Project - Feedback Request

I have just posted in the Bike Messengers and Bike Pirates communities as well as the Messengers.org and Bike Messengers forums. Now all we need to do is sit and wait for the feedback.

Project - Interactive Prototype

Contributors: Femma, Richard and Sven

We have created an interactive version of our prototype (using Powerpoint). You will have to download the file from here.
We have justified our design decisions in this post, therefore it might be useful to read the post before proceeding to testing our prototype.
We would appreciate feedback on the design. What is good, what is bad and what you feel needs changing or improving. Thanks :)

NB: 1) Our file has been throughly virus scanned using AVG anti virus and is completley safe. 2) In order to run the prorotype successfully you will need to enable macros in powerpoint. 3) Macros will only work on Windows. 4) We are aware that when you click from screen to screen there may be a few inconsistencies (i.e screen may jump very slightly) we are not seeking feedback on those matters, more so on the layout and design.

HCI at PC World

Richard and I managed to spend about half an hour at PC world today, just browsing stuff. We came across a few interesting products which I'll blog about from a HCI perspective.

Firstly I'll discuss screens. Many people have LCD display screens, especially for laptops and they're pretty cool. Recently I've been noticing a lot more laptops with the plastic finish on the display screen. Now this is very aesthetically pleasing and looks very cool, however as I was discussing with Richard, I personally found them rather impractical. There are two reasons for why I think they are impractical:

1) You can see your reflection in them and that would annoy me a lot whilst I was working.
2) On a sunny day, the reflection of the sun on the screen would be pretty annoying too.

However, I must admit, the quality of the display looks absolutely amazing.

The next product is the amazingly tiny laptop(not sure if laptop is the right word for it) we saw. I personally am really fond of small, sleek and compact products and this was just that. I found it really impressive that such a small product could be used like a regular laptop, although it was aesthetically pleasing and very convenient portability wise, it has drawbacks too. The main drawback was that due to it's size, everything was very very small. I found that although the web pages and text in general were readable, they would become rather annoying very quickly. It's not the type of product, as a computer scientist, I feel that I could perform tasks like programming or dissertation writing on.
(Unfortunately I can't seem to find the image to show you the product).

Finally, mp3 players. The one that struck me as very impressive was the mp3 cube (shown below) :
I found it very cool that such a minature product could have quite a huge storage space. The one on display was 512 MB, but I think they go up to 1GB. I would contemplate purchasing this product, however I don't like the fact that it's a cube. I feel a cube is a rather bulky product that would stick out quite a lot in my pocket. If the size stayed the same and it was reduced by half in depth, then I would definately purchase it.

World's Smallest Drive

I think this would be pretty handy. It's quite impressive how technology has advanced in the past 10-15 years that we can have drives that small. From a HCI point of view it's really cool too. It's very portable and the design is relatively simplistic, not only that but you could also probably store large quantities of data in various formats.

First Mac Trojan

Who would have thought it? One of the reasons I bought my mac was (well besides being brainwashed into buying one, but that's another story) that there were less threats on security. Obviously I was wrong. I guess it's still not as bad as Windows though. Click here for the article.

Project - First Stage of Prototype Design

Contributors: Femma, Richard and Sven

Today, we started on the prototype design. We took out our paper and crayons and came up with a few physical designs. We took pictures of the drawings, however they came out a bit dark so we have also computerised them. Both images are below.

Sven's Design:




This design has a 3x2 inches rectangular paper screen display. It will have a plastic or glass (we haven't decided) cover to protect the screen. There is an 'up' and 'down' scroll button. The red button allows the user to back out of current mistakes and the 'enter' button allows the user to select what they want.

Here is Sven's original drawing:





Femma and Richard's Design:




(Note We bastardised the image from the seiko-epson website).

The display screen will be a 4x6cm square paper type display. The screen will be protected with either a plastic or glass cover. There will be a scrolling wheel on the right hand side, which is used like a mouse scroll wheel and pushes in to 'enter'. There will be a lock button on the left hand side, to prevent accidental scrolling. The scroll button will be quite tight so that a more stable control will be availabel. The strap will be made of an elasticated fabric so the messenger can wear it on the outside of their clothing in the winter and on their bare wrist in the summer.

Here is their original drawing:





We have one more protoype design, which Sven was working on but will be finished and blogged later (he had a C++ lecture).

The next stage is to design the functionality features.

All in all, it has been a pretty productive day. Here is Richard's reaction to the finished work:

BitTorrent sues for trademarks

Like Richard, after yesterday's lecture, I too have been inspired to make a post on ethics. This one is concerning BitTorrent. BitTorrent is widely used as a faster way of downloading documents.

BitTorrent is more than another pesky P2P network - it divides large files into sections so they can be downloaded from different computers before being reassembled. Once you have received a section it can also be uploaded by other users so very large files can be distributed much faster than from one dedicated server

I regulary use BitTorrent, at the moment I am using it to downloade SuSE for my friend. A lot of people perceive BitTorrent as unethical as it is used for downloading films and music (which technically is stealing). However, I feel this is an issue of ethics with the user and their 'immoral' use of it, rather than the product.

However, what is unethical is using the BitTorrent name to enforce spyware or adware (or both) on my computer. Spyware and adware is the most annoying thing ever, I do not want it on my computer (like many other people). Just because it is synonymous with 'bad things' doesn't make it justifiable to use the name for *what I regard as) malicious intent. So good on BitTorrent for charging a licensing fee for anyone wanting to use their name.

Apple's 1GB Nano

All I have to say on this is that it's about time! I mean I love apple products, I really do but they do have their flaws as well as their many advantages.

Firstly lets talk about the shuffle. It was an awesome concept, small, compact, affordable what more could a person want? Only there were already existing products out there, similar to this with DISPLAY SCREENS! Now I wouldn't want to spend £69 or £99 on a product that has no display screen.

So, I bought the ipod mini. It was in between an ipod (which I personally find too bulky to carry) and a shuffle (that was too small in capacity and no display screen). Not only that, the mini's casing is pretty scratch proof, which is a bonus too. All in all, the mini was fine, maybe they could have added a colour screen to it at some point. But noo...they release the nano and make the mini obsolete.



The ipods before the mini.

Now, I find it pretty impressive that they were able to produce a product that thin and light. Basically it was a shuffle with a screen (the article I've linked to proves this more so). However a) the screen scratched way too easily and b) it's just so fragile. Not only that, the 2GB nano cost slightly more (or maybe around the same) as a 4gb mini. To be honest, I personally don't care much for the colour screen and the picture thing. All I want an ipod for is to play my music and I would rather pay for a 4GB mini than a 2GB nano.

Recently, they've decided to make a 1GB nano. At first I thought, great, why couldn't they have done that in the first place instead of the shuffle. They've also reduced the price of the shuffle, which is good too, now if I wanted an mp3 player without a screen I'd want it to be CHEAP!

However, a few problems with the 1GB nano.
1) There is a £30 difference between a 1GB and a 2GB. If Apple are going to make a 1GB nano, atleast make it slightly cheaper. I'd rather fork out the extra £30 and buy the 2GB. I mean really, £30 difference between something that's twice as much storage space.
2) Apple said the 1GB Nano can hold 240 four-minute 128Kbps AAC tracks, the same as the 1GB Shuffle. What it didn't explain, however, was how the 2GB device can hold 500 songs formatted the same way. In other words, that 100 per cent extra capacity can hold 108 per cent more songs.



The Nano.

What are people's thoughts on this?

PS I only paid £28 for my mini :D

Project - Visiting a Bike Courier

We received a suggestion from one of the people who filled out our questionnaire about visiting a bike courier.

I have searched for local companies on yell.com
This is just a post to add a link, to which I can revisit later without re-searching. I know, I am lazy!

Red indicator lights.

I was driving along merrily to university yesterday afternoon (in my Nissan Micra with amber indicator lights) and in front of me was a blue Honda Civic Sport. The person driving was about to turn right and the first thing I noticed RED INDICATOR LIGHTS!!! The first thing that popped into my head was "that's very bad HCI" hence why I'm blogging about it.

Now I've been told they are pretty common in USA, however I've not been to the USA so I usually assosicate red with brake lights, so when this thing started flashing it took me a good second or 2 to realise it was indicator lights.

Personally I think that having red indicator lights are pretty hazardous, as someone especially in the UK could easily have identified them as malfunctioning break lights, hit the break and WHAM! we have ourselves a little accident.

I just don't get why they don't use amber indicator lights, they seem to make sense to me. Red indicator lights might be the norm in the US, but I just found them weird.