Paper Reading #17: Mobia Modeler: easing the creation process of mobile applications for non-technical users

Reference Information:

Title: Mobia Modeler: Easing the Creation Process of Mobile Applications for Non-Technical Users

Authors: Florence Balagtas-Fernandez, Max Tafelmayer, Heinrich Hussmann

Conference: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Summary:

In this paper, the authors talk about the tools that they developed called the Mobia Modeler. This tool is aimed at the users without technical background or programming expertise. It facilitates these users to develop mobile phone apps.

The development of mobile applications has now extended from mobile network providers into the hands of ordinary people as organizations and companies encourage people to come up with their own software masterpieces by opening up SDKs, APIs and other development tools.

However, as of the moment, these APIs and tools are only usable by people with programming skills. There is a scarcity of tools that enable users without programming experience to easily build customized mobile applications.

The paper talks about Platform Independent Model and Platform Specific Model. The users create apps using the graphical user interface and the program translates the graphical model to the code taking into consideration the relationship between different modules.

In this paper, the authors present a tool and framework that would enable non-technical people to create their own domain-specific mobile applications. The tool features a simple user-interface that features configurable components to easily create mobile applications. As a proof of concept, they focus on the creation of applications in the domain of mobile health monitoring.

Discussion:

I don't think this program can be used to develop complex applications, however, it can be very easily used to develop simple apps designed to solve simple tasks. I am currently developing a phone app and the process is indeed time-consuming. I can see how this program will generate a huge inflow of app developers and an exponential increase in the number of apps available in the app market.

Paper Reading #16: Mixture Model based Label Association Techniques for Web Accessibility

Reference Information:

Title: Mixture Model based Label Association Techniques for Web Accessibility

Authors: Muhammad Asiful Islam, Yevgen Borodin, I. V. Ramakrishnan

Conference: UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology

Summary:

The internet used to consist of text-based pages, but today the internet has grown into a massive chunk of data. The information is growing exponentially each day. However, many websites are not designed for blind users. An important aspect of making the Web accessible to blind

users is ensuring that all important web page elements such

as links, clickable buttons, and form fields have explicitly

assigned labels. Properly labeled content is then correctly

read out by screen readers, a dominant assistive technology

used by blind users.

Improperly labeled form

fields can critically impede online transactions such as

shopping, paying bills, etc. with screen readers. Very often

labels are not associated with form fields or are missing

altogether, making form filling a challenge for blind users.

Algorithms for associating a form element with one of several

candidate labels in its vicinity must cope with the variability

of the element’s features including label's location

relative to the element, distance to the element, etc. Probabilistic

models provide a natural machinery to reason with

such uncertainties. In this paper, the authors present a Finite Mixture

Model (FMM) formulation of the label association problem.

The variability of feature values are captured in the FMM

by a mixture of random variables that are drawn from parameterized

distributions. Then, the most likely label to be

paired with a form element is computed by maximizing the

log-likelihood of the feature data using the Expectation

Maximization algorithm.

The FMM approach was also adopted for two related problems: assigning labels from an external

Knowledge Base to form elements that have no candidate

labels in their vicinity and for quickly identifying clickable

elements such as add-to-cart, checkout, etc., used in online

transactions even when these elements do not have textual

captions e.g., image buttons without alternative text. The authors provide

a quantitative evaluation of their techniques, as well as

a user study with two blind subjects who used an aural web

browser implementing the approach.

The results of the experiments showed that after using VSM, 95% of the web elements were correctly labeled. Couple of blind users were asked questions and feedback to rate the system on the Likert scale. Both the users gave a very postive feedback and mentioned that they've always had problems filling out the online forms but this task was made easy after the web elements in the forms were properly labeled.

Discussion:

This idea is one example of how technology can be used to change lives. Technology has tremendous potential to benefit people. The paper does a great job at increasing the accessibility of the web for the blind users.

Overall, the paper was quite technical and presented the reader with complex mathematical formulas and code segments that were not quite comprehensible in the first reading.

Book Reading #41: Why We Make Mistakes

Summary:

Chapter 2:

This chapter sounds like a continuation of the first chapter, however, now he changes the focus from vision to meanings. He claims that meanings matter while details don't, which is why we forget names since names don't have much of a meaning. Then he talks about slip-of-tongue errors and gives an interesting example of the slip-of-tongue error committed by Joe Theismann on national media. The author also talks about why we forge passwords and hiding places. Finally, he talks about why eye witnesses make errors in identifying the suspects.

Chapter 3:

In this chapter, the author talks about how we connect the dots in our memory to form a complete image. In one of the examples he mentions that during a wine tasting event, people rated the more expensive wine to be the better one even though there was the same wine in one of the bottles marked with a cheaper price tag. He also mentions that smell and color play an important role in forming perceptions, for example, pink is a feminine color while black demonstrates power.

Discussion:

The examples make this book very interesting. The experiment in which people were tested if they remembered the exact details of a penny proves that we don't store details in the memory. Also, he mentions that we must come up with passwords quickly else we ourselves end up forgetting it. I think this was pretty interesting. Also, the wine bottle example that he provides in chapter 3, was really fascinating.

Book Reading #39: Why We Make Mistakes

Reference Information
Title: Why We Make Mistakes
Author: Joseph T. Hallinan
Publisher: 2009 Crown Archetype

Summary:

Introduction:

I thought this chapter was very similar to chapter 5 from the book design of everyday things since both these chapters address human errors and their types. He also mentions some interesting facts like most of us show a preference for the number 7. He also talks about how people keep forgetting their passwords. He states the we make mistakes but blame the wrong cause. In most cases, the human is not to blame but the poor design of the machine is.

Chapter 1:

This chapter talks about our perception about our vision. The author mentions that we don't really see as much as we think we see. Many a times we just look, but we don't really see i.e. we get a general image, but we don't focus on details. He also mentions some interesting human tendencies like we are more likely to look at our right first. Author says that we don't find something often, we tend to miss it. To prove this he mentions error rate of radiologists in finding cancerous tumors.

Discussion:

I enjoyed both these chapters. The examples provided by the author are very interesting and sometimes surprising. I think knowing why we make mistakes can help us to avoid mistakes.

Book Reading #40: Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 14: Education for Choice
Summary
In the final chapter of the book, Mead continues to focus on the education of the youth in Samoa and compares it with American education. Mead once again mentions that the kids in Samoa have to make many choices and decisions at a very young age. Despite some differences, there are some similarities in the American and the Samoan culture.

While talking about American culture, Mead says that people have a wrong idea about American society providing limitless choices while actually that's not true.
Mead finally says that a civilization where there are so many choices and so many different ways of doing things, parents must teach their children how to think rather than teaching them what to think. They should let the children make their choices.

Discussion
Mead makes a good point in this chapter by mentioning how education must be imbibed on children by letting them make their choices. She specifically says that we should teach them how to think. However, today, after about 80 years after the book was written this is actually a reality. Most parents today let their kids make their own choices and choose their own careers. Thus, we can see that civilizations take time to mold. They start off as primitive and then there are slow positive changes like forming the constitution, the bill of rights, forming the education and the health care system etc which convert the civilization into a developed and prosperous one. Who knows, after a few centuries, Samoa might have a very developed civilization.

Book Reading #38: Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 13
Summary
This chapter compares the Samoan and American youth. Mead discusses the difference in the social environments between the two cultures. She mentions that American children have many more choices as compared to children in Samoa. The Samoan child knows about life, death and sex. She states that no Samoan child is spoiled.

Education

She mentions that American children go to school to pursue their interests and goals. On the other hand Samoan children start assisting the elders in everyday work of the society.

Display of affection:

Samoans do not display their feelings and affection as openly and with the same magnitude as the American youth.

Discussion

I we see carefully, all primitive cultures are more or less the same, while all the developed cultures are pretty much the same. School is a sign of development, and that's why a kid from developed culture like America would could to school to achieve formal education. If the high school and college degrees mark the person's level of education and intelligence then every kid has to go to school. On the other hand, the skills of a Samoan kid are marked by his acumen in fishing, farming, carpentry etc. and so, he starts to get involved in these jobs from a very young age.

Ethnography Results, Week 7

Goal

My goal this week was to log on to second life and teleport to a place where I can find high density of people. Then, make a statement about a controversial topic that will trigger a debate. Make observations about the debate, if it is more technical and educational or if it contains more hate words, negative sentiment and derogatory language.

Methods of Study:

• Teleport to the Newbie Island
• Observe the mood of the people.
• Make a controversial statement to trigger a debate.
• Make observations from what people say about the issue.
• Judge the tone of the debate.

When I got to the newbie island, i noticed that one of the guys was changing his costume very frequently. All the costumes he was wearing were superhero costumes. First, he showed up in the spider-man costume, then superman, then batman and lastly he-man.

A controversial statement I used:

"I think all the superheroes are faggots (gay)!"

Observations:

Initially people interpreted this statement as something against the superheroes. So, they started talking about real life superheroes and they help people and why they are important. One of the good point was that super heroes inspire kids to behave well. Some people remained neutral while some people agreed that super hero costumes usually look pretty stupid and lame.

However, soon the debate switched to the other aspect of the statement - Homosexuality. This is what I was really looking for. Homosexuality is a very controversial topic and I wanted to know people's opinions about the issue.

Most people present at the Newbie Island actually supported homosexuality. Most of them said that they had no issues with people being homosexual. One of them asked me straight up that what was my problems with gay people since I made a controversial statement. I tried to keep the debate going. The debate lasted for about an hour.

Tone of the debate:

The debate did not contain a lot of obscene words or hate words. It was surprisingly quite educational. I think one of the reasons for this is the place where you carry on the debate. At the newbie island, most of the folks who frequent there come from good backgrounds - college students, housewives, professionals etc. Also, when I checked the profiles of the people who were present there, most of them were from California, some from New York and New Jersey region, a few from Washington and a couple from Chicago, Illinois. People from other states formed a minority. Since most people available there were from big cities, especially from the west coast, they had a more liberal attitude.

Overall Experience

The overall experience was very interesting. I did collect a lot of qualitative data. It was interesting to know what people think about the LGBT community. Lot of people on SL actually are intelligent and do make sense opposing to the popular belief that people on SL are time-killing procrastinators and losers. I found a lot of interesting people on SL who are professionals, doing great in their lives.