Endless Ramblings

My blogging buddies and I have been discussing what the future of interactive design might bring.  We’ve talked about lofty things like life-logging, fab machines, and the gradual movement towards ubiquitous computing.  Sure, that’s great stuff, and I have a lot of respect for it.  But that’s the “high end” stuff - the glamor stuff.  There are some very respectable “plain vanilla” developments that are also worthy of mention.

In his book The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society, author James Beniger mentioned that significant change often occurs too gradually to for us to notice.

The tragedy of the human condition is that each of us lives and dies with little hint of even the most profound transformations of our society and our species that play themselves out in some small part through our own existence(1).

I agreed with that statement the moment I hit the period at the end of the sentence.  I think of it whenever I discover something previously unknown to me that’s been in progress for a while.  Two such recent discoveries that come to mind are: Ubuntu, and OpenOffice.

Ubuntu is a free, open source, Linux-based operating system that will run on Windows computers.  There is a new release every six months, and free security updates for eighteen months.  Every computer needs an operating system to function.  This one won’t cost hundreds of dollars like the others do.  It’s free, and you can have as many copies as need.

OpenOffice is another free, open source program.  It is an alternative to other higher priced office software, and offers word processing, spreadsheet, database, graphics and presentation applications.  In addition, OpenOffice files are compatible with most of the major programs it emulates.  That’s a diplomatic way of saying it’s similar to Microsoft Office, and the files you create are interchangeable, but it’s free.

What does this have to do with the Beniger quote?  Work began on Ubuntu in 2004.  OpenOffice.Org claims that they have been working on their project for twenty years.  I must have been very busy, as I seem to have missed both of them until now.  The work will continue into the future, of course, but make no mistake - these programs are available today.

The implications should be obvious.  The cost of basic computing is going down.  Programmers and developers are donating their talent, time and effort to make products available to everyone and anyone who needs them.  Schools, towns, organizations, businesses, and individuals are all welcome to use these programs at no charge.

Innovative, cutting edge software will probably always continue to demand a premium price.  But many of us don’t need cutting edge software, and many others would probably be quite happy with the computers and software we discard when we upgrade.  I have a feeling the free, open source software trend will go a long way toward helping a lot of people long into the future.  Expect to see more of it, and expect it to get even better as time goes on.

Bibliography:

Recently while catching up on the blogs of my colleagues, I noticed the following statement from Ann John concerning the book Smart Mobs:The Next Social Revolution.  She refers to the Shibuya Epiphany chapter and writes:

In Rheingold’s excerpt, the student is quoted saying “If I don’t receive a text when I wake up or I receive only a few messages during the day, I feel as though nobody loves me enough to remember me during the day,” ((Rheingold, 2002).  While, at face value, this seems absurd, I would argue that this statement clearly depicts a need for constant communication, a need that probably wouldn’t exist if it were not easily accessible.

This raises a classic “chicken and egg” question.  Did the youth of Japan have a need for this communication before the technology existed, or did the technology create the need and therefore the behavior?  Is it possible that the concepts of Socialist Determinism and Technological Determinism are rearing their ugly heads once again?  Valid arguments can be made for both theories.  The chapter tells us that cell phones and texting features such as the heart symbol were deliberately designed to appeal to youth, but the structure of the society lends itself to the heavy use of cell phone texting and socializing.  In reality, I doubt that either theory is more correct than the other.

On the other hand, I would point out that few nations have youth who use texting as heavily as the youth of Japan.  When I go to a college campus, I almost never see students texting.  I consistently see them with a cell phone glued to their ear.  Part of this difference is due to the nature of  Japanese society.  In the Shibuya Epiphany chapter, Reingold mentions this as told by anthropologist Mizuko Ito:

Explaining that the life of Tokyo high school students is tightly controlled by family and school, Ito elaborated: “Getting a mobile phone grants teenagers a degree of privacy and right of assembly previously unavailable, which they use to construct a networked alternative space that is available from anywhere they are(5).

Later, Ito tells us how this difference between the American and Japanese culture explains why the youth of America don’t use texting as heavily:

Things that many middle class urban Americans have that most middle class urban Japanese don’t have include homes large enough to entertain friends and colleagues, private bedrooms for children, kitchens with storage space and appliances, more than one car, extra parking space at home, free parking for cars when out, cheap gas, toll free expressways, PC with internet access (and the space to put a PC in the home), more than one phone line with competitive phone rates (this just recently changed in Japan)(23).

The above quotes show a significant difference in personal privacy and supervision between Japanese youth and their American counterparts.  The sentiments expressed by the Japanese student seem excessive to us, especially when we evaluate them based on our own personal experience.  We also have no knowledge of what the norms are for the subculture she is communicating with.  While it is possible that the technology led to her feeling the way she does, it’s also possible that the society pushed her into the waiting arms of the technology.

Bibliography:

Neil Gershenfeld is excited about the future of fabrication and the Fab Labs he presently has functioning around the world.  Anyone can see this enthusiasm by watching his presentation on the subject on TED.com.  It’s a bit difficult to get a handle on what he is saying, however.

The presentation starts with about 8 minutes of background history and theory.  Gershenfeld moves through it quickly, but there is easily enough material here for an additional five or six TED presentations.  He then quickly switches subjects to his How To Build (almost) Anything class at MIT, and expresses surprise that few, if any, students took the course to research how to build.  Instead, students wanted to actually build something.  He then discusses some of the projects they made.  He later states that when similar machines were distributed around the world, the people who had access to them used them to make things as well.  Many of the projects involved the fabrication of needed items that were not commercially available.

Given the title of the course, I don’t find the high student turnout, or the desire to actually build something very surprising.  Likewise, if given access to some equipment, I’m sure I could dream up a useful project or two.  My first table saw project was a little barrier designed to stop my three year old son from crawling into the dishwasher.  It consisted of a horizontal wood panel which simply hid the controls and door handle from view.  The job only required access to the tools and a bit of pragmatism.  It needed to be done though, as my son was about to break the dishwasher.  All of my woodworking projects have been have been forced into being by the lack of a commercially available product.

But Gershenfeld’s Fab project is interesting for other reasons.  The ability to have digital control of the fabrication equipment opens up an entire new dimension.  The digital instruction for a particular build can be put into a network and shared.  Projects can be collaborated on.  Experts can be consulted, and users can be easily educated about the process by other users.  Instructions for finished products can be shared with others much like we share recipes online.  Characteristics of convergence can be exploited to distribute and manipulate the files and information about the current project being built in new and different ways.

The fabrication machines can be connected to computers, or have their own on-board computers, but once the instructions and materials are loaded, they will function as automatically as printers do.  Unlike the printers we use however, the fab machines will make three dimensional objects.  It is possible to make one object when only one is needed, but multiple copies can be made in one location, or in many locations, one time, or many times.  In this respect, fabbing is manufacturing on-demand.

Since the actual design of the item is driven by the person who actually needs it, the design process is highly user-centered, bottom-up design.  It’s not the top-down product of the corporate design team from a large corporation.  Chances are that the user will get exactly what he needs.

Here is a simple example and explanation of a fab machine which is available today.  It handles semi-solid materials such as plaster or liquid plastics which will harden after application.  Other materials could be worked and shaped by a fab machine as well.  Commercial shops are presently using computer controlled machines to cut wood and metal, and smaller fab machines are already performing these operations.

While Gershenfeld readily admits that the technology is not sufficient to permit digital information to control atomic-scale programmable assembly outside of a laboratory environment, his international Fab Lab projects show that quite good work in fabrication can be done with what we have at hand.

Bibliography:

While reading Shibuya Epiphany, the first chapter of a book titled: Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold, I was instantly struck by the thought that the youth of Japan are using text messaging as an extension of their “third place”.  The concept of a third place is fairly well established, and one explanation of it may be found in an article titled: We Live Here: Games, Third Places and the Information Architecture of the Future by Andrew Hinton.  In the article, Hinton refers to the social interaction taking place between participants in the game Quake and writes:

What Quake (by which I mean, at this point, Quake as cultural experience) became, then was what urban sociologist Ray Oldenberg called “the third place” in his book The Great Good Place.  Where our “first place” is home, and our “second place” is work, our “third place” is “determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people’s more serious involvement in other spheres.”  Oldenberg is describing physical places, like the corner pub or town commons, and, with the increase in suburban sprawl, he grieves for the loss of these places in American life. (Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place, 1990)

The quote defines the third place concept, and shows that when physical places are unavailable for whatever reason, an Internet place can, to some extent, serve to function as a valid third place.  Many of us have observed this when visiting online chat rooms.  Many chat rooms have their regulars and peak usage times not unlike a corner pub where people stop in for a short time to interact after work.

The Japanese culture has some distinct characteristics that serve to make text interaction desirable to the youth of that society.  Author Howard Rheingold mentions information given to him by Japanese anthropologist Mizuko Ito:

Explaining that the life of Tokyo high school students is tightly controlled by family and school, Ito elaborated: “Getting a mobile phone grants teenagers a degree of privacy and right of assembly previously unavailable, which they use to construct a networked alternative space that is available from anywhere they are(5).

It should be pointed out that this alternative space does not always totally replace a physical third place, even though it can.  The potential for online social interaction in an online third place certainly exists when using the texting platform.  But there are also many times when texting through the use of keitai is used to arrange meetings in physical third places such as fast food restaurants.  Rheingold writes:

Keitai-equipped youth use the parts of the city between their schools and homes as the stage for their alternative social space, staying in touch with friends while traveling from home to school, conducting group communications while shopping, flocking to fast-food restaurants or coffee-houses at fluidly negotiated intervals(5).

If there ever was a perfect word to describe the nature of texting, fluid is it.  The technology seemingly makes everything about texting communication open ended.  When you go to a pub, you are there until you leave.  The session begins upon your arrival, and ends with your departure.  When texting, this time limit is removed.  Other limits are removed as well.

If you miss a text message, it isn’t lost - the technology will save it for you.  Although some time-sensitive interactions will become obsolete quickly, many won’t and can be continued at a later time.  If more than one participant is texting, the live session is in progress.  If only one user is awake but texting, the game is still on.  The storage of the message for those at the receiving end, taking a “sleep break”, keeps the session available until they wake up.  Given the lifestyle of younger people, it’s almost impossible to determine when the session is actually over.  As long as the participants possess a cell phone, they are seemingly all in the game and the game could be in progress.

The parameter of time has also been altered in an additional way.  The real-world third place session seemingly no longer has the fixed time parameters of the pre-text era of the local pub visit.  Texting seems to serve as an extension of the real-world third place.  You can be there through the intention expressed by your text message even if you aren’t physically present yet.  Since the text communication constitutes of interaction, you are considered as good as actually being present.  Rheingold describes how this happens.

Kawamura documented communications exchanged by a group of thirty who were organizing a party at a karaoke bar. “As the date grew nearer, the frequency of messages increased.  But only four people showed up on time at the agreed place,” Kawamura told me.  However, dozens of others stayed in touch through voice and text messages while they trickled in.  “Kids have become loose about time and place.  If you have a phone, you can be late,” added Kawamura(5).

This concept of a text message third place also differs from other models of an Internet third place from the standpoint of user location.  For instance, when I interact in a virtual third place, I generally sit in front of a computer in my house and interacting with or around other fixed users on a specific site.  But those who use text aren’t really limited to interacting from a fixed place to everyone in a virtual room.  They communicate with only the specific users they choose, while fixed or in motion, and interact with other users who may be fixed or in motion.  Since the operation can be silent and experienced users can text using only one hand, there is even a potential real-world stealth element available.

The potential to interact text produces an interactive space which is generally unaffected by space and time.  It can act as a virtual third place, or extend and guide the user to a real-life third place.  While the cell phone package bundles everything together with the other features a cell phone enables, I have a feeling many Japanese youth would still be happy even if they were limited to only the benefits that texting provides.

Bibiography:

Here are two very short videos I recently discovered that lightly touch on the field of interactive design.  In fact, the general points made can be applied to any type of design you happen to be engaged in.  Take a look.

On the surface, the this video seems to deal with fonts.  I think the concept can be expanded to include all design cliches.  By cliches, I mean the little stylistic flourishes which develop into major trends.  These trends result in the heavy overuse of the flourish, and the whole affair goes obsolete soon after.  In short time, the design looks outdated because it relies on a trend which everyone is now tired of.  One common example of this is fashion.  In general terms, some fashion trends are gone in a year or two.  Others are timeless.  Both types are always available to take inspiration from, but one will always better than the other for the job at hand.  It pays to think carefully before jumping on the trend bandwagon.

Let’s watch another video.

The narrator makes an interesting point here. The colors in the spinning circle look nice, but the user is given no solid information.  In some ways, the progress bar isn’t as pretty as the spinning wheel, but it gives the user solid feedback which is far superior. The feedback acts to comfort the user, which makes for a better emotional experience.  If we are supposed to design for the user, perhaps the progress bar or something similar is the best choice.   Again, it depends on the job at hand, but since feedback is a major design issue, the decision should be a deliberate one.  Come to think of it, just about all the decisions in design should be deliberate - shouldn’t they?

Introduction:

When most people think of online interaction they tend to think of their computer.  They may wonder if their processor is fast enough, if they have enough storage space on their hard drive, or wonder if their graphics card is up to the job.  Most of them don’t think about bandwidth.  They should, because a lack of bandwidth can make your online experience excruciatingly slow -so slow you might think your machine is broken.  If you want good online performance, adequate bandwidth is as important as the computer itself.

Bandwidth is bought and sold by utility companies.  They buy it when they invest in infrastructure.  They sell it when you pay them for your Internet account.  In basic terms, bandwidth is the ability or potential to move digital data.  When you pay your Internet Service Provider, you are not only buying your account and the physical connection.  You are also buying the bandwidth it takes to send an email, or watch a YouTube video.  At this time, we are all using more bandwidth than ever, and will only use more going forward.

Proposition:

Given this increasing bandwidth requirement of online connectivity and the correspondingly higher price it will command, the flat monthly charge will be by necessity replaced by a different payment structure involving metering of bandwidth as a way to calculate charges.  One way to do this would be to sell a basic package which included a fixed amount of bandwidth.  One would be able to use more bandwidth if needed, but it would be billed as an extra charge.  Another method would be to sell the physical connection, and then charge for the actual bandwidth used on a per-gigabyte basis.  The actual meter which established gigabyte consumption would be a software program that both you and the ISP could use.

A Simple Explanation of Bandwidth:

One classic explanation of bandwidth is as follows: think of the cable between your computer and other computers you connect to as being a highway.  The cars traveling the highway are bits of digital information.  If the highway isn’t very crowded, cars can move freely and quickly.  This is a simplified example of adequate bandwidth.  Now consider a severe rush hour scenario, where the number of cars attempting to travel the road exceeds the amount of cars the road was originally designed for.  Traffic barely moves at all, and when it does it moves very slowly.  When this traffic jam happens in the online world, it is due to inadequate bandwidth, as the cable was never intended to carry this high amount of digital information.  Your Internet connection speed slows to a crawl.

In our highway example, the traffic jam can be fixed by building an additional highway to handle the excess traffic, taking some cars off the road, or changing the driving patterns so that there are never enough cars on the road at once to create a traffic jam.  In the online world, the fix involves installing new cable, taking some users offline, or changing some user habits.

A Short Bandwidth Demand History:

As computers increase in processing power and hard drives increase in size, users are manipulating a variety of larger and larger files.  While the existing infrastructure offered enough affordable bandwidth to allow a price decrease at one time, increasing traffic and the exchanging of larger files on the Internet began to put bandwidth at a premium.  For example, a 2001 report from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the school create an emergency fund of $50,000.00 for the purchase of additional bandwidth.  The report explains that people are doing more than ever online, and that the campus connection speed is getting slow.  The tone of the report implies that given the nature of the situation, the $50,000.00 request is entirely reasonable.

The problem was not only limited to universities, however.  In a 2001 article in PC Magazine titled: The Dark Side of P2P, columnist Jim Seymour explains the situation, and how Peer To Peer (P2P) file exchange contributes to the problem everywhere.

First, I worry about the bandwidth-hogging nature of P2P. Widespread use of P2P applications would result in much greater bandwidth demand than exists with current networking models, since lots more traffic would be banging around on the Net among our newly “serverized” P2P-ready PCs.

For individual users at home or at work, it would also mean that the assumption of Net-usage asymmetry—on which present Net-access pricing is based—goes out the window. Today’s Net, and most ISPs’ business plans, is based on the theory that users download more than they upload. We send little queries and requests up, and big files are sent back down. This is one reason ISPs can offer service for $20 a month, and it’s what underlies their planning of how many modems they’ll need to serve customers.

The above quote is interesting because it points out that the original ISP model did not anticipate the high degree of uploads that P2P would require, or the additional amount of bandwidth it would involve.  In P2P, a request produces a large upload and a large download, not a small upload and a large download.

On April 14, 2005, Wired reported: “Internet users consumed more bandwidth than ever last year, driven by the growing popularity of peer-to-peer networks and heightened demand for video files.”  The article goes on to state: “According to TeleGeography, a telecommunications research firm, international demand for bandwidth grew 42 percent in 2004, with the largest upswing in usage coming from Asian nations. Last year marked the second consecutive annual upswing in demand, the firm said, after carriers added 62 percent more capacity in 2003.”

Bandwidth Hogging:

The demand for video has grown in very little time.  The popularity of YouTube is one example.  Although YouTube presently caps its upload size at one gigabyte, a heavy YouTube viewing session can put several gigabytes of digital information through the infrastructure in fairly short order.  Still, the real culprit is Peer To Peer.  BitTorrent is a good example of this.  Bandwidth intensive movie (video) files are available for the taking, spread across a number of home computers which will upload them whenever asked.  Although a fairly small amount of users actually do this, the impact on the infrastructure and on available bandwidth is huge.

Often we accept what seems to be a vague trend as a distinct reality when terminology is developed to describe it.  In this case, the term is Bandwidth Hogging.  Consider this excerpt concerning bandwidth hogging from Wikipedia.

For example, a home or university Internet connection is usually meant for web surfing, moderate file downloading and gaming. If a person downloads a large number of songs or movies on a regular basis, bandwidth usage may reach unacceptable levels, perhaps 100 times that of an average user, causing the connection of nearby users to suffer and costing the company more money.

The above quote only mentions downloading, but P2P file exchange involves uploading and downloading the same file with each exchange.  This can potentially create a traffic jam in the area at both ends of the connection, as well as adding to the traffic in the middle.  In an article for Slate Magazine titled: Why the Internet Is So Infuriatingly Slow, author Chris Wilson writes: “The major ISPs all tell a similar story: A mere 5 percent of their customers are using around 50 percent of the bandwidth—sometimes more during peak hours. While these “power users” are sharing three-gig movies and playing online games, poor granny is twiddling her thumbs waiting for Ancestry.com to load.

High-Definition:

It certainly stands to reason that High-Definition video files are traded on a Peer To Peer basis.  Since Hi-Def looks better than standard definition television, these files will probably grow to be quite popular.  But what happens when the broadcasting industry starts regularly streaming Hi-Def content on the Internet from their own websites?  Additionally, what will happen when all TV programming goes Hi-Def for regular home consumption?  In many cases, both digital signals travel through the same cable.  We know that day will come, and the computers are certainly up to the task.  But is the Internet infrastructure ready?  What will the impact on bandwidth be?

Below is one idea.  Since I can’t identify the source of the video, let’s simply agree that it merely constitutes the opinion of one unidentified person or organization.  Such a source may have a vested interest in presenting this specific information in this way.

Google Invests:

Although Google is not a telecom, the company also has concerns about the increasing need for bandwidth.  Google is teaming up with five international companies to form the Unity Undersea Consortium.  The Consortium will spend 300 million dollars to lay a 10,000 kilometer undersea cable linking the U.S. and Japan.  This cable will increase bandwidth across the Pacific by 20 percent.  The PC Magazine article by Chole Albanesius also mentions: “Bandwidth demand is expected to roughly double every two years between 2008 and 2012, according to the 2007 Telegeography Bandwidth Report.”  The article mentions that Google expects to save money by making this investment in additional bandwidth.

The Case of Comcast:

Presently our Internet demand is nowhere near what the above video suggests.  Still, the demands of present Peer To Peer file exchange which might include Hi-Def is putting a severe strain on the existing infrastructure and available bandwidth.  This makes a problem for ISPs.  Their customer base is experiencing slow service which is caused by a very small fraction of users.

One company which has been forced into the public view over this is Comcast.  Some users of their network have been experiencing slowdowns due to network hogging.  In an attempt to remedy the situation, the company sent notice to heavy bandwidth users that if they did not change the behavior they would have their service suspended for one year.  In an article for PC Magazine titled: Comcast Cuts Off Bandwidth Hogs, author Chloe Albanesius describes the situation.

Customers across the country have been contacted by the telecom giant with a warning to curb excessive bandwidth consumption or risk a one-year service termination. Comcast, however, is refusing to reveal how much bandwidth use is allowed, making it impossible for customers to know if they are in danger of violating Comcast’s limit.

Later the article gives an example: “Admitted “Internet junkie” and Chattanooga resident Cameron Smith also had his service cut off in January for one year. “They said there wasn’t a limit [for downloading] but that I was downloading too much, about 550 gigs. I backed off to about 450 gigs, but they still suspended us.”  This would seem similar to taking some cars off the road as described in our rush hour example above.

Comcast also tried another potential solution, although the situation got complicated when the FCC got involved.  The approach was called network management, where high bandwidth P2P users would be assigned a lower priority on the network than typical users.  Although the high bandwidth user might experience delays of ten to twenty minutes, the typical user would not.  This caused quite a stir, and critics accused Comcast of blocking P2P services such as BitTorrent.  Comcast disagreed.  When the dust settled from the ensuing fracas, the FCC made a decision.  Comcast set an easy to understand monthly bandwidth limit of 250 gigabytes, was found to be in error for its network management practices, but was not fined for them.

The Economics of More Bandwidth:

Why not just install additional cable across the country, thus creating more bandwidth?  That would be like adding another highway in our rush hour example above.  In theory, we wouldn’t be squeezing all that signal into only one cable anymore, so the Internet would run faster.  By using more cables, we could have plenty of bandwidth for everyone.

While that makes perfect sense, the situation is not so simple.  A report titled: The Internet’s Capacity To Handle Fast Rising Demand for Bandwidth from the U.S. Internet Industry Association describes the situation:

The critical difference is that increases in demand for bandwidth by existing users do not translate into higher revenues for the companies providing the bandwidth and access to it, because basic access to the Internet has spread through fixed-fee pricing, usually on a monthly basis, rather than charges based on how much bandwidth individuals use. The pricing model supported the necessary investments in bandwidth infrastructure when increases in overall demand were driven mainly by the rapidly-rising numbers of Internet users, and most individuals and applications used little bandwidth. As these factors have changed – the number of new user-subscribers has begun to plateau, and the average bandwidth used by subscribers has risen – a mismatch between demand and investment is emerging(13).

In other words, although the improvements to the existing infrastructure are needed, the investment required to do this probably won’t be paid off by the existing flat monthly user fee alone. The paper goes on to state:

Without prejudging what would be the most economically-efficient and socially-beneficial pricing arrangements to ensure the increases in investment required to avoid Internet capacity problems, one option involves the development by ISPs of service packages that could be tailored for content providers that transmit high bandwidth content. Such packages would presumably involve higher revenues and, from a purely economic standpoint, could provide at least part of the funding for required investment.

Another alternative is a separate fee schedule for consumers whose Internet use requires large bandwidth. As noted earlier, Korea Telecom is currently shifting to a pricing system that will charge some Internet users based on the bandwidth they actually use. In Norway, where a small portion of users are responsible for 80 percent of broadband traffic, one operator now offers both two monthly rates – one higher with unlimited use and the second lower with metered fees based on the bandwidth a consumer uses.[73]  British telecom offers three pricing plans with the same download speed but different ceilings of total monthly usage(16).  {[73] “Telecommunications Predictions.” Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 2007, op.cit.}

Metered Pricing:

Anyone who has paid an electric or water bill is familiar with the concept of metering.  Quite simply, you pay for what you use.  This plan would probably work well for providers, and certainly be fair to low bandwidth users.  There might be a basic connection fee, and an additional charges would be levied for how many gigabytes of bandwidth you consumed during the month.  Those who used more would pay more.

In practice, I doubt it would work exactly that way - at least not in the beginning.  The transition will probably be gradual.  Since America started with a monthly flat rate for Internet service, most of the average bandwidth users probably expect to keep it.  For this reason, I believe that sometime in near future our ISPs will set a bandwidth usage cap like Comcast did, and charge a basic flat fee.  Those who consume beyond the cap will be charged additionally per-gigabyte of useage.  The resulting monthly bill will be the sum of the flat fee and extra per-gigabyte charges.

Although this initial model is not yet metered pricing in the strictest sense, the ISP will be metering bandwidth usage to see if and by how much the cap is exceeded, and will bill accordingly.  Users can and probably will install install their own software-based usage meters so that they can follow their own consumption patterns and avoid exceeding the cap.  Such meters are readily available today.

Later, when the ISPs choose to, marketing campaigns can be created and the move to a more literal metered model can be made - perhaps claiming it will save the average user money.  Why pay for 250 gigabytes with a flat rate if you are only using 175?  The metered approach is potentially more accurate and may be perceived as being more economically fair to the low bandwidth user than other options such as a tiered approach.  Accordingly, I think competition between ISPs will eventually cause metering to be the dominant system.  Competition will hopefully also serve to keep the cost per-gigabyte reasonable.

The Effect of a New Pricing Model On Bandwidth:

A new pricing model carrying higher charges will undoubtedly change some user behavior, and can be compared to changing driving habits in our traffic jam example mentioned earlier.  While free movies through torrents seem attractive now, would they still be attractive at say, one dollar a gigabyte?  What if it cost more than a dollar?  Consider this excerpt of an article by Washington Post columnist Steven Levy concerning what some users face when they exceed the cap and face additional charges:

Those penalties could be rough. Bell Canada, which meters service in some plans, charges customers who go over the limit $7.50 per additional gigabyte. (The Canadian dollar is worth about as much as the U.S. version these days.) That would jack up the $2.99 iTunes rental fee for “The Magnificent Seven” by 10 bucks. A high-def movie, typically 4 gigs, could cost you $30 more. (Bell Canada offers an Unlimited Usage Insurance Plan for $25 a month.)

When a bootleg copy of a film costs real money, we would undoubtedly see less heavy P2P activity.  This would serve to open up a substantial amount of bandwidth.  But no matter how it happens, and what the billing structure is, it seems our golden age of the all-you-can-eat Internet buffet is coming to an end.  Corporations such as Time Warner are already doing research to determine user patterns and considering a per-gigabyte service fee.

Network Neutrality:

Although this discussion primarily concerns the issue of pricing bandwidth, many see it as a network neutrality issue.  When Comcast originally attempted network management and assigned lower priority to heavy P2P users, they immediately stepped into the area of network neutrality.  The concept of net neutral states that access to Internet sites should not be restricted.  Critics of the move claimed that the priority downgrade and resulting slower download times were, in fact, restrictions.  The debate continues, there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer.

Consider the following scenario:  A person has to get on the Internet in the early evening to upload an important report for work or school.  The connection is extremely slow because the 13 year olds in the area are exchanging P2P files of bootleg movies featuring their favorite teenage stars, and “shoot ‘em up” films.  The report upload fails twice, and the user decides to wait an hour and try again.  It works on the third try.  Would a net neutral violation such as network management have helped the user make the upload earlier, and would the rights of the teenager be seriously violated if his connection was slowed to let someone else also get online?  Are anyone’s rights more important than the rights of others?

In turn, Comcast would simply say if something doesn’t change, service will continue to degrade and get even slower. In fact, Comcast doesn’t see network management as a net neutral issue.  Consider this excerpt titled: Comments of Comcast Corporation filed with the Federal Communications Commission on February 12, 2008.

The carefully limited measures that Comcast takes to manage traffic on its broadband network — including its very limited management of certain P2P protocols — are a reasonable part of Comcast’s strategy to ensure a high-quality, reliable Internet experience for all Comcast High-Speed Internet customers. Importantly, in managing its network, Comcast does not block any content, application, or service; discriminate among providers; or otherwise violate any aspect of the principles set forth in the Internet Policy Statement(2).

Comcast urges the Commission to declare that these and similar network management practices are “reasonable” within the meaning of the Internet Policy Statement, and are, in any event, fully consistent with sound principles of “net neutrality.” Comcast further asks the Commission to make it clear that it will not be drawn into second-guessing the reasonable network management decisions that engineers and service providers must make on a daily — and sometimes hourly — basis to respond to a dynamic and ever-changing Internet. These critical decisions should not be based on the demands of the vocal minority who make the most noise in public forums, but on what is needed to serve the best interests of all Internet users(3).

In reality, there is no easy black and white answer to the network neutrality principle.  However, the issue can be expected to play heavily in cost/bandwidth debate.  In a report titled:Telecommunications Predictions:TMT Trends 2007, the consulting firm Deloitte, Touche, and Tohmatsu makes the following observations concerning network neutrality: “Net neutrality advocates should recognize that the argument that the Internet is a free, open and public resource is an unsustainable anachronism.  The Internet has now become a largely commercial entity, grown and structured on the basis of massive investment in infrastructure(8).”

The report also states:

Balancing the two sides of this argument is likely to remain challenging.  Both arguments have their merit; both have their flaws.  Clearly, something has to change in the economics of Internet access, such that network operators and ISPs can continue to invest in new infrastructure and maintain service quality, and consumers can continue to enjoy the Internet as they know it today(7).

Conclusion:

Current trends such as increasing bandwidth consumption, the state of the infrastructure, and the trend toward the routine handling of larger files make it obvious that some change is inevitable in order to preserve and sustain an Internet that functions well.  The providers and carriers claim that more infrastructure is needed, and that the existing revenues from the current price structure are not sufficient to pay for it.  They also claim that the habits of high bandwidth users have to change in order to preserve a serviceable Internet until the required infrastructure can be put in place.

Providers seem to be leaning toward a change in price structure as a way to achieve both objectives.  All proposed plans involve the notion that high bandwidth users should pay more than low bandwidth users.  The new pricing structure would serve to raise revenue to provide additional bandwidth over the long term, and slow down the trend toward heavy bandwidth consumption in the short term.

Ultimately, the metered system seems the fairest since it is based strictly on consumption, and is easily understood by consumers.  Competition between ISPs is possible through the pricing of the per-gigabyte charge.  For this reason, I believe the pay per-gigabyte metered system will eventually become the norm. However, since the American consumer is presently accustomed to a flat rate, I feel that we will transition through a flat rate with an extra charge per-gigabyte for heavy users first.

Bibliography:

Proposing realistic thesis statements is not the easiest thing to do.  It’s fun to come up with ideas, but rendering them in loving and accurate detail is quite another story.  Here are three basic ideas:

1)     Given the increasing bandwidth requirements of online connectivity and the correspondingly higher price it will command, additional public facilities which charge on a “per use” basis may be required to avoid a “have or have not” social situation.

2)     Given the recent increase in computing power enjoyed by the typical user, software is far less limited by the constraints of hardware, making the production of larger applications based extensively on usability through user centered design more commonplace.

3)     Due to the competitive nature of the computer industry, tech marketing has traditionally and will continue to, make false promises to consumers not unlike those found in the “Kitchen of the Future” concept kitchens.

As always, comments are appreciated.

A blog entry by my colleague Ann John strikes a familiar chord.  In her article she mentions the difficulties her mother has with computer operation, especially file management.  I have a feeling that this is quite common.  Looking back, my own mother had problems with menu structures on devices such as VCRs and phone answering machines.

I agree with Ann that there is a Generation Gap concerning technology, and that it is harder for some of the elderly to get comfortable with the usage of it.  But I got the surprise of my life the other day when college level students in my class displayed a genuine lack of knowledge concerning directory structure.

It seems that when they save items on their own computer, the issue takes care of itself.  The file automatically is saved in a place where they can find it.  But when they are using a networked machine having many different users and several available drives, many students have trouble navigating to the proper drive and going a few layers deep to save the file in the correct folder.  The operation looks different from what they are used to doing on their own machine.  As a result, many of them don’t navigate deep enough.  They save their file in the wrong place, and can’t find it later.

Interestingly enough, this was happening on an Apple computer using Final Cut Pro software.  When you open Final Cut, you automatically inherit the settings of the last user.  In a group setting this means you must respecify where you want your work saved.  To do that you need to use a hierarchical file system.

Dan Saffer mentions the hierarchical file system in a book titled: Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices.  While giving an example of a woman having trouble locating her files on a computer, he writes:

Although computer operating systems need hierarchical file systems, the people who use them don’t.  It’s not surprising that computer programmers like to see the underlying hierarchical file systems, but it is equally unremarkable that normal users like Jane don’t.  Unremarkable to everyone, that is, except the programmers who create the software that we all use.  They create the behavior and information presentation that they like best, which is very different from the behavior and information presentation that is best for Jane.  Jane’s frustration and inefficiency is blamed on Jane, and not the programmers who torpedoed her(11).

Obviously Ann’s mom is not alone, although I do find it surprising that some younger people have the same difficulty.  After all, they grew up with computers.  On the other hand, these difficulties show that the hierarchical file system poses the same pitfalls to everyone and may not be the most intuitive system for many users to operate.

Bibliography:

In his enjoyable presentation on Emotional Design, Don Norman mentions three levels which Emotional Design usually involves.  They are the visceral level, the behavioral level, and the subconscious level.

Briefly, the visceral level of design invokes visceral reactions in the buyer or observer.  This is a superficial level where attractiveness really counts.  The product may look so good the consumer decides he has to have it whether it works well or not.

The behavioral level involves the functionality of the product.  This not only includes how well the product works, but how the product feels when you use it.  Cheap stuff feels cheap and may not work well.  Good stuff feels like good stuff and hopefully works proportionally better.  If it isn’t cheap stuff made to feel like good stuff, it probably will.

The subconscious level of emotional design defines you and your image through your use of the product.  Some products carry an distinct elan, and others carry none at all.  If you are seen in possession of the former, the quality of this elan applies to you as well.

These levels work in combination.  Norman cites Jaguar XKE sports cars as an example.  They were beautiful, so they had a strong visceral component.  They were finicky and didn’t run well, so they were weak at the behavioral level.  Finally, they were pricey, so the subconscious level was in play as self-image was involved, and people wanted to be seen driving the car.  In summary, we have a great looking car that made people feel great about themselves even though it ran horribly.

Norman also speaks of citrus juicers.  When you think about it, citrus juicers are a curious item.  It is debatable if we even need them.  After all, if you squeeze a lemon hard and long enough, you will get the desired results.  Still, there are juicers that sell for hundreds of dollars.  Since Norman mentions the Phillip Stark juicer, I wanted to see it.  Here it is:

Norman tells us that this juicer produces a very strong visceral reaction.  It tends to generate a distinct love or hate response.  The functional level is debatable, as I’ve read on the internet that while it does work, the performance is not inspiring.  It seemingly has a fairly strong subconscious component for those who view themselves as sophisticated and artsy.

Since I like to cook, I broke down and purchased a simple juicer for my own use.  Here is a picture of it:

Since I’m a form follows function sort of person, my juicer is a simple one, and works well.  On a visceral level, I think it’s attractive because it looks like what it does.  Functionally, it performs well and feels comfortable.  On a subconscious level, I love the thing!  It supports my self image because I know I wasn’t stupid enough to spend hundreds on an electric appliance that does the same job.

Then my son was born, and became interested in playing with things.  He somehow got his hands on my juicer and I lost track of it for about a year.  Although I wanted another, I never got around to purchasing one.  Then a cooking program on television gave me an idea, so I started using a totally different juicer.  It looks like this:

Believe it or not, even though I eventually found my other juicer, this new one is my favorite.  It’s probably a failure on the visceral level for true juicer afficianados, because for some reason it looks more like a fork.  With little practice, it is superb on a functional level, as it rips through lemon and lime flesh quickly with absolute brutality.  It scores high on my subconscious scale because I appreciate the irony of the situation and am quite happy to play it on the cheap.  Perhaps someone else would not find it as appealing.

Of course, the point can be made that I may not be a typical user.  We also know that as budding designers we should try to accommodate as many users as possible.  Still, that doesn’t mean the big guys with years of experience are perfect.  Look what one fellow did with his Phillip Stark juicer.

I don’t like taking still photos much anymore.  It’s a shame, because photography has come such a long way.  The way we store and manipulate digital images is superior in some ways to dealing with the film negatives and positives I used to work with.  For me, it’s the cameras that make it tough.

The old film cameras had four controls: ASA, shutter speed, and f-stop, and focus.  Setting ASA was just a matter of setting a dial to the number the film packaging indicated.  It was set and forgotten until you switched to a different type of film.  Focus, of course, was generally variable from picture to picture.

Shutter speed and f-stop were generally variable also, depending on what you were shooting, and were two frequently manipulated controls.  It hardly mattered, because shutter speed and f-stop were quick and easy to set.  Usually it involved turning a ring or dial until a needle in the viewfinder hit dead center in an area that was very easy to see.  A later innovation was a light that would activate when the settings were correct.

Sadly, it’s not that simple anymore.  Year after year camera manufacturers have worked to make things easier for us.  In doing so, they made things automatic, but far too complex.  My present camera has ten automatic functions that attempt to do what I instinctively did when manipulating the shutter speed and f-stop dials on my old camera.  That means I now have ten controls to replace two.

Selecting the right automatic control is actually an extra step.  I don’t feel like I’m quickly capturing what I see anymore.  I feel like I’m programming a machine to do what I need.  If the programming is done correctly, the reward will be the perfect image.  If it is done incorrectly, time will be wasted and the window of opportunity to capture the image may be gone.

Apparently my experience is not unique.  Alan Cooper has some reservations about his camera as well.  In a book titled: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, Cooper states:

That old mechanical Pentax had manual focusing, manual exposure, and manual shutter speed, yet it was far less frustrating to use than the fully computerized modern Nikon COOLPIX 900, which has automatic focusing, exposure and shutter speed.  The camera may still take pictures, but it behaves like a computer instead of a camera.

In my case, it is quicker and easier to do it the old way, and in most instances the results are better.  Because of this, I override as many automatic functions as I can.  The functions are still a problem, though.  The viewfinder and exterior displays can barely hold the indicators for all of them.  Because of this all the  indicators, including the manual ones are very tiny and difficult to see.  And there are lots of tiny little buttons all over the place.  One misplaced touch of the finger will change your settings.

Why make such a complicated and counterproductive design?  Reviews of the camera indicate that users requested some of the features.  The inclusion of many of the others is standard industry practice.  Somehow all this has to be squeezed into the product.

Perhaps this is an example of Genius Design.  In a book titled: Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, author Dan Saffer explains this concept.  In Chapter Two he writes:

The fourth major design approach is something I call genius design.  Genius design relies almost solely on the wisdom and experience of the designer to make design decisions.  Designers use their best judgement as to what users want and then design the product based on that judgement.  User involvement, if it occurs at all, comes at the end of the process, when users test what designers have made to make sure it really works as the designer has predicted.

This would partially explain things.  Perhaps a limited amount of basic market information indicated that users wanted features.  The folks in design were ordered to make it happen, and they did.  Users may or may not have been used at the end of the process.  If they were used, we don’t know how extensively.  The result was a camera with a lot of features - and seemingly a home run.  Sadly, this does not seem to be the reality.

Of course, as consumers and students of design we would hope that the design of such products is careful, unrushed, and and given it’s fair share of time and resources.  I have a feeling that in practice, the opposite is frequently true.  These are often competitive manufacturing and sales situations.  The key to profit is usually getting the products out to market for the least possible cost in the least amount of time.  Consider this excerpt from Applying User-Centered Design to Mobile Application Design Development by Eeva Kangas and Timo Kinnunen.  Here the authors look back at the constraints put on two of their previous projects involving mobile devices.

Both projects had major time and cost constraints, which affected the selection of the methods and the willingness to make changes, based on the usability recommendations. These projects were the first UCD projects in the company, so we sometimes faced organizational resistance against our usability design activities(56).

Later they go on to write: “Again, we did not have a large budget for an as-yet unclear business case, so the test was conducted in a laboratory setting, not in mobile environment.  The usability test revealed several problems in the product, but improvement recommendations were too late for the delivered product”(57).  This shows that if needed, a company will release a product before it is really one hundred percent ready.

This makes for a curious situation.  In some cases, the company manufacturing the product seems to be spinning the wheel and taking chances as much as the consumer who chooses to buy the product.  While we tend to identify and attach a certain level of confidence to a brand or product that we see advertising for, it is quite possible that such confidence may not be fully deserved.  It really depends on the approach that the company in question takes concerning design.

Bibliography: