VAY_KAY_SHUN means different things to different people

July 17th, 2010

The word vacation is a relative term.

Coming from a big family, vacations were not a common occurrence.  I think we went on five vacations as an *entire* family during the course of my life growing up (up until I was 18 years of age).  This did not count camping with friends or ‘daycations’ to Hershey Park, Williamsburg, etc.  And, IF we went on vacation, it was only because someone offered us free housing, or a relative’s wedding, or my lovely Aunt Margie paid for airline tickets to visit us in San Diego, etc.  This is what I remember from the first family vacation my family took (at least that I remember):

We loaded up our station wagon – the yellow Country Squire with the fake wood paneling on the sides and the funky seats that folded up in the very back – with our luggage and a cooler with sandwiches (no drinks! that meant extra stops to the bathroom).  My brother, Terry, and I usually sat in the back with the luggage. Thankfully, we didn’t take our dog with us, though I do have many memories of sharing the back seat with dog butt in my face for hours on the way to Pittsburgh for Christmas to visit the Grandparents.  Everyone was allowed to have one piece of luggage to take with them for the week; I used a ‘toy’ suitcase that belonged to one of my dolls until I was eight. There was NO stopping at fast food places or Howard Johnson’s for that was a waste of money. If you stopped at all it was to pee or get gas or let the dog get some water. I remember thinking if the dog got loose while we were at a stop by the turnpike that we’d never see her again, my older siblings usually held on tight to the leash so the dog wouldn’t take off out of fear.

On this particular journey our destination was Ocean City, MD, to be the guests of Vince and Marie Phaelen, lovely friends of my parents who owned a condo on the beach and did NOT have children. On our car journey that took 8 hours to complete (even if you buried the needle the family truckster *never* went above 60 MPH), there were multiple screaming matches, hair pulling, blaming one another for farts, begging for music that wasn’t Tommy Dorsey or Ella Fitzgerald, and many pleas for something other than pb&j or ham&cheese from the cooler.  After making four threats, and being too far for him to slap with his huge hand while he was driving, at one point my Dad pulled the car over to belt one of my sisters who would not stop arguing with him. My Dad usually drove the car half asleep while smoking a pipe, peeling an orange, listening to KDKA, telling my mother to “dry up” and disciplining us all at the same time. Don’t be jealous of my upbringing.

At last, we arrived! I remember thinking that I would spend the entire time in the ocean and that I could sleep on the beach since it is so beautiful in pictures.  My initial thoughts were the ocean is not blue – it is dirty, why are there so many old people here, the condo is so far from the ocean (a whole two blocks!), sand is hard to walk on, and crabs were very scary when I stepped on them.  I got so sunburned my first day that I developed sun poisoning that night and threw up all over the sheets, which kept me inside for the next two days.  Luckily the condo units had a pool just for them, and I could swim there when the sun went down. On the fourth evening my parents went out with our hosts for an adult night out and we were told we could see a movie with my eldest sister as babysitter. We saw JAWS on the big screen. Needless to say, no one went in the ocean for the rest of our trip. I was five. I wasn’t just afraid of the ocean, but the condo pool (for JAWS could swim through the pipes, I was sure), the toilet, even the blue carpet in the condo. What a good movie choice that was! I’m sure my parents were thrilled with our film choice but they never provided specific instructions, ever. The rest of the vacation was pretty much ruined, though I do remember wanting to buy tons of crap on the boardwalk but had absolutely no money to do so. At least that was a blessing. Oh yeah, and a number of my family members are allergic to sea food, who recently learned this the hard way, which made for an extremely limited menu selections.

On our way home (and since there was no air conditioning in the car), my Dad thought it best to drive back at night, which would have been a great decision if our car didn’t break down constantly.  We did end up breaking down, all piling into a hotel for the evening, and swimming in the hotel pool because it was far from the ocean (and JAWS). It was so damn hot and humid during the car ride with so many people inside – the windows couldn’t be down because the wind hitting you really hurts when you are severely sun burned – that the hotel pool was appealing.  This was a *cheap* hotel; a hotel is cheap if the pool is in front, not all of the neon lights work, most of the patrons don’t have license plates, and it doesn’t have a restaurant attached. Despite this, I think we were actually glad to be ’stuck’, not be home yet to fulfill child labor of laundry, cleaning, yard work and canning tomatoes. This was my first hotel stay – being in a hotel was exciting!

I remember my Dad let us get in the pool even though it was really late at night – like 11pm – because of the heat and the naps most of us had had in the car. While at this classy establishment, a guy with few teeth (who looked like he crawled out from under a rock) and what I thought were his two daughters came to the pool as well.  The girls were wearing their underwear, not swimsuits, had really bad skin, and were lighting sparklers and snapping sidewalk snakes. The guy’s swim trunks were his boxers, looked to be about 35, had a huge pot-belly, a wad of chew in his mouth, and had a plastic jug in his hand with what I thought was cleaning fluid. I didn’t think he was scary really, because he was short and I truly believed no one could beat up my Dad, but then I heard him speak and he sounded like he was straining just to make a sound. After hearing him speak, I thought he was sick and was worried that if he got in the pool then I would get sick, too. As soon as he yelled at his daughter, “quit lightnin’ sparklers and tossin’ them in the f*@kin’ pool – yer wastin’ ‘em.”, My dad said to him to “watch your language in front of my children. And yours as well, for that matter.” Then the freaky-disease man turned to my Dad and said, “They aint my kids, old man, that’s my wife. Dunt tell me wot to say and wot not to, I’ll talk to mines anyways I want. [dramatic pause] I’m on VAY-KAY-SHUN”.

I remember thinking, uh-oh, you don’t talk back to my Dad. I thought for sure this was going to get ugly at lightning speed, but I was wrong and I’m glad. My Dad just looked at him with his best cold stare and I could see the wheels turning in his head.  I guess he gave my Dad the heebie-jeebies as well, because my Dad did not waste his energy on him nor did he disappoint with a response. My Dad said, “Ohhh, I see… Well, you should keep to the shallow end of the pool, to match your genes, or lack thereof. [turning to us] Kids get out of the pool. Get to bed. Now.” I don’t think he wanted to guys ‘genes’ to get anywhere near us either.

Suddenly I didn’t think we were so ghetto after all and that ‘vacation’ really has different meanings to different people. I have to admit I still like the way he said the word vacation, though. As if it was three words: VAY. KAY. SHUN. If I have a chance to get my inner hillbilly on, I’m totally going on one of these.

need to remember to record these more

June 30th, 2010

M: Mommy are you an adol?

Me: Am I a what?

M: Mommy, are you an adol?

C: Yes, because she eats salad. Adults eat salad and she drives the red car.

[we've incorporated an evening salad for the kids with dinner so I think that's where this comes from]

M: Well, I eat salad.

Me: That’s because you’re such a smart girl. My angel-girl.

M: Yes, that’s right. I am smart.  Christian is smart, too. He drives the red car when you no look at him.

[Oh shit.  I'm pretty sure this is just when I'm loading the car in the morning.  Or is it?]

————

[After we've read our evening books and said good night prayers]

C: Mommy, I love you bigger than supersaurs.

Me: Wow, thanks. I love you bigger than the sky.

C: Well I love you bigger than the planet earth.

Me: Well I love you bigger than the galaxy.

C: Well I love you bigger than Affinity.

Me: I think you mean infinity.

C: No, I mean the space-car.

F#$king advertising-product-placement-sons-of-bitches.

——————

C: Mommy are you old?

Me: Yeah, pretty much.

C: How old are you?

Me: I’m 29 [huge lie, but my mom had my brother believing this for years].

C: Wow, that’s old.

Me: Yeah, someday you’ll be that old, too.

C: Yeah, but I will be 6 next, then 7, then 8, then 9, then 10, then…

Me: I get the picture.

[trots off...]

C: When I be old like you, will I be tall?

Me: I sure hope so.

C: When I be tall, I will go like this [does karaté moves for me], and I will smash the bad guys.

Me: Where did you see that?

[We both walk into the living room.]

C: points to TV, Midnight Oil’s “Beds are Burning” is playing on the Classic Alternative station on cable (no video, just music) and this is his latest dance move.

Me: Oh.

[I guess its better than the white-man overbite. Seriously thinking of buying "Just Dance" for the Wii.]

Things I learned in Tufte’s class

June 14th, 2010

p. 17-20, Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Cancer Maps

We can accommodate this level of information because it is simplified and there is a map that is generally interactive.

The super-graphic is necessary to do in one “slide” for absorption

General spatial comparisons have to happen vs. temporal ones (that take 16 slides) for effectiveness

Resolution is important for spatial adjacency

Pg. 120-121, Visual Explanations

Simple explanation to this that cannot be conveyed enough: words are better than charts sometimes as in this example by Soloman Rushdie. Nothing else to be said. Tufte, himself, attempted a graphic to describe the passage, and admitted it fails miserably.

Pg. 56, 57, Envisioning Information

Micro-level data summed up at macor-relay to overall problem (Macro/Micro theme)

Supergraphic – needs 5 or 6 of these to use in any presentation as artifacts to show what the work is about

Bring real artifacts into the room

Bring something actual to help convey the message/information you really want to discuss

It is all about the content

Everything interacts

Two dots make three interactions

Any optical intensity or unecessary elements clutters information — strip them out and include only what is necessary

Funny fact: the term “users” is used by two industries — drugs and computers (credit to Sam Zaisss – use “readers” instead)

Local optimizing leads to global pessimizing (“this is the way in which the world will end, I promise you”)

pg. 175-176, Beautiful Evidence

Cancer survival rates example

Put numbers in substantial order

Every table should be placed in numerical order or by performance

Why are we so ready to CLUTTER?

De-clutter!

Apple Design process: “we don’t do focus groups, we rely on proven, actual performance”, e.g. performance of displays

Analytical design – cancer survival rate constituted 18 million pages of a Google search

More reliable: performance in the wild

Successful performances in the real world about showing lots of info: WSJ, NYT, GoogleNews, 300/400 links on home v. the ‘7′ link standard

Performance can be understood by anyone, look at sports charts

“Performance in the wild”, is s solved problem and does not need to be tested

You can have your own opinions but you cannot have your own facts

Find excellent examples and count them

No more 7 links per page

“Talent stimulates but genius steals” — T.S. Elliott

In the making of reports (non-fiction reports, that is), do good reporting and report once a week even if there isn’t anything new to say

We are all at our smartest at 24-30″ away, staring at a wall chart. We are at our dumbest at 20′ away looking at low-res slides. This is all about resolution!

I’ll give you an example – I (Tufte, obviously) consulted on the Space Shuttle Columbia explosion (hole the size of a basketball in the wing), Boeing prepared 28 slides and they sucked

They knew there was a problem and screwed up the analysis

The effort was on the “Return to Flight”, 2 million dollars are spent on analyzing the HVAC problem

What you need is a “High Resolution Data Dump”, which will be followed up by questions to allow for localiazation and provoke thinking, as well as go home and think about it even more as the people in the audience can read faster than you are talking. Always.

Paper is running 10x the amount the amount of resolution on the screen.

pg. 16, Envisioning Information

Euclid’s Geometry is an example of “drop-laying” information – this model is 440 years old — a 3D model – that also brings in a scaled model in his test

We want them thinking about content all the time and the presentation is seemless

pg. 120, Beautiful Evidence

Napolean’s march – we make comparisons to show 3 or more dimensions/variables:

  • size of army
  • location
  • direction
  • temps
  • dates

If you follow this model and its strategy for display, you will be able to absorb in 30% less the amount of time it takes to grasp the concepts

pg. 18-19, Envisioning Information

EI Galileo’s sun spots model, took 40 days of observation to reconstruct the weather on the sun

A student once contacted him for the translation of the text in order to get a tattoo of Galileo’s quote proving that the earth was round

pg. 30, John Gotti

“No matter how beautiful UI is, it would be better if there is less of it.

pg. 146,147 Visual Explanations

EI Galileo’s Think more about the user screen real estate for screen than for print.  Hand-held devices even more so.  The droid phone has the highest resolution today, but “remember and type”, then the UI from XPARC happened and changed everything to “point and click”, and mapped this to natural user interfaces.  Tufte says he often “claws at his screen” in a reference to gestural user interfaces and sees this as our near future. He believes this will clarify and add detail.

pg. 46, 47 Beautiful Evidence

Graphics are no longer a special occasion, they are integrated

pg. 54, 55 Some divisions it is all over by June 3rd in the example of the Wayfields

pg. 158

Use word to describe this? No. What? Use InDesign?

How to proceed? Give it to them spot-on to go where they need to go

We never want to attract attention to our method of production, have them reading in the room where you have them

Have a tighter, more efficient meeting, have everyone engaged and all about the content

Get better content and limit yourself to four pages, this will reduce the “ummm” talk

Show up early for your presentation – 1 in 20 you’ll head off a problem and finish on time.

To which, Tufte finishes his talk at exactly 4pm and left the room, exactly at the time it was supposed to end.

some real gems lately

March 5th, 2010

Mary: Are you afraid of the nipples?  I’m afraid of the nipples from Madagascar.

Christian: Well, my hands hurt because I’m tired. Because they hurt.  Ouchie. Ow, ow. [because he was asked to take his plate to the sink]

Mary: You have to get up so I can wear Tigger. I want to wear Tigger always. Because I am Tigger today.

Christian: I want a snowboard because I am fast and I am not afraid to go over that hill mommy. You’ll see that I am tough.

Mary: Are we going to see Nick and ZQ? [surprised how often and randomly both M and C remember these two guys, made quite an impression!]

Christian: Well, remember you said that I could have a cookie ‘l’esterday? I want that cookie now. [It was more like three days prior and he wanted it at 8am].

Mary: I’m just taking care of Doe because her nose is wet. [poor Doe, our dog, is putting up with blankets, kleenex and a fake thermometer that Mary keeps trying to put in her mouth]

Christian: I’m just Christian Connell, I’m not a superhero… yet.

C teaches me about the earth

March 3rd, 2010

A conversation between Christian and me yesterday morning over breakfast:

C: Mama, let me tell you about the earth [hands in front of him, mimicking how I speak to him when explaining something complex].  It is round and we live on it. And if a big spaceship, or rocks hits the earth, it will hurt the earth and put a big whole in the earth and we’ll all be dead.  And Saline Street will have more holes in it.

M: Wow, buddy, that’s a lot of information.  You know, I kn0w about the earth, too. But where did you learn this about a spaceship or rock hitting the earth and hurting it?  Did you see it on Transformers or something?

C: No [rolling HIS eyes]. The earth needs the sun, and if the sun doesn’t burn up the rocks that will hit us, the earth will get hurt. I saw this from the museum where I drove the spaceship.  The place where the sperm whale ate the giant squid.

M: Oh, ok, that’s cool.  So that’s where you learned this?

C: No, I learned this from my brain. That’s how it does. It learns stuff.  I learn new stuff always. I have an idea, we need to go back to the Discovery room, I think.

M: We’ll go back soon. Wow, honey, you sure are smart.

C: Yes, my brain is smart. [skips away]

I truly love entering this new phase of everything being ‘amazing’. He is so much fun, and he is so serious and wide-eyed when he talks about “interesting stuff”.

Central Blood Bank pissed off my Mary

October 17th, 2009

[I'm downstairs doing laundry, Mike's at the store.  Phone rings.]

Me: (yelling) “Don’t answer that, let the answering machine get it.”

[little footsteps running... phone rings three times. answering machine goes off. Mary picks up phone. conversation captured on speaker.]

Mary: “Hello. Who are you?”

Person: “This is Central Blood Bank. May I speak to Mike Connell?”

Mary: “This is Mary Connell.”

Person: “This is Central Blood Bank. May I speak to your daddy.”

Mary: “Is this Aunt Peggy?”

Person: “No. Is your mommy or daddy home?”

Mary: “THIS IS MARY CONNELL, I said.”

Person: “Ok, honey, we’ll call back later.”

Mary. “NO. GO AWAY.” [click]

——-

This is the new official policy in dealing with solicitors at the Connell home.

had an “a-ha” moment

October 16th, 2009

While charged with a project to design a site to showcase a font collection, I fell into the flawed approach of “designing for the self” instead of the user that the Contextual Inquiry was actually *performed*.  Luckily, I caught myself before any methods of the research toolkit were breached.  Sometimes I look back and wish I’d had the a-ha! moment earlier (would’ve saved me several hours on brainstorming). But I’m glad it wasn’t any later!

Information Gap Theory

September 3rd, 2009

During my MHCI Capstone Project, I became fascinated with visualizing networks and information.  As a team, we used several methods to visualize networks (speed dating, participatory design, peer critiques, etc.), we came up with many ways to visualize networks in the form of people, content, and resources.  But, what I think is even more interesting is identifying information that is not there and visualizing ways to represent these “gaps”.

Information can be presented in a manner that is straightforward or curious. If we opt for curious, we are guaranteed not only attention, but likely higher engagement as well.  As human beings, we demand to know more. What was known information (a book we’ve read many times) that might have been ignored has been converted into something unknown, something mysterious, something that demands resolution (a movie adaptation of said book where the ending has been changed).

When we become aware of this missing information- when something changes from being known (or so we thought) to an unknown state—we become curious. This is the explanation of curiosity posed by behavioral economist George Loewenstein in his Information-Gap Theory. Loewenstein says “curiosity happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge.”

The feeling we get from these information gaps is best described as deprivation, which is critical to understanding why it is we are motivated by curiosity. In order to “eliminate the feeling of deprivation,” we seek out the missing information. This is ironic, considering people routinely seek out puzzles, mystery novels and other curious situations that create this sense of deprivation. However, it’s important to note that many researchers once viewed curiosity as something averse, this view suggests we should only want to know something if it helps us make more informed decision.

In “The Psychology of Curiosity,” Lowenstein surveys the body of curiosity research and how it resolves many of the debates surrounding curiosity. He sums it up as: I’m curious because there’s a gap between “what I know and what I want to know.” Two notable implications come from this perspective:

  • Loewenstein’s tests confirmed that subjects were more curious when given parts of a greater whole—the need to complete enough of a picture puzzle in order to determine what it was (a picture of an animal) resulted in more interaction than a scenario where each block was a discrete picture.
  • Curiosity correlates with our own understanding of a particular domain. The more we know about some topic, the more likely we are to focus on our own information-gaps. If I know 8 of 10 items, I’m more curious about the remaining 2 than if I only know 2 of 10 things.

I want to visualize the 2 of the 10 things I don’t know, but what is the best way to do this?  And, how much does a user have to invest in the information to want to do this?  My belief is that the best way to get people to spend time doing this is to embrace both the highly-motivated, highly-curious users as well as those that “stumble-upon” the information via social networking tools that are available (and avoid bias simultaneously).

How to embrace them all?  How to get people motivated? What’s the best way to visualize these gaps?  In progress…

MHCI Project Complete!

August 11th, 2009

Say it with me people, D-O-N-E.  Wow.  I fell like a huge weight has lifted.

I also feel very lucky to have worked with Nick, ZQ, Varnali, and [yes, even him] Paul this summer.  I learned so much.  Even though I felt very old being around a bunch of bright young things [age range of 23-28], whom did not share my lifestyle (husband, kids, job), I am so glad I went through with the project.  For the most part, people treated me with kindness and respect.  I was even “sought out” on occasion for my input, which made me feel fabulous!

Since the project was funded by my boss, I feel like the value of the experience can be added directly to my  job.  How cool is that?  He’s awesome.  Most importantly, Mike was on board with this and supported me entirely.  I am a lucky girl.It always seems that I’m on the difficult path toward a destination, but that makes arriving there so much better! At least, this is what I choose to believe.

Here are some lessons I’ve learned from Grad School:

  • Never go part-time
  • Don’t have kids along the way
  • Never leave a good lunch in a ’shared’ refrigerator
  • If you do, seal it in a plastic bag and mark it “live sample” with a date that is a week old — no one will touch it
  • Do not fall asleep on a ‘public’ couch, not unless you have your own blanket and pillow to put your head on
  • Group Projects are about group conflict and how to resolve it in an optimal way
  • Grad students will eat anything for free [only sleep deprivation trumps this]
  • Do NOT complain to another grad about what you owe in student loans, for they also have debt
  • Presentations matter more than final artifacts (at least in a Masters program, not so much for PhDs I hear)
  • Take lots of pictures of your process, you’ll need it – nothing provides better context than a picture of you/group doing the work
  • Never say user testing isn’t needed.  That’s like trying to say you will “un-know” your own code.  For example, once you saw Bruce Willis die in “The Sixth Sense” you can’t forget it.  Search out users for objective input and you’ll be surprised at what they point out – this will make your product better!!!!!
  • Sleep is overrated
  • If you do have kids, accept that you won’t be the best mom or dad during this time of your life but you’ll do much better later, you’ll have guilt to sustain a lifetime
  • Grad school allows you to make wonderful contacts in an area you are heavily interested, be good to these people
  • Appreciate the feedback, especially the negative feedback, this will make you better at whatever it is you do
  • No feedback is a bad sign
  • Try to reach out to the person that is the harshest critic,  this way you’ll arrive at a refined solution earlier
  • Every person on your team serves a purpose and has value to contribute, you must be willing to adjust when necessary

That’s all, for now…

sharky

April 13th, 2009

For the last six months Christian has been talking to and about two imaginary friends, Sharky and Stuart Little.  There were family dinners where we had to place extra plates at the dining room table to accommodate these ‘guests’.  If he was talking with no one else around it would be to either Sharky or Stuart Little.  If he talked to one of these imaginary friends in our presence, we would ask what they were doing.  Christian would tell us that Sharky was swimming next to him, or that Stuart Little was enjoying the corn, etc.

Suddenly, he no longer referred to Stuart Little, only Sharky.  This begs the obvious question, “what happened to Stuart Little?”.

“Oh, he’s gone”.

“Where did he go?  Did Sharky eat him?

“Just nothing.”

I kept asking, but Christian would not fold under questioning.  I’m genuinely curious if Sharky ate him.

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