U.S. Drivers with Hazard Lights-Interesting America Series #1

How often can you see that American drivers use hazard lights (four way flashers) to warn vehicles behind you of danger ahead? I always want to let another driver know of something ahead using hazard lights. For instance, when I need to stop my car to drop my passengers off, I always turn my hazard lights on before my stop. This can prevent other drivers from quick stop or accidents so that they can proceed with caution around me. This activity can let the following drivers have some time to make his/her own decision whether preparing stop slowly or passing my car changing the lane if allowed. I have been doing this since I got my driver license in 1999 no matter where I drive. After getting US driver license in 2007, it has been really hard for me to expect US drivers’ movement because they rarely show any sign to the following drivers. Even when they take right turn, I have seen a lot of US drivers even do not turn on their turn signals with quick brake. This might not be a problem if the following drivers keep safety distance, but that safety distance cannot be guaranteed 100%.

I don’t see any disadvantage of this four way flashers signals for any drivers. I just hope that US drivers can do this more often considering the following drivers carefully. Can’t you really see the advantages of this behavior? When I see some US brand cars, the hazard lights button is located on hardly-reachable area in very small size. This is very unfriendly-user-centered design which I cannot understand and don’t like. Does this mean that US car manufacturers and drivers think this button gets little drivers’ touch? I think that is not what it supposed to be. The use of  this button, of course, totally depends upon driver and driving circumstances. But the important point I want to mention here is the must-use-moment.

When do we say “Excuse me” while walking? I bet there is no one who wants to argue about the moments saying “Excuse me”. But why they cannot do that when they are driving? The hazard lights, I would like to call safety signals or lights, could be one of the best options which drivers can use as the expression of “Excuse me”. Do you think this should be in the Driver’s Manual? Or is that already there? Or is that illegal in Indiana, Illinois?

This is my first blog post about interesting America series. I will try to keep continuing this posting as long as I stay in US territory.

I have just read an interesting Canadian Driver Rule. In Canada drivers only use four way flashers if car is stationary. It is illegal to drive with them on.

Reading: Cooper Ch. 21 & 22

Chapter 21 Controls

Controls come in four basic flavors: imperative controls, used to initiate a function; selection controls, used to select options or data; entry controls, used to enter data; and display controls, used to directly manipulate the program visually.

Control-laden dialog boxes are not the key to successful use-interface design. The control type that corresponds to a verb is called the imperative control because it commands immediate action. We should use links for navigation through contents, and buttons or butcons for other actions and functions.

A selection control allows the user to choose the noun from a group of valid choices. Selection controls are also used to configure actions. Well-written text can make check boxes unambiguous. However, this exacting text forces users to slow down to read it, and takes a considerable amount of real estate. A newer convention of list controls is to use the list items in a drop-down or other listview control as a preview facility. If the items are draggable within the listview itself, it makes a fine tool for enabling the user to put items in a specific order. If we were to add a check box to every item in our problematic list control, the user would not only clearly see which items were selected and which were not, he would also clearly see the items were not mux-linked, solving both of our problems in one stroke. This check box alternative to multiple selection is called earmarking. Draggable items can help users gather items into a set. Providing two adjacent list controls, one showing available items and the other showing chosen items, is common GUI idiom. Never scroll text horizontally. Drag-and-drop functionality should be a standard part of combo boxes.

Entry controls enable users to enter new information into an application, rather than merely selecting information from an existing list. A text field that rejects a user’s input after he has entered it is not a bounded control. It is simply a rude control. Sliders are less useful for entering precise numbers, though many program use them for that purpose. Controls such as spinners are better for entering exact numbers. Proper implementation of a dial should allow linear input in two dimensions: clicking on the dial and moving up or right should increase the value of the dial, and moving down or left should decrease the value. If the desired values are finite, the text edit control should not be used. If the acceptable values are numeric, use a bounded numeric entry control such as a slider, instead. If the list of acceptable values is composed of text strings, a list control should be used to users are not forced to type. The key  to successfully designing a validation control is to give users generous feedback. An entry control that merely refuses to accept input is just plain rude and will guarantee an angry and resentful user. The primary way to improve validation controls is to provide rich feedback to users.

Display controls are used to display and mange the visual presentation of information on the screen. The scrollbar provides useful context about where you are in the window. The scrollbar’s thumb is the small, draggable box that indicates the current position, and, often, the scale of the “territory” that can be scrolled. One of the biggest problems with scrollbars is that they demand a high degree of precision with the mouse. Drawers have the benefits of not covering up the main work area the way a dialog does.

Chapter 22 Menus

Menu commands have a great advantage in their verbal descriptions of functions. This makes them amongst the most useful interaction techniques for the purpose of teaching users about the capabilities of the product. In other words, menus provide a pedagogic vector. Toolbar and direct-manipulation idioms can be too inscrutable for a first-time user to understand, but the textual nature of the menus serves to explain the functions. The menus have to explain what a given function does, not just where to invoke it.

Almost every GUI these days has at least a File and an Edit menu in its two leftmost positions and a Help menu to the right. One thing solely lacking on most Help menus is an item labeled Shortcuts that explains how to go beyond relying on the menus. One variant of the standard drop-down menu provides a secondary menu when a user selects certain items in the primary menu. This mechanism, called a cascading menu, presents some serious issues for ease of use. Cascading menus move us into the complex territory of nesting and hierarchies. Disable menu items when they are not applicable. Use consistent visual symbols on parallel command vectors. Keep in mind that the most experienced users will rely heavily on their keyboards; so the keep them loyal, ensure that the mnemonics are consistent and thoroughly though out. Mnemonics are not optional.

Reading: Cooper Ch. 14

Chapter 14 Visual Interface Design

Visual interface design is a frequently misunderstood discipline, largely because of its similarities to visual art and graphic design. Visual design is a critical and unique discipline, and it must be conducted in concert with interaction design and industrial design. The design of user interfaces should not entirely exclude aesthetic concerns, but rather should place such concerns within a functional framework. Visual interface designers focus on how to match the visual structure of the interface to the logical structure of both the user’s mental models and program’s behaviors. They are also concerned with the communication of program states to users and with cognitive issues surrounding user perception of functions.

Every element in a visual composition has a number of properties, such as shape and color, that work together to create meaning. There is rarely an inherent meaning to any one of these properties. Rather, the differences and similarities in the way these properties are applied to each element come together to allow users to make sense of an interface.

It is usually a good idea to distinguish different logical sets of controls or data by grouping them by using visual properties such as color and dimensional rendering. In looking at any set of visual elements, users unconsciously ask themselves “What’s important here?” followed almost immediately by “How are these things related?” Based upon scenarios, determine which controls and bits of data users need to understand instantly, which are secondary, and which are needed only by exception. Establishing a clear visual hierarchy is one of the hardest challenges in visual interface design, and takes skill and talent. A good visual hierarchy is almost never noticed by users. Elements that tend to be used together should generally be grouped spatially to minimize mouse movement, while elements that aren’t necessarily used together but have similar functions may be grouped visually even if they are not grouped spatially. Spatial grouping makes it clear to users what tasks, data, and tools relate to each other, and can also imply sequence. Grouped elements should be aligned both horizontally and vertically. Visual interface designers should help regularize the layout into a grid structure that properly emphasizes top-level elements and structures and provides room for lower-level or less important controls. A grid should also have consistent relationships between the sizes of different screen areas. Symmetry is a useful tool in organizing interfaces from the standpoint of providing visual balance.

A good understanding of personas and their mental models should provide a solid foundation for both the textual and visual language used in an interface. Creating unique symbols for types of objects in the interface supports user recognition. These symbols cannot alway be representational or metaphoric.

Your program’s behavior is part of its brand, and your user’s experience with your product should reflect the proper balance of form, content, and behavior. The basic shape, behavior, and visual affordance of controls should be driving factors in developing the visual style, and purely aesthetic considerations should not interfere with the meaning of the interface or a user’s ability to interact with it. People perceive more aesthetically pleasing designs as easier to use than less aesthetically pleasing designs, regardless of actual functionality. Color should be used sparingly and integrate well into the other elements of the visual language.

Unlike a print display, which must convey all of the data at once, electronic displays can progressively reveal information as users need more detail. We should provide a means for user to compare related variables and trends or to compare before-and-after scenarios. In interactive interfaces, modeless visual feedback should be employed to inform users of the potential consequences of their actions or to provide hints on how to perform actions. Data displays that provide information on multiple, related variables should be able to display them all simultaneously without sacrificing clerity.

User interface standards provide benefits that address these issues when executed appropriately, although they come at a price. Good standards can lead to reduced maintenance costs and improved reuse of design and code. The primary risk of any standard is that the product that follows it is only as good as the standard itself. It is also risky to see interface standards as a panacea for good interfaces. And obey standards unless there is a truly superior alternative. Consistency does not imply rigidity, especially where it is not appropriate. Interface and interaction style guidelines need to grow and evolve like the software they help describe.

Reading: Cooper Ch. 8 & 11

Chapter 8

This chapter discusses about the design principles and patterns. Interaction design principles falls into the following four categories: design values, conceptual principles, behavioral principles, and interface-level principles. Types of work to be minimized include cognitive work, memory work, visual work, and physical work. Principles are rules that govern action, and are typically based at their core on a set of values and beliefs. Products should not harm anyone, or at least, should minimize harm. iPhone 3G is giving users psychological harm slowing down iOS system. The current iOS 4.1 is working find with iPhone 3GS and 4G, however, iPhone 3G delays system with iOS 4.1. This causes serious frustration and discomfort to the users.

Goal-Directed Design helps designers to create products that support users where they are weak and empower them where they are strong. Once built, a design needs to be deployed in the world. And once deployed, it needs to provide benefits to its owners. One of the classic elements of good design is economy of form: using less to accomplish more. The Goal-Directed Design process, in which product concepts are conceived of as a whole at the top level and then iteratively refined to detail, provides an ideal environment for creating internally coherent design.

Design patterns are a means of capturing useful design solutions and generalizing them to address similar problems. Patterns are always context specific: They are defined to be applicable to common design situations that share similar contexts, constraints, tensions, and forces. The core of each pattern lies in the relationships between represented objects and between those objects and the goals of the user.

Chapter 11

Software, too, has a pretty clear dividing line between goal-directed tasks and excise tasks. We must be careful when we eliminate excise. We must not remove it just to suit power users. Similarly, however, we must not force power users to pay the full price for our providing help to new or infrequent users. Training wheels are rarely needed for extended periods of time, and although they are a boon to beginners, they are a hindrance to advanced users when they are left on permanently. Excessive ornamentation can detract from users’ effectiveness by forcing them to decode the various visual elements to understand which are controls and critical information and which are mere ornaments. There are probably no more prevalent excise elements than error message and confirmation message dialogs. If options are modifiable by a user, he should be able to do so right where the application displays them.

The most important thing to realize about navigation is that it is largely excise. If the number of windows is large enough, a user will become sufficiently disoriented that he may experience navigation trauma. Adjacent panes can solve many navigation problems because they provide useful supporting functions, links, or data on the screen in close reach of the primary work or display area. The use of tabbed screen areas is a space-saving mechanism and is sometimes necessary to fit all the required information and functions in a limited space. Frequently used functions should be provided in toolbars, palettes, or the equivalent. Menu use should be reserved only for infrequently accessed commands. Scrolling is often a necessity, but the need for it should be minimized when possible. Humans are not used to moving in unconstrained 3D space, and they have difficulty perceiving 3D properly when it is projected on a 2D screen.

Signposts cannot aid navigation if they are removed, so it is best if they are permanent fixtures of the interface. The most prominent permanent object in an application is the main window and its title and menu bars. Part of the benefit of the menu comes from its reliability and consistency. Unexpected changes to a program’s menus can deeply reduce users’ trust in them. Most breadcrumbs provide not only a navigational aid, but a navigational control as well. The most important principle in the proper inflection of interfaces is commensurate effort. Rather than forcing users to navigate deep, complex tree structures, give them tools to bring appropriate information to them.

Reading: Cooper Ch. 6 & 7

Chapter 6:

This chapter describes the first part of process for bridging the research-design gap. Personas is employed to achieve the design solutions. The design process is iterative but Personas-based scenario can provide a clear method to develop a compelling design tool. What-if? scenarios can contribute a lot the flexibility of the design. Persona-based scenarios are concise and narrative descriptions of one or more personas using a product to achieve specific goals. Personas and scenarios can be used to test the validity of design and assumptions throughout the process. I have never worked in this domain such as web site developing, but I think any product can have its own Personas-Based Scenario. And if the designers can have solid Requirements Definition following the iterative steps which authors explained even it is time-consuming process, that would be really helpful to create the initial physical design product. People’s expectations about a product and the way it works are highly informed by their mental model. So, it is absolutely critical that the represented model of the interface.

Chapter 7:

This chapter start explaining how to design. Now start talking about design… it have been a long time. The previous chapters were also about design process, but those were not the actual design product. The author describes six steps which describe the process of defining the interaction framework. These process are general steps which any user-interaction-related-product-designers can employ. I personally think that the last step of validation scenarios is the most important one among 6 steps. Refining and polishing works can be done through the iterative process before the validation process but key path variant scenarios, necessary use scenarios, and edge case use scenarios are considered in depth on the previous steps. And those validation scenarios have directly related to the usability test. If those validation scenarios were good enough to foresee the current nanoHUB website, the usability test we are performing in this class might not be necessary. Maybe the current nanoHUB website is a less than quarter-baked design product which does not have the benefit of clear, compelling models of the target users and their goals and need.

AA4: Easy on that trigger dad: a study of long term family photo retrieval

Summary:

This article investigated people’s ability to retrieve personal photos related to personal events from more than a year ago to better understand the ways that people store and access photos for long term retrieval. Through an empirical study involving 18 parents of young families (only seven (39%) of the participants were women), the authors found that people failed to find almost 40% of pictures in a total of 71 retrieval tasks, despite most participants indicating the importance to them of carrying out such tasks. Specifically the authors focused on the following issues: archival values; access; organizational strategies; access strategies.

They interviewed  parents regarding their digital family picture collections. They first elicited their views on the value of their archives. The interviews included retrieval assignments in which participants were asked to show the interviewer pictures from important past events. They were then asked to reflect on their retrieval process and organizational strategies. Participants interviews were performed in their homes. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed.  Retrieval time was measured after the interview by analyzing the audio recording. The authors did this measurement post-hoc so as not to apply pressure or stress the participants into feeling that they were being evaluated. The majority of the tasks (71%) were suggested by the participants who selected the target event themselves as being a significant past event they would like to revisit. On average the retrieval events occurred 3.1 years before the interview.

The authors analyzed  the content of responses to the open question: “Why do you take pictures of your children?” Sixteen out of 18 participants (89%) spontaneously generated answers that referred to long term purposes such as: “I want to document my children, to eternalize them; so that I will always have these pictures and can always look at them”. The results clearly indicated that long term retrieval is a major motivation for taking family pictures.

In the retrieval task, participant were asked to show the interviewer digital pictures from 3 to 5 salient past events concerning their children. In contrast to their expectations, the participants were successful in retrieving pictures in only slightly more than half of the retrieval tasks (61%). In the remainder (39%), participants simply could not find pictures of significant family events. The average time participants took to find the required pictures was about 3 min, with an average of about 2.5 min for successful retrievals and nearly 4 min for unsuccessful ones.

The participants spontaneously reflected about the retrieval process using emotionally laden language: “Can I say what I think about that search? It was very difficult. I feel my picture archive is a very big mess. I have no idea where things are. I has no logic. It has nothing. During retrieval they realized that having too many pictures has its price when this mass of pictures competes for their attention, making it hard to locate specific ones.

Typical folder structures has not picture subfolders. But even when participants did use subfolders, they were often inconsistent in how they used them. Only three participants constructed an organizational hierarchy that included systematic use of subfolders. The three participants who systematically used subfolders had a higher proportion of successful retreivals on our long-term retrieval task than those with more rudimentary organization.

There was no evidence that experience  using photo software led to a greater proportion of successful retrievals on our long-term retrieval task, there was a suggestion that those people who used a dedicated software program tool longer to retrieve their photos on that task, than those who did not use such software. Six participants tried to use knowledge of related events to remember the approximate date when the target event occurred and then navigate to the folders they thought might contain these pictures. Specific folders were because their name contained a date close to the guessed date, or because the name was thought to relate to it. Another two participants tried to remember the exact date when the event had occurred and to find folders from that date. Two participants said they has used the search option to retrieve pictures.

People experience problems in accessing such long term archives, with almost 40% of accesses being unsuccessful. Because of the ease of capture and storage, participants now have larger collections of digital pictures. However, these digital photos seem to be organized in a rudimentary manner. A related factor is false familiarity: participants have a strong (but apparently misguided) belief that their involvement in the initial events will guarantee that they will be able to successfully retrieve photos relating to those events, without subsequent efforts to systematically organize those pictures. At the heart of these problems is that, despite their perceived value, participants do not spend much time accessing or maintaining their collections so that organization and access difficulties are often undiscovered. The authors observed problems arising from people’s inability to determine which new information is likely to be of long-term value. The result also suggest various design implications. One interesting link to explore would be between pictures and calendars to support event-based retrieval. People prefer to browse and scan pictures using thumnails. However, the prevalent operating system authors looked at, Windows, does not recognize that a folder contains only pictures.

It is clear that technical advances could assist with organization, but only if people are able (and willing) to use them.

Analysis

I have more than 5,000 pictures in my hard disk driver. When I was using Windows, I had tried to use software such as Picasa to organize and sort out the pictures using my own customized folder systems based on date and event names. However, I had never been satisfied before I started using Mac OS with iPhoto application. This iPhoto application can solve a lot of problem described through this article. Especially, event-calendar-thumnail-based system gives a lot of advantages to the users even for the long term retrieval. I have never failed to find out my photo since I met my MacBook (iPhoto).

And also geotagging has been giving me such a privilege of looking and finding out the picture based on the geo-location moving around map. Sometimes, this geotagging based finding even does not give me a chance to consider a different way to find or search picture because I do not need to think or remember the event date or folder name etc. other relevant factors.

A potential way to improve retrieval might be to annotate pictures. As we do add comments on Facebook or blog picture, if we can annotate pictures, that can also contribute to help us remember past events.

How do you manage your pictures? How does you picture folder system look like? I have never asked this kink of questions to my friends, even I have never had a clear solution for this matter.

 

AA3: Unpacking the Television: User Practices around a Changing Technology

Summary:

This article investigates the changing television watching practices amongst early adopters of personal hard-disk video recorder (PVR) and Internet downloading of video. The authors sought to explore how technology as enjoyment and entertainment fits into home. In particular, they focused on the single most important leisure technology, television, and how it fits into and constructs domestic settings because time-use studies show that people spend half their leisure time watching television, much more than they spend socializing with friends..

The authors did in-depth interviews with the 21 users (individuals and couples mainly within their own home) of PVR and/or video downloading. The authors approached their analysis with the goal of informing design about possible future use of television and video in the home. The participant were recruited from the friends and family of staff working at the authors university. Five of the interviewees were couples who were interviewed together (23%), the remaining participants were five women (23%), and eleven men (52%).

Eight of the nine PVR households had moved almost entirely to watching prerecorded shows from the PVR. The authors said that this was a large contrast with the VCR users, who recorded only on average two shows a week, compared to seven new shows a week for the PVR users. However, the authors point out the problem of PVRs that can lead users get upset by failing to record shows. The PVR was also not seen as a reliable medium for long-term storage of programs.

The downloaders were distinguished in two groups by the authors. The first group is “supplementors” in that downloaders still watch broadcast television and downloaded shows or movies around once a week. For these participants the Internet is a way of obtaining shows that were difficult or impossible to obtain in their country. The second group is “replacers” who watch little or no broadcast television, downloading all their TV from the Internet. Unlike the supplementors, replacers were also serious about building up and archive of TV shows and films downloaded.

Particularly for the families interviewed, TV could be considered the default evening entertainment for the family. It was expected that a set number of hours of television would be watched every evening, even if not everyone in the household would actually be watching TV. The perceived advantage with both downloading and a PVR seemed to be the selectivity that tool place real time. One couple enjoy having a range of television to choose from for the weekend evening and would watch much of it together. The PVR enlarged the number of shows one could practically keep up with, making the PVR an “addictive box”. Keeping up with episodes was in essence very important to the participants; when they watched was not as important as that they watching the shows in the correct order. With their favorite shows, the viewing was important to their everyday life in that it gave them a satisfaction to keep watching new episodes and follow the thrill of the plot.

The authors found that many PVR users watched recorded TV on the broadcast data so they could talk to friends and colleagues about it the next day. The only difference was a minimal time-shifting, either to avoid advertisements or to postpone to a later convenient time. Most of the participants found great satisfaction in watching television to socialize afterwards, some found it stressful at some times. The live television that the participants did watched was in most cases news or live sporting events. Many of both the PVR and downloaders found it difficult to remember what they had in fact last watched as live TV.

The authors have been using the results from this study to inform the design of new video technologies that could enhance and better support the lifecycle of television watching. One area these authors are exploring is the collecting of television shows, and providing better interfaces for navigating through large archives of video. A second area that they are investigating is the ability to share information about what parts of shows tend to be fast forwarded, and what parts are best to watch. Lastly, they are exploring new ways to support choosing what to watch. For instance, programming a whole evening’s entertainment from recorded shows, much like the shuffle play in iTunes.

Analysis:

In this article, the authors mainly delivered the data collection methods and analysis result of the data not providing the prototype suggestions that designers can apply. However, from the 21 interviewees, early adopters, the authors retrieved interesting points related to socializing. The number of participants was not enough to represent the all the PVR users or downloaders. The authors could have shown the interview data in tabulated format which can describe the interview data more appropriately in-depth.

I have never used PVR to record TV shows or whatever. I guess I am purely downloader to watch the movie not the drama episodes. I got surprised that when I read the data that in the U.S. individuals still watch on average 18.2 hours of television per week [U.S. Department of Labor 2006]. Sometimes, when I have conversation with American students, I realized that I need to watch Sunday-Night football game in order to at least understand what they are talking, apart from leading the chat. Even though I know the rule of the game, I need to watch the game to get involved in that group chat. Do you really feel comfortable with someone who watches the same game or drama episodes?

A recent estimation suggests that over one-third of all broadband is used for file sharing. Using the Internet to download television and movies is surprisingly popular; some sources indicate that about 27% of Americans have downloaded video from the Internet at one time or another. The authors exploration for better television lifecycle will be mainly dominated by Internet sooner or later. Apple TV is the perfect example which shows alternative television delivery method. If Apple TV can provide the all TV episodes and sports games, I will definitely buy that instead of paying a lot of money to Comcast.

What if Toll Booth doesn’t work?

Do you know Chicago Skyway Tolls on I-90 where you have to pay $3.00

? If you decide to take I-90 from I-65 to go to Chicago you need to pay $0.80+$1

.50+$3.00=$5.30 as you pass three toll plazas. I usually drive up to Chicago at around midnight on Friday. At the most of the time when I pass the toll plaza, I can easily see a car having trouble at toll booth. The driver might not be paying attention when he has to decide which booth he would take. Or maybe he does not have any idea what i-Zoom is so he just takes the toll booth that only allows the car which has i-Zoom and does not haveautomated machine equipped for cash or credit-card customers. Then, what he is going to do? He can decide move back and go to the right booth or he can push the help button, because he has no idea about this booth is only for i-Zoom user. But where is help button? As you can see from the pictures, there are two different types of indication for help button. There is a really bad example booth which takes $3.00 per car. That orange color box is on the Chicago Skyway Toll Plaza. Can you easily figure out this is the help button which you are supposed to press in the middle of night when there is no assistant at all. The drivers who meet this situation spend a lot of time to figure how they can resolve that problem, but this problem occurs traffic congestion or even accidents. However, I have never seen any changes since 2007 when I joined at Purdue.

I am i-Zoom user for the convenience. When I pass the toll plaza paying the toll using i-Zoom automatically, the LED screen tells me “PAID THANK YOU” letting the barrier bar raised. How do I know how much money did you take from my account? Cannot the LED screen show the money that I have just paid for the toll? It would be much nicer if the LED screen can also show the current balance of my i-Zoom account!!

AA2: Time, Narratives and Participation Frameworks in Software Troubleshooting

Summary:

This article problematizes diagnostic work as a solely technical and rational activity by presenting an analysis focused on the social and organizational practices in which diagnosis is embedded. The analysis of a troubleshooting episode in an Italian internet company shows how diagnostic work is realized:
1) through collaboration sustained by specific knowledge distribution among designers (different but overlapping competences);
2) intersubjectively and discursively as an activity characterized by specific and diverse forms of participation and inter-wined with material intervention in the system;
3) following a sustained rationality which proceeds by gradual approximations to achieve partial or provisional solutions while also taking account of organizational goals and needs.
The authors conclude that the difference with respect to traditional troubleshooting models is that diagnostic activities follow a situated rather than abstract rationality: the process does not consist in a linear and organized pathway from the problem to one ‘right’ solution; rather, it is a process inter-wined with material interventions in the system and which proceed by gradual, flexible, and at times recursive, approximations. And it does not always give rise to a definitive or rigorous solution.

Analysis:

It is always necessary to go beyond the technical dimension of diagnostic work to encompass social and organizational aspects as well when we work in software troubleshooting especially in groups. In that context, I totally agree with the authors conclusion about the time, narratives and participation frameworks. My research lab implemented and have released discrete-event simulation application for construction operations. When we meet a certain problem with our own application, we have been approaching the problem as engineer independently only having initial discussion about the troubleshooting. If my lab could take advantage of the time, narratives and participation frameworks, we would be able to optimize the workload saving time.

One thing that I am curious about is that if the company has very strict vertical organizational structures, this provided frameworks can work efficiently and effectively to solve the problem? I think the horizontal organizational structure condition is really important for both designers and engineers to implement this framework.

Box does not have holes…

I have wanted to post this Ice Mountain water box case. Now, finally I got the pictures from Sam’s Club. I drink Ice Mountain water by purchasing from Sam’s Club. I buy two type of bottles which are 32-0.5 liter bottles pack and 6-1 gallon bottles one.

The problem occurs when I try to grab that box to move from the stack to the cart or from cart to car or from car to home. There used to be two holes on each side of the box until about last January so that I can grab those heavy boxes easily. Those holes were suddenly disappeared, then I have realized that that hurts a lot to the customers. I hope that the manufacturer did not cut off some expenses of punching those holes because of this economic situation. But I cannot think of any reasonable reason other than that. Can you come up with any other possible reasons that led the manufacturers to this decision? This change certainly violates the efficiency of use principle that should be applied to all the customer end products.

Do you have any idea or suggestion to fix this problem?