mcantamesse.net

Oggi sto dedicando la giornata alla conversione dei video acquisiti durante le sessioni sperimentali dello studio 1…

In pratica usando la funzione embedded nel motore di Half-Life 2, durante la sessione abbiamo registrato il demo di ciò che accadeva a video… Ora sto facendo girare il gioco, acquisendo il video con camtasia, per poi convertirlo in wmv, per analizzarlo con  .

Pessimismo e noia.

Su Terranova stanno discutendo di curricula, programmi ed opportunità di carriera accademica nel campo dei videogame, con approccio umanistico o sociale.

study synthetic worlds and video games as graduate students, from a humanistic or social-scientific perspective

La discussione è viva ed accesa, ed i commenti (illuminanti o meno) si sprecano…

Su Gameology, invece, è comparso ieri questo post:

this is an incredible opportunity for any university library that would like to start a classic games special collection. Though $30,000 isn’t exactly petty cash in the humanities, it’s hardly out of the range of possibility either. Having the hard media trumps emulators by an order of proverbial magnitude. Spread the word. I can’t imagine the sort of research opportunity this would provide ludology scholars.

Mi sento un provinciale, quando penso allo stato della ricerca su questi temi in Italia…

Nicolas (http://tecfa.unige.ch/perso/staf/nova/blog/2007/05/08/command-line-as-the-future-of-interface/) riporta alcuni stralci di Donald Norman, realtivamente al futuro dell’interazione HCI:

[…] Donald Norman points towards the command line, as an interesting metaphor:

“What is to replace the GUI? Ah yes, journalists are constantly asking me that question, hoping I will speak of virtual reality implants by which we fly effortlessly through hyperspaces, finding just the items of interest, then immediately packaging and caressing them to do our bidding in reports, diagrams, and instant insights of wisdom. Well, the answer is much simpler, and it’s already here: search. The real surprise, though, is that search engines have evolved into answer engines, controlled through a modern form of command line interface.
(…)
Even though these three services are called search engines, they are in fact becoming answer services controlled through their command line interfaces. The control language seems more ad-hoc than systematic, and the language forms are still spotty and idiosyncratic, but it is nevertheless a form of command line interaction
(…)
GUIs were—and still are—valuable, but they fail to scale to the demands of today’s systems. So now command line interfaces are back again, hiding under the name of search. Now you see them, now you don’t. Now you see them again. And they will get better and better with time“

The main reason he mentions for that is flexibility (”They are tolerant of variations, robust, and exhibit slight touches of natural language flexibility”).

Questo ritorno dell’interfaccia testuale, dopo l’evoluzione dai comandi shell alle metafore di Windows ed ai desktop tridimensionali, non stupisce chi sulla tastiera ci passa le giornate: dal “semplice” cut&paste alle scorciatoie delle varie applicazioni, all’autocompletamento nel word processor, le modalità di interazione tramite tastiera sono molto diffuse.
Più raro trovare siti web con gli access key attivi… ancora più rare le applicazioni ajax che si basano sulla tastiera come principale meodo di input.

Nel lungo peregrinare alla ricerca del sistema GTD perfetto (solo un’altra scusa per procastrinare, ad essere sinceri) sono incappato in Remember The Milk.
A parte le considerazioni sulla sua efficacia in termini di gestione delle liste di attività (con l’integrazione con Google Calendar, Outlook 2007, Netvibes ed amenità varie), mi ha colpito l’uso estensivo delle scorciatoie via tastiera: è sufficiente premere “T” (task), iniziare a digitare l’attività, “INVIO”, “D” (Due) ed immettere la data… e via, per immettere le etichette, la priorità eccetera. Stupito dalla semplicità e velocità che caratterizzano tale soluzione (risulta più veloce di Outlook, nella maggior parte dei casi !) ho cercato altri modi per sfruttare i comandi via tastiera.

Per questo motivo ho rispolverato AutoHotkey. Ho spesso utilizzato spesso questa applicazione per creare GUI e macro per semplificare la cattura e l’invio di dati da pc remoti, nel corso di alcune ricerche… Al Cyberlab, ad esempio, appena conclusa una sessione sperimentale, uno scrpit crea una copia di backup dei dati raccolti, ferma la registrazione di Audacity, esporta il file audio, rinomina il tutto, lo carica su DropSend e mi invia un’email di conferma.
Questo strumento è così flessibile (e poco avaro di risorse) da semplificare parecchio la vita, nell’esecuzione di task ripetitivi, o per creare un unico comando che esegua più azioni: una routine che utilizzavo solitamente durante il mio soggiorno a Gatineau, ad esempio, consisteva nello scaricare le email, aggiornare i feed, selezionare i 10 più recenti, copiarli ed incollarli in Word, stampare il tutto, sospendere il notebook… Il tutto mentre lottavo per accedere al bagno (gioie e dolori della condivisione).

Ancora più semplice (sebbene meno flessibile) è Launchy: permette di avviare le applicazioni installate, aprire i file e, con i plugin disponili, aprire pagine web, o aprire il client email (o Gmail) con l’indirizzo del destinatario già inserito.

 Una gran comodità, per chi come me è pigro per definizione: basta cercare applicazioni nel menu avvio, o quel documento su cui stavo lavorando, salvato sul desktop… Un trick utile consiste nel creare una directory contenente i file .lnk che puntano ai file che ci interessano (anche se dispersi nelle cartelle), e settare Launchy per indicizzare anche quella cartella. Tutto questo (e molto di più) lo fa anche Google Desktop, molto più esigente in termini di memoria e processore (per quello che ho visto sul mio laptop, almeno).

In questi giorni sto valutando anche Enso.
A differenza di Launchy, permette anche di spostarsi tra le finestre (ed i tab di Firefox), di fare semplici manipolazioni del testo (cutpaste, Upper e Lowercase). Risulta comoda la possibilità di “insegnare” ad Enso nuovi comandi (associando all’hotword OPEN il collegamento selezionato).

L’utilizzo della tastiera per interagire con il pc credo sia una valida alternativa per quelle operazioni che richiederebbero parecchi passaggi con il mouse… Per fare un’analisi “keystroke level” grossolana: per aprire il file “Campione.docx” nella cartella “Esperimento 2” sul mio desktop usando il mouse dovrei: raggiungere l’icona “Desktop” nella barra di avvio veloce (sempre che sia attiva), dopio click sulla cartella Desktop per aprirla, e poi iniziare a scorrere l’elenco, trovare il file e fare doppio click per aprirlo. Con Launchy, ALT+Spazio, iniziare a digitare “esp…” freccia Giù, perché è la seconda cartella dell’elenco, premere invio, digitare in Esplorare Risorse “ca”, e poi invio. Più rapido, IMHO.

Resta da esplorare cosa questo significhi per l’evoluzione della HCI.

E voi, che ne pensate ? Utilizzare le scorciatoie da tastiera ? O siete mouse-dipendenti ?

Perdo sempre un sacco di tempo a provare nuove versioni di software: dalla “febbre” per i tool gtd, alla scelta sempre temporanea e ri-negoziabile della soluzione CAQDAS per l’analisi dei dati della tesi.

Per chi soffre come me di questa mania, segnalo la nuova versione beta di QDA Miner

Normand Peladeau at Provalis Research has just released a beta version of QDA Miner 3.0.

New features include:

- Support for image coding (bmp, wmf, jpg, gif, png)
- Query by example (e.g., “find things like this”)
- Automatic document classification (i.e., machine learning)
- Greater integration with WordStat
- … and much, much more.

Mike and I are long-time Provalis users, but we are still discovering features of this powerful and robust software suite (QDA Miner, Wordstat, Simstat).
For my money, it’s the best thing out there if you study text (qualitatively, quantitatively, or both).

Source: New QDA Miner beta
Originally published on Wed, 16 May 2007 14:29:15 GMT by Ken

Nicolas è sempre ricco di stimoli.
Oggi ha sollevato un tema molto importante: la necessità (ed anche l’opportunità) di definire un framework concettuale.

Currently writing a paper about a framework for “mutual location-awareness” (i.e. the representation of significant others’ whereabouts through specific interfaces), I felt the need to reading back some papers about needs of having a “framework”. Reading some HCI literature is a good way to find some ideas about that; the excerpt I quote afterwards are not general theories about framework but examples of justification that are used for awareness and context-awareness in CSCW.

First, most of the papers that present a framework starts by describing the extreme open-ness of the field and the inherent need to have a clearer picture: “no clear overall picture of awareness has yet emerged from the X community”, “Considering the broadness of the term Y, it is difficult for any single research effort to engage the term as a whole”, “As we shall detail, there are a growing number of X Systems and a diversity of approaches”.

These assertion leads researchers to express their concerns towards a “void” or a “lack a firm foundation”” that has consequences:

“Most importantly, this void means that groupware designers have little principled information available to them about how to support awareness in other domains and new systems. Faced with a blank slate for each new application, designers must reinvent awareness from their own experience of what it is, how it works, and how it is used in the task at hand.“(Gutwin and Greenberg, 2002)

As expressed by Jones et al. (2004), a framework would enable to clarify the “design space”:

“in particular, there is no agreed-upon conceptual framework for describing the design space. Without such a framework, it is difficult to characterize precisely what different systems have in common, let alone to explore systematically the range of possible designs. A framework can identify key
challenges and suggest important research opportunities. “

So it’s about: (1) organizing the design space (list features, show choices to be made), (2) showing how important certain tasks can be supported, (3) suggesting ways in which key topics can be addressed, (4) enable to explore unexplored research areas.
The point is then – as described by Gutwin and Greenberg (2002) – to have “ a descriptive theory of awareness for the purpose of aiding groupware design“:

““The framework provides designers with a structure to organize thinking about awareness support, a vocabulary for analysing collaborative activity and for comparing solutions, and a set of
starting points for more specific design work. We do not give prescriptive rules and guidelines, however, since each groupware application will have to operate within particular awareness requirements dictated by the task and the group situation.”“

Now, regarding how to achieve such a goal, building framework is about giving sense to the existing: “We synthesize and organize existing research on Y, and extend this work through a conceptual framework” as claimed by Gutwin and Greenberg (2002) using observations and insights of other developers, employing theories (psychologists, linguists, ethnographers, etc.), carrying out observational studies, developing technologies and applications.

Source: Describing a framework, but why?
Originally published on Mon, 14 May 2007 08:49:37 GMT by Nicolas

As usual, Nicolas writes interesting posts: 

Seen last month in CNN Money, this article describes how the through the combination of satellite maps and 3-D software (the 3D modeling program SketchUp), Google Earth is turning into a virtual online playground. Some excerpts I found interesting below. It starts like the Second Life crazyness:

You can already download user-generated layers that sit on top of Google’s 3-D Earth and show you, for example, the location of celebrity houses or hiking trails or famous landmarks. One dating service has even started showing people looking for partners as a Google Earth layer. Real estate companies have started showing off virtual versions of their buildings (for sale in the real world) on Google Earth. SketchUp allows them to build entire models of their apartments, right down to the microwave oven.

And the more interesting stuff is coming along:

The result could be that we’ll soon populate a virtual version of planet Earth instead of the made-from-scratch metaverses like online games or Second Life. The main element Google Earth is missing today is avatars (…) “I would expect to see someone using Google Earth as a virtual social space by the end of the year,” says Jerry Paffendorf, research director of the Acceleration Studies Foundation

Then the article starts describing how the Web can become a 3D metaverse-like environment with blabla and stuff that I am still dubious about.
Why do I b log this? Even though I am not very enthusiastic about the whole article there are some relevant stuff here. Of course, stories such “Consumers could fly into the virtual New York, go shopping in a virtual Times Square, get past the velvet rope at a virtual Studio 54 and chat with an avatar dressed as Andy Warhol” always get my hackles up. The journalist seems to stretch out a bit his conclusions. IMO what is interesting with google earth and sketchup is the creativity it allows not that it can be the basis for the future of the web. This said, I additionally think it’s very interesting to have a non-avatar based virtual environment; it’s indeed a model on which interesting things could be done (though I feel like some avatar will pop up at some point).

Source: Google Earth + sketchup = non avatar based metaverse?
Originally published on Mon, 08 Jan 2007 15:05:18 GMT by Nicolas

As I told before, I’m using HL2 engine for some studies.

I think wiimote could be an useful input device…

From pasta and vinegar:

This video is quite intriguing. It shows how some wii-fans used the wiimote to play Half-Life 2 on a windows-machine:

Why do I blog this? it’s interesting because it ask the question about to design proper FPS control with gestural interactions, I don’t know how hardcord gamer would feel this…

Source: Use the wiimote to play Half-Life 2 on a windows-machine?
Originally published on Thu, 07 Dec 2006 17:17:08 GMT by Nicolas