Mobilising emotion or emotional mobilising?

Kristina Höök talked today about human centered computing using digital products that attempt to set the scene for emotional experiences. It was all a bit creepy. She gave examples of something called

• eMoto - that's a phone - if you used this dildo-like pen with your mobile phone, it would send your message in colour depending on your mood, or what you wanted to express - I'd be grey so as not to give away mood to any one but family -
• Affective Diary - you get some electronic gadget that reads measurements from a wrist-strap and turns them into not-quite-human blobs, whose colour is supposed to mean something
  

Needless to say, most of the computing chaps appeared from their body language to be a bit sceptical and disdainful of such equipment.

I can't quite see the use of it - but if given feedback I guess you could control your sweat and temperature - like you can control your blood pressure if you get feedback. So may be that's useful for controlling your stress levels.

Collaborative learning

The post grads in the maths, computing and technology (MCT) faculty are having a series of lunch time seminars or lectures on human-centred interfaces. This week, a third year student, David King, presented his findings these far on collaborative learning in a wiki environment. He's going to present his results at the Alt-C conference next week. ALT-C is an association for teaching and learning.

He'd studied two cohorts of OU students whose courses required collaborative work on an on-line report. One course was in requirements engineering and one in public administration, so one lot you might expect to be techie, and the other lot, not.

What interested me was the need to introduce a wiki to students because they hadn't used one before. So the course provided some reading and a collaborative icebreaker, like introducing themselves on the wiki, saying what they expected from the course and then editing each others input. Through out the course, this last was difficult. One reason was that it seemed rude to edit someone else's writing, and another was because there was assessment of the work, so it seemed wrong to interfere with what someone was going to get assessed on. Another problem was students' understanding of an on-line document. What they produced got too big to read on line without scrolling, or took ages to load. They needed to rethink what they were producing, and use links for example. (I wish course teams would remember this when they email out the TMAs and tutor notes, formatted for printing, but they inconsistently expect tutors to read them on the screen).

Lessons that David found included the need for constraints, like the use of templates, and for more guidance. You'll have to ask him for details - see his web page.

Human centred computing

A Human-Centred Computing seminar today was a dry run of Yvonne Roger's keynote to be presented at the HCI 2008 conference.

The covering email read:

New Horizons for HCI

"HCI is experiencing a renaissance. No longer only about being user-centred, it has set its sights on pastures new, embracing a much broader and far-reaching set of interests. From emotional, eco-friendly, embodied experiences to context, constructivism and culture, HCI is changing apace: from what it looks at, the lenses it uses and what it has to offer. At the same time, new technologies are proliferating and transforming how we live our lives, for example, significant growth in techno-dependency and hyper- connectivity. As a result of these changes, HCI researchers and practitioners are facing a congeries of concerns that can be overwhelming. In my talk, I discuss how a different way of thinking is needed to help manage and make sense of the multiple perspectives, challenges and issues that increasingly define HCI."

I'd not had anything to do with the seminar series before, but am interested in such technology. Yvonne Rogers seemed to be talking beyond usability or ease of use but was addressing social aspects, ethics and value laden decisions. She had a great book to share with us, called 'Being Human', which is a report. You can find out more about it here and the BBC reviews it here.