CHI2010 Conference Day 2

Giving number 100 of 112 25-second speeches this morning was the scariest moment in my academic life*. If you’re not familiar, CHI has a fun tradition of doing CHIMadness each morning where EVERY speaker of the day gets up and does a 25 second “commercial” for their talk. Very nerve racking. VERY. The room was so packed that the organizers needed to invoke the fabled Fire Marshall rules and keep people out of the room.

This is what I remember: I said “Good Morning Atlanta!” much too loudly and then Layered Elaboration blah blah blah previous iterations blah blah blah permanent markers blah blah 4:30 in Regency 6. Completely quiet audience. Exit stage right.

After that, I needed to get to a workshop on Storyboarding. I was not that interested in spending my morning doing this, because I know everything there is about storyboards…wrong! It turned out to be a great class. It was led by Pieter Jan “PJ” Stappers, from Delft University of Technology’s ID Studio Lab’s Context Mapping group. Such a cool class! We really got into storyboarding at a level I had not thought about before and did a fun class exercise with cameras and play-acting to build storyboards for an equalizing remote control.

I spent the next few hours in a state of excitement and fear for my impending presentation. I met our session chair from Cornell as well as the other speakers. I was second. I was getting really nervous until the chair introduced me as Gregory. Allison and I had practiced to just pick up from there, but, instead I opened with “I go by Greg. Apparently, I filled out the form assuming my mother would read it.” And it went smoothly from there. I got some easy questions (how old were the kids) and some not so easy ones (how is this different from brainstorming? when should you throw away designs and start over and how does this technique allow for that?). My goto answer was “artifacts”.

And then dinner and then most of Lost and now bed. It was a great day but long.

*besides the Institute for Interactive Technologies Corporate Advisory Board making me ridiculously nervous 12 years ago this week…go Bloomsburg Huskies!

Why Apple’s restrictive iPhone 4 SDK License is a non-issue for academics

I did not know that Apple announced a new iPhone OS, let alone a new software development kit (SDK). So when I heard about it, I looked it up in Google News and saw the restrictive license as a trending topic. I read the Daring Fireball article [link] that most people are referencing and agree with his interpretation of the license, but, I don’t think any of it will matter.

In summary, Apple’s new license says that developers must use either their own programming environment for native apps or use only approved languages, like Javascript, for web-based apps. It specifically says, “Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited.” That means that the new Adobe Flash CS 5’s export (or compile) to iPhone is prohibited. There are other programs that help end users create apps without using Apple’s development environment.

I don’t think this will have any effects on researchers. I know some people who were looking forward to using Flash to create a prototype iPhone app for HCI research purposes. I think this will still be doable. Prototype apps are loaded onto iPhones from Apple’s development tool, Xcode. If this is true, Adobe must have intended for Flash to export to a format that can be uploaded to an iPhone (and eventually the app store). So, if it could be uploaded to an iPhone for testing, it should still be uploadable under the new license.

My understanding is that the license is not enforced by software, meaning, that Xcode does not currently check your code for violations to the license. The checks come when the app is submitted to the App Store and a license violation is a sure bet to being rejected. If this is all true, you should be able to upload your prototype application to several handsets for testing. Even if you can’t turn it into a publicly available app, you should still be able to do research with your prototypes.

NOTE: I could be completely wrong. Apple could institute a software check and ruin everyone’s research plans.

CHI 2009 Acceptance

My paper “Wii Can Do It: Using Co-design for creating an instructional game” was accepted to the CHI 2009 conference’s works-in-progress track.

This is a big deal for me because the reviewers/judges were torn on whether or not it should be accepted (there was a lot of discussion), but, they all ranked me high in my writing skill. Take that 11th and 12th grade AP history teachers!

Here is the abstract:

There are many children for whom learning is difficult if they need to remain still. The Nintendo Wii, with its motion-controlled sensors, can support learning experiences that enable children to be physically active learners. This paper presents the methodologies and results from a multi-day, co-design session at the University of Maryland’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab. The goal of the sessions was to design an instructional game that leveraged the Nintendo Wii’s motion controls to teach about U.S. National Parks.

There are some things I wish I had done differently. In order to keep the count to 6 pages, I cut out this paragraph and that really confused the reviewers:

On the surface, it would seem as if the co-design sessions led to a recreation of the 1989
Broderbund game Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, even though none of the child-
partners are old enough to have played that game. But, Carmen Sandiego was a fact-
based game that required the players to identify historical events through clues, and, the
preliminary game designed by Kidsteam requires higher cognitive skills to problem-solve.
The Kidsteam game could engage more players because it relies on problem solving, physical
activity, and immersive environments which may be traits of successful Wii games.

One reviewer said that the game designed in the project sounded like Oregon Trail…that paragraph may have shown that was an interesting finding.

Let’s hope the future Walsh cooperates and I am able to go in April.