chi

ok, i get it already…

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006

the way to blog from a conference is to, well, blog from the conference. yesterday i got hung up on writing the officialesque posts that i’m supposed to write for the sv blog (but they’re not there yet, because i

and movable type can’t reset it automagically because the wireless isn’t allowing smtp requests, and the people in charge haven’t done it manually yet, so… dum di dum dum dum…), but then my battery died in the middle of the first session (what the hell?! it was charging all night!!) and i realized that i had left my power supply at the hotel. so i was in the void, and the “blog this” queue just kept getting longer and longer, to my dismay.
i spent too much time fussing about it, and today i realize i should just keep the pace and post everything here, and we’ll figure out that officialesque business later.
officialesqueism and blogging don’t mix that well, anyway (perhaps because blogging is a place where one can use words like “officialesqueism”?), but that’s another topic, and there’s a few more ahead of it on the stack.

so here goes the mad blitz to catch up on tuesday.
??tes-vous pr??t?

thoughts on sv culture

Monday, April 24th, 2006

the conference from the sv perspective is somewhat unique. grunt labor on one hand, representatives of the next generation of the field on the other, we have a rather strange group personality.

CHI workshop: faceted metadata for IA and search

Monday, April 24th, 2006

flexibility, previews, meaningful organization, support for expansion and refinement
none of these speak to the conception of location
talks about the difficulty of classifying in more than one location, and offers the faceted approach as a solution to this problem.
rather than finding the place for items (the right category), facets allow us to attach descriptors to the items where they are.
cooking method: stirfry, ingredient:chicken, course:main dish…
this is pretty much just like what i was calling genres, eh?
facets make refinement simpler from a UI perspective – what is relevant is determined on demand.
issues?
handling facet similarity/synonymity
adding facets is done separately from assignment to items?
makes me think about how my idea of merging annotation and search parallels the wiki movement’s build as you go philosophy. there are strengths and weaknesses to this

claims that it could make automatic categorization easier, so i’m not the only one wondering about that…
“themes” as a name for groups of facets, ways of capturing larger ideas like “japanese internment during wwii”
facets are shown independently in the interface, attributes still exist, but are associated with individual items.
labels are the names used within the facets, not the facets themselves.
this is a lot of names for things…
the ebay example she gave for attributes is shipping rate, tax, etc. couldn’t this be grouped into a facet? right, but then all of those things wouldn’t be shown on the main page. but, in my view, they Would be accessible in a detailed view of the facet itself, not just on the screens of the detail results that contain the attributes.

the lists of facets in the nobel prize example still feel overwhelming to me.
there is a lot of learning required to understand to affiliate the colors of each faceted section with the meaning behind it.
so what?
well, it also takes up a lot of screen space.
and for the halo to be powerful in a wide range of contexts, i am pretty sure it’s going to have to fade into the background pretty well.
how should i test that?

a few years since the last usability study?!!
fairly or unfairly, this triggers my wariness of the academy. i am more and more convinced that i need somewhere that encourages me to make shit fast and put it in front of people immediately. i already naturally resist this out of shyness, or perfectionism, depending how you look at it.

she talks a lot about the goal of helping people not feel lost, but none about the sense of location. the main wayfinding aid seems to be breadcrumbs. and the general sense of relevance that comes from seeing the multiple facets. and yeah, that’s huge, but is something lost from not making the new location metaphor a bit more explicit? if not, maybe i should give that up. but i should think about it.

all shared facets of a selected facet are already “or”s – allowing people to start with the most obvious first step by making the process of choosing subsequent steps less overwhelming. this is a good point.

key points i see to make/clarify in incorporating these thoughts into my capstone:
help finding “nearby” items
location as constellation
merging annotation, search, and exploration
facets and genres
spatial consistency for key facets? iconic representation to speed absorption at a glance?
and/or/not filtering easier if we think about the filter as a place?
facets/genres support hierarchy And multiple categorization. this is huge.
ebay could provide interesting examples.

bienvenue

Sunday, April 23rd, 2006

here we are in montreal, with chi in full swing. after a near miss at the airport, which tiffanie recounts in vivid personal detail here, and a couple of days of scrambling to catch up on sleep so that we could promptly begin depriving ourselves again with clear consciences (and slightly clearer heads), i’m feeling pretty good.

i’d like to do some wandering around downtown soon, but it’s been raining in a cold, dreary way that makes that less enticing. that’s not much of an excuse though, so i hope to overcome it soon. right now i’m sitting in the hotel after a nap that was one of the greatest experiences of my life (which is good, because i ended up skipping a session that i was interested in because of it), and soon i will head across the street for the conference reception. so more reports of wider montreal soon.

right now, though, i just want to play catch up here on all those loose ends i’ve been dropping, so then we can charge ahead with confidence as the week starts to whiz by. right now my brain thinks its wednesday, even though i keep telling it otherwise, and i think i should take advantage of that, because by the time next thursday rolls around i’m pretty sure that i’m going to think that it should still be february, so feeling like i have More time than i actually do is incredibly luxurious.

yesterday was a good long day. i knocked out 7 of the 10 volunteer hours that i need to fill on top of blogging, and we met some cool folks. our new friend brian from rochester, nyvolunteering at registration on the day before a conference really kicks in is a great way to learn the ropes. most of what i did involved updating the registration website and helping with walkins and people who wanted to add courses at the last minute, so i got to experience the glories of the interface that the hci community has chosen to administer its conference. it’s crap. but it was fun to sign people in and joke about it with them. ah, kindred spirits. :)

the palais de congres, where the conference is being held, is pretty awesome. my first impression was actually rather neutral. it feels like an old campy 70’s conference center in a lot of ways, with some scuffed edges and architectural decisions that, shall we say, do not exactly strike one as timeless.
the most striking characteristic of the decor, i’ve since come to realize, is it’s daring revolt against conference-friendly values such as subtlety and consistency. the main hallways, and most of the rooms themselves, are a rather deep vivid blue on the walls and carpets. the connecting halls, however, are an intense reddish-orange, which means that every time you turn a corner, or leave a room, you are jarred awake by the contrast. it’s not something that i’m used to, so it was a little odd at first, but i’ve come to like it.

the basement level of the building, which connects to the metro and the street, is all about grey. dark grey-black floor tile, burnished chrome touches, rocklike walls. a closeup of some colorful windows in the palais de congres, montreal as you ascend to the main convention center level, however, you are greeted by the most garish display of window coloration that i have ever had the privilege to see. my first impression was not good, but i think that was because “tasteful” and “technicolor” is not an association that i readily make on first glance. they grew on me pretty closely after my initial response mechanisms gave way to a closer look, and by lunchtime i was completely smitten.

i took many pictures, and will probably take more, so keep checking that chi2006 flickr feed for updates.

the other noteworthy thing to say about the building is that it hooks up to a series of underground tunnels that run underneath pretty much all of the downtown montreal. i haven’t had time to explore this as much as i want to, but even knowing that it’s there is pretty freakin’ sweet. especially when it’s raining.

speaking of raining, i look up and realize that i’m late for the reception, and had better make my way across the street.
some thoughts on sv culture, a few reflections on conferences in general, a small celebrity sighting that spurred those reflections, and the transition into some official volunteer blogging…
all of that and more, when we return, with these stories of this one particular american life.

sneak preview

Sunday, April 23rd, 2006

time for dinner, but check out the pictures i took today!
http://flickr.com/photos/kynthia/tags/chi2006/

more once i eat!

arrival

Saturday, April 22nd, 2006

the brain’s not working too well at the moment, so i won’t say much, but here i am in montreal.
we had some good fun singing karaoke at japonais last night before our pre-dawn stretch suv limo ride to the airport, we had a good scare when the plane took off from indy without tiffanie, josh, and justin on board, and we had a good calorie blitz at the ben and jerry’s factory after we were all reunited in burlington.
we also had a good little tour of downtown montreal since we drove around in circles about 700 times trying to find our various ho(s)tels as we dealt with a barrage of bad maps, one way streets, and construction detours, and now we’ve had a good little introduction to french-canadian chinese-american cuisine.
we have not, however, had much good sleep.
so more detailed stories of these events, and more cogent accounts of the present state of affairs, will have to wait for the morning.
i’m volunteering beginning at 8am, and will be done early afternoon, so then i’ll try to write a little prologue to the week ahead.

in case you missed the memo, i’m in montreal for CHI, which is the big annual meeting of the association for computing machinery’s special interest group in human computer interaction (yeah, that’s why we abbreviate it), and i’ll be blogging it both here and here, with slightly different perspectives on each…
but we’ll talk about that tomorrow, too.
:)

night night!