Challis Hodge’s UXblog

The Houston Independent School District has a so called “high-tech new way to keep the elusive high school dropout.” They plan to “catch them before the leave.” I, for one, think that is a brilliant idea. I’m glad they thought of it.

“With a new computer database available at every campus this fall, teachers can keep a virtual eye on every student and identify those at risk of leaving. For the first time, educators can look up a student’s attendance, discipline, immigration status, grades, and test scores at one source and use that information to predict dropouts.”

During a demonstration of the program, Lee High School Principal Steve Amstutz was able to determine which fictional students were likely dropout candidates because they missed too many days recently or their grades dropped suddenly. Amstutz said, “In the past that would have taken a small army of people looking through obscure records.”

Hunh? Privacy issues aside, I’m a little confused as to why Joe’s home room teacher needs a database to notice he’s been excessively absent. Maybe I’m just not getting it but couldn’t the database research time be used to follow-up with a few of Joe’s other teachers down the hall?

It looks to me as if HISD has spent three years developing this pointless application to avoid being sanctioned by the Texas Education Agency for it’s previous errors in record keeping. OK, I can live with that if the tax payers can. But what really grabs me is the fact that the district is considering a plan to assign an adult to each student.

It’s bad enough that we throw out civil liberties and invade personal privacy these days at the drop of a hat. It’s down right scary when we look to technology to replace personal responsibility and accountability.

The smoking ban in Florida had led to a new drink–the Nicotini! Larry Wald, the owner of the Cathode Ray Club on trendy Las Olas Boulevard, has invented a new cocktail in response to Florida’s recent smoking legislation. Soak tobacco leaves overnight in vodka, disguise the taste by adding a couple other liquors, and you have the Nicotini!

“Some say that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Well, I say when life gives you a smoking ban, have a Nicotini,” Wald said.

Like I always say, everyone designs yet not everyone is a designer.

Engineers at the University of Calgary have developed a pill that, once swallowed, will determine how healthy or ill the patient is, and will release just the right amount of medicine accordingly.

Dubbed the Intelligent Pill or iPill, the new drug-delivery system packs a micropump and sensors that monitor the body’s temperature and pH balance into one pill. If the body’s temperature and pH reach certain levels, the iPill responds by pumping out more or less of its drug payload. It could be used to treat many ailments like AIDS or diabetes.

The best uses of emerging technologies inevitably come from the street and back-channeling is as good an example as any. My first glimpses of back-channeling were in corporate meetings where blackberries, cell phones and SMS were a rescue from the boredom, not to mention a means to quietly let your next meeting know you were running way late.

Well before we figured out whether it was good, bad or appropriate, back-channeling simply was. Now with the proliferation of things like IM, Wi-Fi, blogs, and various social software, back-channeling is poised to alter the dynamics of traditional speaker to audience, audience to audience, and audience to world relationships. Back-channeling has quickly spread from the corporate conference room to the lecture and conference halls.

In the study of online learning, researchers have discovered that higher levels of learning occur not when a professor delivers a one-way lecture, but rather when dynamic discussion and debate amongst students happens around carefully constructed course topics. So too, have we learned long ago that conference goers do not attend to gain knowledge from speakers, but rather to interact with their peers and like-minded people around specific topics and subject matter. We also know that those unable to attend wait anxiously for the online reviews, commentary and discussion so they too can participate in the community.

For better or worse back-channeling is here to stay. While we may be able to stave off the use of wireless devices in the classroom, the conference scene is a different story. There are some interesting possibilities to consider in terms of introducing back channels to ad value to learning. I know I’ll be looking for ways to incorporate a back channel into my future presentations and lectures. It may just provide a means to quietly remind the student in the back row to pay attention!

You’ve got to be kidding me or are you? The Mobile Phone Olympics kicked off Friday (7/26/03) in Clapham Common, London, as part of the Sprite Urban Games, an annual cult street sports event.

More than 15,000 competitors will use the new Sony Ericsson T310 in their quest to be crowned the first Mobile Phone Olympic Champion, and will take part in four events designed to test their all-round ability. A Quadrathalon, if you will!

It doesn’t take much to imagine the mobile phone olympics merging with online gaming…throw in some social software, stir and volia–the future.

Edible food wrappers. A concept so simple it amazes me that it hasn’t been created already. They’re made from vegetables or fruits, they keep air out and they’re water soluble. Add a little vegetable oil and they’re moisture resistant.

Oh and did I mention the flavors can be used to compliment recipes. A tomato wrapped frozen burger could tossed on the grill–wrapper and all! Food chemist Tara McHugh, Ph.D., with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Albany, California is the creator. McHugh says the edible wraps will likely be in stores by the end of the year.

The work is featured in the April 2003 edition of ChemMatters. Bon appetite!

“Although design is one of the most profoundly powerful disciplines in our modern information culture, its identity as a profession is in a state of incoherent disarray verging on crisis. The economic slowdown and tenuous world situation provide us an opportunity to come together as designers to articulate and organize our professional culture, to enhance our recognition and prestige within the context of an increasingly design-reliant information economy and to wield our influence in ways that will benefit humanity and the planet.”

“Change is, in itself, the stuff of design: it is the experience of engagement with the inevitable. What design does is to put us in the driver�s seat, or, at a minimum, to enlist for us the services of an expert driver. If we are dissatisfied with the present, it is up to us to design a more desirable future. Nothing could be more eminently possible, if we apply some imagination and resources to the problem�if the present world does not suit thinking and feeling human beings, it is up to designers to envision and create one that does.” Designers: Time for Change!

For those of you who can’t wait for Amazon to send your preordered copy of Don Norman’s forthcoming book, Emotional Design, you can check out Affect and Machine Design: Lessons for the Development of Autonomous Machines, published in the IBM Systems Journal.

The paper is written by Don Norman, Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University and cofounder of the Nielsen Norman group, Andrew Ortony, Professor of Psychology and Education, and Codirector of Northwestern University’s Center for the Study of Cognition, Emotion, and Emotional Disorders and Dan Russell Senior Manager of the User Sciences and Experience Research (USER) lab at the IBM Almaden Research Center. It is apparently one of the references in Don’s new book and seems to lay some ground work for the Emotional Design thesis.

Keep in mind that it won’t be written in the eloquent lay prose we’ve come to expect in Norman’s books. The paper was written for a technical journal and it reads accordingly! Still it’s worth the read.