UX nerd

This post is the second part in the series: the clock. As I mentioned before, I had this lecture with Bert Bongers where he introduced the concept of device parsing, which he came up with (if I’m not mistaken). There, together with Dominika, Maria and Valentina, I did the parsing of a clock.  In this second part, I would like to explain what device parsing is about, illustrating the explanation with our own experience parsing the clock in the image on the left.

Continue reading ‘The book, the clock and the toaster. Part II’

Some time ago, I had a lecture by Bert Bongers on the use of sensors and actuators to enhance interfaces. Besides discussing the different existing sensors and actuators and their usual and unusual applications, he introduced the concept of device parsing and mentioned some topics from The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman. And, in the end, we got to work during one week redesigning a toaster and building a prototype that could be used as a proof of concept and eventually to run user tests. So, this is what this post is about:

• The book, or part I: The Design of Everyday Things
• The clock, part II: an intro to device parsing, and the parsing of a clock as example
• The toaster, part III: our redesign of the toaster, using a different combination of sensors and actuators, following Norman’s principles

(I’ll leave talking especifically about sensors/actuators for some other day, I have a rather ambicious project on them, but it’ll have to wait until I finish with the emoticons and the pagination :)

So, today: the book.

Continue reading ‘The book, the clock and the toaster. Part I’

I’m now in the middle of a project to find out how the use of emoticons in IM conversations relates to the use of actual facial expressions and, together with my colleagues, I have to set up an experiment. We have this plan about how we’re going to do it:  we have interesting literature about the subject, we have a nice and original experiment design, we’ve found the technology we need to carry it out and we’ve almost figured out who we want as participants. But at the end of out to-do list for today “# of participants” is still there, sporting a devilish wink >;-) So, how is sample size chosen when doing an experiment?

Continue reading ‘The choice of sample size in an experiment’