Mind the Gap: Design, Technology and Usability

1. Mind the Gap: Design, Technology and Usability Professor Roger James Director of Information Systems University of Westminster

2. Mind the Gap: design, technology & usability • In his 2007 Lovelace lecture for the British Computer Society Sir Tim Berners-Lee used a very simple model which linked cycles of technological change to cycles of social change which then generated profound world changes. The Web was thus described as both a technical and social creation, dependent on both technical protocols and social conventions. • The interplay between disciplines, technology and worlds develops as a function of social scale and technological maturity. Previous technologies have had a profound impact on society although it is argued that the huge size and complexity of the Web also introduces a new repertoire of large-scale emergent phenomena, both planned and unplanned. • We can learn from Neil Postman’s thinking: in any earlier era printing was the technology that became the basis of a monopoly of knowledge “school was an invention of the printing press and must stand or fall on the issue of how much importance the printed word has”. With the dramatic breaking of this monopoly the challenge is to understand those elements of learning that endure and those driven to change by emerging technology. Clear signs are that as technology matures so markets are determined by unsophisticated users not experts, the market buzz moves from the specialist press to the popular press and the markets evolve from niche to commodity. • However our perspective is also distorted by the frantic rate of technological progress, many of the institutional conventions and technology norms in education are very recent changes. Indeed many of the technologies employed by the modern university introduce gaps in use, and gaps in interaction that did not exist before ‘computerisation’. More than a digital divide of the haves and have nots, we are in danger of propagating an interaction divide where the seamless flow of conversation, interaction and learning is stymied by different generations and implementations of technology. • The presentation will explore how the development of technology seeks the design of environments, not of systems, as a common stage of maturity. A wider adoption of technology then builds a societal familiarity which delivers on Esther Dyson’s “intuitiveness is familiarity”. It is an evolution that penalises anything beyond the basic requirements of use by fragmentation and exclusion. If Alan Kay is also correct in his assertion that “the best way to predict the future is to create it” we technologists are challenged by a very different era of design, design in the style of Google: interactive, data intensive, all encompassing and social.

3. Wordle of above

4. Web 2.0: And all that • The aim has to be to make those running universities realise that technology isn’t just something that means you build a room full of computers on your campus.

5. Technology & Design

6. The UX Journey “Most software is run by confused users acting on incorrect and incomplete information, doing things the designer never expected.” — Paul Heckel

7. Scale – from this to that!From one click to web science

8. Getting the policy right • In an expert roundtable conducted by Demos, one participant used a telling analogy to describe the current predicament of the higher education sector: ‘This seminar feels a bit like sitting with a group of record industry executives in 1999.’ • Technology undermined certain business models that sustained the music industry, but the threat was not to music itself, only to the way that current business models worked. New ways of creating and finding music had been made possible.

9. design truth • We may learn from Thamus the following: once a technology is admitted, it plays out its hand; it does what it is designed to do. Our task is to understand what that design is—that is to say, when we admit a new technology to the culture, we must do so with our eyes wide open. From an old bloke, english scholar and technophobe

10. Seeing is believing, or believing is seeing? • This is the sort of change Thamus had in mind … He meant that new technologies change what we mean by "knowing" and "truth"; they alter those deeply embedded habits of thought which give to a culture its sense of what the world is like—a sense of what is the natural order of things, of what is reasonable, of what is necessary, of what is inevitable, of what is real. • When we use such a technology to judge someone's behavior, we have done some thing peculiar. In point of fact, the first instance of grading students' papers occurred at Cambridge University in 1792 at the suggestion of a tutor named William Farish. No one knows much about William Farish; not more than a handful have ever heard of him. And yet his idea that a quantitative value should be assigned to human thoughts was a major step toward constructing a mathematical concept of reality. If a number can be given to the quality of a thought, then a number can be given to the qualities of mercy, love, hate, beauty, creativity, intelligence, even sanity itself. When Galileo said that the language of nature is written in mathematics, he did not mean to include human feeling or accomplishment or insight.

11. Or more skilled? Who knows more about me, than me?

12. Pace of Technological Progress Performance that customers can utilize or absorb Disruptive technologies Incumbents nearly always win Disruptive Technologies:A driver of leadership failure and the source of new growth opportunities Sustaining innovations Performance Entrants nearly always win Time Source: Clayton M. Christensen

13. So where should we be looking? • In 1961 it was relatively easy to predict man would be on the moon by the end of the decade, what we all missed is that everyone would be at home watching it on colour TVs

14. Just what are we desiging? • Exemplary design of a concept whose time had passed!

15. Sir John Chisholm – on Universities • There are five things universities do for companies that companies could not readily do themselves • provide graduates with subject skills to a sufficient and proven level • provide the life training skills – self motivation, knowledge gathering, social poise, networking • provide a source of continuing education • provide a stream of new knowledge to be mined for the basis of improved products and services • act as a key attractor in a business cluster to engender entrepreneurship and investment • Three of these five ‘products’ from universities relate to universities’ pedagogic mission. These are the most important outputs for companies but many companies find that the balance of the graduate population is less well matched to their needs than in the past. • Skills acquisition is no longer an activity which takes place at the start of a career and remains relevant for the duration of that career. Companies know that for staff to remain useful to them they need access to continuous training programmes. In 2007 companies spent £39 billion on workforce training, that is ten times the government investment in academic research. Universities captured £480 million of this industrial training expenditure, which is a sizeable income but only a little more than 1% of the available market

16. The innovation periphery • We used to expect new ideas to come from the universities and research laboratories of major companies in the US and Europe. Technology flowed from this innovative core to the technologically dependent periphery. No more. The core and periphery are being scrambled up.

17. Our New World

18. You used to go to work to gain access to the technology Today you try and avoid technology at work You used to use work to communicate Today you go to be interrupted technology

19. The last place I’d look is • Why are things always in the last place you look for them?Because you stop looking when you find them.  —Children’s riddle • Should we have a new take on satisficing, to conveniencing • ‘Google’ is now an acceptable reference at UG level

20. A safe dose? Safe at any dose? • As universities feel the impact of the ‘perfect storm’ of increased demands and fewer funds, these technologies are changing how people can learn and research. Higher education institutions are now one source among many for ideas, knowledge and innovation. Google opens up vast resources to many more people, but at the same time it undermines the role of universities as stores of knowledge.

21. Should your strategy be:- • not Google: repel & prohibit • and Google: embrace & extend • or Google: parallel, out google Google

22. Obligatory Web 2.0 Definitions • Them and Us • Us and Us

23. Office Love? • Does anyone under 30 love Microsoft Office? The most important thing to know regarding your user is that he is not interested in using your product. He is interested in doing his work, and your product must help him do it more easily. Paul Heckel, "The Elements of Friendly Software Design"

24. Two worlds Fun & Funky Formal & Functional Reductionist Functions Noun • Holistic • Environmental • Verb We overestimate capabilities in the formal and underestimate contributions in the funky

25. Marjorie Scardino on kids • We worry that school students no longer read much. That may be true, but they certainly write a great deal more than preceding generations. If text messages counted, people under the age of 24 would be putting 200 billion words into the ether every day. That same group writes millions of blogs every day – several million of those from children under 14. They have things to say. • But they need to know how to say them in different ways and to a wider and more diverse audience if they are to be useful as citizens and a part of the workforce. This starts with learning good writing.

26. One in five adults maintain a social networking profile, this rises to 75% for teenagers Youngsters prefer Club Penguin & Piczo, moving to MySpace and Bebo in adolescence, to Facebook in late teens and LinkedIn as young professionals the kingdom of Lilliput

27. Who you are with different people • Our online-offline worlds are raising more questions about what we can and should share with different audiences. My colleague Matt Locke over at Channel 4 has come up with what I think is a pretty definitive rundown of these different private-public spaces which compete for our information • Secret Spaces • Examples: SMS, IM • Group Spaces • Examples: Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, etc • Publishing Spaces • Examples: Flickr, Youtube, Revver, etc • Performing Spaces • Examples: MMORPGs, Sports, Drama • Participation Spaces • Examples: Meetup, Threadless, CambrianHouse.com, MySociety • Watching Spaces • Examples: Television, Cinema, Sports, Theatre, etc

28. Faith, Hope & Charity

29. Faith: Will it work?

30. Faith: 90:9:1

31. The Numbers Game or • 2 system experts • 20 developers • 200 in ISLS • 2000 academic staff • 20000 students • 1 company • 4000 experts • ----------- • 1.2m editors • 200m pages per day

32. Hope

33. Technical capability Charity? sites widget new portal mashup v chat video calendar wiki docs existing facebook mail User competence existing unexploited

34. Learner skills Staff skills Infrastructure

35. Technology Opportunity? Threat?

36. Evidence & Proof

39. Web 2 – is 2 way No longer producers / consumers but consumers/contributors Web is standards RSS and mashups to link data sources Web 2 is consumer technology No artificial them/us, home/work boundaries effective, efficient, consistent 5 October, 2014

40. thought experiment • If we tear down the walls …….. • Will familiarity breed fluency? • Will contributions cross-over between spaces? • Will students spend more time in the University spaces and in the learning spaces? • What positive graffiti will evolve? • Will micro contributions prove valuable? • Will peer review develop? • What structures will the students build? • Will learning extend more outside the University?

42. Data Sharing

43. 4usby.me

44. Some old issues

49. Activation: In the Gen X Society • A book Never • A paper Possible • An essay Probable • An email Likely • A text Certain • A click Already Done • How easy can we make it, how close to the contribution threshold can we place ‘real’ work?

50. Measures of 3: Educational t1/2 • Catch the moment • Thesis 3 years • Paper 3 months • Course 3 weeks • Essay 3 days • Class 3 hours • Log-in 3 minutes • SMS 3 seconds • Click .3 second Likelihood of Participation (community size)