Week 5 Reflections

Class this past week was pretty interesting. The topics that we discussed, design and the changing workplace of the 21st century, are topics that I find interesting. It is interesting to think that in this time of high technology, many of the skills that we seemingly have left behind will reemerge in importance. Although I don't think that the changes will be as soon and as severe as Daniel Pink envisions, there is little doubt that these trends will surely be evident in one form or another. What I find most interesting and exciting is the emergence of design as important to the "common" man. While many design elements may have been favored by the cultural elite in the past, design is coming to the masses. Just look around and it is evident.

In other news, work continues on my project. I was able to produce the presentation for the project and I just have to work through some of the details before finally finishing. It is interesting to see many of the uses people have for tagging. Most recently, I came across a site called LibraryThing, which uses tags to help people keep track, share, and recommend books to other people. I found this to be a great resource for the bibliophiles out there, of which I am one. By just spending a few minutes on the site, I was able to find a myriad of books that I would like to read in the near future. All in a very visually stimulating, well designed site.

A Day To Remember

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Week 4 Reflections

Although I was not at class this week, I did the reading and looked through the powerpoint presentation. I have begun to look at other people's items with design flaws. Pretty interesting stuff. Design has been an interest of mine for the past few years as I have been creating websites and applications that require ease of use. Although I was familiar with some of the terminology and ideas, it was good to get some formality within these issues.

On the project front, I have continued to accumulate information about 'tagging' from a variety of sources. I have started creating my presentation and am excited about it. I think that it will all turn out well and be interesting and informative to all the members of the class. Basically, many of the Web 2.o technologies use 'tagging' to help its user to organize and find the information and/or files. Anyway, back to work on the project.

Everyday Thing With Design Flaws: The Corkscrew Wine Opener

Everyday Thing with a design flaw:

The corkscrew wine opener:

Affordances: The perceived affordances of this product invite people to simply try to screw it into the cork. There is little else that one could be expected to do by just looking at the item. For example, what are the multiple little points for? In addition, there is little to explain what the flip top portion could possibly be used for. It is possible that a diagram could have been included on the corkscrew to clarify some of the possibilities.

Constraints: The corkscrew does not have enough constraints. The corkscrew itself is not the problem. It is fairly clear that it should be used to screw into the cork. The main problem has to do with the lever, which offers too many possibilities of movement, making it difficult to properly position without more knowledge.

Feedback: Feedback is a problem, because if you have used the opener incorrectly, it is very possible that you have damaged the cork, pushed the cork in the bottle, or pulled out the top half of the cork.

Overall, opening a wine bottle should not be a difficult task. Yet, I remember being 21 and feeling loads of pressure trying to use a bottle opener. I remember several emabarassing moments when I ruined bottles of wine by pushing the cork in or making it impossible to extract the cork because I damaged it so thoroughly. It seems like the item could have been designed better to accommodate to these concerns.

Week 3 Reflections

After a difficult journey to class caught in a storm, I arrived a bit tired and weary. In class we went over some of the history of Instructional Technology. The article we were assigned was simply put, mind numbing. I found myself reading over and over the same lines as my mind atrophied. Going over the material in class helped a bit, but it was too much of a whirlwind of information to really have fostered any learning other than at surface level.
As for my first project, which will be on "tagging", I have been gathering resources and doing some preliminary research. Tagging is such an interesting topic because it is very relevant at the present moment and is currently evolving at an accelerated pace. This is exciting to research, yet challenging, because things are constantly changing. What I find most useful about tagging is that it brings the "social" aspect into traditional searches. While Google and other search engines might only provide links due to reasons related to financial reasons, tagging is a way to find information because other users have tagged information and brought it to the community.

Week 2 Reflections

Moving in to the second week I am beginning to think of the possiblities for projects. I am fairly knowledgeable about a lot of these topics, in that I use Flickr, Delicious, Wikis, Podcasts, and RSS feeds on a very frequent basis. Thus, I am a little worried that much of the first half of the class, the class meetings will be a lot of rehash of stuff I already know about. As for my own project, there were a few things that came to mind. A few of my ideas were....open source software, digg.com, Wikis in Education, Google web applications, and Web browser extensions. These all would have been interesting topics, but what I have really decided to focus my attention on is tagging. Tagging is the idea of attaching keywords to various things on the internet. This technology is adding many interesting ways to manage and find information of various kinds. My idea is to try to find many ways in which tagging is used and how this is making it easier for people.