Michael Voong » interaction

iPhone Development

Michael Voong — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:56:44 +0000

Working on an iPhone app! The image gives it away for those who knows me or knew me well enough. Keep your eyes peeled for a preview version! ^_~

Impact 2% of Developed or 80% of Undeveloped?

Michael Voong — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 12:12:38 +0000

Conversation with friends – a banker and a trader reminded me of University of Cape Town’s Gary Marsden’s plenary talk at Chi 2007 about how there is so much to achieve in the undeveloped world where we can see immediate impact with people’s lives. Pondering over whether I should try to make a difference in these markets rather than battle with stiff competition that may or may not improve our lives?

Google Chrome Beta – My Thoughts

Michael Voong — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:55:04 +0000

I looked at Google’s Chrome browser by going through the walk-through clips, and it actually has some merits! People have complained about an increased memory issue. I can’t believe people actually worry about memory usage nowadays. Even my 2 year old laptop has 2GB of memory.

I’m not here to slag off Chrome (it is ‘beta’ after all), or worship its greatness, but to just adjust my thoughts on the browser according to the hype. What’s important is not how badly it does things other things do better, but how Google has tackled an extremely difficult problem of redesigning a web browser, in a way that it simplifies browsing for most people. Please note, I haven’t tried the browser, as it’s only for Windows right now.

One box for everything

Makes sense. Most browsing tends to start with a search nowadays, even if it’s a site you know address to.

New Tab page

Requirement in every browser. makes sense.

Application shortcuts

Silly. Makes things more complicated. Adding more ways of achiving the same task (loading web page) may confuse people.

Dynamic tabs

Good innovation that I first saw with Safari (3?). Should be there in all tab interfaces

Crash control

lol. reminds me of how Windows Mobile has a task manager. There are simpler ways of task managing and indicating misbehaving apps! E.g. press close on the tab or fade window to show it’s not active.

Incognito mode

Makes sense for secret browsing. Incognito is a bad word to use though. I didn’t even know what it meant at first.

Safe browsing

These big messages confuse people – I remember when designing Firefox 3, the Mozilla Foundation went through loads of different designs for notifying users that a certificate is invalid/to warn people about installing add-ons. The ones rejected for being too scary were less scary than the Chrome ones. Actually, a quick search showed that for managing current-page SSL certificates it still shows a scary box. We’ve all seen it.

Instant bookmarks

Is this in terms of interaction? Because that doesn’t seem so instant to me. Needs to be synced easily and searched via web! I assume, though – and it would make sense – that the address bar also searches bookmarks.

Importing settings

*Yawn. But I agree that it has to be shown as a feature.

Simpler downloads

Now THIS is a worthy feature that I am genuinely impressed with. Even a web geek like me gets ticked off with the complexity of viewing download progress, extraction, finding files.This fixes part of that problem by taking up screen space, which forces you to keep your downloads organised. I guess, same principle as the downloads drawer in Leopard.

UK HCI Group SEO Success

Michael Voong — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:04:20 +0000

I was involved as web consultant and designer for the rebranding of The British HCI Group to “Interaction”. This involved the complete transfer of all content from their old website into the Drupal CMS and redesign based on their new image. This site was optimised for AA accessibility, a simple user experience and of course, SEO. In fact, I’m proud to announce that searching for HCI on Google actually results in my site being second place, after Wikipedia!

Visit the Interaction website.

Zoom/Spatial Navigation

Michael Voong — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:08:29 +0000

Nice excerpt from “Humane Interface, The: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems” by Jef Raskin, found from looking at a new Mozilla UX designer’s concept of mobile zoom web browsing + gestures.

If you wanted to design a navigation scheme intended to confuse, you might begin by making the interface mazelike. The maze would put you in a little room with a number of doors leading this way and that. The doors’ labels are usually short, cryptic, or iconic, and they may change or disappear,^[1] depending on where you’ve been. You cannot see what is on the other side of a door except by going through it, and when you have gone through, you may or may not be able to see the room you’ve just left. There may not be a way to get directly back at all. Some rooms may contain maps to part or all of the system of rooms, but you have to keep track of the relationship between the map representation and the rooms you are presented with; furthermore, maps are not well suited to situations best represented by three-dimensional networks. The rooms in this description correspond to computer interface windows and web sites, and the doors are the tabs, menus, or links that are provided to bring you to other windows or sites.

As legends and stories from ancient times inform us, humans always have been notoriously bad at mazes. If we could handle them easily, they wouldn’t be used as puzzles and traps. When using a complex program, I often find, deep in a submenu, a command or a check box that solves a problem I am having. When I run into the same problem a few weeks later, I cannot remember how I got to the box with the solution. We are not good at remembering long sequences of turnings, which is why mazes make good puzzles and why our present navigational schemes, used both within computers and on the web, often flummox the user. Many complaints about present systems are complaints about trying to navigate. Partial solutions, such as “favorite locations” in browsers, have been created [2]. But what we are truly better at is remembering landmarks and positional cues, traits that evolution has bred into us and traits we can take advantage of in interface design.

This works until you have so many that you cannot remember what they all are; then you need a “favorites of favorites” or another scheme to keep track of them.

Why I blogged this: everyone remembers how to find things in different ways. Some people think their ‘mess’ is actually organised. Others organise by colours. Some of these issues span into my research interest of how spatial representations can increase/decrease the way we perceive the activities of others. For example, if a buddy’s location is indicated on a topographic, spatial map, would this make you feel a different connection to if they were represented in a hierarchical list?

Mobile HCI 2008 Poster

Michael Voong — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:54:27 +0000

My poster for Mobile HCI 2008. The main aim of this poster is to illustrate my findings regarding location disclosure privacy in mobile awareness systems. Location deception is a real practice, so I argue here that any UI supporting location disclosure to real people should support the ability to manipulate exactly what others see. Mobile tactile interfaces support gestures that would be a natural way to move location indicators around in the UI. The poster illustrates examples that show the user’s current location as a draggable point surrounded by an also draggable circle. The more points on the map that this circle envelopes, the more ambiguous the representation of location seen on other users’ screens.

This is an interaction model that I believe will pave the way to more usable automatic, mobile location disclosure interfaces. If access were controlled by allowed-lists, the interactions required to select who can see what, and when, is multi-faceted, which causes a whole load of problems, including users perceiving the system to be more complex, therefore abandoning use altogether.

Under this model, when users want to blur their exact location, they simply create a larger bounding box around their current location. Who cares if people know you’re ‘somewhere’ in the city? During times when you feel more social, you simply reduce the size of the box. If your buddies know you well enough, they should be able to infer where you’re likely to be even if they don’t know your exact location. Then, the good ol’ phone call comes in and the system becomes a context-setter and conversation starter…

Link to poster’s paper.

Visa Micro Tag

Michael Voong — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:10:57 +0000

Just stumbled upon this new way to pay. Why haven’t I seen such a life-changing product yet? When is it coming to the UK?

Visa payWave allows your Visa Micro Tag to be read only when in close proximity (1-2 inches) to a secure reader that accepts Visa payWave payments. After waving your Visa Micro Tag in front of it, the reader will indicate that your information has been received and is being processed through the secure Visa network.

Wii Remote Hacks – Perspective Enhanced Gaming?

Michael Voong — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 17:12:45 +0000

I was doing some searches on how people have been hacking the Nintendo Wii Remote, making use of the plethora of sensors it contains – an ADXL330 accelerometer 3-axis accelerometer, a PixArt optical sensor, allowing it to determine where the Wii Remote is pointing (senses infrared light sources like the Wii’s sensor bar).

I came across a video demo by Johnny Chung Lee of one of his many hacks, which attempt to create a perspective controlled 3D viewing experience analogised as being like taking a flat 2d photo out of a photo frame, meaning that you can see through the frame at varying perspectives and distances. Interestingly, instead of putting the sensor bar above your TV, you put it on your head. The system calculates a change in the visible scene based on the location of your head; thus the wearer feels like he’s immersed in the scene.

The demo in the video is really, really cool. This use of the technology (which is new to me, at least) has obvious applications in VR and gaming. How many times have we seen gamers tilt their head to get a better view round the corner?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Source: http://wiihacks.blogspot.com/2007/12/head-tracking-vr-using-wiimote.html

Vibrations Used to Control Objects

Michael Voong — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 21:11:00 +0000

OK, I tried to be funny with the title there. No more S&M innuendos, I promise.

Researchers from TAI-CHI (Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction), based “somewhere” in Europe, have developed techniques to locate the origin of vibrations on physical objects. The article discusses how the team has developed four main technologies, which I won’t go into here. What’s interesting is the second technique, called “time reversal”. I wonder how this works

“Time reversal is a beautiful technology,” he says. “Unlike TDOA, it works with any object and it does not require special materials. Because it needs only a single sensor and a normal computer, it is very simple and cost-effective. “

Actually, it has nothing to do with the fourth dimension and the space-time continuum. They explain:

“It works on the notion that each location on the surface of a solid generates a unique impulse response which can be recorded and used to calibrate the object. Time reversal works on 3D objects just as well as flat surfaces. “

Interesting applications: I guess we can create better punch/kicking arcade machines based on the damage you cause on something via vibrations, not just the offset momentum you create on the object by bashing the hell out of it. My dreams of a Taekwondo decent kicking machine can finally be realised!

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news116778958.html