Augmented Reality: Increasing collective intelligence posted 23 July 2009 | Lawrence Lee    view bio

Search engines like Google have trained us to believe we can find the answer to any question. Now activity streams from Twitter, Facebook, and others are changing our expectations around information yet again. We now demand information in real-time that’s socially and contextually relevant. Contextual information transforms our interactions within our physical environment… This area of research is called Augmented Reality, and it spans a wide spectrum of applications…

comments (3) tags: augmented reality, collective intelligence, context-aware computing, information overload, mobile devices & interfaces, pervasive computing, recommendation systems, search, technology trends, ubicomp, web 2.0 posted in our culture & processes, our milestones, social & enterprise computing, ubiquitous computing

PART 1: The slowing growth of Wikipedia: some data, models, and explanations posted 22 July 2009 | ed h. chi    view bio

In September of 2008, we blogged about a curious change in Wikipedia that we didn’t know how to explain that we had known for a while, and the ASC group has been looking into understanding this change in the last 6-9 months or so. The change that we w…

comments (7) posted in uncategorized

Experimenting on Mechanical Turk: 5 How Tos posted 21 July 2009 | Markus Jakobsson    view bio

Performing human-subjects experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk offers many benefits, including very low experiment costs, quick turn-around rates, and relatively simple approvals from human subjects boards. But you have to be careful to avoid bias and error…

comments (6) tags: crowdsourcing, Mechanical Turk, phishing, research methodology, science 2.0, usable security posted in ethnography, our culture & processes, security & privacy

Can a recommender choose what’s best? posted 7 July 2009 | Ellen Isaacs    view bio

While doing a user experience evaluation of a mobile recommendation system, I noticed how the list-based design implied that there was a single best choice, with ‘goodness’ decreasing in even increments. This made me wonder whether it makes sense to try to identify the one Best option when you’re choosing among options that vary across many dimensions. Making choices might be easier if we assume that there is rarely one single Best.

comments (0) tags: context-aware computing, decision making, recommendation systems, user centered design, user experience posted in human computer interaction (HCI), ubiquitous computing

Building innovation teams posted 2 July 2009 | Jennifer Ernst    view bio

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 at PARC, it’s always intriguing to hear the viewpoints from those who aren’t as lucky.

comments (0) tags: collaboration, open innovation posted in business of breakthroughs, our culture & processes

Serving shoppers’ needs in physical stores: Responsive Mirror posted 1 July 2009 | Bo Begole    view bio

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. But we can still help shoppers by supplementing their decision-making processes with electronic information.

comments (0) tags: responsive mirror posted in human computer interaction (HCI), ubiquitous computing