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Au Revoir

      Through out the past few months, this course has been very compelling and interesting to attend. It has given me a new respect for HCI and the various nuances that exist in the field. After attending the course I feel more distinguished, cultured and enlightened as a computer scientist. One of the most compelling, most interesting and most applicable concept that I thought was introduced to me was the concept that everything was hired to fulfill a certain job.      I really liked the exploration of the milkshake company trying to improve the milkshake, Trying to make the product objectively better, focusing on opinion groups and market segments and how none of these approaches worked. The company only improved their sales when they asked the how and why questions. When they started wondering about the job that the milkshake was hired to do then they started improving their sales.      Although the idea is pretty intuitive and seemingly obvious, it made me realize
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Amazon Go, Automation, Drones.

Amazon Go is one of Amazon's new endeavors which has a main selling point of being a grocery store which you do not need to checkout from. It's motto is "No Line. No Checkout. No, Seriously." With the use of computer vision, sensor fusion, and machine learning, Amazon has supposedly created a system where you can just pick whatever items and then they'll bill your amazon account. This announcement brings about a great number of implications and questions should it see massive success. It brings to question the future of the retail job. Are all the retail jobs going to be outsourced to automation? Are other companies going to try and follow in Amazon's Foot steps? How are those companies going to try and match Amazon? Many companies are already outsourcing their retail jobs to automated checkout services. Pictured bellow is the McDonalds self checkout service which when supplemented to other workers greatly reduces the lines at McDonalds. These self
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Fitting a Niche, Nintendo Switch, Discord

The Nintendo switch is indeed an interesting release by Nintendo. It was branded as this hybrid cross between a console and a mobile gaming platform. It tries to be a jack of all trades and master of none. Above we can see the primary two modes it is used in. The console mode where the mobile screen is tucked away into the console port allowing a TV screen to be used and the handheld mode which allows the switch to be used as a mobile gaming device. Before analyzing the functional uses of the Nintendo switch, I like to bring attention to the logo Nintendo has chosen for the switch. The logo is not only visually very similar to the actual device but is also visually very similar to a Ying-yang symbol, alluding to the Asian background which Nintendo comes from. I think it represents the company's product since it brings such a since of familiarity with it by referencing the Ying-Yang symbol and the company's Asian roots. Even though the Nintendo switch has repor
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Modernizing UI trend, Swapping Functionality for Aesthetics

Recently I've seen some trends where developers are trying improving the overall look of an application at some costs to functionality of the user experience. Our lectures example of the windows 10 visual update made me realize some of the subtle trends that are catching on with UI developers. The buttons for controlling the windows are integrated into the window. The whiteness of the buttons are hard to distinguish from the picture in the actual window. This loses some functionality for more aesthetic appeal. League of legends has gotten a similar treatment where the UI has gained some more aesthetic appeal but lost out on some functional benefits. Here is am example of the new client on the store Here is an example of the old client also on the store screen The buttons for the new client have some problems. They actually aren't buttons, you actually have to click on the text to change screens. The clickable boundaries are not as concrete as the old c
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Nuisances of the New and Nuance of the Old.

     I've been using piazza for two and a half years now, while it is a great tool for learning there has been one feature which they have that drives me insane every new semester.      I have no idea what the website designer was thinking when they made it so that whenever you add a new class they automatically subscribe you to a reading "smart digest." This means that per a class every 4 hours if there was a post then it will email you an update. Although this might be a great feature for some people who are super extremely keen for their classes, to the majority of people it's a huge hassle.      This is a great example of a developer trying to force a feature onto its users without careful consideration. When I was first using piazza, after about a weeks my email was filled will a bunch of junk notifications from piazza that I did not care about. It about two weeks before someone cared enough to make a post about how to change the emai
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Pilot

      Over the past two weeks since taking CSC318 we've talked about a lot about interactive media and I've been noticing design implications of objects in my day to day life much more since I have been taking this course. Two things that really stood out to me is an implementation of a crosswalk and this water bottle at a Korean restaurant. These are examples of bad designs which I think could be drastically improved.       Pictured is the cross walk that I am talking about. Instead of being implemented as a normal crosswalk it's implemented so that the lights above flash yellow signalling the cars to stop for the passengers instead of flashing green yellow red. At first I didn't think much of the set up of the intersection until I tried to cross the road. If you position yourself at the street corners by the buttons you need to cross you cannot actually see if the lights are flashing or not. I think this poses a major inconvenience to the pedestrians as
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