New Career Alert

I have just accepted the position of Interaction Designer at Mitchell International. Mitchell is a medium sized software company that caters to the automobile industry- especially in the insurance claim fields. I will be working with some really bright guys on a successful User Experience team. I am excited to get in there and start learning!

I will miss my work at Hewlett Packard- and most importantly- my coworkers. But, it’s time for me to find a new direction and find a comfy home at a company that values my work as much as I feel I deserve. I start my new job on June 11th.

By the way- this is indeed the reason why I have not posted in a long time. It was exhausting trying to build my portfolio, move my blog (from blogger), hone my interviewing skills (or lack there of), keep my day job, and stay thoughtful and insightful enough to write at the same time. Hopefully, I will be able to find more time to post.

Ipod- fixed?

My ipod was dead for several days. It had a sad face on the screen and all of my attempts to charge, use, connect, restore, or even reboot into disk mode were failures. Apple’s support site told me that it was in need of service repair, and since I don’t have any warranty services or whatever, it would cost a pretty penny to fix.

My Dad tried to pry it open with his keys, figuring “hey, if it’s broken, we might as well open it up and have a look.” He was likewise unsuccessful.

Then, all of a sudden, while trying to wrestle it open, it turned on and it was running in normal mode! It’s working now, but I don’t trust it… we’ll see what happens in the next couple of weeks.

If my ipod really ends up failing on me, I was be completely music-less in my travels, since my car stereo was ripped off about 6 months ago…

Barbecue Grills and Affirmations

Went to Sears today to pick up a barbecue that Lauren bought.

The pick-up process was really painless and easy for me. I walked in and pressed a big area on the kiosk touch screen that says “Pick-Up Merchandise”. I was then instructed to scan my receipt under the scanner, and after it beeped, the screen told me that it was on it’s way out and that I could check on the progress on the screen above. That screen had a sort of first-in first-out list of people waiting. and the ETA.

Then, as I was waiting for my grill to come rolling out from behind the double doors, an elderly man came up to the kiosk and attempted to pick-up his stuff as well. Only, he had more difficulty. I’m not sure what went wrong, but when I started paying attention to it, it was telling him that there was nothing waiting for him on that receipt at this time. He was confused and starting to panic because he thought his merchandise was gone just like that.

What had happened was he had already scanned the receipt and his name was already on the “waiting” screen above. He was done, but didn’t catch on. So, when he tried again, there was nothing left of his on that receipt that he could pick-up.

It got me wondering about the differences in people regarding the usability of systems. No matter how easy a system appears to me, it may be completely beguiling to somebody else- due to cultural or generational differences.

As I was thinking that, he approached me and began complaining about computers these days and all the shit he’s seen in his life- a classic romanticist of analog and directly manipulative objects like rotor phones. When I told him that I work for the cause to improve the ease-of-use of technology, he smiled and looked at me like I was some kind of hero. I was kinda funny- cute, in a way. But it was also flattering to step back and affirm to yourself that people really do feel passionate about their feelings of inadequacy- their sense of not being welcome- to computers. I felt important for a couple minutes as I explained what I do, and then my barbecue burst through the doors and I was on my way.

I drove away thinking that old people aren’t so bad after all. But then, as I got back on the freeway to head home, I got stuck behind an old woman driving 25 on the on-ramp. That’s no lie.

The Traffic Guy: Perspective

If I had to define a cognitive system in the most broad sense, I would say that it is any system that receives information (input), transposes it into one or more representations, manipulates them in a meaningful way (computation- if you will), and outputs that information in a meaningful way. I don’t really want to get into the specifics and the caveats, because I just want to discuss one aspect of these cognitive systems: perspective.

In a cognitive system, each player has a field of operation that concerns them.

• In a soccer team, each player has a position, and a role.
• In an emergency task force division, each member has a duty, a specialty, or a role in each situation.
• In a brain, each nucleus of neurons and even each neuron has a receptive field and a specialization of sorts.

Further, every member or cell of these system also has a specific position in time and space. That seems obvious- and it is- but it is important with respect to perspective.The information that one member has about the system as a whole is usually quite different from the information atained by the other members, and also quite different from the shared information as a whole. This is, of course, a good thing because it allows for rich distributed computation to be done about different types and different ranges of inputs.

However, is the difference of perspective sometimes a bad thing? And if so, can it sometimes be minimized?

In a soccer team, one player may have open sights to the goal, but if the player who has the ball doesn’t know that because his view is obstructed, he won’t know to pass the ball to him. Opportunity lost.

This morning, I was listening to the Mikey Show, a morning show on FM 105.3. The traffic guy was talking about the traffic conditions and started off saying that traffic was looking great today. It went something like this:

Good morning everyone, traffic is looking fantastic today. There’s really not too much going on to worry about. There was an accident on the 78 eastbound this morning, but it looks like that is clearning up quite nicely. South I5 is slow from Encinitas to Solana Beach as usual, but starting to pick up. The 8 is surprisingly smooth this morning. The only freeway with traffic issues is the southbound 15. It’s packed from Valley Parkway to Via Rancho Parkway.

Now, I happen to take the 15 south to work, and I get on right near Valley Pkwy and exit about 2 exits after Via Rancho Pkwy. Obviously, for me, traffic is definitely not fantastic this morning. I could care less about the 8, or the 5, or the 78 for that matter. But the traffic guy said “traffic is looking fantastic”. I beg to differ.

The problem lies in perspective. For him, he sees the overall picture. In fact, if he’s not flying in a helicopter, he probably has a nice little animated graphic of a map of san diego freeways with symbols, and colored flow arrows representing blockage or lack there of. For him, if he sees only one red slow arrow on his screen, traffic is otherwise pretty damn good. “One red arrow? Not bad at all”

But his perspective is much larger than mine- both cognitively and visually. He cares about the 8 and the 5 freeways. I don’t. He sees activity in the entire county. I don’t. What this leads to is a contrast in system status. He feels that the status is good. I don’t.

The problem gets complicated in that the purpose of the whole cognitive system of traffic reporting is to aid the audience (radio listeners). It’s not so important to give the overall status of the entire system of transportation, because nobody in the audience cares about the entire system! They only care about what applies to them and their morning commute.

If I were in a hurry, trying to figure out which route to take to work, I might just listen to the first five seconds of his report and conclude that my ride should be fine. After all, traffic conditions are fantastic, right?

I don’t have a great solution. After all, it is radio. It’s just something that I’ve been thinking about this morning- how perspective in a system can sometimes lead to inaccuracies and misleading interpretations.

Intelligence: chances are you got some

Intelligence is something of a scourge to neuroscientists and the rest of human kind alike. Its definition and understanding has flipped, swayed, and morphed over the last 100 years so much that the confusion around it is more than beguiling.I am a believer of the multiple intelligences idea- that there are different types of brain specializations that cannot qualitatively be compared against each other to show how smart one person is over another, as we often try to do today. E.g., a pianist vs. an athlete or an accountant. I also am a believer that these different types of intelligence may possibly use the same exact methods- hierarchical temporal memory systems interacting with lower-level brain structures (emotional, etc.) and motor generator circuits.

However, today I just want to talk about that area of intelligence that we typically use in our daily life(without care) to describe how smart somebody is. What I mean is that quality of some person that we describe as that broad result of their genes, their grades in school, and their breadth of knowledge that we perceive when we interact with them.

I believe that this understanding of intelligence can be separated into two semi-distinct areas. One, is that amount of knowledge- or Memory. This is a common judgement of someone’s intelligence. We see it in game shows like jeopardy, Who wants to be a millionaire, and in most tests that we are given in the school system. This area of intelligence is simply due to (first, of course the underlying allowing structure and ability provided by the genome) the amount of stimuli and the ability to retain the stimuli representations. If I never learn anything intelligent or retain anything I’ve learned, I won’t appear to be so smart.

I think the second area- which may even be more important- is the ORGANIZATION of this knowledge. It is how somebody’s thoughts are structured. It is what pops out to somebody when they process some stimulus because of how their output is structured in accordance with that input.

For instance, If I remember everything from the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, that would be very impressive. I would probably do very well on a comprehension test. However, if I don’t organize my thoughts and beliefs in accordance to what I’ve read, I won’t get much good out of it. If I don’t associate some of the meanings from the book with other meanings in life that can be equated with some of the situations in the book, then I won’t be able to apply the book to anything in my life, and I will not have gotten much good from it.

I believe that this organization quality of intelligence is what makes somebody creative, or intuitive. I believe it is also what makes somebody “level-headed” or have great “common-sense”. Further, I feel that if I want to be very sharp, wise, smart, agile, etc. (indeed, intelligent in all of it’s forms) I need to master this essence of having an organized mind model. I think it takes both areas- amount of knowledge, and organization of it- to be truly intelligent in the sense that we use in our daily language.

I’ll leave this post with a question- How can I purposefully make my organization better? Is this something that I can modify by learning a lot and consciously making connections and metaphors with other parts of my knowledge? Or is it handled by my genes exclusively, meaning that all I can do is learn and lot and read a lot, hoping that my brain will organize it well due to its ability to structure my neuronal connections in accordance with my DNA?

…Maybe both?

What skill would you like to improve?

I saw this question asked on somebody else’s blog, and I immediately got a rush of excitement. I thought it was a great question because it shows what your short term and long terms goals are (or how they are affected), and it also gives the answerer an opportunity to reflect on their self-image and organize their scattered thoughts into ones that are progressive. We should all do this from time to time.

The problem is: I can sit here and rattle off about 50 skills that I want to improve- and I’m not stretching it either. Don’t believe me?
creative writing, drawing, speed reading, critical thinking, quick thinking (on my feet), inhibitions, running, keeping a healthy diet, basketball (collection of skills), designing interfaces, organizing, keeping to schedules, scoping time and projects, social skills, speaking skills, speaking in public, story telling, snowboarding, backpacking, survivor skills, beer brewing, graphic design, 3D and CAD Design, building with raw materials, fixing automobiles…

I’m half way there and I haven’t even gotten to my relationship skills, household skills, and any work-specific skills like project strategy,prototyping, or web design skills…and it only took me a minute or two.

Am I too unfocused? I mean- it’s really unrealistic for me to reach a level that I’d be happy with in just a few of these areas, let alone all of them! But, why can’t I just stick to a few things I am good at and make myself better? Why do I spread myself so thin? Am I lessening my potential for greatness??? Am I a scatter-brained, indecisive, identity-less dreamer?

Anyway, I realized the question was asking for the ONE skill most desired to improve. So, my answer is doing comical impressions of mutual friends.

Split-Personality Disorder: The problem with your TV…

Televisions are traditionally pretty straightforward. They serve as a medium between streaming information from a cable provider, and you- the person that would like to absorb some of it. Usually, you do this by two easy interactions: manipulating some control that tunes into a particular channel so that the information you want is displayed on the screen, and by manipulating some control that puts the auditory volume at some level that is preferred.

Well of course, our interactions these days are slightly more complex, allowing for much more features and preferences to be accounted for. However, for the most part- our most common usage of our television is really those same basic features that it all started with; channel and volume. Therefore, these basic interactions should be protected and maintained in their usability.

One common feature you might find in your television interface, your cable provider, your DVR/Tivo (or all three!) is a channel guide. What this usually consists of is some navigational or scrolling table that lists the channels and the programs on them for some window of time, in a descending direction. It is a great feature, but one I feel confuses the consistent navigation of your television UI.

The channel button on your remote control is mapped so that it matches up with our conventional number system. Up = channel up, Down = channel down. Makes sense, right? Well, remote controls often make the channel buttons left and right, so that they can make use of a cross-shape where the volume is up and down- but remote controls in general are a whole different story!

The problem is that when you enter the channel guide, suddenly the up and down buttons switch! Now, when you press up, the channels available to you decrease in their number. When you press down, the channels increase. I noticed this because whenever I entered the channel guide, I began to realize that I always felt a little bit of uncertainty about what to press.

My suggestion: List the channels in an ascending direction. The only reason that the channel button is reversed is because the channels are listed downwards, thereby requiring your to navigate downwards to access the next set of channels. There is nothing inherently useful for descending the numbers on a television. We don’t expect to read a television screen like a paper or computer screen- reading top-to-bottom. Channel guides aren’t documents. I can see how this notion came to form the way channel guides are implemented today- but it is not worth destroying the consistent navigation. Besides, these guides usually lie at the bottom of the screen anyway! If the numbers are listed upwards, the channel button maintains its mapping. Your mental model for using your remote is not constantly being switched on you like a TV with split-personality disorder…

Philosophy of Argument: Use this tool

The next time you’re involved in an argument with a person (as opposed to a lamp or guinea pig), here’s a great weapon to keep in your arsenal: the redirect. It’s name is derived from the move in martial arts where you take an opponent’s hit and gracefully use their momentum to redirect the blow back towards them. It works well in martial arts and it works just as nicely in argumentation.

here’s an example:

Person 1: Killer whales kill people! They are dangerous and we need to rethink whether or not humans should be interacting with them as pets and performers!

Person 2: No no no, orcas are friendly, intelligent creatures. When you hear about attacks and fatalities in the news, it is usually because the orcas are just playing. They don’t mean to harm the people.

Person 1: Exactly! You are absolutely right and that’s my case in point right there. Whether killer whales have intent or not, they are still dangerous!

Person 2: hmm, I’m in your corner now. Well done.

Ok, so the last comment is figurative. But this is what person 2 would probably be thinking…

See, what you do is you take one person’s point or counterpoint, and you validate it and at the same time show how it actually supports your claim! If you are successful in this endeavor, the result is that your opponent has his/her argumentative fire minimized significantly and it forces them to teeter on the thought that you and him/her are really on the same page, but that you were just there first! I’m not saying that they won’t still have a counterpoint afterwards, but if you use this tool, the likelihood of having a great counterpoint in light of your redirect will be greatly decreased.

It’s a simple weapon to use, but it’s hard to master. You can’t use it often either. But when you see an opportunity, you attack!

MyLifeBits

Microsoft has been working on a gem of a project for the last few years. It’s called MyLifeBits, and it is featured in the March issue of Scientific American.

What is it?

Basically, it’s an attempt to record and digitize information from all modalities in your life. These include books, photos, videos, emails, text, phone calls, locations and travels, websites you encounter, and also internal things like heart rate, breath rate and/or cessation, and essentially, the sky is the limit. It aims to take advantage of ubiquitous sensors and computation devices so that there is no cognitive burden on the user. The attempt goes further to organize this enormous collection of sets of continuous data into a software interface that serves as a UI for both looking back on people’s lives and for recognizing low-level patterns and suggesting possible changes (like in work productivity or possible health alerts). All in all, it attempts to evangelize Vannevar Bush’s Memex machine from 1945- back when the technology for his idea wasn’t yet prudent. Although the idea is intriguing and quite possibly the most revolutionary technological interaction in human history, I have my concerns- some of which I can imagine difficult, albeit possible, solutions for, and some of which I can’t…
First and foremost, is the issue of privacy and security. If you think security is important now, with your bank account data and social security number tucked away inside your PC, imagine what the security threat would be like for ALL of your personal data! Your health records, legal matters, financial information, interpersonal transactions, confidential job matters, private activities, and all the like will be fair game if someone has access to your PC. It’s decently safe to say that this could be a potential show stopper for MyLifeBits ever becoming fully embraced by the public. But there may be security breakthroughs in the future that I just can’t account for, so for now we can pretend that a solution exists for this problem.

Privacy, on the other hand, is a much more fuzzy problem. Even if you were able to protect files from hackers, there is still the issue of assigning semantic interpretations to content and handling content that is available to people and not available to people (if there is indeed a function that allows you to share some of your life bits info with others). Who has access? How do you control negotiated access to parts of your life? We are already having difficult solving this problem with simple cell phones and socially-collaborative websites. This problem will only be exacerbated 100-fold with the amounts and types of information from this project.

Then there’s the issue of controlling which content you even want AT ALL! A person may not want some parts of his/her life recorded at times, for reasons personal only to them.

For instance, to use a bold example- let’s say you wanted to engage in a plot to commit some crime. You probably don’t want information related to this activity to be recorded for fear of it being confiscated if you are suspected of committing it. You would not want investigators to see that indeed you were at this GPS location at the time of the crime, where you came from and where you went afterwards, what activities you engaged in before it was committed, and all the other possible damning evidence. This activity is an extreme one and, hopefully and unlikely scenario, but it paints the picture I am trying to show. There are many sides to our lives, some large and most small, that we prefer not to share with people- for whatever reason.

This is the same reason why people are so weary about possible technologies emerging that promise to one day be able to read people’s conscious thoughts. People aren’t comfortable with their thoughts being observed and broadcasted to the world. I fear that they also won’t be comfortable with every internal and external facet of their lives being available for dissection and possible judgments by others…People have a lot of ugly thoughts and behaviors. It’s just the reality of things. It’s what makes our ability to inhibit our primal urges and bad habits that makes us who we are today. How degrading is it to think that our ability to behave in a socially inhibitive manner is completely moot when the data is analyzed from our thoughts and behaviors. There should be some way to start and stop incoming information at certain times…but then that negates the purpose of ubiquitous and continuous technology! And some of the sensors may not allow for easy start and stop functionality…

Complicating the problem even further, if we add in social sharing functionality and negotiated access, we will encounter awkward situations is our friends and loved ones wonder why parts of our data stream are not complete. A spouse may inquire why you weren’t logging your life bits yesterday from the time of 3:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon. Basically, the system would be broadcasting what times you are comfortable with people knowing everything about your life and what times you are not. Very awkward.

How about memories that you don’t necessarily want to remember? In the description of MyLifeBits in Microsoft’s PowerPoint presentation, they make note of a slideshow/screensaver functionality that will at time reflect upon one’s life memories. This sounds nice. But what if it displays an image or video of a horrific automobile accident? Will I want to see that? Or what if it shows me memory content of my grandmother when she was on her death bed. I may not want to review this life bits. There may be lots of other more serious life bits that we wouldn’t want to encounter in our lives. Doesn’t this sound like an aggravation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Would a rape victim want to review the horrible act? Would a retired soldier want to review horrible scenes from their memories of war?

You might think, “Well, we could just assign trauma tags to these memories that we don’t want to review so that it doesn’t pop up in screensavers.” That’s a good idea, but the sad truth is that we may not be able to find the data that we know to be negative affecting. Even at the time of an act, such as seeing that horrific car accident, I might not know that this scene will be emotionally disruptive when it pops up no my radar again,. The neuroscience of emotional signaling is still very rudimentary and is not all that conscious to us…

If Microsoft can figure out ingenious ways to solve the above issues and concerns, then that would probably be the hard part. The easier yet just as important parts will be issues such as usage and usability of the interface, organization methods that easily allow for associative combinations and changes to organization structure, and intelligent software algorithms that can learn and autonomously discover meaningful patterns from low-level data. The latter sounds like a job for Jeff Hawkins and his theory of applying Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) systems.

Anna Nic-OLD NEWS

Sorry if I seem apathetic, but ENOUGH with the Anna Nicole reports on all the news stations! Yes, unfortunately, she lost her life. Yes, her son had died too recently. And yes, she was a celebrity that was in the news often. But why should every news program focus half of their content on speculations as to her death and anything else about her life that they can get their hands on??

To be honest, I was interested to hear that she died- because it was a shock. And I will be slightly interested to hear how exactly she died. But other than that- DROP IT. It’s boring, repetitive, negative, non-progressive, untruthful (in many cases), and honestly unimportant.

Matter of fact, don’t even watch the news. I’m with Brandon Boyd on this one- all the news does is depress you these days…and if it’s not depressing, it’s usually silly and contrived.

Go read a book. Go plant a tree. Go stomp on weeds. Go running to your local park and beat clumsy adolescent kids at some sport. Anything- just don’t watch more useless reports about a deceased celebrity that really has no effect on the world – or your world – at all.