also opened possibilities for increasingly detrimental consequences of design errors.  Any designer should take heed of the lessons learned within these examples and consider the added risks when working on socially embodied technology.

Engaging with socially-powered technology for the past decade, I’ve noticed the slow, natural formation of ‘digital etiquette’.  In the same way that researchers have found information-seeking behaviour to be akin to animalistic ‘foraging’ behaviour, it seems that our typical social behaviour manifests itself on the web as well.  As online tools are appropriated by real users in a social context, we are starting to see the natural development of online ‘politeness’.  Some examples…

Re-Tweeting and Sharing Posts
When finding an interesting link posted by another user, it is polite to credit them when sharing it with your own network.  Twitter users accomplished this by creating and following the convention of re-tweeting (which is now being integrated formally into the system by twitter).  Along the same vein, Facebook has recently added a share feature which allows you to auto-distribute any post to your own network. However, Facebook’s system does not automatically include any information about the original poster with a user’s “re-post”.  This can result in a reaction from users; unless you mention whose post you’re sharing, you’re likely to receive a friendly “hey, you stole my post!”.

Multiplayer Gaming Conventions
Since their inception, multi-player games have been steeped in their own customs, language and culture.  Upon the release and adoption of a new game, its player community naturally tends to form rules and customs surrounding the freedoms and limitations of the game.  Starcraft, a classic strategy game from Blizzard, became extremely popular due to its balanced and engaging gameplay.  After an online community of players developed, a weakness of the game was revealed: advanced players could bypass an involved war by rapidly training a few troops to kill off beginners before they even get a chance to start playing.  The process was named rushing and an abundance of players started hosting games with “no rush” in the title, resulting in civil games based solely on players’ trust that fellow players would show politeness.

Selective Photo Tagging
Photo tagging is a useful feature on Facebook.  Users are able to tag the people in a photograph, automatically notifying them and attaching the photograph to their profile.  This creates a delicate situation, as anyone has the power to add pictures to your profile.  At first, users would tag every picture added to the network.  As users become more and more aware of this phenomenon, they have started tagging only the best pictures.  This creates an environment where all photos are accessible, but only the best are attached to a users’ profile.  Selective tagging is a clear display of respect and politeness for fellow users of the service.

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There are many more examples of online politeness.  As social technology becomes more central, the trend is not likely to slow down.  What does this mean for designers?  We should take note of this trend and improve the user experience of any socially-driven system by considering and accomodating digital etiquette in our designs.

On its official blog, Google has recently announced the production of a new, lightweight, simplified operating system:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

To commemorate the occasion, I thought I would vocalize my stance on what operating systems today are missing, and how Google might be able to fill that hole.

Macs have a reputation of providing smooth, sleek and usable interfaces.  Linux is well-known as a base for full customizability: tech-savvy users can build their own machine’s architecture.  Windows has many reputations, good and bad, which place it somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.  The spectrum lies between offering a practical solution to many of life’s problems and offering the techno-philic an opportunity to customize and create a machine that works to their exact specifications.  The implied question asks whether we are stuck with many different operating systems, each tailored to a different point on this gradient.  Are we doomed to segregation?  Is our technological future littered with incompatibility and a lack of standard?

Technological development may seem divergent, but it’s not too late to move in the right direction.  Operating systems started with cryptic, technical command prompts and eventually evolved to the smooth, intuitive GUIs we know today.  However, the answer is not to simply shove a system’s implementation model behind the scenes in favour of creating a usable mental model, but instead to allow users a practical interface which implicitly builds a foundation of systemic understanding.  Put simply, we are oversimplifying our operating systems so much that, to the laymen of the next generation, computers are considered mere ‘tools’.

The ideal situation is to build a system where users’ practical needs are met while they also enjoy the experience of learning the system.  If done well, their desire for enjoyment will develop into a curiousity which will eventually manifest an urge to explore the system as its own entity (and not just a tool)!  At this point, users begin to form an intimate understanding the true potential of technology to solve problems in all fields (something i learned tinkering with my first DOS machine as a child).  Google is working on a simple OS which seems useful for specific contexts, but I’m skeptical to consider minimalism as the future.  If they, or anyone else, can create a practical and usable operating system while simultaneously accommodating a transparency which engages curiousity and promotes ‘tinkering’, I believe it would be a step in the right direction: toward a unified, practical and educational technology.

I consider this concept as an example of inclusive design as it focuses on generating systems which include all users in the long-term iterative design process.  On the generational time-scale, an operating system which encourages tinkering is providing the next generation with the tools it needs to continue progress.  An inclusive system elegantly solves your general problems while inherently teaching you how to design your own unique solutions in the future.  One part Mac, one part Linux, and a whole lot of hope for the next generation.

Pierre-Alexandre Lapointe and I recently presented some Yu Centrik research on design methodology and alphanumeric input for interactive TV at Euro ITV 2009 in Leuven, Belgium.

The community is in very strong agreement that TV’s place in the future lies somewhere between a traditional source of broadcast content and a fully interactive computer.  At Euro ITV 2009, professionals from around the world were drawing lines in the sand on the dimensions of social interaction, user generated content, broadcast vs. downloadable content, input devices, media convergence and systemic integration.  While synthesizing the information presented, I wanted to add two high-level design perspectives which should be considered by those on the front lines creating an iTV system or service for real users.

The “living room” context of television might shift user values.
Many of the papers presented discussed the main distinguishing factor of television is its appeal for a “lean back” experience; users tend to be in a more relaxed state when watching tv.  From a design perspective, this issue might actually reflect a shift in values.  When debating issues for an iTV system, unlike the web, consider that a more engaging, expressive or fun interaction model might provide a better experience than one that is more classically ‘usable’ (efficient, clear, direct).

Optimizing business organization for cohesive design.
Integrated solutions move beyond the traditional business model of the television industry.  No longer can a service provider order a set-top-box from a hardware provider, configure a third-party remote and compete.  This type of disjoint business model prevents one team from being responsible for a cohesive design vision and serves as a major obstacle to user experience.  The suggestion is not necessarily to perform all these tasks in-house, but instead for the individual units to collaborate more openly on a specific service (the service provider and hardware providers should be open to customizing and adapting their products for a unified vision).

Access specific details from the conference: EuroITV Proceedings

Target has issued a series of ads in the New York subway system for a live album by singer John Legend.  The ads feature a headphone jack where you can plug-in and listen while you wait for the next train.  Check it out:

Taking advantage of the user’s situation (bored, waiting, and likely having headphones in his pocket) is a beautiful example of contextual design.  My only concern is that if I have headphones, then I likely have an mp3 player as well.  If I’m already listening to music I like - why would I switch?  The design banks on human curiousity, counting on people to opt-in to the novelty of the idea.  I’d love to run some tests and see how well it works.