The Aim of Interaction Design - Assignment Example

I. The dynamics and impact of al designs of democratic and participatory governance is currently in practice through the following designs: 1) Data gathering through public surveys. 2) Opinion seeking through public consultations. 3) Policy exploration through deliberative forums. 4) Interactive dialogue through governance networks. Q1: Which one of the above four is more interactive in nature? Explain with solid reasons supported by your critical thinking. Products designed with mainly the engineering perspectives need the consumers to perform some set of functions for effective usability. Can a taxi driver be expected to be an expert pilot? Either the driver must be thoroughly trained for the purpose or a plane must be designed in such a way that an ordinary taxi driver can fly it. This second option is called the end user perspective. Any product produced with end user perspective is called interactive product. (Helen Sharp, 2007, pp. 1) The aim of interaction design (IxD) is to reduce this concern by bringing usability into the design process. In the topic of our discussion, the end user could not easily be fixed. As far as the designing procedures and mechanism are concerned, we may consider the government or the body of authorities to be the end user. However, the citizens of a nation in general also form part of the nation and are eligible to enjoy the benefits of designs. As such it is the nation as a whole assuming the role of end user. The governing bodies, individual citizens and individual organisations/networks are tools used by a nation to design some perfect governance methods. The citizen as stakeholders’ conception (Chris Skeltcher et al, 2010) pushes the stakeholders to engage in public deliberation processes to overcome any social problem. Citizens as voters are thus rendered mere spectators of policy emergence through their part of casting votes. The first design mentioned above – Data gathering through public surveys – is akin to the voter conception and we can straight away exclude this design to be less interactive. The second design of opinion seeking through public consultations consists of discussion by public decision makers with focus groups consisting of selective stakeholders. Interactivity is relatively high in this design compared to the previous one. However, the degree of interactivity in this design cannot be equated with the effectiveness, since the selection and participation of focus groups may vary with reference to societal and geographical stratification. The power of interaction in the third design – policy exploration through deliberative forums – in which, a randomly selected group of citizens engage in the process of deliberative forums is normally at a higher level. In the last design, interactive dialogue is carried out among self-grown citizen networks. In this design, only particular issues of a policy are generally addressed. The degree of interactivity may be the highest in this design with the effectiveness too being pointed towards one single issue only. Q2: Explore a possible way to devise a design in which the level of participation by individuals is considerably high. Devising a comprehensive design comprising all the positive factors of the aforesaid designs would pave way to gradual narrowing of policy issues so that effectiveness of a policy is zeroed in. Although a status of democratic ownership (Chris Skeltcher et al, 2010) is assigned to the respondents in public surveys, individuals/respondents in this design get themselves satisfied with their level of participation by just entering into the governance processes. They do not expect more of participation nor do they demand any reciprocation from the authorities. As such this design can be used as the first phase of contributory governance wherein individual citizens are brought under the spectrum of decision making. The second design may be offered the state of second phase wherein the citizen groups are expected to express their opinion. In this phase, the number of issues to be discussed should be short listed for debate/discussion at the next higher phase. The deliberative forums in the design III can now be used as an excellent platform to debate the policy on issue base only. The input in this phase would naturally reduce the number of issues without going away from the nucleus of the policy and its goal. The final phase of interactive dialogue through governance networks smoothly lands on the dais of implementation. To put it in a more scientific tone, each design has its own strength and weakness; thus, a combination of a complementary method is powerful, bringing in the user perspective in various ways throughout the entire evaluation and design process. (Daryle et al, 2008, pp.39) Q3: Taking into consideration the relatively less positive implications in all the four designs, do you think an even distribution of all the four designs would improve democratic governance? The first design of data collection through public surveys (Chris Skeltcher et al, 2010) provides a platform for participation of all the individuals to take part in governance processes, though not directly. Although a wide gate is opened for participation, the quality of interactivity is reduced merely to the satisfaction of participation. The design II does not ensure a complete sense of participation in decision-making processes/governance. Such deficit sense of participation erupts because the reciprocative gestures of authorities do not surface even in the face-to-face meetings of such opinion seeking endeavours. We cannot simply assure the effectiveness of the design III on resorting to the design, since the random selection of the groups has the possibility of being susceptible to be biased by the individual who selects. Despite the fact that the degree of interactivity is the highest in the design IV, one cannot assure the effectiveness to spread throughout the entire policy issues, since this design focus on particular issue/issues of a policy alone. However, I presume a gradual development in all the designs arranged in a sequence leading to formulate a comprehensive design comprising all the positive factors of the designs. * * * * * II. The four news presentation styles namely, Customisation, Personalisation, Choice features and Interpersonal features depict a relationship with the perceived satisfaction level. Q1: How the interactive features are positively associated with the perceived level of satisfaction? The interactive features of news sites may be viewed as an aspect of two-way journalism. Disconnection between media and citizen might have been achieved; but revitalisation of public communication suggested by Lacy (1992) as cited by S. Chung et al (2009) cannot be taken for granted. In fact, the readers’ input and feedback may serve better towards boosting the sale on the marketing arena of the media and create an imagery satisfaction in the citizens that they are treated parts of the journalistic endeavour. Unless otherwise the social responsibility of the media is made known to the public, the real juice of interactivity cannot be relished. Employment of interactive features is simply reduced to marketing techniques. Customisation features like content submission, letter to the editor, and email by-line links while standing significant positive predictor for perceived satisfaction do not at all guide and educate the public towards understanding of the news media’s responsibility. Unsolicited contents are simply sent to slush pile. First readers in all the print media scrutinise the slush pile and recommend for publication of only the eligible contents, which were missed for want of agents’ introduction/channelization. Some publishers return the content to the authors with a mere regret note. Ground for rejection is never conveyed to the authors/citizens. As such, these customisation features assume a half-baked interactive stature. Most of the publishers invariably expect their entire band of readers to visualise and conceive the social responsibilities of the media by way of repeated reading of their publications. This effectually hampers interactivity. Although the advertisements alluring the readers/citizens to take part in these types of customisation features are likely to boost their sales at the outset, they do not fetch fruitful results in the long-run. Citizens/readers are left with only two options: acceptance by way of publication and rejection through non-publication. They cannot even know if their submissions are refused for want of space. Hence, a robust way of rejecting citizens’ submission is the need of the hour. Standardised postulates of rejection grounds must be framed in the design. Rejected submissions should indicate the exact area that has violated the media’s policy or has attempted to dilute the media’s social responsibility. This would naturally throw light on the responsibility of the media and make clear the lapse on the part of authors/readers/citizens in their submission. Adoption of such robust practice would create a permanent pool of readers making them self-committed and self-grown citizens. Satisfaction perceived by the self-committed citizens is the real satisfaction. Publishers are to understand the fact that integration of technologies (A. Pirhonen et al, 2005, p: 5) pose a challenge to the established uses or paradigms. If they possess will to practice robust mechanism of citizen-focussed interaction designing, they can reduce the scare of spawning of – sometimes-inexperienced – competitors who jump-start to make fortune out of their slush piles. Online newspapers harnessing technological innovations can also design their interactivity tools in such a way that the readers/audience are informed through the email obtained from them of their policy/social responsibility aspects particularly when the submission of the audience could not be accepted for webcast. Q2: Imparting the ‘citizen journalist’ status to the audience through interactive features in online newspapers is more likely to skew the overall public opinion on a news/issue discussed. Put forth your suggestion to get away with this. Interactive features in use must be reinvigorated periodically by way of designing them to be fit for application. The citizen journalist status (S. Chung et al, 2009) is not an authenticated conferment on the audience. It is an assumed status, wherein audience are attracted to render their submissions. The submission of an authorised journalist is subjected to rigorous scrutiny and perusal with a view to publish/webcast the contents after necessary correction/modifications. On the other hand, submissions of audience are scanned only to prove its veracity and is either published or disregarded. It may be an arduous task for the media people to train their entire audience towards submission of quality pieces. Out of work pressure and insufficient time tag to continue with their routine, media crew are not able to peruse the contents submitted by the audience resulting in a simple rejection. Technological tools cannot provide a test-result on the quality of submissions in a suggestive tone either to publish or not, although innovative tools have emerged to check even the originality of the contents. ‘Fit for publication’ is ultimately a decision to be taken by the publisher. Recurrent publication of particular types of submission has the possibility of creating over confidence in the audience to submit contents. Such over confidence drives the audience to render submissions constantly and a vicious cycle. Non-publication out of non-submission is considered as slowdown in the interactive processes. It is feared at both the ends; the publishing media and the audience. To get away with this slowdown scare, audience is always kept in a trance to submit any content without interruption and audience too are unable to exercise any check or control over their submission thereby becoming habitual submitters. Can a newspaper suspend publication of letter-to-the editor for a week? Likewise, can an online media keep their blog spot in abeyance for a week? This type of habitual submission and their acceptance affix a routine and inanimate stamping on the contents. Any debate on the contents is restricted to audience sphere only. Such inter audience debates would never find a place in the media although they have the power to form a general opinion among the public. As the newspaper and media do not exercise any quality check – leave alone their right to publish and right to reject – on audience submission, the ultimate danger of skewing in public opinion on an issue becomes inevitable. Currently, this is universally accepted as evolutionary modulations prone to occur in any society. Reducing publication of unchecked/un-scanned submissions would pave way for a better solution to this. The reduction endeavour should consist of a dialogue module before publication especially when the contents require rigorous revisit by the editorial team. Instead of an outright rejection, the dialogue module could address the nagging part of the contents and publish after appropriate modification or even deletion of those parts. * * * * * III. Researchers contacting adolescent Assault Victim patients for prospective follow-up assessments via cellular phone face considerable challenges out of the caller identification feature embedded in the apparatus. On realising the crux to be the confidentiality of the subjects that were dissipated in such technologies, some researchers resort to Interactive Voice Response Tools and find the preservation of confidentiality in subjects and an enhanced utility by way of voluntary initiation by subjects in contacting the researchers. Q1: Apart from the technical and innovative shields available in IVRs, what do you sense as vital in bringing the subjects – Adolescent Assault Victims – to the follow up assessments voluntarily. The adolescent subjects in Emergency for violence related injuries could be conveniently grouped in to two: 1) those willing to quit violence and 2) those still lingering on to violence. The first category subjects usually focus chiefly on clinical improvement and do not hover over the past incident/incidents of violence for long durations. The designs of assessment tools make the subjects consider that the interviewers’ main target is to advocate non-violence. This first impression straight away splits the subjects in the above mentioned groups. The inbuilt automation (Blackstone et al, 2009) of IVR systems provides a sense of security cover by way of preserving anonymity. Apart from these shields, young adults have an urge to register their invigorated ideologies. This urge generally pushes adolescents towards both over-enthusiasm and violence. However, violence and the related negative impacts do not hamper their urge for their ideologies to be conveyed. Such kind of urge easily finds its way through the security cover provided by automated technologies. Although the line between IVR and voice processing technologies is a fuzzy one, (Bates and Gregory, 2005) entering of subject-generated PIN (personal identification number) adds more security for sharing confidential information. Q2: Keeping the low response for investigator-initiated contacts in view, suggest or explore ways to promote subject-initiated contacts outside the clinical ambit, which may substantially assist in reaching the subjects. The best way to near the subjects –in our study, the adolescent assault victims – is to approach via the near ones of the subject; patients’ relatives, attending nurses, distant friends and school authorities to assess the backdrop of accident/violence torn situations. Questionnaires to nurses must contain questions on personal information too apart from clinical information. This method of sideline approach could be used only to check any glaring difference in the information supplied by the subjects on crucial aspects during the interview with them prior to their participation in the IVR system. Although confidentiality is best assured in the IVR system, the low response for investigator-initiated contacts could be ascribed to the age of the subjects. The relatively lesser response from young adults compared to that from subjects of paediatric ward is illustrative of this low score. Recidivistic adolescents (Blackstone et al, 2009) are found to avoid the follow up assessments. If research assistants are capable of expressing their irrelevance over the subjects’ retaliation trend, the possibility of more subject-initiated contacts could be substantiated. This can be achieved by clearly avoiding questions on retaliation both in personal assessment and in the IVR questionnaire. However, the patients’ urge for retaliation could well be inferred from their way of expression about the violence. By way of stressing more on clinical developments, during personal assessments, the RAs can judge subjects’ inclination either to respond or deliberate skipping about clinical aspects. Recidivistic adolescents are more prone to fall prey to retaliation syndrome and never care for clinical developments. Thus, adolescents showing diminished response want to hide the activities they schedule to carry out after discharge. It is enough that RAs do not create an image of crusader of themselves. It may be advisable to engage peer aged assistants to conduct personal interviews. The confidentiality earned through the automated technicalities of IVR must well be ushered towards accurate assessment. Sources to read: - Antii Pirhonen, Pertti Saariluoma, Hannakaisa Isomaki and Chris Roast , 2005, pp.3, “Future Interaction design”, Springer Verlag, London Chris Skeltcher and Jacob Torfing, 2010, “Improving Democratic Governance through Institutional Design: Civic Participation and Democratic Ownership”, Regulation & Governance, Vol.4 Issue No.1: 71-91, Blackwell Publishing. Daryle Gardner-Bonneau and Harry E. Blanchard, 2008, pp.39, “Human Factors and Voice Interactive systems”, Springer Science+Business Media, New York. Deborah S. Chung and Seungahn Nah, 2009, “The Effect of Interactive News Presentation on Perceived User Satisfaction of Online Community Newspapers”, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol. 4 Issue No.1: 855- 874, International Communication Association. Helen Sharp, 2007, pp.1, “Interaction design”, Wiley India (P) Ltd, New Delhi, India Mercedes M. Blackstone, Douglas J. Wiebe, Cynthia J. Mollen, Avash Kalra and Joel A. Fein, October 2009, “Feasibility of an Interactive Voice Response Tool for Adolescent Assault Victims” Journal of Academic Emergency Medicine, Vol. 16, Issue10: 956-962, Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. Regis J. Bates and Donald W. Gregory, 2005, pp. 237-238, “Voice and Data Communications handbook”, Osborne McGraw-Hill, California, USA Read More