Interactive Design = Harmony

Seattle has changed for me since I was learning principles and practice of interactivity design pillars in MCDM program at the University of Washington. My look at things around me became more deep and maybe more harmonious.

The small signs, handles, tubes, stairs that I was taking for granted started to tell me story about their creators, users, producers. They all have personality and even small features do matter.

I’ve learned a lot in interactive design. Designing process is constant and has many iterations. It’s always beta. The successful design is synonymous of simplicity. Simplicity makes designed product democratic.

The Great Inforgraphic About Egypt Uprising on Twitter

The 2011 Egyptian revolution took place following a popular uprising that began on 25 January 2011 which featured a series of demonstrations, marches, acts of civil disobedience, labour strikes, and violent clashes between protestors and security services and supporters of the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Timeline of Egypt’s revolution – A chronicle of the revolution that ended the three-decade-long presidency of Hosni Mubarak (Al Jazeera).

Here is the infographic about Twitter usage during the revolution.

Proposal for Design of News Website – Central Asian News Service

Vision

The idea of “Central Asian News Service” CA-NEWS website is oriented to develop the high-quality online resource of accurate information that reflects variety of opinions and meaningful discussions about development of democratic society in Central Asia. CA-NEWS provides instant news reports and analytical materials, reviews, comments on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

CA-NEWS produces up to 100 news items in Russian and 50 news items in English about politics, economy, society, culture, science, and sport in Central Asian region. Its interactive features include traditional push-channels of content: RSS, maillist, online bookmarks and social networks: Facebook, Twitter.

Design Strategy for UW Libraries Mobile App

Mission

“The University of Washington Libraries enriches the quality of life and advances intellectual discovery by connecting people with knowledge.”

As the part of UW libraries strategy, we suggesting the development of mobile application to make its resources accessible for users of mobile devices, phones. tablets.

The design strategy includes:

The Games I Play in Seattle: Kinect Xbox, Wii, Zynga@Facebook

I’m not heavy gamer but sometimes I like to relax and spend my time for computer games. I don’t like time consuming multilevel strategies and shooters. Prefer simple and fast versions with the opportunity of competition against real players. Here I present you short analysis of the 4 games I played in Seattle and which attracted my attention.

Kinect Xbox

The newest game console from Microsoft Kinect Xbox brings amazing impression to every gamer. Never tried Xbox before I was surprised by its concept of playing and moving body. It’s really energy consuming game. I felt myself as I had workout session.

Kinect Xbox requires time to learn its features and navigation principles as it’s based on gestures. There is no controller. I tried dance game that requires special skills. You have to learn movements during pre-game training session and later to try earn points by dancing as accurate as possible. You need to repeat everything that virtual instructor shows you on screen.

The game is fun as it has vibrant graphic and such features  as gamers’  movements recording and freestyle dance entertain you while you playing a game. But, personally, I was discouraged to hear that the game doesn’t support multi-player mode. There is only option to compare your results with general scoreboard online.

The Fascinating TED Talk About the Art of Choosing & Freedom

Sheena Iyengar About the Art of Choosing & Freedom in Different Cultures (Ethnographic Approach)

About Sheena Iyengar – TED.com

Global Mobile Phone Connections Top 5 Billion

Global mobile connections this week surpassed 5 billion, just 18 months after reaching the 4 billion milestone, according to new data published by Wireless Intelligence on July 8, 2010.

Disability Divide: Law and Web Accessibility

Almost one in ten people on the planet is a person living with a disability, it’s over 650 million people (UN data). U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are 54.4 million people, who have some kind of disability in the USA, including 35 million Americans with a severe disability. They face a problem known as “disability divide” – a gap, a “digital divide” within societies in the degree to which people with disabilities have access to and use information and communications technologies (ICT) despite advances in assistive technologies.

The new research paper covers the problem of web accessibility for people with disabilities in the United States, legislation and legal practice in relations to  the issues of applicability of anti-discrimination laws to public and private websites.

The paper tries to critically review and summarize the current situation with web accessibility policy in the USA and existing court cases. Particularly, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act are analyzed through the prism of new technologies, and interpretations by the courts of several circuits are reviewed. The final part is dedicated to various approaches to overcome the narrow interpretation of “public accommodation” by courts and possible future ways for development of anti-discrimination laws in digital media environment.

The research can be accessed through the “Research” page or via this link “Web Accessibility Laws“.

Intellectual Property: Controversial Case of Genes Patenting

On March 29, 2010 a very important event in the field of intellectual property rights and biotechnology has occurred. US District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet in the case Myriad vs. ACLU has issued the decision that concludes the objects of nature – human genes – cannot be an object of patenting[1]. It is the turning point of patenting in the rapidly growing human genetics industry as since its evolution debates about commercialization and intellectual property law lead to very controversial actions.

This decision can clarify the future development of genetics, as the questions of patentability of genetically created products will become more crucial. The important questions are – how do gene patents it influence the intellectual property rights system and what we can do about it?

The Evolution of Machine Translation: Supervening Social Necessity, Hype Cycle, Disruptive Innovation

The new research discusses the evolution of machine translation in 1930s – 2000s considering three important innovation theories: the theory of supervening social necessity, the theory of disruptive innovation, and the hype cycles theory. The work was made in the framework of the MCDM program in the University of Washington, Seattle as a part of “The Evolution and Trends in Digital Media Technologies” papers.

In our research, the arguments and analysis demonstrate that machine translation adoption was conditioned by the supervening socio-cultural factors as globalization of economic changes, growing volume of information, changing language landscape of Internet. The diffusion of the translation technology was happening thanks to non consumers and creating new markets in translation industry. Now, machine translation is on the stage of maturity and will be expand in the next 5 years to new markets, segments, and platforms.

The first part of the paper analyzes the origin and development of machine translation in the 20^th century from the initial ideas to the first commercial systems in the USA and Europe. It will help to explore the factors leading to the growth of machine translation companies in the past reflecting the transformation of machine translation usage from the assimilation of information to the dissemination application. Next part will examine the growing demand for these services in fields as varied as education and commerce, and describe different social implications in these industries. Finally, we’ll explore the possible future trends of machine translation services in the Internet era, looking at services like Google Translate, YouTube, and try to assess its impact on translation industry.

In addition, you will find the annotated bibliography of literature on machine translation that introduces the most interesting and remarkable researches to understand evolutionary mechanisms of technology diffusion.

The research can be accessed through the “Research” page or via this link “Machine Translation“.

What is social media?

I’ve found interesting blog post about “Top 10 Best Social Media Presentations”. It looks very inspirational and creative.

However, there is no definition of social media. I’ve found the one definition that was proposed in the article of two researchers:

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59-68. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003

Here it is: “Social Media is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content.”

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), User Generated Content needs to fulfill three basic requirements: first, it needs to be published either on a publicly accessible website or on a social networking site accessible to a selected group of people; second, it needs to show a certain amount of creative effort; and finally, it needs to have been created outside of professional routines and practices.

Who can suggest alternative and more comprehensive definitions?

Blitz-Presentations in UW, Seattle

The Master of Communication in Digital Media has organized weekly presentations in small groups of graduate students of ‘The Evolution and Trends of Digital Media’ class on February 24, 2010 in the University of Washington, Seattle. It was very interesting impression when you have to make 3-4 presentations for several groups of 3-4 people on the same topic.

My presentation was about an article “The Age of Egocasting” that concerned about impact of personalized media technologies like TiVo and mp3-players on social behavior and interpersonal communication of users. It was written in alarmist style with many examples that looked very tendentious.

Despite the fact that I knew an audience where I made presentation it was actually hard to choose proper strategy of communication as groups were consisted from randomly chosen people. The first couple of groups of students I’ve tried to explain as much information on topic as I was giving presentation in a large group. As a result, it didn’t help much for establishing rapport with my listeners. Information overload is common mistake, which I couldn’t avoid at once.

The difference of small audience from large one is that it ‘s more challenging in finding common ground and common language. You have to concentrate on every person that is harder and requires individual approach to everyone. The groups with members of different gender and age were the most problematic, and the homogeneous groups provided the best opportunity for discussion. They asked questions and tried to interact more actively that apparently enriched overall discussion and presentation.

Fortunately, I’ve adjusted my approach after the first group and switched focus to facilitation of discussion with questions and answers that engages audience much more effectively than just one-way speaking. It was interesting to see how each interlocutor interpreted the same ideas in different ways, and I re-discovered some points of my topic from new positions and dimensions.