Fit for Halloween
I have been thinking about the plethora of fitness apps that are available and contemplating which ones work and why. Invited by Patricia Lange, I wrote a blog post on zombies, stories, motivation and fitness for the CASTAC blog – the official blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing –… More »
Putting the Person Back Into Personalization
In this draft of a column I wrote for ACM’s interactions magazine, I propose that we need to rethink and expand our ideas about “personalization”. Building on my discussion of data and data sciences, I believe we need to think about process “process” personalization, where we design for interactive exchanges more carefully as well as “outcome” personalization which is what we are currently focused on in the search, recommendation and collaborative filtering world. As interfaces and interactions get more adaptive, the “intelligence” embodied in the data we gather needs to be put to the design of adaptable and socially adept user interfaces as well as carefully filtered content. We need to think about the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what’. More »
Looking at the new Gmail Compose interface
Like many people I have been a little irritated about some of the poor design choices in the new Gmail Compose interface. I wrote about it for a post on the interactions blog. More »
Humanoid (robot) hacking
I find myself more and more intrigued about all the new developments in robot hacking. This was largely driven by discussions with my friend Dave Snowdon, but also after reading an excellent edited book, Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics, by Patrick Lin, Keith Abney, and George A. Bekey published by MIT Press. More »
