213CR Studio 9 | Exploring AGS: Getting started

In this studio I set out to take a beginners tutorial in AGS, the Adventure Game Studio Editor. The tutorial can be found here
I used a pre-existing background as a template for my work in this tutorial. Thanks to Michael Merola for supplying this.

Apologies once again, it seems blogger is uncapable of showing images at a high resolution because of the margins that restrict the main blog. When viewing any of these images, to see the image at full readable resolution, please click the image to be directed to the original.


This tutorial established basic functionality such as using the Room editor, and defining interactions, areas, objects and messages.
The screenshots below show my work in progress:



Here I defined walkable areas, mapping the walls and obstructions.


This screenshot shows the walk-behind area allocated near the door of the prison bars.


This screenshot shows the hotspot door, using an interaction with the hotspot to cause a resulting action (moving to player to another predefined room).



This screenshot shows me defining the interaction that takes place between the key and the player. The key once walked interacted with is removed from the room and added to the players inventory.

213CR Studio 6 | Exploring Playability | Yahoo Pool

There are many ways to quantify playability in a game, and using certain frameworks astute

observations can be made upon the users in-game experience.

To do this decisions need to be made about what behavior indicates the experience.

The experiences in focus are listed below:

1 Flow

2 Easy Fun

3 Hard Fun

4 Serious Fun

5 People Fun

Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Theory:

"•Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).

•Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).

•A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.

•Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.

•Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behaviour can be adjusted as needed).

•Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).

•A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.

•The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.

•People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975. p.72)." - Lecture Notes - John Halloran

Flow itself can be explained to be when a player experiences enough stimulation and challenge to be enthralled and submerged within the game, but not challenged too highly that anxiety causes the player to want to terminate the gaming experience.

Yahoo Pool: Observations of test

One example of People fun that can be found when using Yahoo Pool is the in-game chat facility and game-advertising chat room. Much amusement can be sought after on the heavily populated Pool rooms socialising with the residents. I noticed this when observing my tester (my housemate) play.

The first time I noticed my housemate experiencing Easy fun was when she decided she wanted to know what happened if she tried to try controlling the snooker queue with her left (weaker) hand. This showed that she was curious to see whether it was possible, precisely the sort of Easy fun that is required to hold a players attention. Relating to Lazzarro's Model this fun was open ended and not to fulfill any objective of the game.

Hard Fun was first experienced when my housemate was snookered. She had to use the projection angles provided in game in order to attempt to rebound the whiteball off the cushion to hit her own ball. This was a challenge especially when combined with the 30 seconds shot time that was enforced in this match. This put greater emphasis on the emergency of the decision making, and almost pushed my housemate into the anxiety zone, with her stating "I cant do it! You do it!". However she persevered and enjoyed the tension resulting from the shot. This was also an example of Serious fun because it was the first time she had really taken advantage of the projection angles and therefore she learnt new practices and techniques. This mapping relating the experience percieved by the player and the task required to fulfill the objectives, relates to Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Theory in that it aqquires the correct balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).

The timer almost decieves people into feeling a false perception of time. A players subjective experience of time is altered by the fact that the shot timer is the only time displayed if the Applet is loaded full-screen. This shot counter starts at 30 seconds and counts down, with the player left to count minutes in halfs in their head. This meant that after fifteen or so minutes playing the game, my tester couldnt tell me whether she'd been playing for fifteen minutes or forty-five. This fulfills part of Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Theory.

This exercise has been useful in educating me as to the many ways of quantifying "fun". The different types are now clearly defined in my head, and this exercise will enable me to conduct usability evaluations and user testing sessions to a higher standard. I will know what to look for when analysing game testers experiences, and I will also hopefully be able to design a better game concept that has a near perfect flow balance, submerging the player deep into the game environment. After evaluation of the observations found during testing, I realised that if I was going to be able to fully document the user experience, I would have to capture video and audio of the user playing the game, to create pinpoint mappings between game events and occurance of one or other concept. I could then watch the video and analyse body movement and voiced opinions at my own speed.

An Alternative framework for assessing usability can be read in the link below. This focuses on how to assess usability for the disabled demographic:

http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/whitepapers/WPAssessingUsability.html

213CR Studio 3 | Use Cases

In this studio I produced five use cases for the game concept I established in previous studios, PlayMaker, the first person shooter.
Blogger unfortunately cannot show the pictures at the resolution they require to be readable, so each of these Use Cases will be shown externally through links provided below:

http://ihasaseed.com/a4/Stannly/usecases-main%20menu.jpg

http://ihasaseed.com/a4/Stannly/usecases-audio%20options.jpg

http://ihasaseed.com/a4/Stannly/usecases-display%20options.jpg

http://ihasaseed.com/a4/Stannly/usecases-object%20interaction.jpg

http://ihasaseed.com/a4/Stannly/usecases-generalised.jpg

The narration on each image describes what the use case is attempting to show.

What with thecgs going on and all

I thought it would be appropriate to point some of you to the next biggest thing in gaming, competitive gaming. The Championship Gaming Series has been established and is set to launch gaming to a new pinnacle.
The Championship Gaming Series will be the first true professional gaming league, offering a league structure similar to that available for other sports. The league will include teams that consist of paid General Managers and contracted athletes. There will be a draft, season play, special events and a championship, all with beginning-to-end, worldwide, television coverage. The Championship Gaming Series is the genuine gaming sports league game enthusiasts have been waiting for.
The Championship Gaming Series will have unprecedented television coverage, bringing professional gaming into 100 million homes worldwide with the support of DirecTV, BskyB and STAR networks. The Championship Gaming Series is the world's largest stage for professional gaming.
Draft candidates that are offered a contract will receive a yearly fee, paid monthly, that will continue through the contract period regardless of whether the player/team or team advances to the playoffs or championships. Additionally, players will have the opportunity to earn even more through prize winnings based on performance throughout the 2007 season. The more you win, the more you make.

Head on over to http://www.thecgs.com

Studio 5 | Planning Your Key Assignment

Studio 5 | Planning Your Key Assignment

After reviewing the options for our key assignment, I have chosen Option 2 because I already have a keen interest in many games both newly released and I currently Beta test two games for Steam.

Report: Usability Evaluation of a Digital Game or Games

Choosing a framework: as an introduction I will discuss briefly Usability evaluations and analyse which framework to use when conducting my own evaluation. It is important that I take into account the fact that I am not a well funded games development house, therefore some frameworks may be impossible to follow strictly, but I will have to find the most suitable that best uses my assets. The framework I choose will also have to be relative to the game I choose to evaluate. A framework for a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game may be very different to a framework created to evaluate First Person Shooters. This means that before settling on a framework I must define the game I am going to evaluate.

The game I have chosen to evaluate is Team Fortress 2, a Half life 2 modification, recently released by Valve via Steam. The production has been going on for the last 8 years, so theoretically these guys must have tested this game beyond comprehension. Usability issues may be hard to find, but in a large scale distributed gaming network, problems and possible exploits are always going to prevail.

I will then define the testing and what is to occur in the usability evaluation, following on to a partially ranked list of problems, sorted by severity and colour coded.

Some of these problems will then be discussed in depth with the aid of screenshots. Accompanying these problems are ideas for possible solutions and possible adjustments that should have been made to the usability evaluation.

Studio 8 | Identifying research activities and methods;

Reading Halloran, J., Hornecker, E., Fitzpatrick, G., Weal, M., Millard, D., Michaelides, D., Cruickshank, D. and De Roure, D. (2006) Unfolding understandings: Co-designing UbiComp in situ, over time. In Proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems, DIS 2006. ACM, 109-118.

These are some of the research activities and techniques used by researches at Chawton House:

Usability Evaluation – the advantages of a usability evaluation are that research can be conducted in a controlled environment in order to try and keep the testing consistent. Usability testing showcases possible real life end-users navigating through predefined tasks, voicing their opinions, giving the researchers feedback and acting on the instructors guidelines. The evaluation is often recorded and watched again to analyse a users actions, both on screen from in-game behavior and his actual body behavior and observations visually.

Laboratory/workshop Observation - experienced and recorded by researches but tour actually given by curator, so technically a combination of usability evaluation and Expert evaluation. An expert evaluation acts as a good initial stage before holding the usability testing. An expert evaluation can often draw templates of what experiences and tasks the usability testers should undergo to explore the possibility of usability problems. These expert evaluators also can use their knowledge of similar existing systems(if possible when designing pervasive systems) to enhance the UCD aspects of design. They after all are well practiced and experienced end users, who know what issues may prove to be problematic, and who can provide ideas of possible solutions.

Beta Testing – the school field trip acts as an early beta testing stage for Chawton House, giving the researchers an opportunity to observe a certain type of end user (children) evaluating and testing the system. Also observations are then obtainable via interviews held with the curators after the field trip.

Discussion – brainstorming in more technical terms, acting as a stage for usability requirements and developmental suggestions to be voiced. This gives the end user to create requirements ranging in scope and relative necessity.

Questionnaire – alike discussions in many ways, but a more individual approach. In a questionnaire the person giving the information will hopefully have not have had their views affected by others as they would have in a discussion. Questionnaires are also a good way to let people give feedback in their own time, allowing them to make more educated input.

203 Studio 4 |Decide how far and in what ways Usability Goals and Design Principles have been used in the design of your mobile phone

Usability Goals:

Effectiveness

Efficiency

Safety

Utility

Learnability

Memorability

Design Principles:

Visibility

Feedback

Constraints

Mapping

Consistency

Affordance

Usability Goals:

Effectiveness; the K800i has the capability to call, text, email, take photos, videos, make video calls (3G), play music, read RSS feeds, and upload photos directly to a blog. With all this and more the phone succeeds in its effectiveness in that everything works as described. The K800i has a vast range of features, some newly integrated into mobile phone technology.

Efficiency; the K800i’s menu system is alike many other in the Sony Ericsson range, with some small tweaks in the new revision. The waiting times for turning the phone on vary from 6-10 seconds, from opening the camera lens to the phone being ready to take a photo, 1-3 seconds. The phone does not feel sluggish in many scenarios however occasionally when receiving messages/emails at the same time as constructing messages/emails the speed of the text being shown on the screen will fall vastly behind the speed of the user typing the message. This is frustrating as characters cannot be viewed until a second or two after they have been input, so mistakes are most time costly and harder to correct. Also when pressing the Clear/Cancel key and the back button it is easy to accidentally depress the WAP immediate access button, or the shortcut navigating to the “Homescreen” – the area where users can “tab” or alternate between different running applications and “events”. This problem is due to the keys being incorrectly placed near to some of the most used buttons on the mobile phone, and also the way in which the buttons are designed allows accidental contact again and again. One critical problem of this button placement is that once on the “Homescreen” if a user presses the C button again, a dialogue emerges asking whether the user wishes to delete whatever is selected, be it an event such a missed call or text message, or a whole application like Bluetooth or their favourite bookmarks. The user has to press on the joystick to select yes to the prompt, which would be easily performed accidentally in someone’s pocket/bag. This is possibly more of a safety issue than an efficiency issue.

Safety; the phone occasionally freezes up(crashes), occurring more so when the battery is nearing the end of its life, or when the phone has been kept in cold temperatures. After it crashes the phone reboots and any messages or unsaved data is lost. The K800i also receives messages, plays the message alert tone and displays a new message has been received, but if the user tries to access the message whilst the message tone is still playing, sometimes the message is lost and no history of the message being received at all can be found. This is very frustrating because potentially vital information could be lost.

Utility; the phone’s menu system interface is easy to inter-act with, utilising tabs selectable by moving the joystick left/right and drop down menus accessible by pressing the joystick down. The phone has a wide variance of features that are easily accessible.

Learnability; the phones features and functions are easily learnable because the designers of the interface have followed already existing conventions for user design, using menu and data display systems that would seem familiar to desktop computer applications or television menu systems. Much of the learning is easy because the phone has been designed intuitively, using world-wide standards and logos for easy recognition and usability.

Memorability; the ability to map your own shortcuts and macros to a limited number of keys on the phones keypad gives the ability to reduce navigating time to experienced users. These shortcuts are localised around the central joystick and the surrounding buttons and can provide easy access to SMS writing/reading, phone call history, and to the contacts library. Even without these the menu selection system is concise and is easily memorable so much so that an advanced user can navigate through the menu system without looking. One problem with the memorability of the design is the ambuiguity surrounding the “back” button, which more realisticly should be called a “go to level above” button, which instead of taking you back to the last thing you were viewing/editing, takes you to the menu above the menu screen you are viewing currently. This difference can be hard to remember considering the presence of a “not very active” cancel/clear button.

Design Principles:

Visibility; it is clearly visible where you are navigating to and from when using the K800i. The menu system changes enough to display a change in menu, yet not enough to delay a user. The prompts and feedback are shown graphically and usually with accompanying text.

Feedback; audibly each keystroke is represented by a sound on the phone, so input is not only shown on what is displayed on the screen, which is useful when on the phone, the main time where a user will be possibly using some of the in-call functions, but not actually looking directly at the phone. Feedback is also marked by dialogues to ensure accidental deletion and editing of data cannot should not occur. This feedback is much alike the dialogues you would see in a desktop computer application, i.e. “Are you sure you want to delete this?” followed by a simple “Yes” or “No”. Text or selected items are highlighted to display to the user what information has been recorded, and animations occur to indicate waiting or progress.

Constraints; the confirmation dialogue boxes are a major part of the safeguards put in place to ensure a user cannot accidentally cause damage to data or crucial information. These act as another barrier between a user selecting an action he or she did not actually wish to carry out. The phone has alot of information shown not just via text but graphically or via animations too. This helps users to recognise the information shown and for example the text provides an accurate description of what otherwise a picture could not convey. i.e. the graphic to indicate the “Drafts” folder looks not much different from the Outbox icon, but the text conveys the difference adequately. The number pad and keyboard like the rest of the phone, follow arbitrary conventions in order as not to throw the new user.

Mapping; the relationship between the controls and their functions is visible at most times, and the mapping of the keys on the K800i is not at fault, however on the initial menu screen the right hand button accesses the main menu, whereas the left hand button accesses the recent call list, and then once in the main menu screen, the left hand button now selects the next menu option to progress to. This is not a massive mapping error, but it is confusing for new and old users to use one button as the “Select” button to access the menu, then another button whilst on the menu to “Select” again.

Also considering the fact that accidental keypad presses occur mainly on the WAP button and the Homescreen button, I would go so far as to say that these buttons should not be accessible phones central control panel because although these are good shortcuts to have, they are not used regularly enough to risk them being so close to the main buttons. The mapping looks like it has been created to abide to arbitrary conventions.

Consistency; the interfaces on the K800i are consistent throughout the majority of the menu screens, for example the tabs and drop down menu systems occur in the same way on the Contact list as they do whilst in the SMS editor. Without this consistency the phone would seem poorly designed and like a book consisting of chapters written by different authors. It is almost better to have a slightly clumsy design interface, and to be consistent, than to have a smoother design interface that varies in input method/display method/mapping. The phone expresses internal and external consistency, for example the numbered key pad appears in the same format as on other phones.

Affordances; Intuitive affordances include the joystick requiring a push or a click downwards to input data, the button with the back arrow ß indicating back, the button with the C, short for Cancel or Clear and scroll bars that read up as up is pressed. These affordances are intuitively accessible, as people all around the world will understand how a function or a feature is used. Others include on screen displays such as the pause icon showing whilst a song is playing, to indicate the functions available to the user, rather than a play button showing whilst the song is playing, which would indicate what function is being carried out rather than what is achievable by pressing a certain button. With this affordance there are multiple formats of conveying the information required, appealing to different views of constraints.

203CR ‘Yes Buts’ for using UCD for pervasive computing?

Many User Centered Design techniques could seem applicable for use when designing pervasive computing, however because of the very nature of pervasive computing, many of the methods used in UCD are not always the most suitable.

UCD is all about designing interactive technology to meet user’s needs. The problem is that with pervasive computing, the requirements of the user can be so specific and niche that they may not really be expressed as huge needs when undergoing research. Also UCD can cut down on design costs, however when producing technology that no one has fully experienced beyond lo-fi prototypes, it can be expected that refinement and tweaking are needed to produce a fully fledged working version.

User experience is limited, because often in pervasive computing there are no activities similar, this means that a large proportion of UCD can be inconclusive. Sometimes the activity is to use the new pervasive distributed system and that alone, so no other precedents apply. To get over this hurdle designers must explain and document all sides of the user experience so that interviews and initial design briefs can be based on actual user’s requirements. The users have to fully understand the design concept and its use, else theoretical questions regarding their needs and requirements could not take place.

Requirements are also subject to massive variance and change, for example if the environment is outdoor and mobile, the environment is constantly changing and therefore the design must be able to adapt accordingly.

When designing pervasive computing it is often easy for designers to create requirements before they understand the tangibility of their visions. Pervasive computing is on the forefront of integrating technology with existing environments, so the technology being used has not been fully tested, and often its capabilities are not fully known. This means that it can be hard to know your hardware limitations when creating UCD principles and requirements, and time needs to be invested in researching possibilities.

When creating a lo-fi prototype it is the aim to transfer the same design principles from the concept, across to the easy to produce prototype. However when creating complex distributed systems across massive areas and huge variance of environment, a lo-fi prototype will often not be entirely transferable. Prototyping using a human to mock a computer interface is possible, but much research has to be conducted in order to try and take into mind the scope and depth that user’s behaviour will vary with pervasive computing interaction.

It is evident that to ensure that your time spent researching UCD is not wasted, you should not work with entirely “theoretical” user feedback, based on mid or lo-fi prototypes. It is indeed a price to pay, but in most pervasive computing circumstances, user feedback and UCD should occur before and after a working product is designed. This means that often the initial “beta” product will cost almost as much as the final product, but it will be heavily tested and stressed under ranging conditions and with different usability aspects in mind, so that a more user revolved product can be produced.

213 - Bethke "The Design Document"

"When one says "Look it up in the design document," folks are generally referring to the game design document. This is the fun document that details all of the characters, the levels, the game mechanics, the views, the menus and so on - in short, the game. The game design document for most designers is great fun; here they get to flesh out their vision with muscles and sinew on top of the skeleton of the game concept that it was before. By no means am I saying it is easy to create a complete design document. Creating a finished design document is so difficult I have never been able to finish one of my own, nor have I seen anyone else his or her design documents. With my two latest projects, Starfleet Command: The next Generation for Activision and Black9, I am certainly taking the design efforts to our highest levels, and I see the results paying off with faster and stronger production.
The game design document is part of a suite of documents that specific the game your are creating. All of these documents i collectively call the production plan:

Concept/Vision/Proposal document
Game Design Document
Art Design Document
Technical Design Document
Project Schedule
Software Testing Plan
Risk Mitigation Plan"

213CR Concept Development for Games Design - Studio 2 Exploring games and identifying games concepts

213CR Concept Development for Games Design
Studio 2 Exploring games and identifying games concepts 2



Last week we looked at some existing games and their concepts, and gave a small amount of our own insight in to the games main features. This week I will advance further on the game components, and what would be necessary to produce them for a similar game. I will focus on what is distinctive and original about the game, but other key elements will be included for thoroughness.

Here is an example from the lecture:

Doom
‘A PC-based first-person shooter where the player controls a space marine in a 3D environment against a horde of bizarre monsters. The gameplay is action based with no strategic or role-playing elements; instead the game depends on bleeding edge technology providing a rush of adrenaline through its aggressive attention to carnage.’
(sic. Bethke, p106)

These items will be grouped to organise them slightly, else the structure of the games concepts would be chaotic.

Code – which includes game mechanics, 3D graphics, user interface, and mission interactions.
Art ­– which includes 2D, 3D, Character, Texture and Animation/motion.
Audio – which includes Voiceovers, sound effects and music.
Usability – How easy? Level? Meant to be easy?
Context – Demographic, Accessibility, Setting.
Hardware/Platform – PC Keyboard, Console/Controller, Haptic(Wii).
Communications – Multiplayer, VoIP, Text.

Code – The physics of the game need to be defined depending upon how objects and characters interact with them during the general and extreme play of the game. For example “Breakable Walls” need to be defined so that when a user creates damage to the wall that the wall is no longer a division of space, but is passable through by the character. Without such interaction the game would be limited to a less interactive world. The 3D graphics of the game need to be set, including the ambient world, the look of the game, the skins, and the models. The user interface needs to be mapped out including the physical controls, the in-game menu systems and the pre-match game selection interface needs to be created. This means shortcuts will need to be added to enhance repeated play, and the menu systems will have to find a consistent form that is easy for new and advanced users to navigate through.
Art – For 2D work Backdrops would have to be created, but often now even in 2D games there are 3D elements and scenes so also some form of changing to a 3D view from a 2D view. For 3D games worlds must be designed, objects created and character skins made. Character views and the HUD must be designed, persons and mechanical objects. Textures must be made and Animations any motion must be created.
Audio – Voiceovers for game sequences and links must be created, sound effects for all ingame variation of play must be allocated and music for backing must be planned and set out. All these aspects of the game must be considered before production so that they can interlink and produce a consistent fully developed interactive game design.
Usability - Ease of use is paramount, yet difficulty must range progressively so that users are rewarded for playing the game more and becoming more adept at fulfilling in-game objectives. Ideally the difficulty should be at a level where it always demands new levels of ability from the player. On the other hand it is very important that the game is not unattainably demanding.
Context - The game is set in one world from two different viewpoints, that of a D.E.A. assault squad leader and that of a man working against his own agency for the very people he hunts daily as a Loz Zetas Cartel informant. This means that it is likely the game will be desirable to a relatively specific demographic, males ageing between 17-50. This does not have to be true, as one can see with previously released titles such as Grand Theft Auto and Need for Speed 2, but considering the majority of the content within the game is of a grim and violent nature it is unexpected that many housewives will be ordering the game pre-release.
Hardware/Platform - The game could be launched on a console like an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, but depending on when the game would actually go into development, would depend on what platform would best showcase the advanced graphics. The game is reliant on being realistic in order to provide a believable and tense experience, therefore the latest techniques in 3D modelling and graphics should be used, calling on all the power from the next generation graphics cards to launch the game to success. For example if the game was to go into development now, it would call on DirextX10, and therefore end users would have to be using new graphics cards to experience the full potential performance of the game. A keyboard would be most suitable for controlling the in-game action. However a console could easily implement all of the nescessary controls because certain shortcuts that are included as default bindings on the PC edition, could be edited to merely optional shortcut. This gives the users choice about what functions are available via a simple keypress.
Communications - multiplayer and co-operative(if implemented) missions should use VOiP software to enable talking through microphones, however a stable text chat system must also be permanently available for both multiplayer play and single player missions.

213CR - Studio1 - Exploring games and Identifying Games Concepts

In our first studio we were tasked to list a number of games that all group members are familiar with, ascertain which genre they belong to and rate them as a group from 1-5, 1 being outstanding and 5 bad. We were then instructed to identify the game concept for a chosen game from the list and decide what it is about the implementation of the game concept that makes the game good or bad.

The games we chose are below preceded by the ratings we gave them and followed by the genres we've assigned them:

1. Grand Theft Auto - sport/racing

2. Half Life – 1st person shooter/adventure

3. The Sims - simulation3. Commandos - strategy

4. Painkiller – 1st person shooter

The game we chose to analyse in detail is grand theft auto, the basic concepts were agreed to be:

- race

- kill

- survive

- evade police

- make money

in respect of concept implementation, what makes the game good is:

- freedom

- violence

- pace

The game is played on virtually mapped out streets of a real city, bringing it that much closer to the world we know, only in the game there is a slight inversion of the reality we are familiar with, where crimes can be committed regardless of the consequences.
It is also true that this same reasoning could be used to prove this game is bad due to an overabundance of violence and a lack of clear objectives.

Creative Zen:Usability Testing Guide

Golden Rules of Design: Shneiderman

Creative Zen:M Media Player


Strive for consistency:
Ensure that the firmware on the media player stays consistent with its interface, terminology, and shortcuts. For example the media player would be much harder to use if the song selection menu was different when within the “Now Playing Interface”, than in the “Artist” list.

Enable frequent users to use shortcuts:
This means that advanced and experienced users are rewarded with having used the media player frequently enough to memorize certain macro’s and shortcuts. These are often established to transfer a “new user friendly” interface, to a far more advanced UI suitable for users wishing to cut down time taken to complete actions. One example of this that is very obvious on the Zen:M is the shortcut function added to the main control panel in the top left corner as can be seen in the picture above. The shortcut function is noted by the arrow sign.
Favourites and user assigned macros can also be much reward to advanced users. This allows the user to define what a certain button press does (macroing). These altered menus can be problematic however when clashes are made between the user assigned interface and the default UI firmware.



Offer Informative Feedback:
Feedback must be delivered quickly and in a concise fashion. Informing the user of the in’s and outs of errors and alerts would confuse most users, so error messages are key so that the user can get used to seeing certain messages and instantly know what action is required of them to resolve the issue. For example when the Media player runs out of battery, no error message is displayed (presumably because there isn’t enough power to display such a message). This can be very confusing and it can take up to half an hour for the media player to even indicate that it is charging when plugged into a mains adaptor. However during the majority of usage the error messages and display dialogues are concise and informative.

Design dialogs to yield closure:
Dialogs must conclude so that the user is advised as to what their instruction is, these methods of concluding the dialog are often represented by yes, no, stop abort or retry options given to the user.

Strive to prevent errors and help users to recover quickly from them:
Input errors are common place so even small
Validation and checking must be present throughout the system to try and ensure that when input errors have been made, users are alerted to them quickly, but not too disruptively so as to allow them to make amendments without noticing a delay for the error indication to be shown.

Allow undo:
Errors must be reversable to allow for human mistakes. Without an undo button the user may make mistakes, but theoretically no serious errors should be made as long as there are certain precautions made when doing potentially disastrous actions, i.e the fact that you have to press yes three times in order to delete a song.

Make users feel they are in control of a responsive system:
Resource-efficient approaches are needed to ensure that users arent struck with heavy waiting times and sluggish responses from the system. Users should be informed of progress at any wait, and information should be displayed regarding the cause of delays.

Reduce short-term memory load:
The everyday user does not want to be overloaded with information that a. may not be useful to the end user, and b. information that the end user will not understand. For example error messages are key to a user understanding what has occured during a problem. Long strings of code and sequences of numbers and letters will only confuse a user.

203CR – Introductory Research

Introductory Research

Definitions of pervasive computing on the Web:
A ubiquitous, wireless, always-on, networked world.http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=X&start=0&oi=define&q=http://www.dmreview.com/rg/resources/glossary.cfm%3FkeywordId%3DP&usg=AFQjCNFC3pC82__nVfKDJV8hgmL8i1M2Sw
The trend towards an information environment in which users have access to ICTs throughout the environment. ...http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=X&start=1&oi=define&q=http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/SARC/E-Democracy/Final_Report/Glossary.htm&usg=AFQjCNFzKOjReq38vrP2dYy1ypHdaYIE1A
An environment in which computers are taken out of stand-alone boxes to which we are tied and put into ordinary things, in everyday objects around us. Also called ubiquitous computing.www.telecombooksblog.com/telecom-glossary/

Definitions of ubiquitous computing on the Web:
New types of computers invisibly embedded into our everyday environment. Rather than explicitly being the "user" of a computer a human ...http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=X&start=0&oi=define&q=http://www.ortlos.org/code&usg=AFQjCNE19pEhU6REnUgWM1Be2W2TQB2pQg
computers everywhere. Making many computers available throughout the physical envirnment, while making them effectively invisible to the user.mobileman.projects.supsi.ch/glossary.html
invisible, everywhere computing that does not sit on the desktop but lies deep inside the environment we live inhttp://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=X&start=2&oi=define&q=http://www.course.com/downloads/computerscience/invitationjava/keyterms7.htm&usg=AFQjCNFnnK5M07KTfYoDFRgo9_WmtS-lCQ
computing that is omnipresent and is, or appears to be, everywhere all the time; may involve many different computing devices that are embedded in various devices or appliances and operate in the background.http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=X&start=3&oi=define&q=http://www.mansfieldct.org/Schools/MMS/Palms/Meet_the_Team/Glossary.htm&usg=AFQjCNHrLHeUpS4UnEA9bGD02s0YJMLyJw
Ubiquitous computing is a model of computing in which computer functions are integrated into everyday life, often in an invisible way. The model requires both small, inexpensive computers and wired and wireless ("dumb") devices connected to larger computers. ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous computing

Disappearing Computing:
'The vision of disappearing computing is that computing entities become an effective part of our environment, supporting our lives without our continual direction, so that we can be largely unaware of them,' explained Robin to the audience at the BCS' London offices. http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.3252
It seems apparent that there are fine lines between pervasive, ubiquitous and disappearing computing. All of these definitions point at the same idea, which is to intergrate computer systems into all aspects of our physical world, rather than localising computer use soley around desktop computers. This ranges from the heavier use of mobile networking to the daily use of computer systems in a normally less automated world (i.e using an automated checkout at the supermarket). Whilst pervasive and ubiquitous computing may be obvious to every day users, the aim of the disappearing computing vision is to make this integration far more transient and smooth.