HCI Consultant's Diary

Future posts are going to take a more autobiographical approach in an effort to document the application of HCI techniques to real world consultancy opportunities.

Social Networks Solve Complex Problems

IBM wants to create a scalable solution to language translation. The project, n.Fluent, taps into IBM's 400,000+ workforce through crowdsourcing and advanced linguistic techniques. Crowdsourcing uses the strength of social networks and Web 2.0 orientations to solve complex problems. Social networks allow complex problems to be broken into hundreds or thousands of smaller sections, each manageable by a single individual, to be distributed and then solved collectively.

The problem of language translation is complex because of the many nuances in language. Children can easily learn language and figure out what words or phrases sound correct. According to Stephen Pinker (Stuff of Thought, 2006) children do not learn every correct phrase, they simply learn the best rule, or heuristic, and then manage by exception. Linguists call these contradictions positive exceptions. Language plays a large role in helping to define the way we think. Because we think using sentences a lot, language also shapes how we conceive reality.

Google also has an approach to the translation problem that you can try out right now. Though using an algorithmic approach rather than crowdsourcing, it is a vast improvement over previous options. What is remarkable about Google's solution is that you can add it to your homepage or use it in conjunction with your Gmail.

Translation becomes an increasingly important problem as the internet continues to unite people across different cultures, countries and languages. The age of ubiquity will likely begin to rely upon the power of social networks to develope enterprise level crowdsourced solutions such as those brought to us by IBM and Google.

Microsoft Confuses Consumer on Updrade to Windows 7

This week is devoted to Windows 7, especially the upgrade to 7 from Vista. Suffered with Vista long enough? Ready to finally upgrade to a 21st-century operating system?

The long-anticipated release of Windows 7 has finally come and not without great fanfare, publicity and marketing campaigns across the web. The "launch-party" meme a well known viral web meme that has been circulating the internet the past couple weeks. The launch-part turned out being more humorous than successful for Microsoft. Users, confronted with the upgrade deployment, didn't take long to realize there was a huge problem with Windows 7.

There are two options for instillation of Windows 7: Clean-Install -or- In-Place Upgrade. If you are like most people, you want to upgrade to avoid wiping your hard drive and losing ALL of your programs! It appears as though the ability to upgrade to Windows 7 depends upon which version of Vista you had and which version of 7 you have.

What's worse? It appears that the upgrade paths are a deliberate attempt to require a certain action on behalf of users. Does this sound like a marketing gimmick to anyone else? This problem has been talked about before, here, here (by Techspot) and here by Microsoft.

Still don't believe me, take a look at this Chart showing all of the 66 possible upgrade options. This is a usability nightmare. It looks like Microsoft was too focused upon fixing the problems with Vista to see the problems they were creating with the deployment of Windows 7. Lesson learned: deployment is a significant aspect of usability.

New Web Search Engine Review

Internet search overload, a slogan recently used by Microsoft to popularize their new Bing engine, is a phenomenon we can all relate to. Microsoft advertises Bing as the "first ever decision engine." What does Bing actually decide for us? Speaking for myself, I certainly prefer to make my own decisions, don't you? What I think consumers actually want, in order to solve the "search overload" dilemma, is a search-engine that gives us the appropriate information so that we can make our own decisions.

Stephen Wolfram's search engine, Wolfram Alpha, calls itself a computational knowledge engine. This certainly is the case. Far from the run-of-the-mill engines, Wolfram Alpha takes your querie and lists relevant facts, statistics and a unique organizational interpretation of the concept. Wolfram has stated that the goal of Wolfram is to continuously update the collection of the world's knowledge. What is so unique about Wolfram is the content. A search query shows key facts rather than a storehouse of related sites.

It seems as though the Wolfram engine has considered the user's experience through tailoring the search experience to fit consumers of information. This is not the only search engine concerned with the user experience. Yahoo! is also actively concerned with increasing the efficacy of search results in consideration of the human experience. Google became famous for it, Microsoft is now competing using it and Yahoo is quickly closing in on it. But what is it? Bottom line is, consumers want a search experience that gives them the results they are searching for quickly and easily.

Free Symptom Diagnosis Creates New Medical Condition

When is the last time you checked the internet before going to the doctor to see what it is that may ail you? You are not alone. Free symptom diagnosis has become a common sort of website offering clues to possible new medical conditions that a user may have. However, could the DIAGNOSIS actually be creating the CONDITION? A recent article in Newsweek entitled "How to use the internet to get the best health advice without freaking yourself out" suggests there is a new medical condtion has a arisen that uniquely threatens tech-savvy individuals.

Cyberchondria, as it is termed, is the web-based equivelant of hyperchondria. Wheras, prior to the use of the internet, individuals had to diagnose themselves using self-recalled information, individuals are now aided by free websites promising to determine new medical conditions. Free symptom diagnosis creates self-fullfilling hypothesis about medical conditions. This phenomenon, Newsweek says, is created by search free web search-engines dedicated to sorting by relevance, not by probability.

So, for now, our doctors can rest easy that free symptom diagnosis is not going to replace professional prognosis.

First Weekly Web Technology Post

Hello World...

This is the First Weekly Web Technology post. Each week this Digest will seek-out and post relevant, useful infromation for readers interested in getting the most out of computers and the internet in an alotted amount of time.