15-502
Instructors:
M. Bernardine Dias and Yonina Cooper
TA: Aysha Siddique
Spring 2009

• Logistics
• Videos
• Technology
Infrastructure
• Technology Design
• Assignments for
Next Class

• Case Study assignment questions?
• Scheduling final project presentation
• Final project for this course
– How are things progressing?
• Other questions/comments?

Neil Gershenfield
"Beckoning promise of personal fabrication"
• What are some of the technology innovations that
Neil is working on?
• What does his ideas have to do with ICTD? Can this really be IT development for the masses?
• Neil claims the result of personal fabrication yields the potential to “locally design and produce solutions to local problems.” Explain what he means.

• How is playing with blocks problem solving?
• What are siftables?
• What can you do with siftables?
• How could these be used in ICTD?

Adapted from: Leon-Garcia

• Sensors on chip => very cheap if integrated
– Basic: temp, humidity, pressure, moisture, light…
– Moderate: acceleration, magnetic, position
– Simple chemical: gases, smoke
– Complex biological: toxic agents
• Actuators: control environment as well
– Harder and costlier, often require more human interface
• Examples
– MEMS for low-cost “lab on a chip”and drug delivery
– Sensors
• Environmental or food quality (or security)
– Remote sensing for predicting and enhancing crop yields
– Leveraging “cyber-infrastructure”for science and policy
• Healthcare, e.g., Epidemiology and Patient Management

• Countries need not just be followers
• Role for new / advanced technologies
– Can involve R&D
• Speech
• Power systems
• Wireless
• Role of (need for) new business models
– Open Access

• Roles of advanced technology
– Increasing output (yield)
• Productivity
• Sustainability
• Optimizing inputs
– Improving the supply chain from the farmer’s perspective
• Price discovery
• Weather information
– Land ownership and empowerment
– Education

• It is important to ensure that your design process is:
– Iterative (allowing for feedback at different stages)
– Participative (allowing for input and feedback from the community)
– Needs driven (follows a good needs assessment endeavor)
– Cost effective (modularity often helps)
– Robust (works with existing infrastructure under local environmental conditions)

• In good iterative design practices
– To refine designs with formative evaluations
• In good participatory design
– Allows for collaboration in interim stages
• To keep the scope of your class projects reasonable

• High-fidelity prototyping
• Sketches
• Paper prototyping
• Storyboarding
• Web-based prototyping
• Software prototyping
• Video prototyping
• Wizard of Oz

• Provides (near) complete functionality to the target system
• Fully interactive (like the target system)
• Has the look and feel of the target system
• Can be used for quantitative experimentation

• Takes long to build and change
• Expensive
• Users may refrain from giving feedback, for they see it is already locked in stone
• Users tend to comment on surface issues, not core functionality
• Developers resist changes
• Prototype can set expectations that are hard to change
• A single bug in a hi-tech system can thwart the whole test

Low-Fidelity
Prototyping http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~landay/research/publications/SILK_CHI/jal1bdy.html

• Mock up the interface with a series of paper elements
• Evaluator manipulates the elements to model the interface
• User simulates interaction by pointing and/or speaking
• The prototype provides detail into the function and flow of the system, but is not true to the look and feel of the final system http://www.usabilitybok.org/methods/p312

• Big heavy paper (bigger than 8.5x11)
• Lots of 5x8 inch cards
• Adhesives (tape, post-it glue)
• Markers, pens, pencils
• Sticky note pads of various sizes
• Acetate sheets
• Scissors, exacto-knives
• Excellent how to: Prototyping for tiny fingers: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=175276.175288

• Storyboard depicts a series of illustrations representing
– A process
– Flow through a web site
– Function of an application
• Can be used to check if the steps of an application make sense to the user.

• Use HTML to mock-up the interface of an application without implementing the functionality behind it.
• Use web-based form elements
– Text input boxes
– Check boxes
– Radio buttons

• Develop a demo of an application
• Some semblance of a user interface
• Perhaps little or no functionality
– E.g. in Flash

• Develop a (paper, web-based, software) prototype
• Videotape a user interacting with hit
• Videotape can be edited to simulate functionality
• Show it to target end users to get feedback

• Mock up a web-based or software interface
• User interacts with the system, as if it was fully functioning
• Hidden developer ( wizard ) processes inputs and responds with simulated outputs.
• Especially suited for intelligent interfaces
– (e.g. tutors, natural language interfaces)

• Devices, sensors, and robots can be similarly prototyped.
• Using easy to use materials, such as
– LEGO
– aluminum,
– off-the-shelf parts
• Demonstrate ideas
– with human control
– with remote control
• Rapid Prototyping of Small Robots
– http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~illah/PAPERS/pprk.pdf

• Time and cost to get to a prototype
• Fidelity to key functionalities
• Is it suitable to do a formative evaluation with?
• What are the infrastructure requirements? For example, what are the power needs? Communication constraints? Etc.
• Content creation and language needs
• Cultural appropriateness
• Distribution and maintenance

• Users outside the design team may be required to sign a consent form before participating in a prototype evaluation session
• IRB approval may be required
– Check with faculty first to be sure
• Design user studies that benefit the users in the study in some way
• Be careful with using control groups

• 15502 lecture slides from 2006 and 2007 – jointly prepared by Rahul Tongia, Joe
Mertz, Jay Aronson, and Bernardine Dias
• Most images are from TechBridgeWorld
( www.techbridgeworld.org
)

• Discussion of final project (background, needs assessment, and scope of problem)
• Assignments:
– Due Thursday
• View http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchsc reen.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dean_kamen_on_inventing_and_giving.html
• Preparation questions on all reading and viewing assignments are available on the course website in the
“assignments” section.
– Special note: first do the reading/viewing and then look at the questions and come prepared to discuss them in class.