archive for the ‘human computer interaction (HCI)’ category

Personalizing news on the long tail

5 October 2009 | Mark Stefik

Online news is a crowded field, and personalized news is becoming the Holy Grail for news publishers facing decreased revenues and outdated business models. The challenge in personalizing the news: matching what people want with what they get. I believe that successful personalizing the news on the long tail requires three approaches with their own unique sources of "power": curation, search, and social participation. To news consumers, the appeal of personalized news is that they can keep up on the news that they care about, better manage their reading time, and address their information overload. For online news producers, the appeal is increased consumer satisfaction and potentially greater revenues.

Why a good curator is more than a filter

15 September 2009 | Mark Stefik

In addition there is growing interest by information consumers in taking more control of their media time. They want personalized news for their specialized interests. The problem? News on specialized topics is often hard to find and is scattered across many sources. Mainstream publishing organizations do not cover topics deep on the long tail because they lack both the editorial resources and the expertise. Can social media provide the means for curating the long tail? In traditional news publishing, the role of curating is typically combined with publishing. While curators of online information are needed to help us find interesting and quality content, the requirements and roles differ from traditional publishing.

Remixing the news

8 September 2009 | Mark Stefik

Once music lovers could "Rip, Mix, and Burn" their own CDs they took control of their listening experiences. The economics and consumer expectations have changed for all digital media. Digital media consumers now demand more flexibility in getting what they want, stretching beyond traditional broadcasting models which pre-package content into channels. But as personalization, discovery, and sharing come to the news, it needs to be different from "playlists". How about social indexing to remix the news?

Reducing the password burden: Implicit Authentication

17 August 2009 | Elaine Shi

How many times a day do you enter passwords in different places AND multiple times in the same place? While passwords are the most widely used method for authenticating users to computer systems and protecting our information, they're also difficult to remember, inconvenient, poorly used, and not always secure. There are multiple ways to authenticate us (something we know, have, are) -- but why not use our habits or routines to implicitly authenticate us?

Making mobile printing easier with QR codes

5 August 2009 | Bo Begole

One of the best features of the new class of U.S. mobile smartphones is that they're finally capable of reading QR (Quick Response) codes. These codes, which already appear all over Japan and Korea, are 2D bar codes typically displayed on something -- such as a poster, webpage, magazine ad, or store window -- and captured by a phone camera. The phone decodes the image and launches the appropriate application to see the text, browse the website, send SMS, or call the number that was contained in the QR code. In all these scenarios, the phone is reading the QR code. But you can also turn this model on its head by having the phone display the code to be read by another device.

Can a recommender choose what’s best?

7 July 2009 | Ellen Isaacs

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.

Serving shoppers’ needs in physical stores: Responsive Mirror

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

The future of pervasive marketing: Scenarios

30 June 2009 | Bo Begole

"Responsive Media" applications are one of the most exciting areas of current research in human-computer interaction. Based on technologies that can detect human response using cameras and other sensors to glean demographic data (gender, race, age) and physiological states (eye gaze, orientation, pupil dilation, skin temp, expression), these applications can be used for human-robot interaction, marketing, gaming, digital concierge avatars, and more.