Research, Technology, and Teamwork blog by Susie Wee : experience

My newest discovery: Secret Facebook users

susie.wee — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:06:00 GMT

I’ve been an avid facebok user for years. I started using Facebook very soon after they first opened it up to people outside of the .edu domain. I recruited lots of old people into Facebook… long before it was acceptable for old people like me. And, I’ve been thrilled to watch it go more mainstream. I wrote a post about how my home town in Western New York has even joined in. And now you hear stories about how people’s grandmother’s are joining. This has allowed me to end up with a pretty entertaining set of Facebook friends. I think I passed some invisible threshold where my Facebook social network became large enough and active enough that I can be almost constantly entertained with interesting status updates, posts, and pictures. Pretty fun!

I have a few friends left who are still holding back from joining. They are concerned with privacy, and the thought of blasting their little life events is not at all appealing. Many of my recruits felt that way at the beginning and joined just to be polite to me (and perhaps because I begged a little), but many of them are now actively posting away and having fun. But I still have real-world friends who have not joined.

I was having dinner with old college friends last week and I made an interesting discovery- I discovered a secret set of Facebook users! These Facebook users don’t feel comfortable with getting an account (and some even dis the idea), BUT they lurk by using their significant other’s account! My one friend makes her husband friend her friends. And when she gets home from work, she asks him “What’s going on with my friends?” Another one of my friends just had a shocking event where her friend said “Oh, I saw that you were at so-and-so’s party”, and she thought “how the heck did you know that?”. The reason was because someone posted a picture on Facebook. She doesn’t feel comfortable with joining, but when I suggested she just look at her husband’s account, and she said “Yeah- that would be okay”.

Anyways, I thought it was interesting that there might be this hidden set of Facebook users who are not Facebook account holders. Any idea on how big this group is? Do you know any secret Facebook users?

Toys in my sandbox: HP Touch, Mini, and Slim

susie.wee — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:13:00 GMT

One of the neat things about my new job is getting to play with, I mean, work with some cool products. Last week the HP Personal Systems Group (which I'm now in) had a big product launch in Berlin. I was happy when the launch date finally came, because I could finally talk openly about the products that I was playing with- oops!- I mean working with at work.

Before I introduce you to my new toys, let me wander into a little career advice since some readers told me that they missed this during my little blogging drought.

Back when I graduated from grad school and was looking for my first job (12 years ago!), one big thing I realized was that the company that you work for determines the kinds of projects that you can work on. In other words, your company sets the context for your work. This was very important from a research perspective, because your company's strategy determines which research problems are relevant or irrelevant, you should work on problems that relevant to your company, and thus this has a big influence on your research career. This not only applies to research, but is true for any field that you're in: research, engineering, design, business, marketing, sales, etc.

So, my two career tips from this little story are:

Work on areas that are relevant to your company and your company's strategy!
Work for a company that provides a context for the type of work that you believe in!

Note that this is related to Tip #10 in my Top 10 Career Tips:

Align your work with your passions and strengths. Define your career accordingly.

To say this in a more playful way, I have always viewed that your company is your sandbox, and your company's current and future products are the toys in your sandbox, and these toys are the ones you get to play with and build on to do your work.

Okay, enough of the career advice. Let me introduce you to some of the new toys in my sandbox: Touch, Mini, and Slim! (This is not supposed to be a sales pitch, but I have to say that I love these products, so apologies in advance if it sounds like one.)

Touch is the new HP TouchSmart PC. It's the second generation of the TouchSmart product. Touch has a 22" widescreen with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. All the computer guts are built into the touch monitor, so all you do is plug in power and an ethernet connection. It comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse. The first version was bigger and boxier, and this version is much more streamlined and sleek. It's neat to see the evolution of the product as we refine it through improvements in technology (e.g., touch sensor technology, display technology, etc.) and through user testing and feedback. It's a neat new device category that we're driving. So far the blog posts have been fun to read [1] and I can't wait to learn more from the new users of the product to get a well-rounded perspective. I'm really excited about the emergence and evolution of this category, and it will be neat to get more software developers going on this platform!

Mini is the new HP 2133 Mini-Note PC. It's so cute! (Sorry- I couldn't help myself.) It is less than 3 pounds and it has an 8.9 inch WXGA display. It comes with Linux or Vista. It has a cool aluminum case. When I first saw this model in an internal board meeting many months ago, I was immediately drawn to it. The first thing that came to my head is that this is just about to reach the size where I could put it in my purse and still have a fairly full computing experience (I say "fairly" because of the small display). It was slightly bigger than the purse that I had at the time, but I liked it so much that I was thinking that I would buy a slightly larger one so I could carry it around. This raises an interesting usage question that I'll have to write another post about: women like products that fit into their purse while men like products that fit in their pocket. So I wonder what will become of this new form factor of devices. Don't worry- it's not a women-only device. When we unboxed one in my lab the other day, all the men were equally excited about it and we all drooled equally! This is the product category of the Asus Eee PC and surely more competitors will emerge. An interesting this about this product category are the price points- baseline versions are at the sub-$500 level, which allows this fairly full computing experience to get to quite a few places.

Slim is the new ultra-thin notebook, the VooDoo Envy 133. It's 0.7 inches thick and is just over 3 pounds with a 13.3 inch display. It fully boots into Windows, but it has a quick boot Linux-based OS- another great topic for a future post! The upgraded version has a solid state drive for more money, of course. Unfortunately, I don't have one of these myself yet, but I have seen and touched them and they are pretty cool. My brother has been in the market for a laptop and I told him to hold off until this model came out. Bloggers [1,2] are comparing this to the MacAir, which is .76 inches in the center and tapers out on the edges. These thin and light notebooks with full-size displays are very interesting and they change your coffee shop, airplane, and over-the-shoulder carrying experience. I like the thought of tucking this away in my slim bag neatly lined up with a writing notebook and a few folders. Slim looks and feels very crisp and sleek- very much in the VooDoo spirit!

My team's job is to look at next-gen software experiences for these and other HP personal computing products. All I can say is I have a fun sandbox to play in!

It's neat to see these emerging product categories evolving. I'd love to hear your thoughts on these categories, so here are a few questions:

What do you think about these product categories (the good, the bad, and the ugly)?
How do you think these product categories will evolve?
How would you like to see these product categories evolve?
What kinds of experiences would you like to see on these products?

I'm back: From research to business

susie.wee — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:02:00 GMT

Sorry for my long break from blogging. Thanks to JCS for asking me to come back, as it was just the push I needed to get this post out. A few other readers have also noticed my absence from the blogosphere, thanks to all of you for your encouragement and support.

My silence does not mean I've been idle and it does not mean I've run dry on topics. In fact, it's been quite the opposite. My recent experiences over the last few months have given me plenty of reflections to write about, but very little time to write them! The biggest news I have to announce is that I changed jobs within HP. I moved out of the research lab and into the business.

I am now leading what I call the newest startup in HP--the HP Experience Software Business (ESB). ESB is within the Emerging Businesses unit in HP's Personal Systems Group. I coined the term "Experience Software" to refer to software that drives and is driven by the user experience. I have found that taking an experience-centered approach to software and business is as important as taking an experience-centered approach to design, research, and technology (which I've written about in the past). Putting the experience first is really a mindset that affects everything you do, ranging from deciding what feature you put in a product to asking your friends what they like or dislike about their coffee cup. I want to thank my experience-driven researchers in HP Labs for teaching me the importance of experience over the last few years- they knew the importance of this long before it became fashionable!

While I am no longer in HP Labs (after almost 12 years!), I am still very involved with the Labs. I am on one of the advisory boards that is responsible for approving, guiding, and reviewing the research projects. In fact, I rely on HP Labs research even more now than I did when I was a lab director there. I feel very fortunate to be able to work with the researchers- to get consulting advice in their areas of expertise, to listen to their newest and oldest ideas to inspire ideas for my new business, and hopefully to bring some of their great ideas to market!

I'll try to post more now that I have the monkey off my back regarding my silence in the blogosphere. I plan to keep my posts in the same flavor unless you suggest otherwise. (Any suggestions?) And, while I can't reveal everything we're doing, some posts will give hints about the areas that we're thinking about. In the mean time, please wish me luck with ESB!

p.s. We have a new blogging system that makes it easier to leave comments. Like any other blogger, I love to hear what my readers are thinking; so please feel free to leave comments.

Your computer: A platform, an appliance, or a browser?

susie.wee — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 03:21:00 GMT

I've been thinking about how different people use their computers. It occurs to me that there are at least three different ways that people use their computers: as a platform, as an appliance, or as a browser.

Some people use their computer as a platform. They get the computer with some base operating system and a handful of applications. Then, over time they continue to download and buy software to suit their needs and desires. Gamers certainly do this as they download and install new games. Photo and video buffs sometimes do this as they buy the newest multimedia editing software. As new software comes out, they buy or download it and get different uses out of their computers.

Some people use their computer as an appliance. They get the computer with an operating system and a handful of applications. Maybe they add a few more applications soon after original purchase. But once they get it set up, they pretty much use the computer "as is" for the rest of its lifetime. They may do a handful of things such as run a word processor, use email, and browse the web. I'm calling this an appliance because it's used in the same way again and again after the initial setup.

Some people use their computer primarily as a browser. Think about how much time you spend running applications on your computer (e.g., a word processor) vs. how much time you spend on services through your browser (e.g., in facebook, gmail, and flickr). Those who spend more than 80% of their time in the network are using it as a browser.

How do you use your computer?
What types of people use their computers in these different ways?
Do you agree with this classification? Is this set of modes complete or are their other major modes of use to add to the list?

Desktop vs. notebook: It's all about the display

susie.wee — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 23:17:00 GMT

I thought I had it all figured out. I'm doing a house remodel (wish me luck!), and I thought I didn't need to set up a computer area. After all, notebook computers are awesome. I bought my sister an entertainment notebook computer over the holiday break and it is impressive. I have a small mobile notebook/tablet PC for work since I travel so much. I use my notebook all over the house- at the dining table, on the couch, on a desk, on the floor, and in the bed. And, when I'm out and about I use my little iPAQ handheld to stay connected (actually, I use my iPAQ all over the house too). So, I thought I wouldn't set up a dedicated computer area, but instead I would set up little charging areas around the house for all my portable devices.

This morning I had a change of heart. I stopped by Fry's Electronics and I saw a desktop computer with a 30" LCD display, all on sale for $2000 (yes, it was an HP, but this is an experience discussion, not a sales pitch). The 30" display was impressive, and seeing it really made me rethink how I will use my computer. All I can say is: Wow- I need it. :)

I think I will set it up in my living room so that it doubles between a full-fledged work area and a secondary entertainment area. TVs are getting bigger, so it doesn't quite serve as the primary entertainment area. But, since the TV is often sought/fought after, having a secondary entertainment area nearby would be useful.

The other thing I saw at Fry's was our extreme multimedia entertainment notebook with a 20" display (HP Pavilion HDX). To be honest, at 15.5 pounds I don't think I'll be carrying it with me all around the house, but it sure is impressive on the multimedia front. This would also be a candidate for a combined work/secondary entertainment area.

So, I guess I'll have to re-think my design and put in a computer area after all.

Much discussion to date about the choice between desktops vs. notebooks [1,2,3] has been around the style of computing experience people want. In the years ahead, I think this decision will be based on the style of display experience people want.

Does having an affordable, sleek 30" display change your view of how you would use your computer? If so, how? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Please feel free to leave a URL with your comments.

A cute workshop

susie.wee — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 10:11:00 GMT

I came across an announcement for the following workshop: Workshop on Designing Cute Interactive Media in conjunction with the ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

ACM is the premier professional research society for computer scientists. I think it is quite a statement that the broader research community is recognizing design, experience, and human emotion as bona fide research topics. Cuteness is being recognized as research by the research community!

In my mind, user adoption is the ultimate indicator of a technology's success, and adoption is driven by having a great user experience. The research discussed in workshops like these will help us understand and eventually formalize the coupling of experience and technology. Understanding how to provoke human emotions like cuteness will help identify new research directions and drive technology adoption.

Congratulations to the researchers who were pushing these ideas in their work before it reached broader acceptance! For example, 2007 was the 25th anniversary of CHI. Clearly your efforts are paying off!

What do you think? Is studying "cuteness" research?

Feel free to leave a URL with your comments.

The Life of a Packet for Mobile & Media Experiences (Packet Video 2007 Keynote)

susie.wee — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 01:02:00 GMT

I gave a keynote talk to kickstart the Packet Video 2007 Workshop in Lausanne, Switzerland. The audience was great, and the talk seemed to generate lots of discussion during the Q&A and for the remainder for the workshop. Here's a recap.

Abstract

Mobile & media experiences connect people with each other, with information, and with their environment. Media is increasingly being delivered in packets over networks. This raises a number of questions for today's networks:

How can we transport media packets?

How can we adapt media packets for diverse clients?

How can we protect media packets?
A number of emerging applications will impact future directions for packet networks. We also discuss the following questions:

What impact do globally distributed, immersive media environments have on media packet delivery systems?

What role does context play in next-generation mobile media experiences?
We consider these questions from the perspective of a user and the perspective of a packet.

Coupling experience and technology

I began by stressing the importance of coupling experience and technology. Rather than developing technology in a box, it is important to first consider the desired user experience and then develop the technologies that impact it. The most important factor for deciding whether a technology gets transferred to product is not how good the technology is, but rather how it impacts the user experience. I have been passionate about this theme for quite some time, and as time passes my passion for this only grows stronger.

The rest of my talk cycled between the following experiences and technologies.

Mobile & Media Experiences

Experience #1: Mobile, Diverse, Interactive: Diverse mobile video clients, desktop video, living room video
Experience #2: Immersive, Conversational, Worldwide: Halo collaboration experience, Panoply immersive gaming experience
Experience #3: Pervasive, Personalized, Context-aware: Mediascapes context-aware multimedia experience

Packet Technologies

Packet labeling & metadata
Transcoding & Processing in the network
Scalable Streaming
Secure Scalable Streaming
Multiple Distortion Measures
Public & private domains
Sensing context in the network

The first five technologies were discussed in the context of Experience #1. The last two were discussed with Experience #2 and #3.

Experience #1: Mobile, Diverse, Interactive

Packet labeling & metadata: The main point is that we live in a distributed networked world where media packets will traverse distributed network elements with multiple owners and administrative domains and be processed by devices and equipment made by different manufacturers. In this highly distributed world, one important thing that we can do is smartly label our packets in hopes that over time the smart network elements along the way will use these labels to improve the overall quality of the user experience. The key design principle is to design packet labels that are 1) specific enough to be useful and 2) general enough to be understood.

Example packet labels and metadata include:

Importance: Distortion values
Time requirements: Time stamps
Content type: Video, audio, text, data
Scalability: Is it truncatable?
Media attributes: spatial region, resolution, color; audio channel
Dropability: Can it be dropped? e.g., Drop video for audio-only session.
Processibility: Is it transcodable? Can it be processed?
Security: What are the rights and privacy implications of the media?

The research challenges are designing and standardizing the labels with the design principle above, and then developing algorithms that use these labels for delivering improved mobile media experiences. These algorithms should be evaluated for their performance gains with respect to the label overhead.

Transcoding & Processing in the network

I discussed the experience of delivering media to and from users over any network and on any device. This motivates the technology of performing transcoding operations in the network. In 3G networks, the streaming, recording, and transcoding capabilities can be performed by the IMS Multimedia Resource Function (MRF), which serves and receives the media packets to and from the handsets. Dynamic transcoding can be used to adapt the video for the target client device (e.g., to lower the resolution) and for the network (e.g., to seamlessly handoff media between 3G and 2.5G networks during a mobile media session).

The research challenge that lies ahead is designing and developing transcoding algorithms in a manner that is computationally efficient so that a single transcoding node (e.g., IMS MRF) can process many streams at once to serve multiple clients at one time.

Scalable Streaming

This brings us to a technology called scalable streaming that makes transcoding much more efficient by leveraging scalable coding methods. In essence, if scalable coding methods are used, then we can form scalable packets that pack scalable data, for example low, medium, and high resolution data, into the packet in a manner that allows it to be transcoded by simply truncating the packet. Furthermore, the scalable media packets can have packet labels that contain image metadata and truncation points that can be used by a scalable packet transcoder. The scalable packet transcoder is quite simple- it performs transcoding by simply reading the packet label and then truncating the packet as needed.

Research opportunities arise if the packet labels contain the distortion value of the particular media packet. If distortion values are included in the label, then they can be used as hints for rate-distortion optimized streaming algorithms and rate-distortion optimized transcoding algorithms to improve the quality of the user experience.

Secure Scalable Streaming

Another desired experience includes serving diverse clients while having end-to-end security. End-to-end security means that the media is protected in a manner that only allows the sender and allowed receivers to access the media, while delivering, storing, and transcoding the media packet over the network in a way that does not require decryption. It turns out that this can be achieved by using the same method as scalable streaming, where scalable packets are formed by leveraging scalable coding, and then coupling the packet formation with the encryption process. Specifically, encryption is applied to the packet in a manner that allows the packet transcoding operation to still occur by simple packet truncation. This can also leverage secure scalable image coding standards such as the newly created JPSEC standard for security of JPEG-2000 imagery.

Secure Scalable Streaming was published in ICASSP 2001 by Susie Wee and John Apostolopoulos.

Multiple Distortion Measures

I then described a new technology area that we are studying called Multiple Distortion Measures (MDM). This begins with the following observation: Consider a set of scalable media packets. Generally speaking, the best ordering of the packets is determined by the profit-to-size ratio (or distortion-to-size ratio, in tech terms, delta d over delta r). Surprisingly, we observed that the best ordering for low resolution display is NOT equal to the best ordering for high resolution display. The question that arises is how different are they?

I showed a graph from our ICASSP 2007 paper that shows the PSNR vs. Rate plot for the low resolution reconstructed image with packets ordered in the low-res optimal order and with packets in the high-res optimal order. It turns out that there are differences in performance of up to 4 dB. The graph aso showed the PSNR vs. Rate plot for the high resolution reconstructed image with packets ordered in the high-res optimal order and the low-res optimal order. It turns out that these can have differences of over 1 dB.

This raised a lot of interest from the crowd. I think we'll have lots of people researching MDMs in the years ahead.

This raises the idea of labeling scalable media packets with multiple distortion measures, specifically, with the distortion value of the packet with respect to the low resolution image, the medium resolution image, and the high resolution image. If the packet contains this information, then streaming algorithms can be developed to optimize the media delivery experience to users with diverse client devices.

Multiple Distortion Measures was published in ICASSP 2007 by Carri Chan, Susie Wee, and John Apostolopoulos.

The Future

The last part of the keynote focussed on experiences #2 and #3 to look at the impact of emerging applications on future packet networks.

Experience #2: Immersive, Conversational, and Worldwide

Delivering immersive, high-quality, worldwide experiences has a number of challenges for today's networks. The main problem is that network intelligence exists, but only in spots. For example:

QoS exists in spots, but is not guaranteed from beginning to end.
IPv6 exists in spots, but it is often tunneled over IPv4 and so is not available from beginning to end.
Significant congestion can occur in peering points between administrative domains, and it is very common for packets to traverse administrative domains many times in a single session.
Due to the sheer number of IP addressses, packets in countries such as India may go through many network address translations (NATs) before being delivered to the recipient.

Public & private domains

As a result, proprietary networks are being built to deliver guaranteed experiences. HP's Halo immersive collaboration experience is built on a proprietary network for that very reason.

In the long run, the right answer is to build out networks that contain IPv6 and QoS. However, until that occurs, there is likely to be a co-existence of public and proprietary networks.

This raises research opportunities of developing protocols and algorithms that improve media delivery over co-existing public and proprietary networks. This also motivates the need to develop packet labels that contain information that can be used by smarter network elements that understand them. And, this once again raises the design principle of designing the labels so that they are specific enough to be useful but general enough to be widely understood.

Experience #3: Pervasive, Personalized, Context-aware

Finally, I described Mediascapes as an example of pervasive, context-aware multimedia experiences. The main essence of Mediascapes is that it uses sensors to trigger multimedia experiences tied to your physical and personal context.

Sensing context in the network

This raises the question of using sensors to sense your context and getting the sensed context into packets that can be used by different applications and services. In the web world, the sensors may exist as GPS sensors, environmental sensors, or personal sensors. In the operator world the sensors may come through carrier-grade network elements as in IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architectures. For example, IMS context can include location, presence, group lists, and subscriber info.

The key is to have the sensors provide context that is wrapped into packets in a manner that they can be easiliy used by applications and services. This raises the challenge of creating a semantic representation for sensed context. Again, like the packet labels, this must be designed in a manner that is both specific enough to be useful but general enough to be widely understood.

Acknowledgments

I'd like to take a moment to give special thanks to thank John Apostolopoulos, Carri Chan, Steve Froelich, Dave Penkler, Qibin Sun, and Zhishou Zhang for their contributions to various parts of this work!

Final note and questions

The audience was great and the talk seemed to generate lots of discussion throughout the workshop.

This was a fun topic to put together for the keynote and I'd like to develop it further. I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas on any aspects of this.

What are your thoughts and comments on the life of a packet?
Did you attend the workshop and keynote? If so, what did you think?
I'd like to develop this further. Do you have any suggestions for improvements?

Please feel free to leave a URL with your comments.

Four days offline- Are you okay?

susie.wee — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:51:00 GMT

I have an interesting experience to share. I had family and friends in town this past weekend, so I actually took four days off- Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday- where I didn't respond to emails, I didn't update my status on Facebook, and I didn't post a new blog entry. I was having a grand old time in the physical world. BUT, a number of people at work became very concerned. One person sent me a message on Facebook that said "Are you okay?" Another wondered what was wrong and why wasn't I replying to messages. Another was concerned that I was using up my vacation days and leaving HP. (No, I'm not.) It's amazing what four days offline will do!

I did have an out-of-the-office message saying that I'd be back in the office on Tuesday, but that wasn't enough. Do we need an "out-of-the-virtual-world message" as well?

For those who were concerned: Sorry and thank you for your concern! I'm absolutely fine... in fact, I'm doing great! ;)

What do you think?
Is this a sad statement about my life?
Do you have any similar experiences to share?
What happens when you spend four days offline?

An odd passenger

susie.wee — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:11:00 GMT

I just flew from San Francisco to Singapore. I have a confession. On this trip I did something that I never did before- I brought my Sony PlayStation Portable with me... and I played it in public on the plane! I never brought my PSP with me on a trip. The main reason I don't bring it is because I like to work on airplanes. But, to be completely honest, I think a secondary reason I don't bring it might be because of image. I'm generally not an image-conscious person, but have you ever seen a 30-something (okay, closer to 40-something) year old professional woman in business class on an airplane playing with a PSP?

Actually, I decided to play around with the image of a business class flier even more. My airplane left San Francisco at 1:20am, but I had a 9pm hockey game before my flight. So, I decided to try an experiment. I would play in my hockey game, send my gear home with a friend, go to the airport in my sweats, check in, and then shower in the Singapore Airlines airport lounge. Fortunately, my plan worked perfectly and I made it to my seat squeaky clean! After I showered, I decided to travel comfortably in clean sweats rather than my more typical casual business wear.

So, there I was sitting comfortably in business class in my sweats playing my PSP. I think the airline attendants didn't quite know what to make of me, since I didn't quite match the image of anyone else in the cabin. However, you might know that Singapore Airlines has outstanding service, and since I have over 100K airline miles this year alone, I think I might get extra-nice service. The workers were great, treating me just like everyone else, even though I looked a bit odd. I got a couple comments since it was hard for them to get my attention to give them my food choices, but they handled me very well.

So, have you ever seen a professional business woman in an airport playing games (other than crosswords and sudoku)? Should I stop this silliness or carry on? Am I an oddball or is the world changing?

Please feel free to leave a URL with your comments.

Hyperstimulated at HP

susie.wee — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 15:12:00 GMT

Sorry I've been away from blogging for a while. It's not because of a lack of ideas... It's the opposite. There are so many exciting things going on that I'm hyperstimulated- there's so much to write about!

Let me dive deeper into just a few of the many things that are going on in the company.

Personal Systems

HP's Personal Systems Group (PSG) run by Todd Bradley is really roaring ahead! PSG includes all our personal computing products, including consumer and business PCs, notebooks, handhelds, and televisions. They also have HP's new gaming business. I had the chance to attend Todd's quarterly staff meeting and see him in action. Todd is truly one of the most phenomenal leaders I have ever seen!

PSG is having their big product launch this week in NYC and they are announcing our new products. One very exciting product that catches my heart is Blackbird 002, the new gaming PC that bridges the gap between our HP and Compaq PCs and our VooDoo gaming PCs. Blackbird 002 was designed for the user experience with a focus on industrial design and performance. It has a sleek and sophisticated look and feel that is already resonating with hardcore gamers. It also has lots of technology inside. Famous bloggers Rahul Sood and Phil McKinney are two of the masterminds behind all of this.

HP Labs

I have a new boss at HP Labs, as Dick Lampman just retired on July 31 and Prith Banerjee started on August 1. At Dick's retirement party, George Dies (the HP Labs Director of Strategy) described Dick as a swan, who above water always appears graceful and calm but underwater is paddling powerfully to make things move ahead. This is the perfect description of Dick. He is an example of a great HP manager who showcases the HP Way. I'm glad I had the chance to work for him!

HP Labs is really kicking along now with its new leader, Prith Banerjee. Prith is a real change agent and he is starting us on an intensive effort to define the HP Labs strategic plan for the next 5 years. We have 4 teams of 30 people each coming from HP Labs and HP businesses working on creating the new strategic plan. I'm co-leading one of the four teams, and it's quite exciting to have the opportunity to define the New HP Labs!

Imaging and Printing

HP's Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) is also driving forward. They had their big product launch at the end of August and announced some very cool new products! They are also tactically moving forward on their Print 2.0 vision. IPG's CTO Patrick Scaglia has a great new Print 2.0 blog centered on this topic. A few years ago, Patrick was my boss at HP Labs; I know that he's a very interesting person with very interesting insights, so check out his blog! Also, HP blogger Eric Kintz has joined IPG to lead their marketing efforts. Check out his Digital Mindset blog where he discussed some of HP's coolest launched products!

IPG also announced new product offerings in its HP Halo business that offers a top-notch face-to-face conferencing experience. My team has been working closely with Halo team from day 1, while it was still just an investigation. Since then, Halo has become a real product and business unit with R&D, marketing, sales, operations, support, ... They are a great team, so it's fantastic to work with them as they continue to advance their product portfolio!

Phew- This is just a subset of all the things going on. It's been hard not to talk about them, so I'm glad they're announced! Can you see why I'm hyperstimulated?

Social web technology gone bad: Questioning anonymity

susie.wee — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:25:00 GMT

Alex Vorbau is a true believer of social technology. He uses social technology in all aspects of his daily life and his career, and he even focussed his work blog on Social Technology Innovation. But, he had a bad experience that made him question his beliefs. Take a look at his blog post on Thoughts on Anonymous Cowards. Alex started a legitimate web business with his wife. Someone out there decided that they didn't like his business, so much that they decided that they would try to sabotage it. They used the very same social web technologies that Alex develops, but they used it against him, and, they hid behind the anonymity of the internet to do it. This really is an example of social web technology gone bad.

I love how social web technology gives everyone a voice. I love that people can publish information with the click of a button. I love that people can post comments, both positive and negative, about what they read. I love the rich world-wide user-generated information pool that social web technology creates. And, I love that I can contribute to it with my own comments and my own blog posts. But what do we do when people abuse the freedom that social web technology has given them?

The social web world is an amazing self-governed community, self-governed by writers and readers. If I am honest in my posts, I feel I am rewarded by appreciation from blog readers. If I am dishonest in my posts, I feel I will get corrected by the blog community. And, if I admit to and correct my errors, I feel the community will forgive me and allow me to rebuild my credibility. I think blogging teaches you to be open, honest, and thoughtful. While as a blogger I am open about my identity, I actually like the fact that blog readers can post comments anonymously, especially when it helps them be honest about something they feel deeply about and can't express openly.

But what do you do when anonymity gets abused? What do you do when anonymous cowards attack well-meaning people?

Do we start developing social web technologies that don't allow anonymity? Do we start developing tools that limit or inhibit information sharing? Do we start developing tools to police the abusers?

I can't help think about the amount of social web innovation that is lost by attacking and demotivating well-meaning social web users and social web innovators. I wonder if the anonymous cowards realize the impact of what they are doing. What should we do?

It's a multilingual world- I feel so left out!

susie.wee — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 01:26:00 GMT

I am very fortunate that the nature of my job lets me meet and work with fantastic people from all over the world. One thing that many of these people have in common is that English is not their first language, though they speak and understand it perfectly. Actually, that's not my point. My point is that "some other language" is their first language, and that "other language" is one that I don't understand, and this stops me from being able to share their primary world.

These friends and colleagues use web sites in their first language for their first source of news, blogs, and social networking services. Some of them join in the english-language social networking sites as a secondary site just to see what's going on with their english-speaking friends. But the primary sites where they post most of their own content is in their home language which I can't understand and can't access. I feel left out!

Here's an interesting little tidbit from last year: According to a Technorati study from 2006, 37% of their tracked blog posts were written in japanese, and 36% were written in english. Unfortunately, 64% of the Technorati-tracked blogosphere is in a language that I can't read... And it's probably larger if you take the blogosphere as a whole. I feel so left out!

I wonder what percentage of the world's web content is written in languages that I don't understand. I'm not sure how to measure it, but I'm sure it's huge. I wish I had a way to read or understand some of it. But how?

I am trying to learn a few other languages. But, I'm not particularly talented at it and I'm not hopeful that I'll be able to get to a stage where I have good comprehension skills any time soon.

What percentage of the world's web content is written in a language you don't understand?
Do you feel left out like I do?
What should or can we do about this?

Tags: communication experience, multiple languages, multi-lingual, web technology, social networking, blogging, feel left out, HP

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ICME panel on HCI for Multimedia Communications

susie.wee — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 07:30:00 GMT

Last week I was on a panel on "HCI for Multimedia Communications" at the ICME 2007 conference in Beijing. The organizers and panelists were as follows:

Title

HCI for Multimedia Communications

Organizers

Qiong Liu, FX Palo Alto Laboratory, USA
Zhengyou Zhang, Microsoft Research, USA

Panelists

Zhengyou Zhang, Microsoft Research, USA
Tom Huang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
John Weng, Michigan State University, USA
Susie Wee, Mobile & Media Systems Lab, HP Labs
Arnold Smeulders, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
John Smith, Watson Research Center, USA

We kicked off with each panelist stating their position on the topic, and then went into Q&A with the audience. The panelists contributed a variety of perspectives and the audience raised many interesting questions. Below are a few of my thoughts that I shared in the discussion.

Coupling experience with technology: When we think about multimedia communication, we should start from the user experience, and then think about the technology to enable it. There should be a close coupling between experience design and the enabling technologies.

Existing communication experiences: Technology can recreate existing communication experiences in situations where it is not possible. For example, technology can recreate effective face-to-face conversations for people who are geographically distant, as in HP's Halo virtual collaboration system.

New communication experiences: Technology can also be used to enable new comunication experiences for people. For example, instant messaging, blogging, photo sharing, and social networking are examples of new types of communication experiences that did not exist without the enabling technology.

Experience- Many simultaneous communication threads: HCI for multimedia communications should consider the new ways that people communicate, and specifically account for today's multitasking world where many communication threads are used simultaneously. For example, it is common for people to be reading email, browsing the web for research, getting instant messages, and getting phone calls simultaneously.

Experience- Share experiences instantly: As I was in Beijing, I constantly took photos and uploaded them to Facebook for my friends and family to see. They were able to share my Beijing experience while I was still there. We take this capability for granted today, but note that this was not so easy to do a few years ago.

Experience- Anyone can publish instantly: On top of sharing photos instantly, I can also publish instantly with my blog. In other words, I can create a publication at the click of button for the world to see without asking anyone for help or permission. This has a few implications:

I can publish on a wide variety of topics. At one time, I imagined all my publications would be technical. Now I have publications called "Blogging on the Beach", "Team sports and work", and "Top 10 Tips for How to Talk in Groups".
Since so many people like me can publish instantly, there is information overload and a lot of irrelevant information out there.
On the other hand, the fact that there are so many publishers greatly increases the chance that there is something out there that is useful to you and perhaps written by someone who shares your perspective or background.

People tag and vote: We are in a world of too much information and a scarcity of attention, so the question is how do you find what you want. Search and analysis are important. Tagging and voting can help. So, the advice for multimedia communications HCI is to use the proper balance of analysis and user feedback. Don't spend too much time analyzing if you have a situation where you can just go out and ask for user feedback. Since we are now in a world where people can tag and vote, use it when appropriate!

Measure quality of multimedia communications HCI by usage: Since there is a scarcity of attention, I think the best way to measure quality in multimedia communications HCI is by measuring usage. My advice is to build prototypes, attract users, and study their usage. You will learn a lot by doing this, including what is important, what are you missing, and what are users interested in.

How do we measure quality in multimedia communications HCI? Quality metrics should consider the multi-session nature of the communication experience that exists today.

How do we measure quality in multimedia communications HCI? Build prototypes. Attract users. Track usage (e.g., google analytics), user feedback (e.g., diggs), and quantitative metrics (analysis).

What will be an ideal interface for multimedia communication? An ideal interface will be simple, intuitive, and easy to use. You shouldn't need to read a manual to figure out how to use it.

Should the ideal interface have intelligence behind it? Only if it has predictable behavior. The interface must be predictable so users can learn to use it.

Should the interface have a human form? Not always. An HCI system for medical surgery should not have a false human interface.

What are your thoughts on the topic of HCI for multimedia communications?
Did you attend the panel discussion? If so, what did you think of it?
What advice do you have for the panel organizers and panelists?

Tags: HCI for multimedia communications, communication experience, human computer interaction, interface, IEEE ICME, Qiong Liu, Zhengyou Zhang, Tom Huang, John Weng, Susie Wee, Arnold Smeulders, John Smith, HP

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Are we communicating if we bypass our senses?

susie.wee — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:32:00 GMT

Communication is a person-to-person interaction. Communication involves one person conveying a message and another person interpreting the message. This can be done by talking/listening, gesturing/seeing, and writing/reading. Technology makes it possible for people to communicate even when they are far apart.

Sqchen raised some interesting points in his comment on my post on today's communication experience. He observed that communication uses the senses of sight and sound and asked what senses will be used next. He raised the possibility of having a communication chip implanted in you brain that allows you to automatically communicate with other people through their communication chips "without bothering our eyes", or more generally, without bothering our senses.

This makes me think about a few questions are:

Are we communicating if we bypass our senses?
Is communication about the information or about the experience?
What do you gain or lose if you communicate with communication chips instead of natural human senses?

Take a minute to think about your answers to the questions..........

OK, here's my take on the three questions- in reverse order:

What do you gain or lose if you communicate with communication chips instead of natural human senses?
If we communicated through communication chips instead of human senses:

We would be able to convey factual information more quickly and accurately.
We would be able to convey visual thoughts more easily and accurately. I'm specifically calling out visual information because pictures can be hard to describe in words, so this would be a great advantage.
We would not be able to convey or interpret feelings. Could a communication chip convey feelings and experiences? (I don't know how human senses relate to human feelings.)
We would lose the deep understanding that occurs when you think through and discuss a topic for a long time. Could a communication chip provide deep understanding?
We wouldn't have to work at formulating words around our thoughts. My thoughts could be zapped over to the other person, including the visual imagery that I have in my head. In fact, this would be very helpful for me right now since I'm in the design stage of a kitchen remodeling project-- this involves a lot of visualization and communication.
We would lose the learnings we get from going through the thought process of figuring out how to effectively communicate an idea. Thinking about how to communicate an idea, for example, when giving a presentation, leads to deeper thought and understanding. Could a communication chip instill deeper thought and understanding?
We would lose the person-to-person experiences that we get when spending time together. The person-to-person experience allows you to get to know each other, to get to know how well you get along with each other, how well you can brainstorm together, and how well you can work together.

Is communication about the information or about the experience?
I think conveying information is just one aspect of communication. I think a bigger part of communication lies in what you gain from the experience, such as gaining a deeper understanding from discussing different aspects of the topic and in getting to know the other person. I think human senses and intuition are a big part of communication.

Are we communicating if we bypass the senses?
In conclusion, at this point I'd say No. If we bypass our senses and use a communication chip to to communicate, we would be able to convey information, but we would not be able to communicate.

Well, that was my first take. I'd love to hear your thoughts on these questions!

Tags: communication experience, conveying information, deep thought and understanding, HP

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Today's communication experience: How far we've come

susie.wee — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:21:00 GMT

Alex wrote a very interesting post on sharing our lives in little pieces. He talks about how various new web technologies allow us to share pieces of our lives in different ways. Alex really captures the way I feel about social web tools such as blogging and Facebook- I feel that they give me a place to share a glimpse of my life that I might not have shared otherwise, and they let me do it easily. Blogging lets me share my thoughts through casual posts and Facebook lets me share my travels through casual photos.

This got me thinking about how far we've come with today's web technology and about how easy it is to communicate and share. It reminded me of my childhood memories of how my mom shared her new life in America with her parents who were back in Korea. My mom and dad were born and raised in Korea, and moved to the US after college in the 1960s. In those days, international travel was expensive and seldom done, international phone calls were expensive and seldom used, and pictures took days to get developed... and you had to wait until you finished the roll of film to get it developed! So, my mom communicated with her parents by writing letters and sending them through "air mail".

I remember my mom sitting in the spot in the living room where the sunlight shined through the windows, with a warm cup of coffee in her hands as she thought about what to write, and then handwriting a letter to her parents on special "air mail" paper, the kind with a red- and blue-striped border. I think she might have been restricted to writing everything on one page. Imagine the adventure of moving to a foreign country at a time when it was hard to communicate back home with your family and friends. Imagine wanting to share stories about your new life in America, your husband's career, your three kids' lives, and your adventures about living in a foreign country while learning a new culture and language. Imagine being restricted to a one-page, hand-written letter that takes one or two weeks to get delivered and waiting another one or two weeks to get a response.

Today, I probably travel to Asia more often than my mom wrote letters or called home. I can send an email or publish a blog post that can be read instantly by people around the world at the click of a button. I can snap a picture on my digital camera and share it easily and instantly. I can call my mom and dad from practically anywhere using my mobile phone. Let's take a moment to celebrate on how far we've come!

Now for the next phase. I am fortunate that my friends and loved ones live in places where they can get to a computer and get to the internet, though admittedly they do this with varying degrees of ease and regularity. But, I still know many people who have made the pilgrimmage to a new country but have friends and family in places where they can not connect to the web easily and regularly and in a cost-effective way.

Where are these people who can't get connected easily in a cost-effective way?
What can we do to help them get connected?
If we look ahead a few years, how will they be connected with the rest of the world?

Tags: communication experience, sharing, connected, web technology, air mail, blogging, Facebook, HP

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