ES321 EXERCISE 1

Exercise 1

Observe skilled and novice operators in a familiar domain: for example, touch and 'hunt-and-peck' typists, expert and novice game players, or expert and novice users of a computer application. What differences can you discern between their behaviors?

                Technology brings about the need to learn and acquire new things. And as technology grow and develop, the more human requires to get hold of these new and innovative things. Human behavior is said to be complex but nonetheless, random. The growth of technology largely affects the human behavior; and thus human behavior also affects the growth of technology. However, the way that human deals and interacts with technology also depends on the training and the environment he receives and encounters. 

At some point, not all people accept and understand quickly the changes in technology. Being skilled and a beginner in using modern technology really matters on how it is regularly used and practice. There is definitely a difference between the two in applying technology. Let’s take for example some scenarios stated below:

·         Touch and ‘hunt-and-peck’ typist

These individuals are obviously doing the act of typing, however they differ on how fast or how they can type accurately and conditionally. Touch typists are often called professional typists. They keep their eyes on the source copy at all times uses their ten fingers and avoid looking at the keyboard when typing. They often do their typing works fast and accurate and lessens the time of work. However, hunt-and-peck typists also known as search and peck typist are the contrast of touch typists. They look at the keyboard and tap the keys with only a few fingers (sometimes only two fingers).  They are clearly much slower than expert typists. Usually, they are unable to focus on their works since they always look on the keyboard while typing. This affects the quality of their work. Though there can be accuracy in their outputs, it increases the time of work and thus sometimes slows the time of completion of an output.

·         Expert and novice game players

Differentiating Expert players against Novice players, as expected, these Expert players do have wide knowledge about a specific game. Since novice players are beginners, they are often more on explorations and generating questions. Looking back at their performance, Expert players do have several advantages especially in experience unlike the novice players. Now, taking some tactical games, Expert players can generate certain tactics towards the game and since Novice players are still learners they usually discover these tactics through and when they experienced it.

                Practice makes perfect, that what they say. In order for these novices to become experts, they should strive hard to commit the power over the technology. Experience still plays a vital role, for it encompasses learning and the creation of facts and ideas.

ES321 EXERCISE 4

Exercise 4

Can you think of any instances in which the 'noun-verb' guideline for operations, as suggested in the Apple human interface guidelines for the Desktop Interface, would be violated? Suggest other abstract guidelines or principles besides consistency which support your example. (Hint: Think about moving files around on the Desktop.)

The noun-verb guideline suggests that we can view all operations that the user will perform as being composed of an action (the verb) acting with one argument (the noun). In the case of moving a file (or copying, for that matter), the action (move or copy) requires more than one argument. The way the move operation is performed requires the user first to select the icon for the file to be moved and then to indicate the move operation implicitly by dragging the selected icon to the destination folder. The nouns in this dialogue are the file to be moved and the destination folder. The verb is the move operation. The natural way to express this is in the order noun-verb-noun. Strictly speaking, in order to stick with the noun-verb guideline, we would have to indicate both the target file and the destination folder before indicating the move operation. That would be consistent, relative to input expression, with most other commands on the desktop. However, some principles of direct manipulation and familiarity to the user are more important. Moving files by dragging them on the desktop is very similar to the way we can pick up any object in the physical world and move it to its new location. And the dragging operation is incremental and easily recoverable; moving to one place can be undone within the same operation since the dragging can continue until the file is released.

The file-moving example is a slightly contrived one, because some could argue that there is no violation of the noun-verb guideline (hence, moving is still consistent with respect to input expression) because the verb is 'move to destination folder'. Perhaps a better example is a command to search a file system for files matching some specification. Here, the action is to do the qualified search and the argument or noun is the set of folders or volumes of the system that you want searched. Typically, this kind of operation is defined by some dialog box that allows the user to indicate in any order the specifics of the operation (the search parameters) and the folders or volumes to search. Once this unordered dialog is complete, the user then indicates that it is OK for the system to perform the operation. This kind of form-filling dialog subscribes to neither the noun-verb or verb-noun guideline; the order is more flexible for the user than consistent.

Reference:
http://www.hcibook.com/hcibook/downloads/pdf/exercises.pdf

ES321 EXERCISE 3

Exercise 3

What influence does the social environment in which you work have on your interaction with the computer? What effect does the organization (commercial or academic) to which you belong have on the interaction?

Talking about the social environment I am with, the presence and usage of the technology specially computers is widely in common. The influence of computer gaming is one of the major reasons of the Human-Computer interaction, and also, these interactions are present due to the profession i had chosen.
Through the extensive usage of this technology, organizations whether commercial nor academic had grown popular. Academic organizations had been requiring the knowledge about computers, which includes the usage of these devices to meet certain school requirements. These organizations had contributed a lot on the interaction, some of its effects are addiction, knowledge and the growth of technology.

ES321 EXERCISE 2

 Exercise 2

Pick a couple of computer input devices that you are aware of (joystick, light pen, touchscreen, trackball, eyegaze, dataglove, etc.) and note down how each has different attributes that support certain forms of interaction. You ought to know a little about all of these devices - if you do not, research them.

The following devices are input devices that supports Human-Computer Interaction:

In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches. With the decline of punch cards and paper tape, interaction via teletype-style keyboards became the main input device for computers. Supports interaction by having the users to input their commands by pressing its buttons or keys.

A light pen is a computer input device in the form of a light-sensitive wand used in conjunction with a computer's CRT TV set or monitor. It allows the user to point to displayed objects, or draw on the screen, in a similar way to a touch screen but with greater positional accuracy. Interactions occurs when users points the pen to the screen.

A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. It enables one to interact directly with what is displayed. Similar to a light pen, touchscreen carries interaction by allowing the user to manipulate a device through touching it by hands or fingers.

A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes.

A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer.

As you can see, this devices are commonly used to manipulate the Computer, which results to what they called as "Interaction".

Expert Judgement Tool

ProjectManagement Assignment 5 : What is the best tool use in expert judgment?

It was been discussed before that in order to organize a project, the project team is required to split or break the main project to several phases. These phases are composed of unique processes, and it is constructed with prerequisites. Some or most of these phases will encounter a technique called the Expert Judgment. To handle some risks, generate ideas and decision makings on the project, expert judgments are being conducted to guide the project team.

Expert judgment is mostly used in developing project charter, direct and manages project execution, perform integrated change control, define scope, estimate activity resources, estimating costs, identifying stakeholders, perform qualitative risk analysis, plan risk responses, conducting procurements and etc.

Defining what expert judgment is about: Expert judgment is a common technique used in estimation methods. Most judgments are based on expertise being acquired from specific areas and knowledge, which concludes that this method merely relies on factors such as gained experience from past projects. Which reminds me of something, having students consulting to a mentor for an approval or changes is also a practice of this expert judgment! LOL! Expert judgment is often used to assess the inputs needed to develop the project charter. Through this, gaining an edge using historical data is no more an issue. Inaccurate estimation definitely leads to failure, that’s why accurate data are important to set a mark for those estimations.

Through observations, I had managed to come up with a disadvantage regarding to the matter of having this expert judgment. Yes it is true that through this, the project team could have the advantage of securing the outcome of their project, hence giving them the assurance for a better quality. But using this technique or approach, the project team would spend a large time especially when taking the path of having the interviews and consults. Thus, the project team should be well prepared for consequence of using it or simply its drawbacks.

Any individual who has the knowledge and experience relating to the project could be considered as an expert. It could be a member of the team, an individual with same project in the past, and the project manager. But to avoid having biases, it is more appropriate to have an expert who’s outside the project, an individual or a group who’s not related to the project itself. Through this, the team could have an assurance of having the judgments straight, clear and real.

Expert judgment is a technique right? Where in this expert judgment is an approach to secure the quality of the ongoing project. Tools are being introduced to support this approach or rather the technique. Some tools that could be employed in this technique are the following:

Interviews – Interviews are common to us, this is a tool we had been using specially when we are in doubt or we do not have knowledge on something, it can go to a one-to-one or a many-to-one basis (which is compose of the expert and the apprentice or the project team). Interviews are conducted by asking a series of related questions to an expert or an individual whose knowledgeable that will increase your knowledge of the project or a particular project activity.

Brainstorming – Brainstorming is basically about sharing related ideas, knowledge and solution as an approach for a specific problem. This works by getting a group to focus on a problem and then coming up with as many ideas as possible to determine an absolute solution. The goal of brainstorming is to achieve a broad list of project risks and solutions to terminate further damages to the project.

Consulting – Another tool of expert judgment, in which the project team will come for an expert to have a consultation regarding to the risk and progress of their project. An effective approach, for it could give the project team the path that they must take and a consultant that will test and neglect some options.

Historical Data – Historical data uses the knowledge gained on a similar past project activity to obtain duration estimates for each activity associated with a current project. With the proven data, the team could compare and come up with a better approach or implementation for the project.

Using these tools and techniques, the project team could expand their knowledge about the projects’ risks control and on how to deal with the several options and additions for the developments and progress of their project.

Below are some techniques that still comprise the expert judgment (innovations made to cover the weaknesses of the said technique.):

Another technique that can be applied to handle risks and conclude ideas and solution is the analogous estimating. Analogous estimating is one form of expert judgment and it also known as Top-down Estimating. This approach or technique is mostly reliable when the previous activities are similar in fact and not just in appearance, and the project team members preparing the estimates have the needed expertise. This estimation technique will be applied to determine the duration when the detailed information about the project is not available, usually during the early stages of the project.

Another technique for judgment is the Delphi approach or Wideband Delphi technique attempts to gather the opinions of a group of experts with the aim of producing an accurate unbiased estimate, as mentioned earlier that having expert judgments with the project manager or anyone involved with in the project could or might result in bias for they might not see the abnormalities or severe risks in the project. Delphi technique is a structured technique of expert judgment and is essentially a form based technique involving a multi step procedure and these are: The experts are issued the specification and estimation form by the co-coordinator, a group meeting is held to discuss the product and estimation issues, experts produce an independent estimate, estimates are returned indicating the median estimate and the expert’s personal estimate, another group meeting is held to discuss results, experts prepare a revised independent estimate, steps 3-6 are repeated until a consensus is reached by the panel of experts.


http://www.ecfc.u-net.com/cost/expert.htm
http://project-management-knowledge.com/definitions/e/expert-judgment/
http://www.ecfc.u-net.com/cost/delph.htm
PMBOK of Knowledge

Project versus Other Works

ProjectManagement Assignment 4: How is a project different to any other work? Is Project Management relevant to me? cite examples.

Consider this one: Before you can effectively manage a project, you must first define and understand its projects’ nature (base on the lesson of making meaning, which would result to a good project) - its purposes, objectives, scopes, and budgeting. Some people would define the project as not existing until it has a sufficient definition, because it is impossible to start a project without the thorough examination about it.
scratch scratch scratch

How could I differentiate a project from any forms of work when even I myself am puzzled from it? I was blinded by the word “update” which I usually hear when talking about projects, and the term which states that “there is no such thing as a perfect project or a 100% completion on projects for it involves continuous progress as time passes”. I was puzzled about these factors until I had a little reading and found a missing important part of it. A project is limited; I had disregarded the fact that a project has a bounded lifecycle which has a definite start and an end. Basing in this words, I was been enlightened, and had figured out that these factors are just components of it which means a project is composed of updates and maintenance to deliver its services properly. What I am saying is, a projects’ life ends upon its submission, but its service which needs updates and maintenance still goes on, for a project is not a continuous process but the service it caters is the constant one. That’s what I had concluded from that mind bugling phrases (I suppose) and am hoping I got it straight and right.

Let me elaborate more about these so called projects. A project must be punctual (time is crucial for a project is temporary and has a definite end), must be passed in its deadline and must meet its requirements.
Temporary – a project is said to be temporary because it has a specific due date. It has a definite beginning and an end. And projects must be punctual at any cost. A project is a temporary activity with a starting date, specific goals and conditions, defined responsibilities, a budget, a planning, a fixed end date and multiple parties involved. Therefore, a project has a limited time and the members involved in the said project must cooperate to comply and meet its requirements before the time surpass them.

A continuous process is not a project. An ongoing task in considered as another form of work, for as I had stated earlier a project has a limited lifecycle. Most projects uses top-down cycle (started with a planning, analysis, design and implementation) this comprises updates after the project be presented to a test, and after all of this the cycle will never go backwards. Like any form of lifecycles, there is no turning backs but instead several changes may occur within it not unless you start on building another one. An example of a project is the creation of a certain system, which is upon completion, will be considered as a candidate for maintenance. Its subsequent updates and maintenance are no longer being considered as a project but still a part of it. In hands to this let me again stress out the “project end”. At the very end of certain projects, updates, maintenance and testing are considered to determine and ensure the services that certain project generates; to determine that the project had achieved and met all requirements, and to identify its weaknesses. Another example is all about chores, as we all know chores are done almost every day which I conclude that it would not be appropriate to call it a project, for it is ongoing or continuous if we based it from a lifetime process. But if we consider it as a task for a day, then we could say that it is a project for it will later come to an end (for the day). A project is composed of several objectives, a project could be divided to several tasks which they termed as project decomposition or breakdown and the proponents must works on each of the refined tasks in order to reach their goals and the goal of the project. The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast to business operations, which are repetitive, continuous, permanent or semi-permanent functional work to present their products and services. To make it more clear, projects are commonly different to businesses operations which needs a flow of development (which are considered as some of the other forms of work which contradicts the definition of project as a task). Projects are vulnerable to failures, if a team has failed to follow the decided run of the project time-line, then it would surely become a candidate for failing. The project’s success relies on the team itself and also the effectiveness of their project management. Thus, for it to succeed, a project must deliver to cost, to quality, and on time (which refers to the basic characteristics of a good quality project); and it must deliver the benefits presented in the business case, it must be productive, worthy or should we say cost effective.

The second question is “is project management relevant to me?”… Defining project management based on my learning, it is a key or tool used to have an organized project structure. To have a preliminary view or make certain of the projects outcome, a team should use some project management tools. Project management has been a useful tool in many operations, leading to better innovations that had change the world and had changed the people’s lives. Project management tools can make sure of the projects great foundation, for its quality and standard basis. We had already deal with these things couple of assignments ago, but to rest assure to explain its importance (or rather to be true, just for the word count! LOL) I had provided this terms. Project management is a carefully planned, analysis and organized effort to accomplish a successful and high quality projects. A project is a one-time effort that produces a specific result (or rather takes a limited time), for example, a building or a major new computer system. This is in contrast to generating a program because program as what I had research takes a continuous processes, also comprises with managing series of related multiple projects together, and as I had defined earlier, projects are not continuous thus programs are not projects. We had almost widen the meaning of project management, now how is this related to me? Simple, in our tasks especially on a student like me, project management is a helpful tool or method to organize things such as common school projects. For in a student’s life, there is no way of escaping a project not unless you have the plan of failing a certain subject because of specific projects to make. If you have been given a specific job to complete then you should consider using the principles of project management. This is one of the many things to apply the project management to my life. Let’s take it in another scenario or let’s have some literal examples; project management involves planning for the projects objective and goals, evolution of project through thorough analysis and updates to maximize a projects capabilities and budgeting a projects limited resources; at my certain age I could relate myself through this by simply basing on my lives processes as a whole, like project management, I am also oblige to plan several things for my future and to plan for the achievements of my goals in life; like project management who makes projects evolved to a well developed one, I also have my own evolutions, from being a child who wanders everywhere to a matured one and hopefully for a full maturity as the years surpasses. Evolution had started after I was blown out form my mothers’ womb! Like the first step of the project management, the planning for my life had started and generated there which has been leaded by my parents. And also, I had gone through several processes to gain some knowledge like as having a project through several processes to ensure its service via the tracking of project management. And one last thing! About the phase of budgeting within the project management method, for years I had been forced to budget my allowance to fit it in to my needs (isn't this a good sample of the relationship?).

Just bare in mind that those works with a continuous process could never be considered as projects, for projects has a planned due or is limited. If a task has a definite end, then we could call it as a project. And to assure the project development, must use a project management tool to have project more organized. To settle things within projects, there are lots of project management tools that can help you organize your project elements or tasks one good example of this is a Gantt chart, which is capable of giving the users tracking capabilities for them to be more oriented in the happenings inside their projects.

http://www.epmbook.com/projdefwhy.htm
http://www.spottydog.u-net.com/guides/faq/faq.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management

Project Management as a Method

ProjectManagement Assignment 3 : Is Project Management the best method of implementing change?

Project management by its meaning is the organizing, securing and managing resources; basically it is the foundation of having a high quality and well delivered project outcomes. As you can see, project management (via the use of project management tools) are essential in planning for a good head start, with this you can achieve a higher success rate rather than having it the other way around. Project management helps us to define several things, such as the scope of the project, its elements, the critical things we must consider, the budgeting, its weaknesses, what must be needed to modified, inserted or deleted to enhance the operational process of a project. By breaking a whole project into several milestones into a simplified and refined one, you could simply determine those elements that must be considered and this is done through project management methodology. If you force change on people (without considering their nature, aspects, needs and etc.) normally problems arise for it will create a chaos between the project outcome and the people (which are basically the users of the project). Change must be realistic, achievable and measurable. These aspects are especially relevant to managing personal change. Before starting a project change, you must consult to several people such as the: owner of the project or the client, some expert who will judge those changes and project fairly and better ask yourselves: What do we want to achieve with this change, why, and how will we know that the change has been achieved? Who is affected by this change, and how will they react to it? Project management is the key on answering all of these questions.

To start with, I had mentioned the words modify, insert and delete in which project management are capable in doing to. Clearly, project management is one of the best methods to implement changes inside your projects. I’m not saying that it is totally the best for I am sure that I haven’t met all those implementing changes methods yet, but to assure you that project management is also effective if used properly and abide according to the planned time-line. Remember that as your scope changes, several things will change and that must be considered. As scope changes, the time-line or span of the project, the budgeted cost, and even its quality would be altered. For scope planning specifically comes first before any of those mentioned components. Through this, you can possibly work over changes in a more organized manner, so that you will have a guide or tracking to identify the specific problems ahead as the changes undergoes. Typically, project management is also a useful tool in budget managing, for you could identify if you still have enough resources to be considered to operate some changes and modifications on a project, if there is still an appropriate amount of money to be allocated for some enhancements on it. Considering you are the project administrator or proponent, having enough resources a client could ask for changes on the project to satisfy their basic needs, so you will go through updates on almost all aspects and this project management (tool / method) is a functional way to help you analyze and synthesis a concrete way of meeting them.

Project Management is a methodology and a discipline which can bring significant benefits to organizations by:-

• Ensuring limited resources are used on the right projects – as I had said earlier, project management involves budget planning in order to determine the project limitation and secure its quality.

• Managing complex changes in an organized way – because all elements had been broke down to several structures, changes would easily be applied and the things it will affect will easily be managed or determined, thus making it easier for the project developers to have certain changes on the said project.

• It could also assess some risks as changes occur – certainly there is always a risk inside a project specially in putting up changes. Prevention is better than cure, by engaging in this method you could assess some risks and convert those risks into a useful tool to optimize your project.

In order to have a high quality project outcomes, changes or updates such as deletion and inserting (adding) within a project must be always present. These are some of the several important components to be considered to meet the clients’ standards. Consider a project without this tool or methodology that has undergone several changes to be enhanced; would the resulting project outcome a success? Probably no! Especially when we are talking about huge quantities of projects which are merely composed of several elements and these elements are all having prerequisites, which are the foundation of the project, its core or its major components. Without these project management methodologies and tools, how will you keep track of the issues within a project? And if changes occur, how will you trace the area of effect of the specific changes? How will you determine the changes on the scope and manage the limited resources? Would it be possible to manipulate it easily? No, no, no. Remember, project has a limited time with a definite start and end; you cannot manage changes without these tracking provided by project management methods.

See the difference of not applying and importance of having the project management in terms of including some changes within a project? It will surely help you to manage all of those changes and ensure you the quality of it. Changes are made to suit for the quote “Quality over Quantity”, preferring quality for it would surely satisfy you, than having several functions of quantity but is not satisfying at all. Similarly we could talk about the cost-benefit of a project, wherein lots of benefits are aquired at a lower cost. The usefulness of this specified tool had already been discussed and proven, wherein without this you could not manage changes in just a bunch of time. With this tool and method in hand with several changes, you would surely gain the best quality of the project, assuring that it would give a big impact on the clients’ satisfaction.

http://www.businessballs.com/changemanagement.htm
http://www.spottydog.u-net.com/guides/faq/frameset.html