"I think you mistake the attitude. UI disasters come from anyone who has no training in UI issues, and that's true of many software engineers, and basically all customers.
Keep the context in mind. Customers really can't sit down and tell you what they want. You have to help them work it out, explore alternatives, show them what's possible and what's not, and basically "elicit" the requirements. If the customers could do that stuff, they'd be the engineers." ***************** Good point. Essentially, the "elicitation" you speak of is what happens during a good interaction design process. Again,the process involves designers who understand how to elicit what the consumer's desired *goals* are relative to any hardware/software solution. Further from that, the interaction designer also delimits the population for wich a device (or software solution)is forged. This keeps things under control, and within the user's logical boundaries, thus leading to products that are easy to do UI for (UI is not part of interaction design..ID takes place prior to software coding).
So, the 'problem' of eliciting consumer goals - or preferences for content (in the case of broadcasting) is under way through the discipline of interaction design - the ID process can be used in many scenarios outside technology.
Finding out what consumers really want from their content providers is a similar process, if it's done right, and focused on consumers expectations (including just raw entertainment value)
"You seem to be mistaking television viewers with the customers of Neilson data - the TV producers. Whose customers are advertisers, not TV viewers." *********** Your post isn't intended to do so, bit it nicely summarizes - because of the blindness to good research inherent in the present Neilsen measuring system - the thrust of the problem that I've pointed out. The value chain starts with *consumers*, not producers. Making *customers* happy should be the goal of consumer research (which Nelisen tries to disguise itself as doing, and is doing in a non-optimal way).
I would also suggest a read: The Cluetrain Manifesto", or go to the Cluetrain site www.cluetrain.com to get a sense of what markets are in this world - they're *conversations*. Currently, Neilsen is engaged in measurement of a faulty production system; it's anything but a conversation with consumers around preference.
Your claim that the Neilsen's are primarily for the producer's benefit begs the question.
If the data was based on consumer feedbeack regarding preferences **prior** to production, then the producer's would benefit *even more*.
Remember, a happy customer is always (or mostly always) going to want to return to the source of his/her happiness.
Here's a quote from a Janis Ian essay on the music biz - a must read (do to Dan Gilmore's eJournal for a link): "...the problem with focus groups is the same problem anthropologists have when studying peoples in the field - the moment the anthropologist's presence is known, everything changes. Hundreds of scientific studies have shown that any experimental group wants to please the examiner. For focus groups, this is particularly true."
This is another indication of where things have gone wrong in the broadcast business. Essentially, focus groups are run based on faulty data coming from places like Neilsen, who, again, are measuring preference for *what's already out there*, instead of preference for *what would be optimal*. This represents a classic flaw in their 'research' model. Producers, advertisers, and consumers lose because of this flaw.
"Everything from government subsidy to "public access" channels has been tried to "improve" the quality and breadth of TV programming. And it hasn't worked. " ******* Frankly, the 'voices' that were listened to prior to the creation of public programming (PBS) were from a small elite. Government subsidy has been miniscule (just look at the numbers).
The major broadcasters and cable producers are getting better at listening. There has been a spate of recent programming that has, indeed, exceeded the quality of what has gone before. New voices are being let into broadcast because there are more producers looking for different ways to draw audience.
However, back to my main point about the Neilsen's. Why do they, and their broadcasting and advertising customers, go about measuring audience response in ways that are simply non-optimal? If they took the time (and money, which would be a pittance compared to the billions of wasted advertising $$), they could do serious pre-production surveys, measure truly innovative broadcast prototypes, and get more good stuff into broadcast. Everyone would win in this scenario.
Think about how much more you pay for consumer items due to ineffective advertising based on ad placement that results from a non-optimal survey?
There is a massive opportunity cost to you and me because of this inefficient system of measurement.
If there was better programming to start with, more people would watch it, they would be better identified in terms of demographic profiling, and advertising dollars would be more effective. THis would lead advertisers to want to spend more, more wisely. The broadcasters would win. And consumers would have their minds better satisfied.
""Customers don't really know what they want" is virtually the first axiom of software engineering, and it holds for other disciplines as well. (Ask an architect about their customers... not quite as extreme as software, but they still get asked for the moon.)" ********* Frankly - and with due respect to engineers - it *just this attitude* that results in the impossible UI problems that consumers have been facing forever.
I would recommend Alan Cooper's book "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum" to anyone that thinks consumers are to blame for all the thousands of hard-to-use technology products out there. It's exactly the reverse.
Cooper was one of the founders of a discipline called Interaction Design. This discipline looks at what the *goals* of a consumer are relative to the technology proposed. It's a process that delimits feature creep, employs strict architecture and coding templates, and keeps engineers working on a path that's based on *consumer preference* (relative to goals), instead of "hey, let's use this cool piece of legacy code", or " let's throw in this cool feature".
The same could be said for broadcasting behemoths - they just don't listen. Look at the billions (literally) wasted on poor programming. It doesn't have to be that way.
"Besides, with 24 hours * 200 channels, I get enough programming I like to start a useful evolutionary process." ***** Wading through 200 channels to find out what one likes appears to be a time consuming enterprise.
Sure, one can find a few gems amongst the drek, but why not create a marketing feedback process that ensures broadcasters will produce more of what people want in the first place. The Neilsen process robs the broadcast producer/consumer feedback loop of good information, as it short circuits optimal consumer feedback.
Wouldn't it be better to have a more accurate view of consumer preferences *before* content is scored, rather than after? This is 'Marketing 101'.
Neilsen's ratings, used as a guide for content production are the *reverse* of good one-to-one, or even mass consumer marketing.
Why doesn't Toyota just throw a bunch of cars out there based on some "cool ideas" that their engineers have, and then ask their consumer base which of those products they like best? They don't do this because they don't want to waste time, money, or their consumer's good will. They find out through exhaustive pre-marketing *what their consumers want *before* they engineer.
Newton Minnow - the first (or one of the first FCC Commissioners) called TV broadcasting a "vast wasteland" - that hasn't changed. Why? Because broadcasters don't *listen*, they just broadcast.
Why do we have a content preference measuring system that only measures preference about what broadcasters are currently 'throwing at the wall'?
Why don't they measure what consumers want *before* the fact?
Largely, mediocre content is continually thrust into the broadcast arena, and Neilsen tells us which of the mediocre broadcasts are the best ones. Does that really improve the quality of broadcasting/programming, or give consumers what they really want?
It would be refreshing to see someone come up with a way to poll users (with appropriate rewards for their time) on what broadcast consumers *want* to see, instead of telling us which bad content is the best bad content.
btw, I'm not talking about the lame broadcast "focus groups" here; they simply have consumers watching still more drek that has been modeled after broadcast content created with Neilsen ratings in mind - that's part of the problem!)
In a way, Neilsen ratings - used as broadcast and ad marketing decision tools - are the antithesis of good marketing, because they don't get at consumer preferences *before* the 'product' is created. In the current scheme of things, Neilesn ratings serve primarily producers and advertisers of content, not the consumer - and this is one very good reason why content producers and advertisers are having so much trouble surviving.
In the way of a thought experiment, let's create an imaginary scenario where the tenets of this bill are accepted by the Congress, and the legislation passes, thus causing all the changes desired by the commercial proponents of this bill.
Is there any guarantee that the above scenario would result in an increase - or even maintain the status quo (in terms of real profits) - of the digital content industry? What if profits continue to decrease?
What happens if widely available workarounds to CDBTPA-inspired technology are created and made available via distributed networks - do we turn the hardware industry and consumers upside-down again to keep the creators of digital content happy?
What if some creators of digital content *want* - as a part of their business model - to encourage the free copying and distribution of their digital content? What if the number of people/companies desiring this as a means to distribution eventually *outnumber* those who currently hold copyright (e.g. the proponents of the CDBTPA legislation)? How then does the proposed CDBTPA technology *impinge on the rights of this new group*? Furthermore, what if variations of the latter model were so successful as to be adopted by current producers of digital content? CDBTPA legislation would make it impossible to do so.(note: there are already profitable examples of this model in existence - more will surely appear as creative entrepreneurs find ways to attach unique value to digital content in ways that result in profits *in spite of* the prolific (encouraged by said companies) reproduction and distribution, by consumers (i.e.viral marketing), of their digital content)
The problem scenarios listed are but just a few that could occur if this bill were passed.
The proposed CDBTPA legislation - if passed - will cost consumers, technology equipment manufacturers, and ultimately the very producers of content that it purports to protect , *more* in terms of lost revenues and inconvenience than the theoretical savings promised by the bill's proponents.
Additionally, if one considers 1) the massive task of altering probably hundreds - if not thousands of discrete hardware and software products slated for manufacture and distribution to consumers; 2) the cost of infrastructure to monitor (police) behavior at both the commercial and consumer level; 3)the real confusion - and likely mass resentment - caused by introduction of a technology that forbids behavior (fair-use copying of digital content) that has heretofore been understood as a non-issue by consumers (who, by the way, are voters); 4)the real cost of consumers having to either replace current hardware/software products that permit the copying of digital media.
If one considers the above - in addition to the fact that eventual workarounds to even the best digital copy protection technologies (whther implemented in hardware or software)are all but inevitable - one has to wonder how the CDBTPA legislation has made it into serious consideration.
Let there be no doubt that copying digital content for free distribution to others is stealing. New technologies have made it possible to make this kind of theft easy. There is however, no excuse for theft - whether it is easy to do, or not.
However, to make the assumption that because individuals who have access to the means to copy digital content for illegal distribution *might* do this - and further force upon those individuals real social costs and inconveniences to keep them from doing what they *might* do - is to in a not-so-subtle way criminalize those individuals, and make them pay penalties for the wrong behavior of a relative few.
My hope is that the Congress will take a more robust look at the original intentions of copyright; and, that the purveyors of digital content consider that as social and technological landscapes change, so can their respective business models. Change coming from the creators of digital content - constructed in a way that enhances current products, while adding new kinds of value that digital technologies permit - will in the long run be much more productive than creating inconvenience and cost to millions of consumers and thousands of consumer electronics manufacturers.
from the above site: "Other noncontact optical tracking devices have been built, such as the "Videoharp", introduced in 1990 by Dean Rubine and Paul McAvinney at Carnegie-Mellon. This is a flat, hollow, rectangular frame, which senses the presence and position of fingers inside the frame boundary as they block the backlighting emanating from the frame edges, thereby casting a corresponding shadow onto a linear photosensor array. Appropriate MIDI events are generated as fingers are introduced and moved about the sensitive volume inside the frame, allowing many interesting mappings"
Also check out http://www.ircam.fr/equipes/analyse-synthese/wande rle/Gestes/Externe/ for trends of gestural control in music
Frankly, I would like to see more alternate music controllers built and supported by manufacturers. This is a potential gold mine if done well, not to mention the benefit to those who want alternatives to traditional musical instruments - whether electronic, or acoustic.
Go to TidBits (a wonderful Mac resource) and read the following series of articles:
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06604 (Content is a Pure Public Good) and
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06609 (Why Encryption Doesn't Help) and
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06629 (How to Finance Content Creation) and
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06669 (Are We Just Rationalizing Theft)
All by Dan Kohn, a General Partner with Skymoon Ventures.
These essays put an end to the argument that the current system(s) proposed by content providers will lose - no matter what.
Also, anything Lessig has authored (already in/. the archives)
This is a very compelling series of reads on this issue.
Furthermore, if people like Ebert, Lessig, Dan Kohn and others continue to get the word out, we, and recording artists will be a lot better off in the near long term.
It's beyond me why any well-known act would sign with a major label today, given the raw potential for this medium (the net) to do almost pure 'pull' marketing.
Seriously folks, let's realize that capital is now on the wire. There is simply no reason for high-level politicos to consider what effects their decisions have on the long-term well-being of the population that have been entrusted to represent.
btw, this isn't to paint all politicians and business people with a broad brush; however, it's clear that the trend is doing whatever it takes to make one's chums - the one's with the most money and influence - comfortable.
Who cares if the sector is picking up? This won't *largely* change things in Silicon Valley.
Any upswing due to new security-driven initiatives will be shared by other tech regions.
The projections indicating that the recession is over are way optimistic. Just today the Chron pointed out that the recession 'had' (as if it's past tense) been deeper in California than elsewhere...no kidding!
In fact, as we continmue to go through tech booms-and-busts, the share of the pie that Silicon Valley labor sees as a result will steadily decrease. The region is already in decline, with two exceptions: 1) High end tech skills 2)Investment capital
At the MSFT presentation, Darko Kirovski - who seems to have carefully thought a lot of this stuff through - of Microsoft Research (MSR)talked about some of the simple ways that pure dictionary searches could weed out roughly 25-33% of all passwords.
He also dealt with the possible objections that people might have to trying to remember where they clicked on an image.
As an example, he hypothesized that a physiologist, or a surgeon using this system night very well choose anatomical images as their source material.
He also pointed out that the keyboard layout itself is an 'image'.
Kirovski was sensitive to the behavior change - going from text passwords to image-based sources - that consumers would have to engage.
He also admitted that there still isn't a password system that is 100% fullproof.However, by the time he finished his presentation, I was convinced that the image-based password system is a huge improvement of the current text-based model.
This isn't to say better means for password protection won't cone along - they will. But right now this is an interesting alternative.
btw, Kirovski is an impressive individual. At the same conference, he spoke of research done on something called 'content screening' as a way to protect piracy. The rigor with which he approached both topics - from several perspectives - was impressive.
"synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers), can be controlled realtime via standard MIDI devices" Midiman Oxygen8 [midiman.com] Midiman Surface One [midiman.net] " ------ ------ Right, and the market for unique controller interfaces continues to grow (see links below. Frankly, I think as we move toward faster processors and better design, we're going to see some startlingly unique ways to control digital musical events.
There is a lot of power coming at us in the way of computer-based, music software apps, but control of these computer tools via controller tools that permit maximum and untimate degrees-of-freedom by the body is the real next revolution in musical expression.
This doean't mean the end of acoustical instruments by the way, but rather their augmentation by tools that permit people who have a cognitive skew for a specific way of movement will be able to express themselves in ways that they would otherwise not be able to.
Here are a few more general umbrella sites to look for unique controllers and gestural input: http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~amulder/personal/web pages.ht ml
http://www.ircam.fr/equipes/analyse-synthese/wan de rle/Gestes/Externe/
On the one hand, computer technology has brought a magnificent new palette of possibility to consumers. On the other hand, computer technology is so complex that it often poses more of a problem than a solution to its intended users.
Only the most dedicated consumer can keep up with the flood of innovation and new applications that assault the computer technology marketplace. In fact, thousands of books and magazines - not to mention dozens of publishers - practically owe their existence to the ill-conceived designs that have been brought to market by computer technology manufacturers. After all, someone has to attempt to figure out this morass, as certainly most consumers aren't able to.
The fact is that too many consumers end up devoting more time to learning about 'technology', than doing the work that is supposed to be enabled by technology.
As I recall, within the last several years the Bureau of Labor Statistics has conducted studies that indicate no net gain in productivity in the workplace between those that do, or do not, use computers.
One way to characterize the problematic ease-of-use issues in computer technology is by quoting the title of a recent book authored by Alan Cooper, founder of Cooper Interaction Design ( http://www.cooper.com ) - "The Inmates are Running The Asylum".
Cooper labels his process 'Interaction Design'. Interaction Design is a new precursor, as well as an integral part of product development for many new technology products. Many well-established technology companies have begun to utilize interaction designers in order to both fulfill their customer's needs, and maximize development efficiencies.
In Cooper's book the 'inmates' are hardware and software engineers, and technology marketers, who continually look for - and add - 'new and better' features to their creations - all with insufficient regard for what the primary mission of enlightened - in our case - computer technology development could be - that is, to discover, via careful investigation what the 'essential' goals are that consumers want to accomplish with technologies, and then use technology 'appropriately' to create solutions that enable just those goals. Feature creep and bad product design are anathema to interaction designers. And it's feature creep and bad design (from a user's perspective) that have caused the massive user problem that is today's computer.
Interaction designers discover the goals of the target consumer, and create rich templates that are - ideally - followed nearly to the letter by software/hardware engineers. From there, a product is forged, and then handed off to interface designers who now have a much easier time rendering the product useful, instead of having to deal with a mish-mash of features that have been inserted into a product just because the programmer, or marketer, thought it would be 'cool'.
Many consumers profess to love the power that technology gives them, and are not unlike most general technology customers in this regard. However, most consumers like - and use - technology only insofar as it provides immediate feedback. I have yet to see even an informal poll that asks how hard consumers want to work in order to extract even the most basic features promised by computer manufacturers. My guess is that only a very small percentage of consumers have a high tolerance for the frustration that results from poor system architecture and interface design.
Manufacturers have recently begun to recognize the sorry reality of technology design from a user-concentric perspective, as illustrated by the introduction of many new technologies that appear (at least on the surface) to be more 'intuitive' (however, the term 'intuitive' itself belies one of the computer industry's major problems relating to human interface; that is, the term 'intuitive' is meant to imply that within the boundaries of an already insufficient model for interaction, ease-of-use has gotten somehow easier).
I believe the trend towards increased ease-of-use will continue, but it will continue at a snail's pace, unless computer technology designers get serious about designing technology with and eye toward the accomplishment of specific, delineated goals, rather than the construction of feature-burdened, maze-like products, software and manuals that offer more frustration than enlightenment.
Hardware and software engineers design computer technology systems. Even as those engineers have computing experience (they have to), they are - like it or not - working as technologists first, and consumers second. Technology development is their job; it's what they get paid to do. There has been a lack of focus on ease-of-use in the computer industry. Design, functional design with an eye toward helping the user accomplish specific goals, has not been the rule.
Tremendous pressures are placed on manufacturers - both large and small - to consistently come up with enticing new features and designs. These efforts are concocted to create demand for yet another way to "help you become more productive" etc., etc.
Computer technology manufacturers - especially in these days of rapid product co modification - simply don't have the time or resources to come up with designs that are optimally thought out from the perspective of helping consumers to accomplish their goals. Too many products try to be too many things for too many consumers. Features are crammed into new offerings with insufficient forethought about how those features will be accessed or used. This isn't to say computer manufacturers haven't tried to create good designs, and that a few haven't come close, but those few are large exceptions to the rule.
A further complication is the constantly accelerating speed of change that technology itself brings to bear on the computer technology scene. One no less notable to the technology scene that Ray Kurzweil http://www.kurzweilai.net makes powerful arguments for what he labels the "Law of Accelerating Technology Returns".
Kurzweil claims that technology has the phenomenon of accelerating itself to the point of eventual exponential rates of change. We are currently living, claims Kurzweil, in the midst of the rise of a technology development curve that has begun to approach large exponential rates of change.
Powerful arguments can be made for the rate of technological change accelerating to a point of where it's outside the boundary of human control. If Kurzweil is correct - even given the assumption that he might not be exactly spot-on in his prediction, we are sure to see even more bewildering, and often hard-to-use technology come to market in the near future as technology itself enables an ever increasing ability to create ever more complex technology solutions.
One promise on the horizon for future improvement of computer technology is being made possible by the ever-growing capacity of processors (fed by the phenomenon that Kurzweil and others have identified). These developments may result in the eventual creation of sophisticated computers that are much more intuitive to use that our current crop of available products.
If we consider that most computers provide anything but optimal degrees-of-freedom - or ease-of-use - we must conclude that the possibilities for the future are indeed exciting, assuming that we heed the warnings of interaction designers like Cooper - and properly employ the skills of interaction designers, or those who think like them, in the development of computer technology.
Again, might I suggest that those who both architect, create, and market new technology tools read Cooper's book (by the way, I have no connection whatsoever to Cooper's company) and discover the ugly truth about why computer technology is so difficult to use.
Cooper's 'truth' has to do with trusting the user, finding out what she needs, and designing for specific - not general - use, according to the stated goals of the user(s).
The best of plumbers are very skilled. However, would you trust even the best plumber to draw plans for a skyscraper? When computer technology manufacturers give over the process of product creation to their technology groups, and those groups are set free to develop computer technology tools from a perspective only they understand, the result is hard-to-use technology.
This is a problem that can be remedied, only if computer technology manufacturers take the time to do their job in a way that maximizes the interface between their customers and the technologies they so well understand. Hopefully, interaction designers, and computer technology developers, will begin to work together to make better computer technology - in terms of-ease-of-use, and usefulness -As long as market forces - to the exclusion of technology goals defined by consumers - bear prominently on the success and failure of computer technology companies, consumers will continue to live with ill-conceived tools that purport to enable, but in reality frustrate more than they enable.
Apropos yesterday's thread on "the price of doing business" http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/01/181520 0&mode=thread&tid=98, the mentioned CNET link http://news.com.com/2100-1001-848115.html that goes into how Intel wants to embed wireless communications capabilities in silicon gives another clue as to how "the price of doing business" will lead to more hiring offshore. Here's a quote from the CNET story:
"Increasingly, an incremental amount of the company's research projects will migrate overseas. The company's research grants "are too heavily biased in the U.S. today," Gelsinger said during the interview. "The U.S. graduates about 50 percent of what U.S. industry needs."
Foreign engineers also need jobs. When the company opened offices in Nizhny-Novgorod, Russia, it received approximately 100 applications for every position. "We hired strongly qualified applicants with Ph.D.s for about one-fifth" the cost of their U.S. counterparts, Gelsinger said."
This excerpt represents a forward-looking larger trend that will impact technology workers in the US far more than most currently believe.
I'm not writing to elicit xenophobia, but to encourage technology workers to think about how this trend - which is unstoppable, and in some ways desireable - will change the landscape of technology innovation, and it's implementation on the domestic front.
The exodus from SF is the beginning of a larger trend.
India graduates nearly 40,000 highly qualified engineers *every year*. China, probably four times that, and climbing.
The Law of Lowest Wages, combined with increasing commodification of technology will drive many companies out of the US entirely within the next dozen years.
Roughly 46% of our working population works directly or indirectly with technology. Think about what boardroon executives probably already considering as they make plans for future capital and physical investment. Capital is 'on the wire'. Domestic fealty just doesn't cut it for public corporations; not in a world where profit is king.
There will still be strong technology innovation coming out of the U.S. for many years to come. However, much of the implementation of that innovation will not necessarily have to be performed by people here in the States.
We're facing the very beginning of a huge social displacement problem. Look at the San Francisco phenomenon as a micro-trend that will soon snowball.
Our domestic planners (an oxymoron?) had better start preparing for this and look for ways to either keep people fully employed, or actively interested in a slowed-down version of the 'good life', or we're looking for real trouble down the road.
Slashdot Mirror
"I think you mistake the attitude. UI disasters come from anyone who has no training in UI issues, and that's true of many software engineers, and basically all customers.
Keep the context in mind. Customers really can't sit down and tell you what they want. You have to help them work it out, explore alternatives, show them what's possible and what's not, and basically "elicit" the requirements. If the customers could do that stuff, they'd be the engineers."
*****************
Good point. Essentially, the "elicitation" you speak of is what happens during a good interaction design process. Again,the process involves designers who understand how to elicit what the consumer's desired *goals* are relative to any hardware/software solution. Further from that, the interaction designer also delimits the population for wich a device (or software solution)is forged. This keeps things under control, and within the user's logical boundaries, thus leading to products that are easy to do UI for (UI is not part of interaction design..ID takes place prior to software coding).
So, the 'problem' of eliciting consumer goals - or preferences for content (in the case of broadcasting) is under way through the discipline of interaction design - the ID process can be used in many scenarios outside technology.
Finding out what consumers really want from their content providers is a similar process, if it's done right, and focused on consumers expectations (including just raw entertainment value)
"You seem to be mistaking television viewers with the customers of Neilson data - the TV producers. Whose customers are advertisers, not TV viewers."
***********
Your post isn't intended to do so, bit it nicely summarizes - because of the blindness to good research inherent in the present Neilsen measuring system - the thrust of the problem that I've pointed out. The value chain starts with *consumers*, not producers. Making *customers* happy should be the goal of consumer research (which Nelisen tries to disguise itself as doing, and is doing in a non-optimal way).
I would also suggest a read: The Cluetrain Manifesto", or go to the Cluetrain site www.cluetrain.com to get a sense of what markets are in this world - they're *conversations*. Currently, Neilsen is engaged in measurement of a faulty production system; it's anything but a conversation with consumers around preference.
Your claim that the Neilsen's are primarily for the producer's benefit begs the question.
If the data was based on consumer feedbeack regarding preferences **prior** to production, then the producer's would benefit *even more*.
Remember, a happy customer is always (or mostly always) going to want to return to the source of his/her happiness.
Here's a quote from a Janis Ian essay on the music biz - a must read (do to Dan Gilmore's eJournal for a link):
"...the problem with focus groups is the same problem anthropologists have when studying peoples in the field - the moment the anthropologist's presence is known, everything changes. Hundreds of scientific studies have shown that any experimental group wants to please the examiner. For focus groups, this is particularly true."
This is another indication of where things have gone wrong in the broadcast business. Essentially, focus groups are run based on faulty data coming from places like Neilsen, who, again, are measuring preference for *what's already out there*, instead of preference for *what would be optimal*. This represents a classic flaw in their 'research' model. Producers, advertisers, and consumers lose because of this flaw.
"Everything from government subsidy to "public access" channels has been tried to "improve" the quality and breadth of TV programming. And it hasn't worked. "
*******
Frankly, the 'voices' that were listened to prior to the creation of public programming (PBS) were from a small elite. Government subsidy has been miniscule (just look at the numbers).
The major broadcasters and cable producers are getting better at listening. There has been a spate of recent programming that has, indeed, exceeded the quality of what has gone before. New voices are being let into broadcast because there are more producers looking for different ways to draw audience.
However, back to my main point about the Neilsen's. Why do they, and their broadcasting and advertising customers, go about measuring audience response in ways that are simply non-optimal? If they took the time (and money, which would be a pittance compared to the billions of wasted advertising $$), they could do serious pre-production surveys, measure truly innovative broadcast prototypes, and get more good stuff into broadcast. Everyone would win in this scenario.
Think about how much more you pay for consumer items due to ineffective advertising based on ad placement that results from a non-optimal survey?
There is a massive opportunity cost to you and me because of this inefficient system of measurement.
If there was better programming to start with, more people would watch it, they would be better identified in terms of demographic profiling, and advertising dollars would be more effective. THis would lead advertisers to want to spend more, more wisely. The broadcasters would win. And consumers would have their minds better satisfied.
""Customers don't really know what they want" is virtually the first axiom of software engineering, and it holds for other disciplines as well. (Ask an architect about their customers... not quite as extreme as software, but they still get asked for the moon.)"
*********
Frankly - and with due respect to engineers - it *just this attitude* that results in the impossible UI problems that consumers have been facing forever.
I would recommend Alan Cooper's book "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum" to anyone that thinks consumers are to blame for all the thousands of hard-to-use technology products out there. It's exactly the reverse.
Cooper was one of the founders of a discipline called Interaction Design. This discipline looks at what the *goals* of a consumer are relative to the technology proposed. It's a process that delimits feature creep, employs strict architecture and coding templates, and keeps engineers working on a path that's based on *consumer preference* (relative to goals), instead of "hey, let's use this cool piece of legacy code", or " let's throw in this cool feature".
The same could be said for broadcasting behemoths - they just don't listen. Look at the billions (literally) wasted on poor programming.
It doesn't have to be that way.
"Besides, with 24 hours * 200 channels, I get enough programming I like to start a useful evolutionary process."
*****
Wading through 200 channels to find out what one likes appears to be a time consuming enterprise.
Sure, one can find a few gems amongst the drek, but why not create a marketing feedback process that ensures broadcasters will produce more of what people want in the first place. The Neilsen process robs the broadcast producer/consumer feedback loop of good information, as it short circuits optimal consumer feedback.
Wouldn't it be better to have a more accurate view of consumer preferences *before* content is scored, rather than after? This is 'Marketing 101'.
Neilsen's ratings, used as a guide for content production are the *reverse* of good one-to-one, or even mass consumer marketing.
Why doesn't Toyota just throw a bunch of cars out there based on some "cool ideas" that their engineers have, and then ask their consumer base which of those products they like best? They don't do this because they don't want to waste time, money, or their consumer's good will. They find out through exhaustive pre-marketing *what their consumers want *before* they engineer.
Newton Minnow - the first (or one of the first FCC Commissioners) called TV broadcasting a "vast wasteland" - that hasn't changed. Why? Because broadcasters don't *listen*, they just broadcast.
Why do we have a content preference measuring system that only measures preference about what broadcasters are currently 'throwing at the wall'?
Why don't they measure what consumers want *before* the fact?
Largely, mediocre content is continually thrust into the broadcast arena, and Neilsen tells us which of the mediocre broadcasts are the best ones. Does that really improve the quality of broadcasting/programming, or give consumers what they really want?
It would be refreshing to see someone come up with a way to poll users (with appropriate rewards for their time) on what broadcast consumers *want* to see, instead of telling us which bad content is the best bad content.
btw, I'm not talking about the lame broadcast "focus groups" here; they simply have consumers watching still more drek that has been modeled after broadcast content created with Neilsen ratings in mind - that's part of the problem!)
In a way, Neilsen ratings - used as broadcast and ad marketing decision tools - are the antithesis of good marketing, because they don't get at consumer preferences *before* the 'product' is created. In the current scheme of things, Neilesn ratings serve primarily producers and advertisers of content, not the consumer - and this is one very good reason why content producers and advertisers are having so much trouble surviving.
In the way of a thought experiment, let's create an imaginary scenario where the tenets of this bill are accepted by the Congress, and the legislation passes, thus causing all the changes desired by the commercial proponents of this bill.
Is there any guarantee that the above scenario would result in an increase - or even maintain the status quo (in terms of real profits) - of the digital content industry? What if profits continue to decrease?
What happens if widely available workarounds to CDBTPA-inspired technology are created and made available via distributed networks - do we turn the hardware industry and consumers upside-down again to keep the creators of digital content happy?
What if some creators of digital content *want* - as a part of their business model - to encourage the free copying and distribution of their digital content? What if the number of people/companies desiring this as a means to distribution eventually *outnumber* those who currently hold copyright (e.g. the proponents of the CDBTPA legislation)? How then does the proposed CDBTPA technology *impinge on the rights of this new group*? Furthermore, what if variations of the latter model were so successful as to be adopted by current producers of digital content? CDBTPA legislation would make it impossible to do so.(note: there are already profitable examples of this model in existence - more will surely appear as creative entrepreneurs find ways to attach unique value to digital content in ways that result in profits *in spite of* the prolific (encouraged by said companies) reproduction and distribution, by consumers (i.e.viral marketing), of their digital content)
The problem scenarios listed are but just a few that could occur if this bill were passed.
The proposed CDBTPA legislation - if passed - will cost consumers, technology equipment manufacturers, and ultimately the very producers of content that it purports to protect , *more* in terms of lost revenues and inconvenience than the theoretical savings promised by the bill's proponents.
Additionally, if one considers 1) the massive task of altering probably hundreds - if not thousands of discrete hardware and software products slated for manufacture and distribution to consumers; 2) the cost of infrastructure to monitor (police) behavior at both the commercial and consumer level; 3)the real confusion - and likely mass resentment - caused by introduction of a technology that forbids behavior (fair-use copying of digital content) that has heretofore been understood as a non-issue by consumers (who, by the way, are voters); 4)the real cost of consumers having to either replace current hardware/software products that permit the copying of digital media.
If one considers the above - in addition to the fact that eventual workarounds to even the best digital copy protection technologies (whther implemented in hardware or software)are all but inevitable - one has to wonder how the CDBTPA legislation has made it into serious consideration.
Let there be no doubt that copying digital content for free distribution to others is stealing. New technologies have made it possible to make this kind of theft easy. There is however, no excuse for theft - whether it is easy to do, or not.
However, to make the assumption that because individuals who have access to the means to copy digital content for illegal distribution *might* do this - and further force upon those individuals real social costs and inconveniences to keep them from doing what they *might* do - is to in a not-so-subtle way criminalize those individuals, and make them pay penalties for the wrong behavior of a relative few.
My hope is that the Congress will take a more robust look at the original intentions of copyright; and, that the purveyors of digital content consider that as social and technological landscapes change, so can their respective business models. Change coming from the creators of digital content - constructed in a way that enhances current products, while adding new kinds of value that digital technologies permit - will in the long run be much more productive than creating inconvenience and cost to millions of consumers and thousands of consumer electronics manufacturers.
This instrument built in the early 90's - check out the following:
t ru mX.html
e rle/Gestes/Externe/
http://web.media.mit.edu/~joep/SpectrumWeb/Spec
from the above site:
"Other noncontact optical tracking devices have been built, such as the "Videoharp", introduced in 1990 by Dean Rubine and Paul McAvinney at Carnegie-Mellon. This is a flat, hollow, rectangular frame, which senses the presence and position of fingers inside the frame boundary as they block the backlighting emanating from the frame edges, thereby casting a corresponding shadow onto a linear photosensor array. Appropriate MIDI events are generated as fingers are introduced and moved about the sensitive volume inside the frame, allowing many interesting mappings"
Also check out http://www.ircam.fr/equipes/analyse-synthese/wand
for trends of gestural control in music
Frankly, I would like to see more alternate music controllers built and supported by manufacturers. This is a potential gold mine if done well, not to mention the benefit to those who want alternatives to traditional musical instruments - whether electronic, or acoustic.
Go to TidBits (a wonderful Mac resource) and read the following series of articles:
/. the archives)
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06604 (Content is a Pure Public Good) and
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06609 (Why Encryption Doesn't Help) and
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06629 (How to Finance Content Creation) and
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06669 (Are We Just Rationalizing Theft)
All by Dan Kohn, a General Partner with Skymoon Ventures.
These essays put an end to the argument that the current system(s) proposed by content providers will lose - no matter what.
Also, anything Lessig has authored (already in
This is a very compelling series of reads on this issue.
Furthermore, if people like Ebert, Lessig, Dan Kohn and others continue to get the word out, we, and recording artists will be a lot better off in the near long term.
It's beyond me why any well-known act would sign with a major label today, given the raw potential for this medium (the net) to do almost pure 'pull' marketing.
This is called "takin' care of BUSINESS".
Seriously folks, let's realize that capital is now on the wire. There is simply no reason for high-level politicos to consider what effects their decisions have on the long-term well-being of the population that have been entrusted to represent.
btw, this isn't to paint all politicians and business people with a broad brush; however, it's clear that the trend is doing whatever it takes to make one's chums - the one's with the most money and influence - comfortable.
What's new?
Who cares if the sector is picking up? This won't *largely* change things in Silicon Valley.
Any upswing due to new security-driven initiatives will be shared by other tech regions.
The projections indicating that the recession is over are way optimistic. Just today the Chron pointed out that the recession 'had' (as if it's past tense) been deeper in California than elsewhere...no kidding!
In fact, as we continmue to go through tech booms-and-busts, the share of the pie that Silicon Valley labor sees as a result will steadily decrease. The region is already in decline, with two exceptions:
1) High end tech skills
2)Investment capital
And these are steadily eroding advantages.
At the MSFT presentation, Darko Kirovski - who seems to have carefully thought a lot of this stuff through - of Microsoft Research (MSR)talked about some of the simple ways that pure dictionary searches could weed out roughly 25-33% of all passwords.
He also dealt with the possible objections that people might have to trying to remember where they clicked on an image.
As an example, he hypothesized that a physiologist, or a surgeon using this system night very well choose anatomical images as their source material.
He also pointed out that the keyboard layout itself is an 'image'.
Kirovski was sensitive to the behavior change - going from text passwords to image-based sources -
that consumers would have to engage.
He also admitted that there still isn't a password system that is 100% fullproof.However, by the time he finished his presentation, I was convinced that the image-based password system is a huge improvement of the current text-based model.
This isn't to say better means for password protection won't cone along - they will. But right now this is an interesting alternative.
btw, Kirovski is an impressive individual. At the same conference, he spoke of research done on something called 'content screening' as a way to protect piracy. The rigor with which he approached both topics - from several perspectives - was impressive.
"synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers), can be controlled realtime via standard MIDI devices"
b pages.ht ml
n de rle/Gestes/Externe/
M USIC_PRODU CTION/MIDI_CONTROLLERS/WX5.ASP?sectionid=65
h tml
Midiman Oxygen8 [midiman.com]
Midiman Surface One [midiman.net] "
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Right, and the market for unique controller interfaces continues to grow (see links below. Frankly, I think as we move toward faster processors and better design, we're going to see some startlingly unique ways to control digital musical events.
There is a lot of power coming at us in the way of computer-based, music software apps, but control of these computer tools via controller tools that permit maximum and untimate degrees-of-freedom by the body is the real next revolution in musical expression.
This doean't mean the end of acoustical instruments by the way, but rather their augmentation by tools that permit people who have a cognitive skew for a specific way of movement will be able to express themselves in ways that they would otherwise not be able to.
Here are a few more general umbrella sites to look for unique controllers and gestural input:
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~amulder/personal/we
http://www.ircam.fr/equipes/analyse-synthese/wa
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/86255.html
http://www.lgu.ac.uk/mit/cnmi/
http://www.infusionsystems.com/
Some 'wind' controllers:
Yamaha
http://www.yamaha-music.co.uk/PRODUCTS/
Synthophone - employs a real sax as the body - elegant
http://www.softwind.com/
Akai EWI
http://www.akaipro.com/defaultF.htm
Others:
Don Buchla's superb instruments - with some history
http://www.buchla.com
Starr Labs wonderful products:
http://starrlabs.com
Wind controller list:
http://www.windsynth.org/wind_list/index.s
On the one hand, computer technology has brought a magnificent new palette of possibility to consumers. On the other hand, computer technology is so complex that it often poses more of a problem than a solution to its intended users. Only the most dedicated consumer can keep up with the flood of innovation and new applications that assault the computer technology marketplace. In fact, thousands of books and magazines - not to mention dozens of publishers - practically owe their existence to the ill-conceived designs that have been brought to market by computer technology manufacturers. After all, someone has to attempt to figure out this morass, as certainly most consumers aren't able to. The fact is that too many consumers end up devoting more time to learning about 'technology', than doing the work that is supposed to be enabled by technology. As I recall, within the last several years the Bureau of Labor Statistics has conducted studies that indicate no net gain in productivity in the workplace between those that do, or do not, use computers. One way to characterize the problematic ease-of-use issues in computer technology is by quoting the title of a recent book authored by Alan Cooper, founder of Cooper Interaction Design ( http://www.cooper.com ) - "The Inmates are Running The Asylum". Cooper labels his process 'Interaction Design'. Interaction Design is a new precursor, as well as an integral part of product development for many new technology products. Many well-established technology companies have begun to utilize interaction designers in order to both fulfill their customer's needs, and maximize development efficiencies. In Cooper's book the 'inmates' are hardware and software engineers, and technology marketers, who continually look for - and add - 'new and better' features to their creations - all with insufficient regard for what the primary mission of enlightened - in our case - computer technology development could be - that is, to discover, via careful investigation what the 'essential' goals are that consumers want to accomplish with technologies, and then use technology 'appropriately' to create solutions that enable just those goals. Feature creep and bad product design are anathema to interaction designers. And it's feature creep and bad design (from a user's perspective) that have caused the massive user problem that is today's computer. Interaction designers discover the goals of the target consumer, and create rich templates that are - ideally - followed nearly to the letter by software/hardware engineers. From there, a product is forged, and then handed off to interface designers who now have a much easier time rendering the product useful, instead of having to deal with a mish-mash of features that have been inserted into a product just because the programmer, or marketer, thought it would be 'cool'. Many consumers profess to love the power that technology gives them, and are not unlike most general technology customers in this regard. However, most consumers like - and use - technology only insofar as it provides immediate feedback. I have yet to see even an informal poll that asks how hard consumers want to work in order to extract even the most basic features promised by computer manufacturers. My guess is that only a very small percentage of consumers have a high tolerance for the frustration that results from poor system architecture and interface design. Manufacturers have recently begun to recognize the sorry reality of technology design from a user-concentric perspective, as illustrated by the introduction of many new technologies that appear (at least on the surface) to be more 'intuitive' (however, the term 'intuitive' itself belies one of the computer industry's major problems relating to human interface; that is, the term 'intuitive' is meant to imply that within the boundaries of an already insufficient model for interaction, ease-of-use has gotten somehow easier). I believe the trend towards increased ease-of-use will continue, but it will continue at a snail's pace, unless computer technology designers get serious about designing technology with and eye toward the accomplishment of specific, delineated goals, rather than the construction of feature-burdened, maze-like products, software and manuals that offer more frustration than enlightenment. Hardware and software engineers design computer technology systems. Even as those engineers have computing experience (they have to), they are - like it or not - working as technologists first, and consumers second. Technology development is their job; it's what they get paid to do. There has been a lack of focus on ease-of-use in the computer industry. Design, functional design with an eye toward helping the user accomplish specific goals, has not been the rule. Tremendous pressures are placed on manufacturers - both large and small - to consistently come up with enticing new features and designs. These efforts are concocted to create demand for yet another way to "help you become more productive" etc., etc. Computer technology manufacturers - especially in these days of rapid product co modification - simply don't have the time or resources to come up with designs that are optimally thought out from the perspective of helping consumers to accomplish their goals. Too many products try to be too many things for too many consumers. Features are crammed into new offerings with insufficient forethought about how those features will be accessed or used. This isn't to say computer manufacturers haven't tried to create good designs, and that a few haven't come close, but those few are large exceptions to the rule. A further complication is the constantly accelerating speed of change that technology itself brings to bear on the computer technology scene. One no less notable to the technology scene that Ray Kurzweil http://www.kurzweilai.net makes powerful arguments for what he labels the "Law of Accelerating Technology Returns". Kurzweil claims that technology has the phenomenon of accelerating itself to the point of eventual exponential rates of change. We are currently living, claims Kurzweil, in the midst of the rise of a technology development curve that has begun to approach large exponential rates of change. Powerful arguments can be made for the rate of technological change accelerating to a point of where it's outside the boundary of human control. If Kurzweil is correct - even given the assumption that he might not be exactly spot-on in his prediction, we are sure to see even more bewildering, and often hard-to-use technology come to market in the near future as technology itself enables an ever increasing ability to create ever more complex technology solutions. One promise on the horizon for future improvement of computer technology is being made possible by the ever-growing capacity of processors (fed by the phenomenon that Kurzweil and others have identified). These developments may result in the eventual creation of sophisticated computers that are much more intuitive to use that our current crop of available products. If we consider that most computers provide anything but optimal degrees-of-freedom - or ease-of-use - we must conclude that the possibilities for the future are indeed exciting, assuming that we heed the warnings of interaction designers like Cooper - and properly employ the skills of interaction designers, or those who think like them, in the development of computer technology. Again, might I suggest that those who both architect, create, and market new technology tools read Cooper's book (by the way, I have no connection whatsoever to Cooper's company) and discover the ugly truth about why computer technology is so difficult to use. Cooper's 'truth' has to do with trusting the user, finding out what she needs, and designing for specific - not general - use, according to the stated goals of the user(s). The best of plumbers are very skilled. However, would you trust even the best plumber to draw plans for a skyscraper? When computer technology manufacturers give over the process of product creation to their technology groups, and those groups are set free to develop computer technology tools from a perspective only they understand, the result is hard-to-use technology. This is a problem that can be remedied, only if computer technology manufacturers take the time to do their job in a way that maximizes the interface between their customers and the technologies they so well understand. Hopefully, interaction designers, and computer technology developers, will begin to work together to make better computer technology - in terms of-ease-of-use, and usefulness -As long as market forces - to the exclusion of technology goals defined by consumers - bear prominently on the success and failure of computer technology companies, consumers will continue to live with ill-conceived tools that purport to enable, but in reality frustrate more than they enable.
Apropos yesterday's thread on "the price of doing business" http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/01/181520 0&mode=thread&tid=98, the mentioned CNET link http://news.com.com/2100-1001-848115.html that goes into how Intel wants to embed wireless communications capabilities in silicon gives another clue as to how "the price of doing business" will lead to more hiring offshore. Here's a quote from the CNET story:
"Increasingly, an incremental amount of the company's research projects will migrate overseas. The company's research grants "are too heavily biased in the U.S. today," Gelsinger said during the interview. "The U.S. graduates about 50 percent of what U.S. industry needs."
Foreign engineers also need jobs. When the company opened offices in Nizhny-Novgorod, Russia, it received approximately 100 applications for every position. "We hired strongly qualified applicants with Ph.D.s for about one-fifth" the cost of their U.S. counterparts, Gelsinger said."
This excerpt represents a forward-looking larger trend that will impact technology workers in the US far more than most currently believe.
I'm not writing to elicit xenophobia, but to encourage technology workers to think about how this trend - which is unstoppable, and in some ways desireable - will change the landscape of technology innovation, and it's implementation on the domestic front.
The exodus from SF is the beginning of a larger trend. India graduates nearly 40,000 highly qualified engineers *every year*. China, probably four times that, and climbing. The Law of Lowest Wages, combined with increasing commodification of technology will drive many companies out of the US entirely within the next dozen years. Roughly 46% of our working population works directly or indirectly with technology. Think about what boardroon executives probably already considering as they make plans for future capital and physical investment. Capital is 'on the wire'. Domestic fealty just doesn't cut it for public corporations; not in a world where profit is king. There will still be strong technology innovation coming out of the U.S. for many years to come. However, much of the implementation of that innovation will not necessarily have to be performed by people here in the States. We're facing the very beginning of a huge social displacement problem. Look at the San Francisco phenomenon as a micro-trend that will soon snowball. Our domestic planners (an oxymoron?) had better start preparing for this and look for ways to either keep people fully employed, or actively interested in a slowed-down version of the 'good life', or we're looking for real trouble down the road.