Ryan_Bissoon

Ryan Bissoon's CCT333 WIKISPACE

**Tutorial Articles - Week 1 Answers**

 * 1) Question: Describe the unusual business model used in the ipod's fabrication as developed by Apple.**

Steve Jobs and Apple used a rather distinct and unique business model in developing and fabricating the IPOD. They used a system which was coined in the article as "reverse engineering" in which Apple designed the ipod from the outside inward. Not only that, but they also used components from different companies to create the unique design which makes Ipod standout from its MP3 competitors. Apple relied on a platform and reference design created by PortalPlayer, a third party audio engineering company, mainly because of their expertise in the field of audio engineering and because they have proven to create the highest quality of sound. Not only that, but Apple also combined the uniqe expertise in component design to create the intiricate parts of the Ipod through the use of other companies. An MP3 decoder and controller chip from PortalPlayer, a Wolfson Microelectronics Ltd. stereo digital-to-analog converter, a flash memory chip from Sharp Electronics Corp, a Texas Instruments 1394 firewire interface controller, and a power management and battery charging IC from Linear Technologies Inc. were all used in the design of the Ipod. This gives rise to the notion that perhaps Ipod is not really an Apple product but a combination of all of these companies combined.

**2) What distinguishes the work of the team of Jobs and Ive in relation to products designed by Apple? What new materials are enabling different design?**

What distinguishes the work of Ive's and Jobs in relation to products designed by Apple is that Ive and Jobs actually care about producing products which are valuable and useful. They describe it as fanatical care to everything in their design right down to cables and wires. Also, the core design team of Ive and Jobs is kept fairly small and they invest significantly in tools and processes so that the team can collaborate in unparalleled ways. The design studio is also very open and vast which allows little room for personal space interference, aids in designing the remarkable products that they do. In addition to materials, processes, product architecture, and construction that are enabling different design elements to be incorporated into products, polymer advances are allowing for designs using plastics which were previously thought impossible to use. Also twin shooting materials and metal forming along with new methods of joining metals with advanced adhesives and laser welding is allowing for different design.


 * 3) Describe the importance of Apple's design team. Are other companies trying to compete with Apple by creating their own design teams?**

Apple's design team is unique because it is comprised of a small group of focused designers who collectively share common design goals. The team works together in a very tight knit "community" in a sense, and this is the reason behind the substantial difference between their design team and others. The fact that the Apple team have a vast array of knowledge in terms of how their products should be made, adds to the importance of working collectively in a small group. The importance of the Apple design team lies in their ability to remain small and tight knit. Dell, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard no doubt will try to emulate and compete with the uniqueness of Apple's design team, however they will more than likely fail because the system of small design teams and remaining focused on perfecting particular products at a time rather than using a team to create multiple designs at a time is an integral aspect of design which can really only be imitated but never duplicated. _

Physical Ergonomics
is concerned with human anatomical, anthropometric, physiological and biomechanical characteristics as they relate to physical activity. The relevant topics include working postures, materials handling, repetitive movements, work-related musculoskeletal disorders, workplace layout, safety and health.

Cognitive Ergonomics
is concerned with mental processes, such as perception, memory, reasoning, and motor response, as they affect interactions among humans and other elements of a system. The relevant topics include mental workload, decision-making, skilled performance, human-computer interaction, human reliability, work stress and training as these may relate to human-system design.

Organizational Ergonomics
is concerned with the optimization of socio-technical systems, including their organizational structures, policies, and processes. The relevant topics include communication, crew resource management, work design, design of working times, teamwork, participatory design, community ergonomics, cooperative work, new work paradigms, organizational culture, virtual organizations, telework, and quality management.

**Case 7 - Truck Operators ADVICE**
It is noted that the truck drivers complained of much neck and back discomfort. Well I am quite familiar with truck drivers as I do come from a family of Truckers, and I would suggest that the drivers have ergonomically designed seats which comfortably fit and support their body throughout their long journeys. The seats can be designed to offer strong back support mechanisms along with neck supports and massage elements for added comfort. Having specially designed ergonomic seats would drastically reduce neck and back discomfort, especially if the seats are custom moulded to each individual truck drivers body type. http://www.safetyoffice.uwaterloo.ca/hse/office_ergo/ergoguide.htm
 * Ergonomically designed Task Chair for use in office spaces. This chair will support the back and prevent back and neck discomfort from pro-longed sitting at desks.

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**Week 3 Answers **
The Continent that I chose to explore was Africa. Africa is a vast continent with opportunites for growth and development, quite literally, everywhere. After examining and learning about some of the very unique and socially sound innovations that are assisting the lower class of people there to live a better life, I have determined five distinct characteristics of having a socially responsible product design and how it is beneficial to its users.


 * After reading about the Bamboo Treadle Pump** one major characteristic of a socially responsible product design for an innovative product is that the product must be inexpensive if it will be used by significantly lower income users. The treadle pump is essential for farmers because it allows them to reach water during a dry season from underneath the ground. This item is a necessity and the ones in desperate need of it are not necessarily the richest. Therefore the product must be affordable.


 * Big Boda Load Carrying Bicycle** is a socially responsible product design because it basically does the work of a very small vehicle with absolutely zero emissions. This innovation is is great because many people can benefit from its use and since there is zero emissions, it reduces the amount of toxins that those of a lower class are exposed to, therefore reducing their ultimate chance of aquiring toxin related illness.


 * Internet village motoman network** is an amazing and extremely socially responsible design of a product which can quite honestly be responsible for saving many lives. The fact that the equipment used are recycled and reused motocycle engines is amazing because it is cost effective. But perhaps the most extremely attractive socially responsible attribute is the abiity of the network to connect patients with real time doctors from Boston, in which they can receieve sound medical advice. Quite the advancement!


 * Lifestraw** is a socially responsible design because it is cost effective and it reduces having major water filtration plants placed in poorer communities of Africa. Now, almost anyone can enjoy clean water without the threat of catching a disease from waterborne toxins. The lifestraw is effective in so many ways, but perhaps one of the major ways is that it allows everyone to have water without the high cost of imported purified water. Very socially responsible.


 * OLPC one laptop per child** initiative is a new experiment in socially responsible design and its main characteristic is the ability of the company to allow each child who has never really ben exposed to the cutting edge technology of laptops to get a chance to experience and learn from it. We are fortunate in the wester world to have free access to such communication tools but those in Africa are not. Therefore this product is very socially responsible in that it assists in developing communities one by one from a low class inexerienced one to a more technologically evolved society.

**The Story of Stuff**
The material economy consists of five major steps that "stuff" must go through in order to be considered something that has passed through our materials economy: Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal. The problem however, that plagues this economy is that there is much more to our materials economy than these five stages. The fundamental problem is that THIS materials economy can be defined as a linear system but we live and consume in a finite planet. Therefore, this particular system is putting our livelihoods in a crisis. The problems can be expanded by the fact that we have limits. Limits that are not readily present in our everyday lives. We cannot continue to extract and produce and consume on a planet at a rate faster than the planet can reproduce. If it reproduces at all! Limits are introduced because we are an involved society. Cultures are involved in this system, people are involved in this system and the majority of governments do turn a blind eye to this crisis.

Extraction, or trashing our planet rather, is our first major problem. We are destroying all of our natural resources and destroying animal life in the process. The problem is that we as a society are extracting too much too quickly and this causes a tsunami of destruction in many other areas of our economy. This then cause our country to go and extract from other countries such as the third world. We are taking from other because they do not consume as much as we do and therefore are not considered "owners" at all of those materials. This now causes another major problem in the realm of production. Thousands of toxins and chemicals are used in production and only a handful have been tested on how they react to our environment. Toxins go in and toxins come out with our "stuff." Now this creates an even more severe problem, people become another resource that is used up. After we take from their economies, they are left with no other options than to move into cities and slums and work in highly toxic factories in order to continue to reproduce.

Distribution is a major problem because the costs of producing a given item is "externalized" meaning other people pay with various means of loss in order for us to get these products at very cheap prices. However, the materials economy that we live in is fueled by the golden ticket: our consumption. We consume and consume and we continue to promote the extraction, the harmful production and the costly distribution simply because we have been "brainwashed" that our society depends upon our consumption. The problem is that we are victims of planned obsolescence because we purchase things that will be of no good in the near future simply because they want us to consume again, and again and again. We are indirectly told by countless sources such as media and our friends that if we do not consume, we are outdated and therefore have lesser value. This also adds to our need to consistently consume, which ultimately fuels the destruction of our planet and the destruction of human life through toxic inhalation in production facilities. Unless we force ourselves to exit this never ending cycle, we will only be digging ourselves deeper and deeper into this crisis.

What an amazing video, I greatly appreciated watching this and will continue to spread the word about this video to everyone.

**Week 5 Answers**
=**Body Storming**=

Body Storming, according to Wikipedia, is a technique used in interaction design and often in creative design as a creative technique that encourages a researcher or someone with genuine interest in a given area to imagine a certain product or task or human ability / disability, and acted as though they had that task, ability or disability in order to experience it from the person who is living the reality of the disability in order to better understand and possibly research new methods of coping with the ability, task or disability.

The first case involves a girl who is blindfolded in order for researchers to study the issue of visual impairment and blindness. The girl is asked to walk up a set of stairs and enter a building with the guidance of a walking stick. She is clearly disoriented and uses her other heightened senses in order to navigate her way around. She mentally maps out the route in her mind, but she also depends on her sense of touch and sound. The researchers learned a lot about using multi-sensory approaches especially that of touch and sound when navigating around while simulating blindness.

The second case deal with attention deficit disorder, a problem that is cognitively related. A gentleman is asked to reset a telephone number while simultaneously solving mathematical problems. two very different and difficult tasks which require stimulation of different parts of the brain at the same time. The problem with this is that a persons frustration will and can severely impact their self-esteem. The insights that were gained by this case study were how to use clear narration to assist the user and present enjoyable yet challenging activities to improve attention.

The third case, a participants hands were fastened with pens and then secured with gloves in order to recreate the feeling of chronic arthritis. This participant was in a constant state of fear of injury and made him extremely apprehensive even in undemanding situations. Also from expending more energy, his body temperature rose which then caused more anxiety in the participant. The researchers gained insight in to using access-full routes, passing spaces, intangible objects composed of safe materials in order to decrease a users fear of participation. Also in order to enhance interactions, speech recognition systems should be further researched.

=Week 6 Answers= =**Designing Interactions**=

__**Three phases of adoption of a technology:**__

Enthusiast users love and appreciate the technology in an aesthetic way. They enjoy exploiting it and the fact that it might be a bit more challenging to the user actually adds to the fun of using the camera. The 35mm cameras first used by the astronauts in the 1950's nearly required the user to have a PhD in optics in order to operate and navigate their way around the cameras.
 * Enthusiast Phase**

Once enough enthusiast have their hands on a piece of technology, they begin to ponder the notions of how they can use this technology in their work. They then find ways to practically use the technology. The professional phase is like an inventive phase where users create ore practical uses for the technology at hand. When the 35mm camera went from an exotica product to something more conventional and more people had their hands on it for professional use, everything suddenly stabilized. In terms of the controls on the camera.
 * Professional Phase**

The consumer phase is where the technology at hand becomes practical for consumers to buy. In this stage the priorities for the product have dramatically changed and most of the important controls then become automatic. 35mm cameras today are almost completely automatic. The film speed is set, the exposure is set, and the flash is set automatically. Everything becomes highly automated in order to make things more simple.
 * Consumer Phase**

Another consumer product which has undergone a similar transformation is the laptops, more importantly the MACINTOSH Laptops. When they first came onto the scene, they were nearly impossible for the average user to use. However, as people increased their need for the laptop and when Apple redesigned the entire system, the Mac books are now virtually as simple as ever to navigate around and every aspect of the laptop is easy to use with a little bit of trial and error.

=**Week 7 Answers**=

Interaction architecture and designing a questionnaire
Mat Hunter describes Interaction architecture as an extensible series of rules that would allow not just one camera to be designed, but perhaps a whole series of cameras. Something much more experiential than a simple book for example. A User Experience Prototype is what they called it and their example was a big box with a security camera jammed onto the front with a very "fat umbilical cord" leading to a Mac tower computer. Through this they were able to instantly take a picture, crop it, delete it and send it across the room to a TV.

Rikako was involved in the development of the Photo-stitch. She began with version three, but not before testing and checking versions one and two. She discovered that the biggest problems with the older versions were that the structure was not visible to the users at all and there were too many steps to stitch. The biggest change that she made with version three was the introduction of the tab user interface as opposed to the step by step style of the older versions. She also included animations in order to reinforce text messages which was very helpful for beginner users of the software.


 * Leading questions:** A leading question is a question that forces or implies a certain kind of answer. It basically coerces the user or the person answering the survey into choosing or offering an answer that the creator of the survey would like to see, as opposed to having the respondent answer the question truthfully based on their own opinions and experience. The answer choices are not diverse enough to allow for a respondents own answer to be input. Instead choices such as "yes" "no" or "maybe" and offer no room for description.


 * Hypothetical questions:** A hypothetical question is one which is based on conjecture and fantasy. Hypothetical questions force the respondent to give thought to and answer a question in which they have previously given no real thought or emphasis to. A question such as "if you were the Governor, how would you reduce he crime rate?" Questions like these do not produce results which are truthful or desired or even relevant to the overall research at hand. Basically these types of questions are a waste of time because there is no solid foundation on which to base these questions.

=Week 9 Answers= Bill Moggridge describes the collaborative design process as one in which those who are designing a product must work in collaboration with those who the product is being designed for in order to allow for the creation of a product that is accessible and target specific. His designs are target specific and he focuses on such ideas as where the eyes are in relation to the nose and the mouth, as an example of what he tests for while designing. An example he cites in his video is the design of chair that is meant to actually be comfortable. He states that one mus know more than just the size of the human body in order to properly design a chair that is comfortable. All of a sudden a persons phsyiology and bone structure automatically become important attributes to consider in the design process. Bill continues along and describes his need to design products in teams because teams can effectively map out and understand ideas of anthropology, phsyiology and cognitive psychology much more intricately than just a one person design team. Another example Bill uses is with the concept of integrating surgeons amongst the design team in the ear nose and throat sugery design. This is profound because designers are teamed with surgeons and the surgeons then feel that the design process is theirs to muddle with and this stimulates ideas and gets design initiatives flowing.

An example of Collabrotaive design that was used to engineer a new product is the Ugandan Cargo Bicycle. reasearchers worked in collaboration with bicycle couriers and the general public in Uganda in order to design a load bearing bike whichthey can use to carry products or extra people. basically extra weight. Basically the bike has an extension on the backseat which is strong enough to carry extra load. this design was first used by Ugandas, however, it was more of a balancing act as they tried to fit multiple large objects on their bike without security of the items. Now with the extension, the bikes can hold more and they bike riders can fcus on riding and not so much balancing their products or people.

=Week 10 Answers=

The first design which I found very interesting was the Avian Elements, Japan's 500 series Shinkansen Bullet Train. This train is one of the fastest trains in the world with a top speed of 200 mph. Designers wanted this train to run as quietly as possible, so they designed the train based on the elements of one of the quietest birds, the owl. By designing small serrations similar to those on owl feathers, they were able to reduce the noise generated by the train's pantograph—the component that connects to overhead electrical wires. The most obviously biomimetic design element is the train's nose cone, which is modeled after a kingfisher's beak. This allows the bird to dive from air into water with a minimal amount of resistance. This design ultimately reduces noise pollution.

The second design which I found very interesting is the echolocation sonar enabled cane for the visually impaired. The company, Sound Foresight, used technology to mimic the way bats "see" in the dark when travelling. They use sounds to navigate their way around. The sonar enabled cane prevents the user from colliding with objects by sending out sound waves ahead of the person holding it. These sense upcoming objects, such as street signs or other people, and provide a tactile warning of an oncoming obstacle's location through the cane's handle.

The third design which I find extremely interesting is furniture designed to mimic the human skeleton. Why I find this interesting is because I truly believe that the skeleton of the human body is one of the strongest formations that has existed. The bone structured furniture, though hollow, forms a strong, almost architectural matrix of support. This kind of design approach has also inspired improvements in a wide range of products. General Motors, for instance, developed a series of car parts that is lighter than conventionally made components but just as strong.

=Week 11 Answers=
 * 1. How would you describe web accessibility?


 * My definition of Web Accessibility is a website or online program that is accessbile to all types of people who wish to visit the site. Whether you may suffer some visual impairment, have trouble navigating large or fine text or simply easily confused when trying to navigate a brand new site. Web accessibility is a site which offers solutions that help users navigate and make the most out of their experience on your particular site, regardless of their condition or ability level at the time.**

2. Who do you think benefits from accessible websites and how?

I think everyone benefits from accessible websites because everyone has, so some verying degree, an accessibility issue. SOme of us wear glasses, some only read a certain amoutn of words per minute while some need assistance to move the mouse around. I believe everyone benefits from an accessible website. They benefit because the site has help options which cater to all levels of ability. Also, by making sites more accessible, people from all walks of life are able to gain access to the site, with minimal restrictions.

3. Do you think your website/blog should be accessible? Should all Canadian websites?

I firmly believe that my website should be accessible, in order for me to increase the amounts of hits I may receive on it weekly. All Canadian websites should be accessible because we as Canadians have all typees and levels of abilities. You cannot subject people to visit only certain site because of their ability level. People should be able to visit any site they choose.

4. What do you think is the biggest challenge of making a website accessible?**


 * The biggest challenge of making a website accessible is figuring out how to cater to the many different types and levels of accessibility that exists. One must consider how they can appeal to someone with a visual impairment and at the same time assist someone who has mobility issues, or is slower on the learning curve. This is what I believe is the greatest challenge.**