interaction design – Page 3

by Carina Steindl - January 4, 2021January 17, 2021

Labeled Content – A “State of the art” Analysis

Analyzing the state of the art of content labels.

State of the art refers to the highest level of general development at a particular time. In this case we will take a look at currently used design method and interaction process when interacting with misleading information. Some of the examples have already been shown in prior postings in a different context.

Since there are a lot of social platforms around, only the most popular ones will be analyzed. In this statistic you can clearly see which platforms have the most active users.

Find more statistics at Statista

Clearly the market leader is Facebook, which is why it is the first social media platform in this analysis.

Facebook

Facebook is not only the market leader, it is also the biggest platform for misleading content in any forms. As most people already know, Facebook was a part of a major election scandal in the presidential election 2016, but this was not at all unpredictable. Some studies from 2012 showed that Facebook was a powerful, non-neutral force in electoral politics. Back then the “I Voted” button had driven a small but measurable increase in turnout, primarily among young people.

The research showed that a small design change by Facebook could have electoral repercussions, especially with America’s electoral-college format in which a few hotly contested states have a disproportionate impact on the national outcome.

With this knowledge it is even more important to be really careful about design changes on this platform, because the priorly described effect does not only happen on Facebook. It is happening all over the social platforms.

Facebook Content Labeled as False Information

This is an example of an as false information labeled content. Facebook uses a dark or greyish overlay or a blur effect to let you see the picture and also puts some information onto it. This information includes an icon, a clear bold headline with a subtitle and a link, which leads you to an independent fact-checker site or some other article.

The research questionnaire should help understand how people interact with this kind of content, if they really click the link and how it makes them feel. Furthermore it should show how and if the design of information makes a difference on how trustworthy it is and also which key factors need to be in place to make information believable.

Instagram

Instagram uses the same technique as Facebook for labelling content. This may come from the fact that Instagram belongs to Facebook, which is also why I am not going to analyze this any further.

Youtube

What about Youtube? Youtube is the not only one of the largest social media platforms, it is also often used as a search engine. Most people love it because it offers so much, like tutorials or short explanations and you can even watch some movies for free. However, this might not be as great as at it was because of all the commercials. Just remember the “Good old Days”.

Despite the fact that Youtube is a big player, it is often overlooked when it comes to misleading information, but this statistic shows that a great share of the potentially false information which is flowing around about the corona virus actually has its roots on Youtube.

Data analysis: users find questionable information on the coronavirus especially on Youtube and disseminate it via Whatsapp

Not only does this mean that that by far the most frequent source of potentially false information reported to correctiv.org by readers are Youtube videos. It also means that most of them share exactly this false information through other apps like WhatsApp.

So how does Youtube label their content?

YouTube expands its fact checking feature to the UK | Daily Mail Online — Youtube – Labeled Content about Covid-19

Today, Jan 4th 2021, the dailymail.co.uk wrote that YouTube has started displaying fact-check information panels to users in the UK, in an attempt to stop the spread of misinformation on the video platform.

UK users will start seeing the independent, fact-checked information from third-party organisations on the Google-owned platform from Thursday.

Panels will appear above search results, offering ‘more context’ and links to reputable sources of information relating to whatever users are searching for.

Facit

Most platforms use more or less the same technique or process for misleading or false content. Even the design looks similar on all of these platforms. The strategy most of them use looks like this:

Hard Questions: What's Facebook's Strategy for Stopping False News? - About Facebook — Facebook’s Strategy for Stopping False News

Links

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

https://correctiv.org/en/latest-stories/fact-checking/2020/05/18/data-analysis-users-find-questionable-information-on-the-coronavirus-especially-on-youtube-and-disseminate-it-via-whatsapp/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8764835/YouTube-expands-fact-checking-feature-UK.html

by Lukas Franz - December 18, 2020December 18, 2020

I’m down, cheer me up!

At least since the beginning of the 21st century, we can witness a shift in the occurring of mental illnesses and how we treat them. On one hand, we face an increase in i.e. depression, bipolar disorder, or anxiety disorder, and on the other hand an increasingly outspoken society that stands for the destigmatization of mental disorders.

Mental health is without a doubt of great importance since it affects how we think, feel, and act each day. It contributes to our decision making process, how we cope with stress and how we relate to others in our lives.

What is happening?

Our mentality is affected by biological factors, our family history, and life experiences. The interaction between society and ourselves, be it physical or digital, contributes to the changes in psychology. Western civilization is best characterized as a rather individualistic society that is embedded in capitalism, demanding hard work to live a good life.

In search of…

There is an ongoing search for finding inner peace and a true self for generation X and Y, even for people who are not suffering from mental diseases. It seems like a lot of people have a latent dissatisfaction, and that combined with a quantified self that tries to be as good as it can to keep up, makes up a search for “healing”. Recently many different practices got popular, such as yoga and meditation, fasting, taking ice baths while using the Wim Hof (breathing) method, or participating in an ayahuasca ceremony, just to name a few. So people do all sorts of things to approach their mindset, and to be more healthy.

A creative approach

So, to me the topic of mental health is very interesting as you might have noticed, and I want to help. If my final proposal will be located in the medical sector, in the field of consumer electronics or somewhere else is open for now. But to narrow it down I will focus and further discover the following:

Medical VR: Is there a way to enhance the effects of therapy with the aid of technology? I think of a tool for psychiatrists and psychologists to deepen the connection with their clients. A well-designed tool that is easy to use yet effective. To open up in front of a therapist one needs to feel comfortable. To do so it might be interesting to use virtual reality to provide an experience that is a vehicle to better understanding – to feel more empathetic. The therapist could see through the eyes of the client for example with projected POV images.

If somebody suffers from a childhood trauma it could also be possible to generate scenes (with AI) in which the trauma is revisited in a positive way to overcome the trauma. I am curious about creating a journey in which the user goes through different stages, representing an experience that will change his life or at least his mood for the better. With sophisticated tools like measuring the heartbeat, transpiration, eye movement, and so on, the experience could be an answer to the current body situation, always adapting to the user.

Affecting the senses: Very tempting to me as well is the design of light, sound and haptics, and the embedment into our everyday life. A haptic object that calms us down, mood changing lights or touching sounds – our senses need to be approached multidimensionally. Currently, light is used more and more to treat seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a sort of depression that occurs typically during autumn and winter each year. But we are not only affected by the sheer amount of light but by the colors, the combination with sound and haptics. There is more to discover to deal with our senses in a more appropriate way on a multidimensional level.

References

Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari (2015)

Applications of VR Technology to Mental Health Issues

https://aixr.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/disabled-man-in-vr-goggles-PQAVZFV-1080×675.jpg

https://www.br.de/puls/themen/leben/mental-health-initiativen-depression-psychische-gesundheit-100.html

https://miro.medium.com/max/640/1*r3nk1mgPBKaNEjKeAY6Ptg.jpeg

by Benedicte Rozant - December 17, 2020

Clumsy Interaction

Description

I’m clumsy, it’s one of my characteristics and it’s always the first-word people use to describe me.
I thought a lot about this word and ended up asking myself the question: Is it me who is clumsy or my interactions? So what is a clumsy interaction? For me, it includes all interactions that result in a different outcome than expected, whether it is a man-to-man or man-to-machine relationship.
I wondered where this awkwardness could come from, and if it was inappropriate behavior? Indeed, when we consider something different or have difficulty understanding it, we try to adapt our behavior and this adaptation is not always successful and this is what I would call awkward interaction.
In some cases, the adaptation is quick and after two or three clumsinesses, our behavior becomes adequate, while in other cases, the adaptation seems impossible and the clumsinesses are recurrent.
By studying a human’s behavior, we can understand how he functions and the situations he has difficulty coping with. Through this research, I plan to use Behavioural Design to better understand the subject.

Motivations

What interests me about interaction design is that it is centered on the human, his behavior, and the way he interacts with his environment, both real-time and digital.
My main motivation for this subject is above all to understand human behavior because before analyzing interactions that can be awkward, it is necessary to understand how humans interact. It is also to understand their relationship to the object, how it is characterized because it is a key element in the appearance of awkwardness.

Introduction

I decided to focus on this research on clumsy interactions between humans and machines or between humans and objects. I am trying to understand where this awkwardness comes from, at what level it appears, and what the factors are. Here are different examples and scenarios that lead me to the main questioning of my research.

Understanding clumsy interaction

First example

We have an older person, she uses her phone, and like many people her age, she has difficulty understanding all the possible uses. Her interaction with the object is limited by her lack of knowledge, not intuitive of the object and this creates awkwardness.

Exactly the opposite of this scenario we have the interactions between children and smartphones. These interactions are intuitive and above all too important. Where older people will have difficulty in appropriating the object, children, digital natives, will make it an extension of themselves. And in that, it is also a clumsy interaction because a smartphone is there to be used as intelligently as reasonably.
Let’s now talk about Beatrice Schneider’s Tody concept, which focuses on this subject by creating a product that makes the link with the phone and aims to reduce the time of use of smartphones by children. This small object serves as a vector between the family, the child, and the phone.

What is also very interesting with this product is the fact that it is equipped with two eyes, a mouth, and four legs, which makes it immediately more alive.
All this information leads me to a first question:

What is the impact of society and new technologies on our interactions and behaviors, according to our profile?

Second example

Let’s now take as a reference a garbage can and the attitude we have towards it. It is an everyday object, yet our consideration of this object is negative, we tend to find it dirty and we don’t particularly like to interact with it.

Objects are the basis of our everyday interactions, but more than objects, machines are also present in our daily lives. It is important to see that today we try to minimize the discomfort and awkwardness in our contact with objects and machines through personification.
Let’s take the example of the robot Nina from the CNRS, which aims to assist people and help them in their daily life. What is interesting with this robot is that it has been given a personality and humanity through its face. He has lips, articulated jaw, irises, eyelids and is animated to reproduce facial expressions. This “human” appearance will not theoretically be of any use to the robot, yet it will allow people to perceive him differently and thus give him a real place in everyday life.

A well-known example of the implementation of human behavior in a robot is the movie Wally, where we are shown the history and “life” of a robot, we can feel emotions and empathy when looking at it because we can clearly see eyes and a head.
All this information leads me to a second question:

How do we consider objects through our interactions?

by Alexander Moser - December 13, 2020December 22, 2021

Haptik & Feedback

Einführung

In diesem Blog beschäftige ich mich damit, welchen Stellenwert, Haptik & Feedback in unserem Alltag haben und wozu eine zusätzliche Ebene der Wahrnehmung dient. Ich finde es besonders spannend, das Thema Haptik in die digitale Welt mit einfließen zu lassen. Nur weil etwas digital ist, soll es nicht heißen, dass es nicht erlebbar oder spürbar ist.

Fragen mit denen ich mich beschäftige:

Wann ist der Einsatz von haptischem Feedback empfehlenswert?
Gute und schlechte Formen von Feedback?
Ist haptisches Feedback intuitiv?
Gibt es eine einheitliche Sprache für Feedback?
Gewollte vs. ungewolltes Feedback.
Aspekte der Barrierefreiheit.

Die Möglichkeiten der Interaktionen scheinen heutzutage unbegrenzt.

Viele unserer Schnittstellen sind durchwegs auf einem Touchscreen zu bedienen. Jedoch gibt es immer noch Anwendungsfälle, in denen ein reines Bedienen via Touch-Interaktion nicht ausreicht. Speziell im technischen und industriellen Bereich werden gerne analoge Knöpfe bevorzugt. Die Angst ist groß, dass auf einem Touchscreen gewisse Operationen unbeabsichtigt durchgeführt werden.

Durch eine zusätzliche Wahrnehmungsebene kann der Zustand einer ausgeführten Interaktion soweit emuliert werden, dass Nutzer die Veränderung des Zustands durch ein haptisches Feedback wahrnehmen können, beziehungsweise beim Einstellen eines Wertebereichs die aktuelle Position, beispielsweise eines Drehreglers, zumindest prozentuell, übersetzt wahrnehmen können. Jedoch beschränkt sich die Haptik nicht nur auf Bildschirme.

Durch den Einsatz von haptischen Feedbacks können mittels z.B.: Eingabeschnittstellen oder Wearables zusätzliche Ebenen der Steuerung/Wahrnehmung erzeugt werden um Menschen einen zusätzlichen Sinn in ihrer Wahrnehmung oder Interpretation von Einflüssen aus der Umwelt, die für den Menschen durchaus unsichtbar sein können, aber sich durch eine Haptik bemerkbar machen können.

Abb.1: Haptisches Feedback – http://kentlyons.net/images/touch-vt.png_

LOGITECH

Ein bekannter Hersteller von Computerperipherien ersetzt mittlerweile die mechanischen Teile seiner Computermaus durch Elektromagneten, mit denen es gezielt möglich ist, den Widerstand des Scrollrads zu beeinflussen. Am Beispiel: Logitech MX Anywhere 3 mit der Gerätesoftware „Logi Options“. So ist es möglich, dass das der Widerstand des Scrollrads, abhängig von der jeweiligen Situation und Software, geregelt wird. Somit spüren Nutzer, ob bzw. wie viel Widerstand das Scrollrad im aktuellen Moment bietet.

Abb.2: Screenshot Logitech Options MAC OSX

XEELTECH

Das österreichische Unternehmen Xeeltech fokussiert sich im Speziellen darauf, Drehgeber mit haptischen Funktionalitäten und Erweiterungen zu entwickeln. So ist es nun möglich, Werte durch vordefinierte Parameter fühlbar und erlebbar zu machen.

Xeeltech – IFA 2020 Berlin

Quellen

Preim Bernhard, Dachselt Raimund: Interaktive Systeme
2. Auflage – Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag 2015

Haptics in UX – 07. Dezember 2020
https://uxplanet.org/how-haptics-changed-the-game-of-usability-3ff3ae2c22e4

Basics of haptic responses – 07. Dezember 2020
https://medium.com/@martynreding/basics-of-designing-haptic-responses-63dc6b52e010

Haptic UX: The design guide for building touch experiences – 07. Dezember 2020
https://medium.muz.li/haptic-ux-the-design-guide-for-building-touch-experiences-84639aa4a1b8

Xeeltech – 07. Dezember 2020
https://www.xeeltech.com_

Haptisches Feedback in Touchanwendungen – 07. Dezember 2020
https://www.interelectronix.com/de/haptisches-feedback-in-touchanwendungen.html

Logitech MX Anywhere 3 – 07. Dezember 2020
https://www.logitech.com/de-at/products/mice/mx-anywhere-3.910-005989.html_

Alexander Moser
https://www.alexander-moser.at/

by Janina Schindler - December 13, 2020

The role and benefits of skeuo- and neumorphism in interaction design

I‘ve said it many times over the last few years. But today with even more certainty, I‘ll say it again: skeuomorphism is coming back.
— Tobias Van Schneider (2020)

Skeuomorphism is a term most often used in graphical user interface design to describe interface objects that mimic their real-world counterparts in how they appear and/or how the user can interact with them. Based on skeuomorphism and the famous design trend flat design, a new combination of both – neumorphism – is evolving the design tools.

Apple was the first company who revolutionized skeuomorphism and integrated it in their standard user interface design. They took advantage of human‘s preferences to things that are similar and created an interface, where no introductions are needed to understand what the icons stand for. In the last years, some design critics were talking about the dearth or even the death of skeuomorphism, but the trend is coming back and has evolved with a completely adapted design.

I‘m interested in the opportunities, that skeuo- and neumorphic interface design are having in the design world right now, concering user experience, design itself and especially usability. This design techniques give materials a new physicality and integrate the analog world into the digital, not the other way around. It‘s easy to make it responsible throughout the reduced look and color palette and makes it possible to adapt new technologies among all segments of users. Increasing the level of usability is definitely the greatest benefit, due to intuitive use of the skeuomorphism object.

I‘m curious in how skeuomorphism/ neumorphism is used in the digital world nowadays and how it will evolve our future smart devices or even the whole web, based on it‘s usability improvement. Are there fields exploring, where this design trend can be used? For example, can it be used in a modern way to help the elder generation use the smartphone and learn the common gestures? Are the common gestures changing or developing, because of the intuitive use of skeuo- / neumorphic design elements? Does it change the tools designers are working with? What mental methods can be used to attract the human eye? Can the simple characteristic e.g. of buttons in neumorphism become problematic (good asthetic, less usability throughout minimalistic design)? Are there ways to integrate it in the 3D world?

Links

Desk Online Magazine (11.12.2020):
https://vanschneider.com/skeuomorphism-is-making-a-comeback

Mantra Design Blog (11.12.2020):
https://www.mantralabsglobal.com/services/experience-strategy-consulting/blogs/ui-design-trends-3-reasons-why-neumorphism-isnt-effective

Featured Image (11.12.2020):
https://dribbble.com/shots/9236283-Sleep-Cycle-App-Neumorphism-Redesign

by Carina Steindl - December 13, 2020January 17, 2021

Digital Truth

Introduction to the topic Digital Truth.

In times of new media and fake news it is hard to know which facts are actually true and which are not but why is this a problem for humanity?

You might think that some misinformation might not be harmful, but a workshop of Yale Law School and the Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression showed that fake news can have a bad influence on our society. This problem exists not only in politics but also in our daily life. But what means bad influence and how can we make the online world more transparent?

Since the beginning of time humans were never exposed to such tons of data as we know today. At the beginning of the internet age people did not really use or understand the power of the world wide web. It started around the turn of the century that humans got connected and since then it increased exponentially. The devices got easier to use and the screen design improved as well. Originally most of the information online was reduced to fun articles and some early staged websites with mostly bad usability but that changed quickly. More and more humans became as we call them “Users” and at the same time the amount of misinformation rose and the transparency decreased. Nowadays it is hard to distinguish what information is correct and what is only there to get our emotions out of control. Bots and people who distribute false stories for profit or engage in ideological propaganda are now part of our everyday life as we spend around up to seven hours a day in front of a screen. Since the beginning of the pandemic our daily screen time might have increased even more. The positive or negative health effects of screen time are influenced by quality and content of exposure. The most salient danger associated with “fake news” is the fact that it devalues and delegitimizes voices of expertise, authoritative institutions, and the concept of objective data – all of which undermines society’s ability to engage in rational discourse based upon shared facts.

Reseach result of the American Press Institute

In 2014 some researches tried to cluster algorithms which have emerged as a powerful meta-learning tool to analyze massive volumes of data generated by time-based media. They developed a categorizing framework and highlighted the set of clustering algorithms which were best performing for big data. However, one of their major issues was that it caused confusion amongst practitioners because of the lack of consensus in the definition of their properties as well as a lack of formal categorization. Clustering data is the first step for finding patterns which may lead us to detecting misinformation, false stories, ideological propaganda or so-called fake news. It is also a method for unsupervised learning. Furthermore, it is a common technique for statistical data analysis used in many other fields of science and if used correctly it could be a game changer for our online and offline society.

PEW Research Center Internet and Technology

Why does Fake News exist?

A pretty important thing to know about social media, is that always the most recent published or shared content is the first you will see. That means if there is no reliable recent post on a topic, it leaves a so-called data void behind, which means as soon as somebody publishes something new on this topic, it will be shown first. This comes from the fact that we always long for “new” news, despite the fact that no one, no tool nor algorithm has ever screened these information verifying its accuracy.

Example of how data voids work

What about Twitter?

Since May 2020 Twitter is trying to make it easy or easier to find credible information and to limit the spread of potentially harmful and misleading content. They introduced new labels and warning messages that will provide additional context and information on some Tweets. These labels will link to a Twitter-curated page or external trusted sources containing additional information on the claims made within the Tweet.

Twitter labels for false information about COVID-19

Twitter warnings for conflicting content

So Twitter is one of the major social media platforms actually labeling content, despite it being the Tweet of the current president of America alias Donald J. Trump. Also they are actively trying to decrease the spread of misinformation though introducing an extra notice before you can share conflicting content. Since content can take many different forms, they started clustering the false or misleading content into three broad categories:

categories of false or misleading content

Of course Twitter is not the only platform labeling false information or content going viral – Facebook and Instagram started doing that too. Instagram has been working with third-party fact checkers, but up until now the service was far less aggressive with misinformation than Facebook. Also qualitativ fact checking takes time, which can be problematic and there is still some catching up to do.

Instagram adds 'false information' labels to prevent fake news from going viral — Facebook and Instagram – labeled content

Labeling or removing postings is a first approach in the right direction, but it does not solve all issues that come with false information and how we interact with it. This is why this topic is so important for the future and the wellbeing of our society.

Sources:

Fighting Fake News Workshop Report hosted by The Information Society Project & The Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression

Links:

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2020/updating-our-approach-to-misleading-information.html

https://towardsdatascience.com/the-5-clustering-algorithms-data-scientists-need-to-knowa36d136ef68

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Survey-of-Clustering-Algorithms-for-Big-Data%3A-and-

https://researchguides.austincc.edu/c.php?g=612891&p=4258046 /I

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000265552

https://muckrack.com/blog/2017/02/27/fake-news-bubble

https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/elections/trusted-elections-network/talking-about-misinformation-with-first-draft/