PostPC Computing

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PostPC Computing
2003/4
Prof. Scott Kirkpatrick, HUJI Amnon Dekel, Bezalel
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Course Introduction

• Student Introductions
• Introduction From Problem to Product.
• What is value?
• How Engineers Think 15 min
• How Designers Think 15 min
• Innovation and all that
• Famous Failures
• This Years Theme The Smart Classroom
• Videos of Past Projects
• Homework

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Course Introduction

• Some Administrative info
• Classes will be on Tuesdays 1400-1700
• Class location will be in TBD
• Class website
• http//www.cs.huji.ac.il/postPC

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Student Introductions

• Name
• Background
• Experience
• Interests
• Why are you here?

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Introduction

• This course is about Interactions
• interaction of different ways of thinking
• interaction of different ways of doing
• interaction of ideas
• ideas about usability, functionality, ergonomics,
  problem solving, style, and aesthetics.
• interaction of computational capabilities and
  physical, everyday objects.

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Introduction

• This course will try to create an environment
  within which teams will explore the ramifications
  of adding computation intelligence to everyday
  objects while striving to understand what value
  such a process might hold for such "empowered"
  objects.

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Value

• What value does adding computational power to a
  pen create?
• What value can be created by adding such power to
  a block of paper, or to eyeglasses, or shirts, or
  cameras, or chairs?
• What might happen if a computer mouse becomes
  intelligent?
• What might happen if a room, or other space
  inhabited by people, becomes computationally
  "empowered"?

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What is Value

• Don Normans view
• Engineering values are real and measurable
• First to market
• Best technology
• Standards and infrastructure support
• But there is a danger of losing sight of the
  customer, who alone determines value
• Example Thomas Edison

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How Engineers ThinkThomas A. Edison

• Edison was leader in 19th Cent. Technologies
• Telegraph, electricity, batteries, sound
  recording, movies
• Created the first industrial research laboratory
• Understood the need for infrastructure
• Electric light required electric power
  distribution
• This was a time of star technologists influencing
  public opinion
• Edison, Bell, Marconi, Steinmetz, Westinghouse

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How Engineers Think Thomas A. Edison

• Invented the phonograph (1877).
• Tinfoil on cylinders
• Recording as well as playback
• Solved a problem (dictation in the office), but
  was it the right problem? Predicted the
  paperless office!
• Too complicated at first for office use two
  week learning curve.
• The technology evolved
• Cylinders constant speed, low wear, better
  fidelity
• Disks changing speed, scratchy, high wear, BUT
• Louder
• Easier to store and ship
• Cheaper to manufacture
• Edison's companies were slow to follow.

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How Engineers Think Thomas A. Edison

• Emile Berliner was third to enter the field, with
  first disc machines, and what became RCA Victor.
  Horizontal modulation, not vertical.
• When Edison switched to discs (1913), he used the
  higher quality vertical modulation. INCOMPATIBLE
• Berliner established exclusive contracts with the
  most famous musical artists, and promoted
  heavily.
• Edison reasoned that customers couldn't tell the
  work of less-known artists from the famous ones.
  Saved lots of money. Artists not even listed on
  the labels.
• Result "Victrola" became generic for 50 years.

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What is Value

• Our View Ways to enhance the
• Functionality
• Usability
• Enjoyabilty" of an object
• In the process, enhancing the capabilities of
  those who use such objects.
• By capabilities we mean a mix of cognitive and
  physical performance parameters.

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How Designers Think

• Designers deal with
• Context
• Attention
• Human perception and psyche

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How Designers Think

• Designers deal with Gestalt
• with the overall effect of their creations on the
  viewer
• It is not that they do not analyze and break
  things apart in their process of exploration and
  discovery- but the end product is the packaging
  of their ideas back into a whole system.

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How Designers Think

• Designers can be seen in many ways as Applicative
  Psychologists, Sociologists, and Anthropologists
• They use what they know about people, and about
  how society affects them, as tools to manipulate
  those people.

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How Designers Think

• Designers are manipulators.
• They try to make you think and feel about
  something in ways that they have planned and
  packaged for you.
• Not only is the most obvious form, advertising,
  manipulative, all forms of design are.
• The choices of color, of shape, of material, of
  layout, of type, have been chosen to manipulate
  your perceptions in specific ways.

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How Designers Think

• Designers are manipulators.
• This should not be seen as Negative.
• In most cases this is not a conscious process
• Designers develop ways of seeing and manipulating
  the visual world in ways that change the way
  people see things
• Many times this is done in an intuitive way- but
  what is intuition in this case if not a heuristic
  way of looking, thinking, and acting on the world.

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Designers

• Deal with wholes, with the synthesis of
  multi-modal and multidimensional content.
• Designers analyze things- breaking them up in the
  process of trying to understand how perceptual
  schemas work.
• They break things apart in order to know how to
  create more successful wholes.
• Designers are manipulators, trying
• sometimes intuitively, sometimes consciously, to
  make you see things in ways that they control.

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What is a Good Design?

• A good design succeeds in manipulating its
  viewers- making them see what it meant them to
  see
• A good design manipulates in various ways
• Creates a context which affects how viewers will
  look and understand a design
• Nudges the viewers attention to specific elements
  or areas
• Creates a planned emotional response in the
  viewer
• More ?

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Moores Law and all thatThe Evolution of
Information Technology

• Exponential growth occurs in systems with
  feedback
• Such as any business that makes money
• Any new idea competes with BAU, not today, but
  at the time that the new idea will be introduced
• So technology forecasting is a requirement
• Moores Law not limited to planar Si circuits
• Also population of users
• Mainframe, workstation, PC, cellphone, ubiquitous
  computing(?)
• More complex technologies storage
• Human scale technologies display and imaging
• More traditional technologies batteries
• Even Research-only technologies quantum
  computing

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The all-in-one chart
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Famous Failures

• Load

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This Years Theme The Smart Classroom

• The Problems
• Classes are getting bigger (from 250 -1200
  Students!)
• Frontal teaching is not very effective
• Podium based AV technologies are difficult to use
  and get in the way of the teaching
• Podium based AV technologies are very brittle and
  sensitive

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This Years Theme The Smart Classroom

• Our Goals
• Enable more effective Teacher-Student and
  Student-Student interaction in large classes
• Enable other teaching methodologies to be used in
  large classes (i.e. interactive teaching)
• Create interface(s) that are easy to learn, to
  use and do NOT get in the way
• Create a robust and modular system that takes
  care of itself as much as possible

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Homework

• Reading
• Vannevar Bush As We May Think (1945)
• Mark Weiser The Computer for the 21st Century
• Exercise Adding Computational Power to a Space
• Think of a classroom or auditorium
• What can making it smart mean?
• How would you make it smart?
• Write a one page paper and post it to the local
  PostPC newsgroup (newslocal.course.postPC).

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Info

• Class website http//www.cs.huji.ac.il/postPC
• Email postpc_at_cs.huji.ac.il

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Past Projects -- Videos

• Fall 2002
• Navigator
• The Flower Pot
• The Living Room
• Earlier courses
• Smart Lock
• Travellers companion
• E-Play