West Portal Reflections #4, August 17, 1997
West Portal Director of the MSU Communication Technology Laboratory
West Portal Reflections document my experiences as I try to open a portal to Northern California for Michigan State University. They are targetted to my teams in the Comm Tech Lab and Virtual University, to my close colleagues and bosses throughout Michigan State University, and to close friends and family. These pages serve as ethnographic documentation of my participant-observation research on TeleRelating ("using technology to sustain and enhance close personal relationships"). The contents mix professional and personal life because I am reaching out 2500 miles to people I care about and work with. I hope my reflections help you to keep me in your hearts and make San Francisco a place that is yours. Thanks for journeying with me as I think, learn and experiment.
Weather
Weather Report for the week in SF: SUNDAY 70, partly cloudy. MONDAY 70, partly cloudy. TUESDAY, 71, partly cloudy. WEDNESDAY, 73, partly cloudy. THURSDAY, 70, partly cloudy.
I was in my first SF EARTHQUAKE this week. I thought it was an earthquake only because it sounded/felt like the recent earthquake we had in East Lansing. It was a sound like something hitting the outside wall, just as we were going to sleep. A reminder that they can happen anytime.
Full moon Saturday. Fog sits high on the tops of nearby mountains. Low thick clouds blowing so quickly overhead they completely obscure the moon except for brief dazzling moments.
The CTL held a brainstorming session with the MSU Children's Garden about collaboration and grant writing to create a cutting edge, exciting, fun, innovative, virtual children's garden. Notes from the session appear in a separate web page.
This week's meeting with David Skole (see the white paper in last week's portal report) went very well. We agreed to get started working together by doing pilot development on the Rainforest Report Card. Jason Goode will be the primary liason between the CTL and David's group, coordinating with Randy Russell and the CTL. David will provide the CTL with $25,000 toward this development effort. We will also jointly draft grant proposals for telerelating between scientists at distant universities and on remote site visits.
Bay Area Computer-Human Interface SIG
On Tuesday I drove to Palo Alto for dinner with the Bay Area SIGCHI and to their monthly seminar. Diner was at Jose's Carribean Restaurant. The woman I was initially sitting next to at dinner got up after 2 minutes and said she was moving to another part of the table because if she sat next to me, my hair would wind up all over her plate. I worried throughout the dinner whether my hair was getting into the new person beside me's food. At dinner I met Ramana Rao from Xerox Parc and InXight, Ken Kahn, creator of Toon Talk, Diane from Morgan Freeman Publishers, an interface designer for HP, and Interval Research scientists. Dinner included 20 people. About 120 attended the session at Xerox Parc.
I was amazed to be surrounded by so many industry professionals from industries I normally only get to read about. When people asked where I was from and I responded "Michigan State University," their faces fell. MSU does not have meaningful name recognition out here. Part of what I seek to change.
The session was a Browser War competition between InXight's Hyperbolic Tree browser and Stretch, a patent-pending, grant-funded university browser written in Java by Karen Theisen and Eugene Jhong at Stanford.
Interval and Xerox researchers developed a general framework for what they jokingly refer to as all of human knowledge ("what educated people know"). The point was to be a large-enough-to-be-challenging number of nodes (5500) categorized into 13 levels. They used Barbara Ann Kiepfer's book, The Order of Things, as an initial guide in categorizing, and ended up with the following schema for locating all nodes:
VU Librarians, you might be amused to read that Kiepfer was initially described as a librarian, and an audience member corrected the speaker, saying she was a "computational lexicographer."
The framework resulted in a structured database given to each competing browser prior to the competition. When the Browser War was held at the international SIGCHI conference, there were 6 entrants, including using paper file folders instead of computers. Paper won the early rounds but lost when tasks got more complex. Tonight only two browsers competed.
The competition focused only on BROWSING navigation, not on SEARCHING. Methodology invented four tasks for competitive comparison. RETRIEVAL TASKS included Simple and Complex Retrieval. (An example of simple is USA. An example of complex is Palo Alto because it is nested lower in the hierarchy structure). RELATIONAL TASKS included Local Relational and Global Relational. An example of Local: Which has more vineyards, Southern or Northern California? An example of Global: Compare Europe to North America. Local is in close proximity within the hierarchy, and global is not.
Experts with each system competed first on the tasks. Then novices who had never used the browsers competed. Results were very close:
|
|
Tree |
Stretch |
Tree |
Stretch |
|
Simple |
8 |
7 |
4 |
3 |
|
Local |
6 |
5 |
2 |
1 |
|
Complex |
4 |
5 |
2 |
3 |
|
Global |
2 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
|
|
EXPERT |
EXPERT |
NOVICE |
NOVICE |
Stretch gave a better overview of the big picture structure of the information space, while the Hyperbolic Tree offered much better look ahead -- links several steps beyond where you were spanned out onto the sphere of links.
Methodologically, the most interesting part was an eye tracking video shown between Expert and Novice competitions. Using an eye tracker built by the Office of Naval Research, Xerox Park scientists recorded eye tracking movement of users while they browsed using the Hyperbolic Tree and while they used Internet Explorer. They were able to record the path the user's eye traveled, play it back in fast motion, and then build an still image containing the entire traveled path for the whole session. The Hyperbolic Tree made use of the entire screen, with eye paths searching and moving all around. Internet Explorer brought big laughs by contrast, as the eyes moved repeatedly in a linear pattern from the menu bar down to the middle of the page, back up to the menu bar. The motion was repetitive and linear, looking at only the same 10% of the screen the entire time.
SFSU Extension Multimedia Studies Program
Friday evening I went downtown to SFSU's Multimedia Studies Program open house. It was targetted to prospective students for the MSP extension classes, and more than 100 multimedia wanna-bes showed up. The presenters stressed that companies did not care about degrees. They told visitors all they needed was a good portfolio, and SFSU Extension could enable them to build a portfolio at least 2 years faster than a university degree program, while providing more hands on experience. They mentioned that with a university degree, students "waste years stuck in humanities requirements instead of learning useful things."
Another presenter discussed differences between vocational and academic programs, and said MSP was a cross between the two.
MSP is so successful they have 100 short course offerings. I overheard a program director walking by tell someone that the program has been overwhelmingly successful, and they are struggling to keep up with the enormous growth. He mentioned, before I stopped being able to eavesdrop, that they were still trying to make their Dean understand, but that the enrollment numbers were attracting notice.
The facility is downtown near Embarcadero, at 425 Market Street where they share part of a building with a bank. The operation appears to be completely separate from the main campus and its multimedia degree program.
This shot is looking straight up from the entryway. The skyscraper to the right is across the street.
The teachers are industry professionals. The lead designer for HotWired teaches web design. People from MacroMedia teach Director, and so on. There are numerous classes I would like to take, but they are too expensive, ranging about $350 for 4 to 8 one night per week short courses.
Signs in the Mac Labs and Pentium Labs are amusing: You Must Leave No Later Than 9:45pm.
Their web site is much improved since I last checked it. They already have a "Tech Partners" program that goes beyond what I was planning for our industry mentors program:
The Multimedia Studies Program is creating partnerships with leading manufacturers of new media technologies. The program offers an opportunity for companies to invest in the future of the industry, by supporting higher education.
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone is sponsoring a "New Media Minds" series of 4 seminars with high profile speakers such as Jaron Lanier and Linda Jacobson. I look forward to attending.
They have a teleconferencing facility at MSP to provide 2 way video across the Cal State higher ed networks, and satellite to elsewhere.
I was unable to bring myself to speak to anyone associate with the program. I will, but the situation was not condusive and my ego was not strong enough. The focus Friday night was on recruiting students. Other than those moments when there was a speaker, there was no way to tell who was on the faculty and who was a prospective student.
After an isolated and trying week, seeing teams of people and multimedia labs enjoying working together reminded me strongly of how much fun it is to work with other people on multimedia. Team work enhances the design and the design experience. To put it another way, I was missing you guys.
I need to understand better what kind of relationship I am seeking with the MSP and then approach them. I did not know what to say. Hi, I'm a competitor? Hi, hire me to teach? Hi, tell me about yourself? Suggestions are welcome. (Help?!)
I believe MSU is the first non-California institute of higher education to begin competing in California for industry partnerships. At least, no one has responded to my self introductions by saying "oh, yes, there are people living out here from Kansas and Vermont universities doing the same thing..."
We could carve out a new niche that is in key ways distinguished from the SFSU program. Or we could cooperate with them. For now there seems to be huge growth potential, in terms of student demand for education and professionals interested in teaching part time.
Mark Blanchard, Programmer for Purple Moon, teaches Director at San Francisco State University's Multimedia Studies Program. Purple Moon is multimedia visionary Brenda Laurel's startup company. It is a spinoff from Interval Research, Paul Allen's think tank. Purple Moon has its first 2 CD-ROMs and Web Site launching in about 2 weeks.
At the MSP open house, Mark showed a preview of Secret Path in the Forest. Brenda conducted research for 5 years on gender differences, and based the design of the game on what she learned. The guiding concepts are in sync with my readings on gender differences:
Secret Path begins by selecting players. There are six girls to choose from. When you click on one, she tells you her problems, talking for about 5 minutes with graphics. (Examples: I think my mother likes my sister better than me; I want to be a dancer but I am skinny and funny looking and dancers are gorgeous and tall.) The user picks a girl for her friendship chain, and then follows that girl's path. To finish the game, you follow all of the paths.
The scenes are beautifully drawn, like an impressionistic painting. The audio has girls giggling happily, and lots of pleasing soft magical sounds. I found it aesthically appealing. From my perspective (warped, I know, I hate games), it descends into puzzle solving like all the other puzzle games at this point. At each scene, the user is supposed to solve a puzzle to earn a magic stone. It seems unclear to me what the puzzle is, in the great tradition of MYST. The puzzles have nothing to do with the girl or her story. After you solve all of the puzzles on a girl's path, then you get to go back to the clubhouse and see an animated story of how she solves her problem. It is about 5 minutes of noninteractive, very well done content.
Purple Moon is merchandizing the secret stones and dolls of the characters. The same characters also appear in Purple Moon's second CD-ROM, being released concurrently with Secret Path. Rachel's New School is a social play game about what it will be like to be in 8th grade. The story line changes based on who you sit next to, what you wear, and where you go.
Both are programmed in Director.
Stories about Telecommuting
Susanna Tellschow twice made good use of the Webcam in the Comm Tech Lab to telerelate to me. First, she used it to grab still frames to prepare a web page response/report for me ( http://commtechlab.msu.edu/humans/tellschow/report/report8-6.html). Then on Friday when the IAH Immigration CD-ROM came back from the printer, as a book insert, she used the Webcam to turn the pages and show me what it looked like.
The audio conferencing devices have arrived for the CTL and for West Portal, but not yet for VU. This unit allows me to participate in conference meetings spread out on the floor with a huge piece of paper to take notes on. Or, to have guests in for guest lectures or to participate in brainstorming. Seems to work reasonably well. They can connect to computer or telephone with echo cancelling, but so far, works best over phones by a large margin.
For the weekly allstaff VU meeting, the speaker phone decided to act up, such that whenever I spoke, I would thereafter hear only silence until someone very near the phone made a loud noise to cause the audio to switch back. We disconnected and called back several times before diagnosing the problem. At first, I tried to keep quiet and not say much, since I was punished by nonstop dead silence after every "uh-huh, that's great." Then I would have to ask someone near the phone to make a loud noise, so that I could rejoin the meeting in progress. Eventually Andy figured out that all he had to do was tap on the phone to make enough noise to fix the sound. So, each time I talked, he would pop the phone when he thought I was done. (I only learned this after the meeting.) Periodically, he would assume I was done talking and pop the phone, as I continued talking and everyone laughed. Being the phone on the desk provides considerable amusement to others at the meeting, all at my expense. After each meeting, some kind soul emails me to let me know what I was missing out on and why everyone was laughing this time.
On Friday I attended the weekly CTL potluck and discovered another disadvantage of telecommuting, especially to meals. Basically I got hung up on about 5 minutes into lunch, and was unable to reestablish the connection. We tried using ClearPhone Video, which supposedly had better quality sound than Internet Phone. Things did not work wonderfully well. I am ready to use the Internet for video/whiteboard and phone lines for audio, at least for meetings.
It was not a fun week as a telecommuter.
I was overloaded with catch-up issues for MSU as I made up for having been out at SIGGRAPH last week.
On Wednesday I spent the day losing my 4 Gig hard drive, while participating in the VU conference call and the David Skole Rainforest Report Card meeting. Thursday morning a new drive arrived, and I spent the day reloading 4 Gig of personal content and applications.
Pacific Bell came on Thursday to install the third line (my second). After the installer left and I finally got my hard drive reconstituted, I logged on to discover that now my 56K modem could achieve speeds of only 22K. I tried it on all three lines, and it was the same. Fortunately, the installer left a box of stuff by mistake, so he called to ask if he could come pick it up. I used this opportunity to complain about the crummy speeds. Turns out he had digitally split an existing line, meaning it was no longer possible to go faster than 22K. He said it would be at least 5 weeks before a new phone number might exist. I asked him to remove the new line and try to restore the original lines to better working conditions. He spent the whole day working at it, and in the end "found another number on top of the pole" and was able to get all three working at fast speeds. He did complain to me at the end of the day that even though he workds for Pac Bell, they had kept him on hold for hours waiting for an operator, including while he was hanging on top of a high telephone pole on the hillside.
Between Pac Bell and hard drive and household deliveries, being tied to MSU phone meetings, and other obligations, I ended up being stuck in the house unable to leave for four of five days in the week, two of the five days unable to use the computer and/or dial out. Had a "lunch" scheduled with Darcy that was interupted 4 times. It was a lonely week, where I was acutely aware that there is no one but me here -- no other computer systems, no one to fix my problems but myself, no programers or artists to do better at both than I can. I submitted a demo menu page to Ken and Kitty, and they pointed out that my screens "did not look like revolutionary newspapers." I know, I know...
I had hoped to meet with Broderbund, in person. (Hey, I'm in SF, this will help negotiations!) However, Jen-Lin Liu called me on the phone and was able to reject the proposal over the phone, without a lunch meeting. I called Jeff Johnson to get together for lunch or dinner, and he was too busy this week. Which is OK since I ended up not being able to leave the house anyway. I tried to call Sue Wyshynski of Vivid to set up a lunch meeting about talking to Logitech, but the phone number on her business card was obsolete and the Sausalito Operator had no listing for her. I emailed her but don't know if it got through.
Meanwhile, in "spare time," I am reading books about community (and other topics), to understand and write about how telerelating and community interact. "Communities are a state of group communion, togetherness, and mutual concern where the participants perform the ordinary as well as extraordinary human activities together, including working, playing, meeting, discussing, eating, relaxing, selling and buying, celebrating, commemorating, mourning, or just hanging around. In addition to having their own events and rituals, communities have a continuous stream of history from their founding to their present. History is an integral part of community's identity and character." (from New Community Networks: Wired for Change, by Douglas Schuler, 1996)
In all, by the time I got on the Muni to head home Friday night from the SFSU Multimedia Studies Program reception where I couldn't get up the nerve to speak to anyone, I was very ready to get home and cry, feeling temporarily overwhelmed by the experience. It is strange to know no one in a city. Perhaps I know a little how a housewife feels who moves to a new city. Momentary interactions with the people behind the counters -- at the grocery store, the juice store, the hardware store, become the full extent of my human interaction for large stretches of time.
I rented a tearjerker movie (Evening Star) and settled home to create computer art, as creating something, even if it is useless, restores my sense of peace.
Strangely, what happened is the
same thing that happens when MS is acting up and I admit to myself
that something is missing (i.e. feeling in my legs, or whatever).
What happens is that I am overtaken with an appreciation of what I do
have, and a deep sense of joy takes over. As I got peaceful, I found
that smiling at an old woman I passed walking down the street makes
my day, and that buying a peach from a friendly person means
something. That doing so several days in a row means even more. A
much shorter "history" than 23 years at MSU. But still valuable. And
that anyone of you who is still reading this means a lot too. I write
this to do my part in telerelating, which is to give you a real human
to continue to work at relating to.
I know that much of this telerelating with me is basically a pain. And I appreciate your continued tolerance and efforts to make it work. Progress happens slowly and almost imperceptibly, but things actually are generally improving. I think that what we find and what we invent as we go on will be worthwhile. And I think that San Francisco and I will be able to give back enough to make it meaningful.
Personal Fun
In truth I am neither alone nor unloved, just in case you had forgotten my ability to exaggerate and then believe myself temporarily.
I had such a great weekend, I did not think I would be able to write the previous section. But it seemed to come out miserable enough, despite my current state of happiness. Didn't want you to miss out on the down side.
The orange neighborhood cat is nibbling on catnip placed in the back yard to attract feline visitors. The couch in the middle got delivered on Friday. In SF, things get customized -- you can pick patterns and designs and have them created.
On Wednesday the realtor who sold Sheldon his house took us out for outstanding Italian food in Noe Valley. Her romantic partner, Michael, is an attourney seeking to eliminate the death penalty. He expressed interest in multimedia to help children think about creative, nonviolent approaches to problem solving. Tomorrow when he goes to San Quentin, he needs to be sure not to wear any blue, or the guards might mistake him for a prisoner. Sunday we met three mathematicians and a woman from Taiwan for Dim Sum at the Embarcadero Center. Thursday Matt Pfiefer and family and Karin (who drove my car out about 2 weeks ago) were back in SF and we went out for more Italian food and ice cream.
It's a rough life.
My bike trips continue without new elbow scrapes or bruises. This week rode to the top of Mount Davidson, seen here from our house (for a mountain it's not very tall or very far, but the view is awesome). The child shown with me is covered with blue spots from the blackberries she found to eat. She insisted on using my camera and taking my picture. I also rode to the always breathtaking Golden Gate Bridge.
