Task 8: Reflection on project work

Last words on field research project!

In general the project was a success! not because everything went smoothly or it generated valuable data! Actually it had its dose of confusion and frustration, but because we got to try field work, and to find out its good and difficult aspects in practice. I can see that how much of problem it could cause if I would start doing such work for the first time within a design project(with "no idea" state that i had when i started this course!).

Looking back to the initial project plan, there are changes: some because the original proposal was naively planned and some other because we failed to fully conduct it.
First thing that we did different was the part that we suggested to fit the data into a theory of group work or activity theory. After some consulting sessions we found out that this may not be part of field work but more analysing step. It was our decision to skip this step.
Second thing that went different from plan was that we wanted to interview all the stakeholders but we could not. This was mainly our fault and because of poor planing/time estimation. we left this part for last weeks and then it was during exam time which we could not find students who had free time for interviews.

I think next time I go for ethnographic study, I will study the problem beforehand. Reading related documents, and all the related material that I can find out of the field itself. like in case of our project's context, I would look into university websites, tools, regulations and available documents.
Next thing I will do differently is that I will try to formulate a research question or hypothesis for myself! It can help to have some initial hypothesises to start with. and based on a set of initial hypothesises I will direct the field work in more defined way.

Personal take aways:
-Read the books written about the task, before starting doing things! somebody already done these things!
-Planning is important: somethings can't be repeated, some tasks may take longer than thought.
-Organising and sorting gathered data, and analysing them on time is very useful: I can't imagine writing the final paper without affinity notes and task sequence and interpretation notes that we had for each subject. you think that you wont forget anything, but after some weeks I could not remember most of the details. and I had no time and interest to listen to endless interview recordings afterwards!

M7 group work

Final Concept Map
Kadri-Maria Mitt, Marieh Sayadchi, Alise Semjonova

this is the concept map based on top ones from our collective 30 main concepts. Of course in this stage we could connect everything but we tried to keep only direct links. With this much of connectivity in our map, we can get from any concept to any other.

paper: INNOVATION DIFFUSION AND NEW PRODUCT GROWTH MODELS IN MARKETING

This paper describes product growth model and summarises the state of the art in innovation diffusion models in marketing new product. it concerns about including marketing effects on growth models. the progress of the innovation diffusion models :

1. simple model: first time buyer
basic models of product sale growth:
In modelling the growth of the first-time buyers of a product, the basic diffusion models consider only two segments in the diffusion process: potential market and current market—and two transfer mechanisms to influence the potential customers to adopt the product—mass-media communication and word-of-mouth communication. Furthermore, these models assume a constant total population of potential customers over the entire life of the product.
These models are primarily concerned with modelling nit), the flow of customers from the potential market to the current market.


2. Extended modes:
Extended models try to incorporate other influences in growth model such as marketing and time dependency of previously constant parameters(such as potential market).
this approaches started because basic models dont give useful information about marketing effects.

some attempts to include different parameters:
-In some application external influence is small and marketing strategy changes the model, based on model’s change we can understand the effect
-Constants for external and internal influences should be function of time
-external effect as price
-Sorts of advertising to be included in word of mouth
-Studying the simultaneous growth of related products
-Marketing: is to effect the total number of potential customers
-parameters derived from an empirical analysis of past new product introductions and experience surveys
-not all word of mouth is positive

the problem with most of the extended models is that they mainly miss to incorporate all the parameters at once, repeat or replacement sale.

[M7] Conclusions

What I take away from these reading exercises, apart from quite large set of english vocabulary that I did not know they existed before!, is:

- Theory is important to reason about the problem, to develop a common vocabulary to communicate ideas, to have a framework to evaluate and predict effects, and to improve.(about the improvement: it is very difficult to change and improve something when we don't have a theory as a "frame of reference" behind what we are doing) and of course it is not everything, and it does not mean that we should force fit things into theories!

- There is not only one(or even limited number ) of "right" way to research and develop in HCI. one theory or approach might be more suited to a particular setting but other may fit another situation.
it is important to keep an open mind about new approaches particularly in ever changing technologic world.

- As a student or anyone who practices design in HCI, we should keep in mind that many theories and approaches need skill and practice to be understood and work properly.

The last chapter (this sounded so sad!)
Last chapter gives an overview of the evolution in HCI, starting from importing pure theories from other fields such as psychology and cognitive science to practical frameworks tailored for HCI type of practice and hybrid approaches which combines methods from different sources.
It then analyses the success of different approaches : a framework should be abstract enough to be applied in different problem setting and with different tool sets, but at the same time prescriptive enough to be able to map into real life situations.
HCI researchers should try to close the gap between theory and practice by developing practical frameworks for theories. the contribution of each theory to to the field should be valued. and discarding all the old theories in rise of a new one should be limited: at the end each of them are pieces of the same one bigger picture.


30 concepts: cognitive psychology, user capabilities, user limitations, goals, design, artefact, interaction , group work, society, human, cultural values, social values, design, community, ethnography, context, learning, technology, experience, emotions, reflection, rules, tools, activity, lifestyle, value sensitive, learning, usability

free software , open source software

If we see free software as a movement, the rest of its properties follows naturally. the first uneasy point about free software for me , was the fact that it does not have clear enough definition. it has some principles but not in much detail. but then again free software is an idea and movement, not a licensing framework.
on the other hand open source is much more prescriptive and the licenses that go under open source are clearly stated.

although many may argue that name "free" is ambiguous and can have two, free as beer and free as freedom, meaning; I see the term "open source" much more unclear. having the source open and available is a must in both cases but it is not enough to make a software an "open source" software.
both of these two aim to extend freedom of user and ease the spread of information.  and they are mostly very similar, but sometimes differences show up in detail of licenses. and I think for practical purposes, like publishing a software in current condition, compatibility and so on, open source gives better possibilities.
however I see more potential in free software, to generate and foster new ideas, and more adaptive to new circumstances. specially I believe that all the softwares we release as free and open source should go under permissive license like MIT which only requires mentioning the name and crediting the original authors and allows all kinds of use and modification, I personally see no point in forcing open source or free licenses to everyone.

>>there is a huge need to standardise these terms! they are extremely confusing and they have so many branches and derivatives(I guess this comes from freedom, anybody can define the license he/she feels right!)

Critical Design Brief [M5]: how to save water

How To Save Water:
-Lets not!

The web service that we are designing for :
http://www.tallinnavesi.ee/en/For-Business/Service-Contract/Signing-and-terminating

The website of Tallinna Vesi gives hints and suggestions to keep the sea clean and save water in daily usages. We decided to explore the scenario when humans are short in drinkable water because of too wasteful usage. Although Estonia may currently seem far from this state, water scarcity already affects every continent and around 2.8 billion people around the world; these people don’t have access to clean water at least one month out of every year. More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean drinking water right now.[wikipedia] If we continue using water thoughtlessly, these numbers will grow to the limits of global crisis. In order to bring attention to the problem we’re showing the children as victims and targeting their parents - we are showing what will happen if we don’t leave drinkable water to future generations.



Our critical design brief:
Targeted issue of our design is shortage in drinkable water.

Our project criticizes the careless use of drinkable water and the fact that people tend to think that the point where we face a critical situation in water scarcity is very far from them or their children. We try to engage people with bringing this issue closer to their personal lives, with involving their children. Targeted audiences of this design can be any adult with children or anyone who plans to have kids in the future. The project provokes people through showing how one’s kid should prepare for future shortage in drinking water, combining scientific background with dark humor.


The scenario:
Imagine the time that we have exhausted the drinkable water on the planet to the extent that there is no more water to drink. In such situation we have no choice but to stop water consumption and adapt our bodies to this new condition. Based on researches done on indian yogic (see link:http://phys.org/news191743491.html and http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2013/06/a-man-who-survived-without-food-and.html) many training centers are opened to teach people how to survive without drinking water.

The yogic from the link claims that he started from the age of 8 and had not drunk water ever since.


The proposal:
“Desert Camel training center”

This training center is specialized for children and it promises to train kids to survive without water. They use the newest methods and best trainers and promise to teach the kids to stop drinking water in a three month long course.

The poster for this trainings:

Our Group: Marieh Sayadchi, Maria Medina, Helen Habakuk, Alise Semjonova

[M6] Contemporary theories (part II)

Turn to the wild 

and

Turn to embodiment

In my understanding they are not in conflict with two first approaches: turn to culture and turn to design. in fact they can be a way of looking at and problem solving, (as an example) for a case of "turn to culture problem". where the two first talk about the topic and concern of the design, these two try to shape a kind of lens or philosophy to look at the situation and approach it.

One good thing that I learned during this concept mapping was that I dont need to draw a clear border between different theories and methods. Actually many of them are overlapping. and it is possible in many cases to apply several of these theories to a particular setting and even get a very similar outcome, however sometimes some will be much more descriptive of the problem space and will result in a better solution.

ps: the grey area is kind of general overview, elements repeat in the right side again to make the map more readable

Copying prevention:

-No, I dont like them!
-Yes, They might be effective on temporally preventing copying!

Although being temporally effective does not mean that their good will overdo their harm, or the cost of their implementation.

nowadays physical hardware locks may seem ridiculous but i think that digital and software ones will look as absurd in a few years(even now they are funny and annoying).

I dont know how much of the financial loss in software industries come from copying for personal use, but I think that the copyright enforcement should be directed towards copiers who do it for the purpose of sale and distribution. because I believe that with fair pricing and just licensing, even in the case of propriety softwares, people are willing to pay for their use.

and in the case of professional copying, this kind of copying preventions dont really work, because the mass copier already has or will develop the necessary skills to unlock any copy prevention, as they have done so far.

Software licensing landscape in 2020

Since 2020 is not that far anymore! I dont expect radical changes in licensing in a 6 years period.
however looking at current trends, some  movements towards new types of licensing already started.
boldest change is growth of softwares that recognise and treat cloud or hosted as a new way of computing. it can follow with XaaS(anything as a service) models.
another change is shift from perpetual to different terms of licenses. while traditionally one would buy a software and could use it for ever(if needed!), licenses for shorter terms, with lower prices seem reasonable.
I also see more awareness in users about ridiculous or very permissive(from user side) agreements, and think that this kind of licensing will be replaced by something that user would willingly agree with rather than being forced to.

a nice picture that shows the trend:

table from: "The future of software pricing excellence: An introduction "*

*Mark McCaffrey et.al. The future of software pricing excellence: An introduction

The business of science

Here, politics of science seems to be relevant topic as well. for example in Iran many scientists dont even have paid access to the scientific journals because of sanctions.
This covers not only so called "nuclear physics" related papers, but almost all other areas too. definitely this deepens the digital divide; and this is the case for many countries that dont necessarily think like US.

back to the "business of science", about the case of over simplified educational books; we recently were reading an american book for one of our courses in TLU. teacher already warned us that it may get too obvious sometimes! and he added that "apparently this is the way americans like to do it".
after reading some chapters of the book nearly all of the students agreed that the book could fit in half the pages as it is now, and loose no educational content. then we thought: yes maybe "this is the way americans like to do it"! but after reading "The business of science" part of the wiki, I am thinking perhaps deeper reasons are involved.

same thing happened in Iran about learning aid books for schools, they become almost like a table:
"if question is this, then answer will be that..."
they dont leave any space for student to reason and drive the logical conclusions from the scientific fact. causing the problem of  "educated! people" with minimal reasoning power, unable to adapt solutions to new problems.

GNU GPL

strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats...

Strengths, Opportunities
-GPL like other free licences, provides a platform to make sure that a piece of software is and will be distributed widely and freely.
-GPL implies that source code of the software should be available when this license is used, this makes compatibility in softwares easier to reach and the software becomes transparent in its content and function.
-free licenses try to benefit society rather than individuals.
-every new version of GPL is more covering and compatible with other free licenses.

- it emphasises on making reuse easy by providing a description, help file or any other mean that is necessary to read and use the code.(for example code can be encrypted but the key should be available to the user)
-modifications for private use is excluded from the hard rules.

weaknesses, threats
-Its emphasis on non proprietary distribution of software, is in its nature limiting. This imposes that software driven from an original piece with GPL license has to have GPL license. It can maximize the pool of freely available software but
-In version 3 it says GPL-protected software “shall not be deemed part of an effective technological measure under any applicable law” ; which is another "limitation" that is not in line with the philosophy of the freedom, although the "technological measure" is somehow tries to limit freedom itself.

Paper Review

1. Turn to Design: 

Developing the Drift Table

In this paper authors are challenged to a domestic technology for households to promote non-utilitarian, “ludic” values in the home.

The final design that results from their work is a "drift table", where images of England's landscapes are displayed through a window on the table. image drifts to the left and right based on the weight balance on the objects located on the table.

Paper describes the design process, prototyping and testing. to start they have done ethnographic studies of information flow in the home and made many concept studies and sketch proposals.

After agreeing on a table like design, they has some choices of different tables, but in order to get away from task oriented tables such as dining or work table, they decided on a coffee table which implies a more relaxed settings.

this is defiantly goes under "turn to design" approaches.

why it is a "turn to design" work:

It tries to address issue related to human values and it is not addressing a practical or technical problem. "The idea that interaction design be informed by some ideology". it is a "design for lifestyle" because it promotes “ludic” values in the home. it is a "technology-mediated" experience design.

the video demo of the table:

2. Turn to Culture

Hatching Scarf: A Critical Design about Anxiety and Persuasive Computing 

This paper was a short introduction to the "hatching scarf". it did not include design process or a very deep analysis of the philosophy behind it.
Hatching scarf is an interactive scarf that reacts to the action of the user while she/he approaches to the bag of snacks. it is not a positive or negative reaction, but a reaction that is open to personal interpretation.
Designer says that it is an objection against the anxiety and pressure in the society about weight and body shape. it has feminist ideas behind and wants to encourage self expression without judgment.

why it is a "turn to culture" work:

it is a "design activism" to challenge current views on body image and eating habits. 

this design has elements of critical analysis and a re-contextualizing by doing that for "eating" and "reaction" concepts and it addresses questions concerning human nature and the human condition.

I did some research around it and I found this video about it:

http://vimeo.com/64228939

Paper: The Literature Review of Technology Acceptance Model: A Study of the Bibliometric Distributions by Chang et al.

Summary and review:

This paper is about bibliometric study of publications in the field of "Technology Acceptance Model" (TAM) for information systems(IS).
what is TAM:TAM is a very influential and common theory in information systems field, it explains the user adoption of technology use in different environment setting. TAM is based on theory of reasoned action which discusses how attitude impacts behaviour. The model suggests that when users are presented with a new technology, a number of factors influence their decision about how and when they will use it, notably:
Perceived usefulness (PU) - This was defined by Fred Davis as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance".
Perceived ease-of-use (PEOU) - Davis defined this as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free from effort" (Davis 1989).[4]

The work:

several papers were collected using “technology acceptance model” keyword and 689 related articles were selected after filtering the original list. these papers were published between 1991-2009.

study shows that number of published papers in this topic grew steadily in this period.

The authors who published TAM literature are from 41 countries. The U.S.A. with 37.32% of total is the primary country to contribute to this field.

disciplines:
TAM is used in variety of disciplines such as:
Computer Science, Information Systems”, “Management”, “Information Science & Library Science”, “Business” and “Computer Science, Cybernetics” 

keywords:most frequent keywords extracted from papers, reflecting the subject areas:
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
Electronic commerce
Internet(Web)
Structural equation modeling(SEM)
Perceived usefulness, Usefulness
Trust
Theory of planned behavior (TPB)
E-learning

Bradford Law and Core JournalThrough the 174journals that published TAM papers, 98 journals only published one article.
The result matches the explanations of Bradford’s Law. It indicates the publication of TAM in these journals account for one-third of the total amount.

Author Productivity and Lotka’s Law 

There are total 1692 authors (shown in table 3) contributing to the publications of 689 articles in TAM literatures. According to this data set, 988 authors (58.39%) contributed one article. It is consistent with the Lotka's law that about 60% authors contribute only one paper. The maximum of articles by one author is 14, followed by 11 and 9. the results indicated that the author productivity distribution data in TAM literature consistent with Lotka’s law.

more details on methods used in this paper:

bibliometric methods are a set of methods to quantitatively analyse academic literature, Many research fields use bibliometric methods to explore the impact of their field, the impact of a set of researchers, or the impact of a particular paper.[1]

Two theory is used to achieve this goal:
Lotka’s law which talks about authors impact and productivity in the field.
It describes the frequency of publication by authors in any given field. It states that the number of authors making n contributions is about 1/n^a of those making one contribution, where a nearly always equals two. More plainly, the number of authors publishing a certain number of articles is a fixed ratio to the number of authors publishing a single article. As the number of articles published increases, authors producing that many publications become less frequent. There are 1/4 as many authors publishing two articles within a specified time period as there are single-publication authors, 1/9 as many publishing three articles, 1/16 as many publishing four articles, etc. Though the law itself covers many disciplines, the actual ratios involved (as a function of 'a') are very discipline-specific[3]
y=c/x^n
where y=percentage of authors, x=number of articles published by an author, c=constant and -n=slope of the log-log plot


Bradford’s law that estimates the exponentially diminishing returns of extending a search for references in science journals. One formulation is that if journals in a field are sorted by number of articles into three groups, each with about one-third of all articles, then the number of journals in each group will be proportional to 1:n:n².[2]
Bradford’s law is a regular pattern over a huge number of articles from different journals on a particular subject. concentrated in a small number of journal titles, and the remaining articles would be distributed over the vast account of journal titles



1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliometrics
2. Black, Paul E. (2004-12-12). "Bradford's law, in Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures". U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Retrieved 2007-10-24.
3.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%27s_law
4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_acceptance_model

patent in pharmaceutical vs license in software

one can patent a chemical structure, this covers chemical or pharmaceutical innovations.
It means that only one that holds the patent is allowed to manufacture, market the drug.
period of the patent can vary for different drugs and in different countries, in most patent laws nowadays, the term of patent is 20 years from the filing date of the application.(wikipedia) since patent requests are filled before the drug is ready to market, the actual duration of the patent while the drug is in market can be less than 10 years. after the patent is expired the drug can be manufactured and sold by others, this drugs are called generic drugs.

Although patenting is possible in softwares as well, it is not a common way of protection for this kind of IP. it is because in software world there is a clear way of protecting the algorithm(which is comparable to chemical structure of a chemical) by generating executable binary code from the source code.
licensing on the other hand is not common in pharmaceuticals. a drug is a physical entity and it is hard to change and copy it for an end user(if we try to map the licensing here).




http://www.news-medical.net/health/Drug-Patents-and-Generics.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_patent
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/pharmaceuticals/inquiry/jacob.pdf
https://www.ffii.org/Frequently%20Asked%20Questions%20about%20software%20patents
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/

Intellectual Property : continental european vs Anglo-American

 Moral rights
It seems that in anglo-american (I call it american) school of IP, moral rights have less or no importance, while in continental european(european for short) it plays a major role. but many claim that in digital age, these two are changing towards a closer. where at least in many european laws the part of moral rights are getting shallower. specially when they attempt to get to an agreement between several european countries that may have differences in one specific law, the part that is generally sacrificed is moral rights.

 Copy,comment, reuse, edit ..
Although in european IP private copy and use may be permitted, American approach gives more freedom to "fair use" when the benefit of releasing information for public is great.

since american IP had a more utilitarian approach, it has favourable characteristics in the era of fast changing technologies and competitive economies. some also claim that moral rights limits artistic work and creativity by restrains like "the right of integrity". in this sense another difference between these two is their flexibility in reuse and modifying of existing creations.

but still some other, strongly defend moral rights of the author by metaphor of "author and creation as parent and child", which follows very funny arguments about selling one's child and so on!

Author vs entrepreneur

As in case of moral rights, in european school, author as a person has the central stage. however in american school ownership of a work done under employment goes to the employer.

Different media, different rights

In american law copyright protection covers media such as sound recording, film(producer) and broadcasting(performer), directly; in european school these go under  neighbouring rights. 

contemporary theories in HCI

Contemporary theories in HCI was a reply to similar wave in society where new human values start to emerge. HCI was young(still is!) and was not really fixed on any specific framework, that helped the field to move along the social and cultural revolutions without falling back. It seems that there is no agreed upon borders or use cases for contemporary theories yet. even parts such as critical theories may be ill understood by many of HCI researchers.
this was yet another hard to grasp reading from this book, the good thing is that after several similar experiences, now I am sure that it will become clear in next few days!

Task 7: Field research project outline

I decided to stay with "Information flow in HCI" topic because after doing some work on this topic I thought I can get a better understanding of it rather than a new subject. Aleksei and I would like to work on this, and have done some planning.

Overall topic or problem description 
nowadays almost everything is done online using ICT tools and technics. considering that HCI program is a subset of ICT and is presented by informatics institute, we should have the best connected system with good information flow. however it is not the case in this program(or maybe whole department). 

 
Description of inquiry context
Context of inquiry is relatively known. we both study in this program and have weekly contact with HCI program related matters. we have already done some field work in the form of contextual inquiry.

Inquiry focus and analytical interest(s)
Since we study theory of HCI in parallel with this course, we are very interested to apply some of those knowledge in this context. two main theories that we would like to look into are: 

-activity theory

-CSCW and group theories 

Contextual inquiry interviews (and other types of data gathering) planned 
We did not interview all of the steak-holders by ourselves, therefore the first thing we will do is to interview at least one of each steak-holder group, here: Student, lecturer, staff .. 

Intended project outcome(s) 
We hope to find out the sources of problem and bottlenecks that slows down the information flow in HCI program and gather some change and enhancement ideas to improve the situation.

Reading: Chapter 3 of "Information Liberation"

Against intellectual property

Chapter 3 of

Information Liberation

by Brian Martin

(London: Freedom Press, 1998)

Here is the link to this chapter:

http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/98il/il03.html

"Challenging intellectual property must involve the development of methods to support creative individuals."

-my favourite quote!

This was one of the most comprehensive arguments for and against intellectual property. It answered most of my questions and doubts about this topic. as an example, second argument for IP: "people deserve property rights because of their labour" 

was my main concern thinking about any intellectual creation, "shouldn't author receive something because of his/her labour time and risk he/she is taking?" and even if we just consider effort, time and risk; how to measure this thing after the work is done? there is such measures going on for individuals that work in a company. for example if I work as programmer for a bigger corporation, they pay me based on hours of time I spend there, assuming that the risk is minimal for me, and effort is normal(or if higher, paid more). but still company holds unlimited IP on outcome of my work. nobody calculated time,effort and risk that company itself is taking, all that determines the final benefit of the company is market.

I totally like the idea of need for determining optimum period for promoting intellectual work based on present state of innovation and technological advances.

I agree that IP is not the only way production and distribution of ideas can work, even dont say that it is the best one(or close to be good), but in case of a society without IP, given example is university research and publications, there is a fundamental change in Infrastructure of the society necessary. since in universities people dont earn from monetizing their ideas but they get funds from government and industry which that shapes corse of their research. although this is a problematic manipulation in their freedom, it is still very difficult to map and implement into other areas such as art and literature.

another point that caught my eye, was that all of the successful examples of no-IP, were happening in an IP dominant world. we have a world that things are working mostly based on IP and then we have small islands of free from IP areas such as universities or open softwares. we dont know how all these things will function if we remove IP totally.(still this does not mean that I suggest that it wont work, but may not work the same way that we see in these islands now)

[M4] Modern theories (part II)

These theories were much closer to each other than previous ones, like a family they had a big common conceptual backbone. they all focus on human and technology in the social context of them.
while reading the book, it was really difficult to make a clear border of definition for each one, rather I found them merging together in many cases. grounded theory was a different approach between them because it had kind of engineering point of view to collect data and drive theories out of it based on researchers background. this and activity theory seemed to me more clear and easier to apply.

A hacktivism case "Deportation class"

A hacktivism case


On June 20 2001, Lufthansa(the german airline)'s website was attacked. some 13,000 people participated in a DDOS action against the airline's homepage and more than one million hits were sent to lufthansa webpage and services went down for several minutes.
the main reason for this attack was Lufthansa's participation as carrier, in forced deportations of asylum seekers. the poor condition in which these transportations were held caused at least death of two passengers.
Lufthansa later claimed that the company was required by law to allow the use of its flights for deportations. The demonstrators also claim they never intended to totally disrupt Lufthansa and it was only an 'activist demonstration'.
After several years(more than 3) German court found that DDOS actions were a valid form of political protest!(which is cool!) one reason for that can be that while the site itself was rendered briefly inaccessible, the actual corporation, its ability to fly planes, maintain normal operations, and communicate internally and with the media remained, for practical purposed, unaffected.[2]


resources :

1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/01/lufthansa_ddos_attack/

2. Molly Sauter, "Towards a New Framework for the Ethical Analysis of Activist DDOS Actions"

Socio Technical Systems Engineering Handbook

Socio Technical Systems Engineering Handbook

.....here is a summary on 3 first chapters of this book......

>CHAPTER 1. SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEMS<
well this chapter is about the change of view in system development. many now agree that reductionist approach to development, which divides the system into a social system and a technical system is not a good representation.

in system development there are three aspect to consider:
-organisational-social-technical

STS methods promise to provide one way of at least ensuring that the organisational, social and technical aspects are appropriately dealt with.

0. these methods encompass socio-technical ideas :

0. 
   
   • Soft Systems Methodology.
   • ETHICS (Effective Technical and Human Implementation of Computer-based Systems) 
   • Cognitive Work Analysis.
   • Ethnographic workplace analysis.
   • Cognitive systems engineering.
   • Human centred design 

problems with existing STSD methods:

• A lack of consistent terminology
• Determining the appropriate levels of abstraction to use.
• Conflicting value systems, with humanistic values on the one hand, being regarded by some as incompatible with managerial values. 
• A lack of agreed  evaluation criteria
• focus on analysis rather than synthesis 
• A lack of multidisciplinary, with some disciplines failing to understand what other disciplines can contribute to system development. 

>CHAPTER 2. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT<

how and why software development shifts towards STS design methods:


what helped this shift in view:

• A shift in focus from programs to systems
• A shift from development to procurement, configuration, and reuse 
  
• A shift from small to large development teams 
• Changing user-provider relations 
• Development increasingly becoming a professional activity  

what shapes the development work:
Many of the problems of software development are organisational; they are the problems of coordination, scheduling, decision-making, awareness, and so on. A key difference between systems engineering and socio-technical systems engineering is that the latter takes these into account.

Managing the ordering devices in software engineering is crucial to the successful development of any non-trivial system.it is important to notice and analyse the repertoire of ordering devices used in any particular systems engineering project, the interdependencies between these, and their strengths and fallibilities.
how organisation affects the process of work: an organisation is structured can significantly impact on the way a project is practiced and, indeed, the architecture of the system itself.

The priorities of an organisation also significantly affect the ways in which systems engineering is practiced.

Systems specifications:specifications provide a framework within which, and in reference to which, design and testing, and user-designer relations, get worked out in practice.

The area of specification is one where socio-technical factors are, perhaps, most evident and so it has been a focus for research in using socio-technical analyses.Requirements engineering, particularly in user-centred design methods, often seeks to improve the quality of user-relevant information available during the design process.

work specification:-contract:contract between a supplier and customer stipulating the work that will be done over a period of years.
-card:methods produce short-term requirements written on small cards throughout a project.



>CHAPTER 3. REQUIREMENTS AND DESIGN<

how fieldwork can be used to gather date that informs the requirements engineering process.many practical problems comes not directly from tool or technology but from they way people work.
needed a better understanding of work, the actual rather than the formal business processes and the relationships between these processes and organisational factors that influenced the ways in which work was done.


where ethnography comes in:-softwares made based on theoretical business modes, but actual process is different(more appropriate requirements to be proposed.)
-People cannot articulate their requirements if you ask people they might not even know what they do, but if you observe them you will see important details.
how fieldwork inform prototype development




questions for ethnographer to have in mind while conducting field work:
-what are current unimportant characteristics-what are current important characteristics and features that should be supported in future design
-what should be replicated as before

how to direct the ethnographic field work(sanity checking for requirements):
rather than building a general picture of the work being done, the fieldworker can focus on the activities that are reflected in the requirements and can identify requirements which could cause problems in practice.


short period of fieldwork (quick and dirty field work)
-The work setting, which describes the environment where the work takes place and the interactions with this environment.
-The work flow, which describes the sequences of work activities, information flows etc.
-Social and organisational perspectives, which show how the work of individuals in the process relates to other peoples work and to broader organisational issues.

-Documentation : designers notepad


-problems: An accepted problem with fieldwork is that it tells you about work as it is done and doesn't really give you any clues about ways of doing things differently.

authors conclude : "we now think that fieldwork is not an activity that should precede the development of system requirements but should not be started until an outline set of requirements is available."

Distributed Cognition

Modern Theories in HCI:

Distributed Cognition(DC)

Development of distributed cognition method is continuation of involving cognitive science into HCI, and a result of popularisation of internet and computers in workplaces and social processes. 

This method tries to step out of individual user approach and move towards the networks of people and artefacts that they use.
Since it does not try to model process happening inside of human brain and focuses on external events, DC is expected to give a better detailed view on properties of the system itself.
Although distributed cognition promises a more accurate results, it has its drawbacks as well. one big difficulty on applying this method is that it needs conduction of ethnographic field study. ethnographic studies are time and resource consuming and there is no easy and predefined way of extracting design tips out of collected data.

My concept map of distributed cognition part of the book:

the hacker ethic found in today's world

hacker ethic, yesterday...today


I see all the free knowledge spreading communities around the web, as part of hacker ethics.
wikipedia, stackowerflow and all the open source tools and drivers that are made everyday. and there are people working on them actively, developing tools and answering questions and solving problems.
in this sense the hacker ethics is alive and moving forward. it may has changed a lot during recent years, but it is still natural as hackers are front line technology users and developers they should adopt to changes in the world. I also feel some new waves of hacker activity coming along with copy right and intellectual property issues. too much restriction on data sharing, monopolies on publishing and data privacy issues seem growing.

Jargon File

my digging in Jargon File


I was mostly fascinated with the different language use rather than a single word. perhaps because I used to work in language processing and had some experience on web data collection.

it was interesting to see how much original hacker language has impacted current web and youth language. actually about youth, I am not sure if youth language entered hacker language or other way around. because it is always youth speciality to play with language and make up new words and expressions. impact of programming logic on the way hackers communicate is a big one too.
this is my(!) impression in Jargon file:
foo bar
or

foobar: n.
[very common] Another widely used metasyntactic variable; see foo for etymology. Probably originally propagated through DECsystem manuals by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1960s and early 1970s; confirmed sightings there go back to 1972. Hackers do not generally use this to mean FUBAR in either the slang or jargon sense. See also Fred Foobar. In RFC1639, “FOOBAR” was made an abbreviation for “FTP Operation Over Big Address Records”, but this was an obvious backronym. It has been plausibly suggested that “foobar” spread among early computer engineers partly because of FUBAR and partly because “foo bar” parses in electronics techspeak as an inverted foo signal; if a digital signal is active low (so a negative or zero-voltage condition represents a "1") then a horizontal bar is commonly placed over the signal label.

when I was younger and I was doing my master in computational linguistics, I used to look for all sorts of regular expressions in web. very often I would find my answer with an example using "foobar"! I always wondered why foobar appears everywhere! and what does it mean. I even imagined that maybe there is a real place called "foo bar" ...

Women as "different people"

Yes internet made it easier to spread feminist ideas, to publish abuses and challenges ...
but internet did this for almost anything. what ever you want to say, now with internet it is easier to share it with others. but what was greatest effect of internet in women's lives that actually changed something? I am not sure!...
what I know is that computers and internet made it easier for women to work and earn money, which then boosted their confidence and satisfied their need for doing something different than household work. the same opportunity that it brought for people with physical disabilities.
housewives had a chance to be financially independent, an important step to step up against abusive and aggressive environment.

some times ago, I read an article about a mobile app that was kind of map that user could tag it. the idea was that women tag their experience of sexual (mis)behaviour on that location. for example you could see on the map that one particular district was crowded with tags of verbal abuse or so on..
it was very interesting app not only because it informed women to avoid places or be careful and ready to defend themselves but also it made everyone aware of such behaviours and even local citizens and police were more careful.

having that app in mind I did some google search on similar apps, and I was very amused by the results!:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/domestic-abuse-apps,news-19477.html

ethnography and system design

I found these two quotes from Ian Sommerville a very good summary of what I also think about importance of ethnography in design:

“Software systems do not exist in isolation. They are used in a social and organisational context” and “how the social and organisational context affects the practical operation of the system.”

this point to the “sensitising” role of ethnography:

“sensitising you to the nature of work and its organisation ”(Tom Rodden)

and

“You get information about the social interactions in the setting, which other design and analysis methods simply don’t capture.” (Ian Sommerville)

and

“I think the most important thing in ethnography is simply getting designers sensitive to the issues that the people who use systems confront. ” (Dave Randall)

The second point which is also interesting was what Richard Bentley said about looking for new ideas, new developments and new solutions. It may even happen that when we look closer to the context and actual setting and workflow we may find out that our original questions and problem definition that we are designing for, is wrong or need a serious revise.

“ethnography is a very good way of finding out some interesting things that might be worthy of further exploration or of changing your view.”(Steve Benford)

The third point that I found relevant was the use of ethnographical study to understand which parts are essential to remain and which parts are dictated with limitations of existing tool.

“what things are non-critical and the consequences of the environment they are in at the moment?”(Richard Bentley)

the forth point is the use if ethnographical studies evaluatively

“at each stage, to learn about how people experience them and feed that back into design. Ethnography is, I think, a highly appropriate and relatively quick way of doing that. ”(Steve Benford)

I also somehow disagree with Richard Harper when he says “I think if you’re doing ethnography it seems intrinsic to observation and grasping and feeling inside the worlds of those that you’re studying that you get a sense of how those worlds are assembled and thus you therefore also have a sense of how it can be reassembled.” I think when you study something you gain some information, and what you would later do with that information is up to you. It seems engineering kind of thinking that you go from “how something works” to “how it can work or be reassembled differently”.

Random Thoughts

So! I read the week 5 of ethic and law. two main questions till now:
-why hacker ethics is compared to capitalism only and not to any other ideology?
-what was the internet age's role in the whole "different people's" integration?

1. informative to others:they are not that different after all, 
2. informative to themselves:information that made their life easier,like the Estonian website that tells about accessibility facilities around the country 
3. hiding screen: it made it possible to participate without showing the difference to others
4. it opened new possibilities to work and be effective without a lot of physical activity, nowadays for many jobs we just need to have a brain!

social cohesiveness and reaching ubicomp

social cohesiveness (or caring) in reaching ubicomp

in short I think it is important. I actually I have not thought about it before reading the Pekka's paper.
I dont know what kind of role it can have in "reaching ubicomp" but it has a big role in sustaining the ubicom society.
to me it seems that the importance of cohesiveness is more in making a sustainable social plan. maybe it wont directly affect the initial performance but in a long run the health and cohesiveness of a society will have a big impact on its performance.
when people dont have the old social and emotional contact with each other the way they used to have, it  is easy to lose the whole social relatedness and it can be very helpful to have an strong cohesiveness to begin with.

Internet availability in Iran

Internet availability in Iran

It was an interesting process to dig up the data supporting this post! every resource would claim different set of numbers! it was controversial and doubtful that how each organisation came up with its report! the main problem seems to be the unclear data collection methods and difficulty to access some sources.
unfortunately the data I found is from four years ago, but it can give some rough overall idea to the reader.
in 2010 access to internet in urban areas were ~19% and in rural areas down to 4%.
out of 20.3 million families,4.3(21.4%) million had internet access from their own homes, which 94% of them were living in cities.
35.2% of all households in Iran had computers at home. which is 91.5% of urban households and 12% of rural.
comparing to the studies from 2008, within two years, the amount of home internet access and families with computer increased respectively 3.2 and 5 percent.
58.1% of internet users where men and 41.9% women. which are 16.6% of male population and 12.7% of females.
from older than 6years internet users , 59.8% had university degree of some kind.

reference: 
http://www.alef.ir/vdcepp8zejh8epi.b9bj.html?14wml

Digital divide in Iran 

in my perspective

in Iran digital divide is most visible in different age groups. younger generations have constant contact with computers and online world while their parents may not even own an e-mial account !

this is not a big practical problem for older generation, since it is totally possible to live a normal life without using internet or computers(it actually depends on the job, but still possible to live your personal life easily). 

due to strict filtering and low bandwidth, even internet users dont use online connections as a serious means of instant communication, for example friends wont use messenger or facebook chat to fix a meeting point or deciding where to go for dinner. they rather use phone calls for serious purposes.

in this aspect younger and older generations behave similar to each other. what makes the gap between them is the use of internet and computers for free time activities and connectivity to the rest of the world.

while parents watch news on tv with limited access to the different sources, their children have the opportunity to see the world trough many different lenses, have live feeds from people inside the event and read different opinions on it.

in this sense I can say that knowledge makes the biggest divide between the two generations. but kind of knowledge that changes and shapes ones ideology rather than knowledge with immediate practical usage.

getting in contact with bigger external world which is quite different from what they used to, in Iran, changes and shapes ideas, expectations and worldview of youth making an even bigger gap between them and their previous generation. 

Classical Approaches in HCI

                 Classical Approaches in HCI

For making the map I first went through the text very quickly and had a grasp on the content and structure of the text. then I started reading it in detail and after I finished each sub-section, I drew the part of map related to that. while reading the next sub-section, I would sometimes revise my map accordingly editing previous part as well as adding new branches.
My map aims to summarise the classical approaches in HCI , their application and limitations.
I had a small problem during this Cmap, in many cases I found the examples interesting and wanted to include them in my map, but it was not clear how to show them in a meaningful and readable way.