Video posts of HCI research

View short videos revealing current work with HCI technologies and research at:

http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pubs/video-reports_full_list.shtml

Enjoy!

Why streaming video?

Steaming Video

Why is streaming video so valuable?

1. The video is parsed into pieces that can be rearranged or viewed in any order necessary
2. They are available on demand and can be watched as often needed
3. The videos are portable - they can be introduced into other medium (Power Points and the like) and be taken with you to view as necessary.

So, convinced that streaming video is different from other types of video available on the web?

Discovery Education Streaming Video

Discovery Education claims to have “4,000 full-length videos segmented into 40,000 content-specific clips.” (Discovery Education, 2007) They also say that streaming video empowers educators to:
• Expand students' horizons using new multimedia content for all subjects from leading educational publishers
• Create and innovate with Assignment Builder, Quiz Center, Writing Prompt Generator, and other resources
• Save time with fast and accurate search functionality and dynamic navigation menus
• Customize and personalize lessons to different subjects, grades, and learning styles

What I think would make video more accessible to students and allow for more just-in-time learning opportunities would be a searchable video data base that is built on keywords embedded in the video itself and retrieval by time code.

Additionally, combining a massive video database like Discovery Education’s with a Music Genome Project type intelligent learnable automated music recommendation service to create a automated video service that works with learning students to offer video segments aligned with what they are currently studying.

HCI and Video Streaming

I have been compiling a short list of ideas connecting video streaming with HCI. They are divided into three areas: Why Video Streaming, HCI Connection, and Educational Connections. This is not intended to be a complete list but rather to start a discussion and offer a direction for HCI and video streaming.

Why video streaming
• On demand – watch it when you can/want/need to
• Repeatable – watch as often as you like
• Segmented – view a lot or view a little
• Transportable – move the video to different sources, expand on the information, annotate it, combine it with other things, capture it and take it with you

HCI Connection
• Facilitate streaming – beyond fast connections and fast servers
• Make it searchable – search the video to any point like searching a document
• Make it intuitive – focus on why we chose video

Educational Connections
• Video and learning
• Just-in-time learning
• Lesson enhancement
• Standards based
• Familiar medium/format
• Pacing
• Information

What is Human Computer Interaction Anyway?

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is an area of study concerned with you and how you interect with your computer, or any other computer for that matter, or anything technology related... An important idea at the heart of HCI is affordance. Afordance is simple what you bring to the table, or screen, when you site down to a computer. What is your skill set? Your experience? Your knowledge?

The study of HCI came of age in the early 1990's as the World Wide Web, emailing, and Windows 95 emerged as a new direction for technology interfacing.

"HCI was a major factor at the Xerox Park Research Project in the late 1970s, even if the people involved weren’t quite sure initially what HCI was (or the monumental impact it would ultimately have). Those researchers made pioneering efforts studying how people interacted with technology. They then redesigned software (and computers) to improve the “computing experience,” boosting productivity. Mouse technology and “desktops” with icons (primitive as they were compared to today’s standards) made it easier for people to work with technology that was soon to change the computing landscape of our daily lives in the 1980s." (IconoLogic, 2006, pg 2)

There are a few issues with HCI and I will get into those in future blogs. I want to leave with a short and by no means complete, list of HCI names to know.

Douglas Engelbart – computer mouse
Alan Kay – window interfaces and graphic interfaces
Steven Mann
Ted Nelson – hypertex
Jakob Nielsen – user interface
Jef Raskin – Macintosh
Ivan Sutherland – graphical user interface
Donald Norman – psychologist – HCI interface design
Shneiderman – Principles of HCI – Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design

Brad out...