Team Ether

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Team Ether

• Kyle Barnhart
• Qian Xu
• Sharon Kats

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Research Notes

Potential Topics

Ubiquitous computing

• Computers are getting faster, smaller, more effecient, and cheaper which will result in computers in everything (ubiquitous). This is already happening, and as it grows computers will become invisible, embedded in everything, and connected together. They will also become intellegent to changes in their surroundings (ambient intellegence).
• The key to the success in ubiquitous computing will be the human factors. The will not be invisble unless human-computer interactions become more natural so that people are not aware that they are using a computer at all.
• Example: Amongst mobile phones, digital music players, and many other computers that we don't think of as computers, tablets have become popular. Tablets have been around a long time, the idea has been around for decades, and there have been many effective tablets in this decade. However it didn't gain popularity until people started looking at them in a new way (a new class of device) different from newbooks or laptops. That is what the iPad and the Apple iOS accomplished. It was a shift in perception accomplished through a new user interface that was much more natural to users that had previously existed.
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_computer

• Video that got me interested in the subject: THE INTELLIGENCE REVOLUTION - Visions Of The Future - BBC
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-14mZgPfxM
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_intelligence

• Some Computer Science Issues In Ubiquitous Computing
  • http://lcweb.senecac.on.ca:2531/citation.cfm?doid=159544.159617
• Ubiquitous Computing: Are We There Yet?
  • http://lcweb.senecac.on.ca:2289/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5410720
• Connecting the Physical World with Pervasive Networks
  • http://lcweb.senecac.on.ca:2289/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=993145
• The Human Experience
  • http://lcweb.senecac.on.ca:2289/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=993144
  • "Machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs will make using a computer as refreshing as a walk in the woods.”
  • "Invisibility of computing, from the human perspective, can start when we can determine an individual’s identity, location, effect, or activity through his or her mere presence and natural interactions in an environment."
  • "It is not the value of any single service that will make computing a disappearing technology. Rather, it is the combination of a large range of services, all of which are available when and as needed, and all of which work as desired without extraordinary human intervention. A major challenge for applications research is discovering an evolutionary path toward this idyllic interactive experience."
  • "The brief history of ubicomp demonstrates three emergent features that appear across many applications. First, we must be able to use implicitly sensed context from the physical and electronic environment to determine a given service’s correct behavior. Context-aware computing demonstrates promise for making our interactions with services more seamless and less distracting from our everyday activities. Applications can work well when properly informed about the context of their use. Second, we must provision automated services to easily capture and store memories of live experiences and serve them up for later use. Finally, we need continuously available services. As we move toward the infusion of ubicomp into our everyday lives, the services provided will need to become constantly available partners with the human users, always interrupted and easily resumed."
  • "The focus on activities as opposed to tasks is a crucial departure from traditional HCI design."
    • "They rarely have a clear beginning or end, so the design cannot assume a common starting point or closure and thus requires greater flexibility and simplicity."
    • "Interruption is expected as users switch attention between competing concerns."
    • "Multiple activities operate concurrently and might need to be loosely coordinated."
    • "Time is an important discriminator in characterizing the ongoing relationship between people and computers."
    • "Associative models of information are needed, because information is reused from multiple perspectives."

Thesis (roughly):

• Ubiquitous computing is changing the way human-computer interfaces are designed. In order to be invisible to users, computers must interact with users naturally.

Outline:

Intro - What is ubiquitous computing, and thesis. Background - Why is it important, where did it come from, where is it going. Body - Key aspect of ubiquitous computing interaction/interface design. Exmaples - tablets, smartphones, boards Conclusion

Banner Blindness

Banner blindness is a phenomenon in web usability where visitors to a website consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like information, which can also be called ad blindness.

• An eye-tracking study conducted by the Nielsen/Norman Group finds Internet users avoid viewing banner ads. Text advertising is read more often than display ads, according to the research.
• There's still hope for online ads. Pernice Coyne said graphical ads with text and contrasting colors, like white text on red, is less likely to be disregarded. "They're looking at them if they're text," she said. "I hate to sound boring, but [it is best] if you can make sure your ad is something simple, text or a recognized logo, and it needs to be relevant to the page."
• The researchers also found that people read Web pages in an F-pattern, narrowing their focus as they scroll down a page of content. Pernice Coyne said readers fixate or focus on the content at the top of a page, read a little bit further down, then give up and go back to the beginning of the same or subsequent page.
• Images that appear in the middle of the page, a spot for advertisements, are considered "obstacles" and annoying.

[1]

• The industry is taking different approaches to the problem. Many are starting to have Rich Internet Application advertisements (RIA) – with ads that sometimes takeover the entire screen without the users consent – classic interruption marketing. I haven’t really looked at the stats as to the efficacy of these campaigns but it’s a clear response to banner blindness.

[2]

Solutions

• placed it right at the beginning of a bulleted list, a natural breaking point.
• put the banner ad by natural exit points – the end, after the first paragraph, at the beginning of a break in format, or by the most boring parts of the article.
• Size color shape all play a part in people noticing your ads

webpage marketing strategy

Research Essay Outline

Thesis: Webpages and web ads suffer from a phenomenon known as banner blindness

Outline:

• Intro - on the thesis, and on what blinder blindness is
• Background info - how humans read web pages, the studies that are done on users reading webpages
• Banner Blindness Problem Identified - tests and studies that have been done, and how this issue was discovered
• Solutions - the solutions for web ads, and possible ad placement to over come this problem
• Conclusion

Reference

Banner Blindness research with some tests