Project - Even more feedback

We're starting to get even more feedback from here and here. Once my team mates get here, we can start to take some of these suggestions into consideration and come up with a better design, catering for their needs.

Project - Note to self...

...keep a track of the following communities for user feedback

Bike Forums

Bike Pirates

Bike Messengers

Messengers.org

Project - Woo feedback!

Yay we have feedback. It's pretty constructive feedback too.

So messengers would like:

• Digital signing for packages received.


• Not too complex a system


• Pre entered addresses


• Something that isn't too distracting as they have to focus on many things


• For the product not to be too focussed on novices

Right, I'm going to go and join the other communities suggested to see what else I can find out.

Project - User Feedback

I've managed to find a Live Journal community called Bike Messengers. I am hoping that they will be able to provide us with feedback that will allow us to design our product with their needs in mind.

I have made this post, in the hope that it will be read and we will receive some form of feedback.

I'm reading through this community and one of the problems we seem to have overlooked is abuse messengers might receive when riding late. This is a problem to take into consideration when designing our product.

Project - Task Analysis and User Needs Analysis

Contributors of post: Sven, Richard and Femma

Task Analysis

At present our bicycle courier uses an A-to-Z to plan his route from the location of the package to the desired location. The only information available to the courier is the address of the location of the package (which he has to find from his present location) and the destination address. The courier has no prior knowledge of any road closures or traffic light failures. Therefore they are encountered unexpectedly and the courier has to deal with them at that time. He also has to be able to cope with most weather conditions and hazardous situations, this can become very stressful. If the courier has a tyre puncture or encounters a problem with the bicycle, then the only way to get it fixed is to ring around until he can find a local garage . By the end of the day, the courier must ensure that all the target deliveries set by the company are achieved. He must also collect signatures from everyone that has had a package delivered and maintain records of the package. He does not really want to be working overtime, however if they are not delivered within his 9-5 daily shift then he will have to, until they are.

User Needs Analysis.

In order for a bicycle courier to be able to perform their job efficiently and effectively they need to be able to do the following (In no specific order):

1) To be able to communicate with headquarters.
2) To be able to work out how to get to target location where package needs to be picked up.
3) To be able to plan a route from target location to destination.
4) To be able to carry the package whilst on the bike.
5) To be able to deal with multiple pickups and drop offs.
6) To be able to re-plan where necessary.
7) To be able to deal with very bad weather conditions.
8) To be able to cope with problems like a tyre puncture.
9) To be able to deliver x amount of packages in desired time.
10) Obtain a signature from recipient of package.
11) Maintain a record of packages.

These requirements are based upon information we have collected from the Internet. The next stage is to collect information from couriers and then to determine how we can overcome the problems that they encounter.

Project - Information On Bicycle Couriers...

...because google is my friend :D

This is mainly for our benefit as it will help us with our requirements. They're just links at the moment, and where better to store them than on our HCI blog ;)

Couriers and Messengers

Microelectronics

Your Sidewalk's My Sidewalk

Wiki Wiki

London Bicycle Messenger Association

Skimming over them they seem pretty useful. Will go back and read them now! See what I can find.

Android Date

I've been thinking about the android gf idea some more (I know I'm sad and I should have better things to do on a Saturday night, but I feel it should be blogged).

Ok, what gave me the idea was an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch that I watched in my teeny bop days (a long time ago ;)). Basically Harvey (the guy Sabrina wants to go to the dance with) agrees to go with Libby so she doesn't have a date. She decides to stay at home, so her aunts decide to make her a date out of 'man dough' and add flavourings for his personality. It was such a cool episode, so I thought why not incorporate it in our very own department.

Think about it, the male:female ratio is something like 10:1, maybe higher. Now if we decide to have a computer science ball, the guys will sure as hell will have a difficult time finding a female computer scientist to go with. I'm sure the girls wouldn't want 10 dates for the night, right?

So why not create an android as a date? I know it's a pretty far fetched idea (at present) and a rather expensive one to incorporate but it would be really cool. If we wanted to be really cheap, I'm sure Jeremy wouldn't mind us using lego and the handy boards (although the android would be very very very limited in what it could do ;))

What features would this female bot have then? Well she would have the basic features of how to be the perfect date for a ball. She'll be able to dance, will be a good listener, able to have excellent conversations (of course the guy would have to make her aware of his interests) and if the guy gets bored he can always turn her off.

How awesome would that be for the guys? Also her personality can be changed by downloading new software into her.

This idea wouldn't just be restricted to the CS dept. We could create male androids for department where the female ratio is higher than the male ratio!

Project - First Brainstorming Session

Contributors of post: Sven, Richard and Femma

Here's our brainstorming session for a new, innovative and designable product that uses HCI.

We came up with quite a few ideas for the different types of technology we could use. They are as follows:

• Paper type screen, which is a fairly new concept.


• Galilaeo system.


• Technology clothing.


• 3D holographic projections.

We came up with the following product ideas:

• Paper screen - used for a bicycle navigation system along with Galilaeo for tracking.


• Holographic projections instead of paper screen for bicycle navigation --> Holographic projectors, pops out of watch, 3D map in that direction.


• Holographic technology control robot doing surgery 3D ---> already been done?


• 8 legged freak robots that climb up the UoB clock tower shooting lasers at people and therefore eliminating the scummiest students.


• A music player system that has sensors and plays music according to the persons mood.


• Robot - more sophisticated tour guide as a hovering robot for foreign students --> we felt that systems like this were already available.


• Neural interface for a car, so the user can control it with their mind -->this might be too expensive and therefore infeasible.


• pupil movement tracking for virtual reality --> Rich elaborate?


• Female android as a gf for comp scientists --> perfect gf as there aren't that many at CS.

We decided to expand the bicycle navigation idea further. We came up with the following ideas:

It would have a paper type screen that would mould to contour of arm and would use the new galilaeo gps system for tracking.

One of the issues that we had with this is whether a 'curved' screen was a good idea or not? Is it going to be practical for contour of arm?

So how would the cyclist interact with the system?

There were various ideas we had for this.

• Push buttons before the cyclist sets off and therefore when in motion interaction would be minimalistic.


• Talk to it using a headset, however there would be a lot of noise so a very reliable system that filters out noise well would be needed. Also would the interaction be frequent enough to need this?


• Neural interface.

Practicality wise the bush button was the best idea.

We felt that the courier may need entertainment features in the system as below:

Music, interface with mobile phones

Built in games console gps, karaoke --> rates you on how good you are.
Home control system
PC on your arm

We felt that the idea could be extended for a hiker too.

HCI 2 and yay we get to blog again :D

Woo Blogger.com. Never used this before and I'm finding it quite difficult to adjust from live journal to this. This is a test post to see if I can figure out to use it.

****Edit****

OMG it's quite difficult to use!!!!