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SIGCHI Social Impact Award for 2010

Ben Bederson and Allison Druin
from the University of Maryland are awarded

The SIGCHI Social Impact Award for 2010

ACM SIGCHI identifies and honors leaders and shapers of the field of human-computer interaction with annual SIGCHI Awards. The Social Impact Award honors individuals who promote the application of human-computer interaction research for pressing social needs. This year the award was given to Ben Bederson and Allison Druin of the University of Maryland for their joint work in developing the International Children’s Digital Library and their individual work in developing new methods that give children a voice in the development of new technologies, and for their work on electronic voting systems.

Ben Bederson is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland and past Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory. With his collaborator, Prof. Allison Druin, he led the development of many of the key technologies designed for and by kids, including KidPad and StoryKit for iPhone. He is the Technical Project Director for the International Children's Digital Library, a multilingual free digital library of children's books, currently consisting of over 4,000 books in over 50 languages, with more than three million users from over 160 countries worldwide. He led the library's collaboration with the Government of Mongolia -- bringing access to the library in rural Mongolia. Prof. Bederson also did influential studies of the usability of electronic voting systems, which resulted in scholarly publications, reports aimed at policy makers, and books directed to the general public. This work has served to highlight the challenges in developing usable electronic voting systems and has informed decisions on voting technology adoption.

Allison Druin is Associate Professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland and Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. Prof. Druin is a pioneer in the development of technology for children and the inclusion of children as partners in the design process. Her technology co-design methods have been reported on through scholarly publications, presentations, and books, and have become widely used throughout the CHI community. She founded the CHIKids program for the CHI Conference. This program enabled many CHI community members who were parents to participate in the conference while their children learned about CHI and contributed to the experience of the conference, e.g., by producing daily newsletters, websites, and plenary session videos. With her collaborator, Prof. Ben Bederson, she created the International Children's Digital Library, a multilingual free digital library of children's books, currently consisting of over 4,000 books in over 50 languages, with more than three million users from over 160 countries worldwide.

Another problem with Flash - keyboard focus

I consider Adobe Flash to be a virus and have been thrilled that Apple continues to fight against it. The reason I dislike Flash so much is because it breaks fundamental user experience standards, such as:

• Consistency: The same action should do the same thing in different places. Example: if pressing the down arrow scrolls the web page, then it should always scroll the web page.
  
• Modes: Modes are almost always bad - but when you have to have them, make them clearly visible. I.e., the user should know what mode they are in by looking at the screen. Example: if typing enters text in a specific text box, then that text box should be clearly highlighted so the user knows which textbox will get their text.

My problem with Flash is that it breaks these basic design standards. In order to use a Flash plugin in your web browser (like when you watch most videos), you have to click on the video - and Flash then takes complete control over the keyboard (i.e., it takes your "keyboard focus"). This is bad because you can then no longer use your keyboard to do other browser things - such as scroll with the PageUp and PageDown keys, press Ctrl-T to open a new tab, or Alt-LeftArrow to go back to the previous page.

The fact that Flash breaks standard web behaviors is bad enough - but it is even worse because it does so completely invisibly. I get used to using my keyboard to control my web browser because - um, I am a human and I am using my computer. So, sometimes it stops working for no apparent reason. There is no way to see this problem, and the only solution is to use your mouse to click on some non-Flash component in your browser. I bet most people just think that web browers are sucky and inconsistent. The real problem is that Web plugins for common activities that take over they keyboard just shouldn't exist.

Bravo Apple. Let HTML5 and built-in web standards for common activities take over.

2/4/2010

Collaboration with New Super Mario

I've been playing Mario for a long, long time (i.e., decades). I've been playing it on Wii with my daughters (now 5 and 10) for a year, and until last month, it was always an exercise in patience. Only one person played at a time, and you we spent more time watching than actually playing. Actually, this is how video game playing has been for 30 years.

So, while collaborative game playing is not new, and I don't even think there is anything in particular here that is new, I was stunned by just how good Nintendo put it all together with New Super Mario. It isn't just that we are all playing at the same time, but that the designers have put together so many modes of game play in a seamless way that is equally attractive to a 5 year old and a 45 year old. It supports exploration, goals, collecting points, collaboration, and competition equally. But the killer thing is that it supports these 5 modes at the same time in the same interface. There aren't 5 different ways to launch the game. There is one, and you just choose how to play. In fact, at any given moment, we are often playing several modes simultaneously, or dynamically switching between modes, or one person is doing one thing and the others are doing another.

Aside from the sheer number of hours we have played (and continue to play), I judge its success based on our volume. The three of us end a game-playing session exhausted, excited, and a bit hoarse - because we have been yelling so much.

There are too many details to go into just why this all works so well, but here are a few examples from the 5 modes:

• Exploration: Wander around, poke at things and see what happens.
  
• Goal-driven: Complete as many worlds as possible.
  
• Collecting points: Get as many points, big gold coins, or powers saved up as possible.
  
• Collaboration: Bounce on each others head to bounce higher, do a super ground pound (a synchronous maneuver), or wait for someone to finish before moving forward.
  
• Competition: Push each other off the edge, grab a power rather than share it.

They also nailed the screen sharing issue. The essential problem in collaborative games is that everyone looks at the same screen. The traditional solution is a split screen - where one player sees where they are in the world on one side of the screen and the other players sees something else. This isn't really collaboration - this is competitive, simultaneous separate play.

New Super Mario, on the other hand, places everyone (up to 4 characters) in a single world. You all move and bounce around in the same space. If the characters wander apart from each other, the world automatically zooms out so everyone is still visible - up to a point. There is a maximum zoom out level after which the lead player (right-most player since this is a left-right side scrolling game) implicitly owns the visible area. The last player (left-most character) gets dragged along. If they get dragged into a hole or something else bad, they die.

Actually, they don't die - when someone does something that would normally result in dying, they go in a bubble (i.e. "ahhhh - daddy, I'm in a bubble"). After a few seconds the character floats around the screen in a bubble and they can be revived by one of the other characters bumping into them - up to 5 lives, after which you really die and you have to wait for everyone to die (or bubble), at which point that world starts over. Again, a combination of approaches that brilliantly encourages collaboration without requiring it.

There is a lot of verbal communication going on to support all of these modes - which is part of the reason it is so fun. I'm looking forward to finishing dinner tonight just so we can go play. I haven't heard enjoyed a game this much since Asteroids in 1980 - when we played one at a time, but the social element was in going to a gaming parlor.



1/21/2010