A place for members of the PARC community to periodically discuss news, events, trends, competencies, markets/applications; share context or narratives we can't easily provide elsewhere; and directly engage with you...

Building Innovation Teams
Posted 2 July 2009 | Jennifer Ernst

I recently enjoyed moderating an almost rowdy dialogue on Building World-Class Innovation Teams, as part of a Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXChange event. For someone immersed in innovation, it's always intriguing to hear the counterpoints from those who aren't as lucky.

Comments (0) Tags: collaboration, open innovation Posted in business of innovation, our culture & processes

Responsive Mirror - Serving shoppers’ needs in physical stores
Posted 1 July 2009 | Bo Begole

We've found that there are certain types of information that shoppers need but still cannot get online. Certain kinds of tactile and physical information cannot easily be communicated electronically: texture, fit, drape, flow, movement, light refraction, heft, etc. So, people still visit stores to find out how things feel. No wonder you can't get that information online - feelings are difficult to communicate electronically, because they use human sensing modalities that are not easily quantifiable and/or are based on individual subjective perception. But we can still help shoppers by supplementing their decision-making processes with electronic information.

Comments (0) Tags: responsive mirror, ubiquitous computing Posted in human computer interaction (HCI), ubiquitous computing

Scenarios in the Future of Pervasive Marketing
Posted 30 June 2009 | Bo Begole

There are many researchers looking at technologies that can detect a human response using cameras and other sensors that pick up demographic data (gender, race, age) and physiological states (eye gaze, orientation, pupil dilation, skin temp, expression, etc.). There are a variety of applications that are envisioned for these technologies including human-robot interaction, marketing, gaming, digital concierge avatars, etc. We refer to this class of applications as "Responsive Media" and it is one of the most exciting areas of current research in human-computer interaction.

Comments (0) Tags: HCI, pervasive computing, research methodology, social media, ubiquitous computing Posted in ethnography, human computer interaction (HCI), ubiquitous computing

Making projectors more social?
Posted 29 June 2009 | Yutaka Yamauchi

So many of us get frustrated with projectors. When you connect your display cable, the image doesn’t show, or it’s stretched, or it’s cut off. You try to troubleshoot but as the audience is waiting quietly, you have to give up and blame the projector.

Projectors are interesting to us because they imply a social activity, but are not in fact social. You need to use a projector in front of an audience that is looking at you — but is the current design appropriate? How can we go about designing such a technology?

Our ethnographic research approach is particularly useful for understanding, and addressing, these sorts of problems.

We conducted a short study of projector use at PARC — 2 weeks of data collection, followed by analysis — to observe how people use the technology and uncover the social issues that would dictate an improved design/ social interaction. Check out this video;...

Comments (0) Tags: collaboration, design, user interface design Posted in ethnography

How social media, twitter, and blogs might change reading bias…
Posted 24 June 2009 | Ed H. Chi

The Augmented Social Cognition research team at PARC has focused on understanding how Google Wave, Twitter, and other new social media is changing the way we consume news and respond to it. I just finished reading some really interesting articles and watching some videos of how people’s behaviors seem to be changing.

First, on June 8th, there was a report that described how, because of the great variety of choices now people have in what they read online, readers now tend to choose news that only fit their view. The research, done by researchers at Ohio State, showed how students tend to seek out and spent time reading media articles that focus on points of views that fit their political ideologies. Students spent 36% more time reading articles that agreed with their points of view.

Perhaps this isn’t too surprising, but it has a huge implication for the future of political discourse,...

Comments (0) Posted in augmented social cognition (ASC), social computing

National Initiative for Social Participation
Posted 15 June 2009 | YF Juan

Social media is not just a technology phenomenon, it is an important part of the cultural and social fabric. Given its prominence in the everyday life around the world, it is surprising that there has not been a systematic understanding of its many dimensions.

Peter Pirolli at PARC is one of the organizers behind a whitepaper that tries point out the importance of social media and calls for a national level organization like NASA to tackle the following 6 challenges:

• A Nation of Neighbors
• A National Deliberative Process
• Encyclopedia of Life
• Climate Collaboratorium
• Energy Initiative: Socio-technical systems supporting reflective communities
• Enabling Healthy Living

You can find the full document and related information at http://iparticipate.wikispaces.com/

Comments (0) Tags: science 2.0 Posted in augmented social cognition (ASC), social computing

Content as Network
Posted 20 May 2009 | YF Juan

It’s rare to meet your hero in person. Rarer yet is to be able to work with your hero on a regular basis. So, it’s pretty mind blowing for me to say that I sit only a few doors down from Van Jacobson who is the primary contributor to TCP/IP, which in term provides the foundation for the internet as we know it today.

Van is leading the PARC effort in content centric networking (CCN). Here’s a high-level talk that he gave a while back that explains the vision — the next generation of the internet.

Comments (0) Posted in networking

Science2.0 and Collaboratories
Posted 17 May 2009 | Ed H. Chi

I’m in Hong Kong on some personal business and have had some alone time to think about our research direction. One of the things we have been doing lately at PARC is understanding more about the past work on collaboration, and how it might be changed (or not) by Web2.0 design principles. We have been talking to Gary and Judy Olson, who are recognized experts in collaboration systems and models for large science remote laboratories formed by scientists across many institutions. These laboratories (called collaboratories by the Olsons) are a great way to understand what works and what doesn’t work in the real world, when CSCW and distant collaboration technologies are put to the test and used in real everyday scientific work. These studies are interesting because they’re real ‘living laboratories’ and scientists engaged in these collaborations because it is necessary to do real work.

One of the best articles that summarizes...

Comments (0) Tags: collaboration, CSCW, research methodology, science 2.0, what we're reading Posted in PARC Living Laboratory, augmented social cognition (ASC), our culture & processes, social computing

Can 802.11 cut the HD TV cords?
Posted 30 April 2009 | YF Juan

802.11 is the de facto wireless standard for computing devices that comes with all wireless PC/laptops, and is increasingly available with mobile handsets and gaming consoles. Can 802.11 become the de facto wireless standard for all electronic devices? Instead of wiring up my new HDTV with all the players and other devices, would something like 802.11 help cut the cords?

This is an issue that a lot of industry players are grappling with and the latest verdict is yes according to this analyst report “802.11n Wi-Fi Technology is the Spoiler at the Wireless HD Video Party; Will Dominate”

Instead of arguing over the technical details, we conducted an informal analysis of how 802.11n will perform in typical home scenarios. Think of it as simulations on how 802.11n will work in a perfect environment - so your performance at home would only be worse…

We wanted to assume a home environment with different types of wireless...

Comments (0) Posted in networking

Social bookmarks as traces left behind as navigational signposts
Posted 24 April 2009 | Ed H. Chi

Social tagging arose out of the need to organize found content that is worth revisiting. It is natural therefore to think of social tagging and bookmarking as navigational signposts for interesting content. The collective behavior of users who tagged contents seems to offer a good basis for exploratory search interfaces, even for users who are not using social bookmarking sites.

In Boston at the CHI2009 conference, we presented a paper that showed how our tag-based search interface called MrTaggy can be used as learning tools for people to find content relating to a particular topic. We have already announced its availability, and also touched upon the way in which it is implemented. Here we will briefly describe an evaluation study we did on this system in order to understand its learning effects.

Short Story:

The tag-based search system allows users to utilize relevance feedback on tags to indicate their interest in various topics, enabling...

Comments (0) Tags: CHI, enterprise 2.0, search, tagging, user interface design, web 2.0 Posted in PARC Living Laboratory, augmented social cognition (ASC), social computing