I, Lamont

UI, UX, and MVP ... oh my!

2012-02-11T17:17:00.003-05:00

"User experience" (UX) and "user interface" (UI) are terms from the world of software and hardware design. But these terms should be intimately familiar to anyone who uses gadgets, software or the Web.

Ever been frustrated by your television remote control's assortment of buttons and symbols? How about a confusing website that has dozens of links on the front page, but it's difficult to find what you're looking for, even though you know it's there? Blame bad UI. It's endemic to the television and camera industries, but individual companies such as Research in Motion (maker of the BlackBerry) and GoDaddy (a large Web host/domain registry) are notorious for terrible user interface design.

At the other end of the spectrum are technologies that not only look good, they make your life easier by minimizing unnecessary clicks, buttons, or engineer-centric features. The experience is often so good that you want to recommend it to your friends. The simplicity of Google's search engine and most Apple gadgets (such as the iPod touch and click-wheel iPod nano, pictured above) fit into the "good UX" category.

But design and technology clash for early-stage technology companies, which are often trying to get an MVP ("minimum viable product") out the door and into the hands of users as quickly as possible. It's easy for design to fall by the wayside. But maybe it shouldn't be. Over on the Invantory blog, I've written about MDP, or Minimum Delightful Product. The idea comes from Adam Berrey, who had this criticism of MVP:

"In the consumer world 'viable' isn't really compelling. It's like someone in the ICU. They are alive, but not really fun to hang out with."

He's right. Further, MVPs are targeted at early adopters rather than mainstream users, meaning that the feedback loops will be based on a different set of users than the people you want to attract. That's not to say an MVP can't evolve into something delightful, but for a product aimed at mainstream users, why not start with great design?

Read more about MDP on the Invantory blog.

Image: iPods, circa 2010 and 2007. I am licensing this picture under a Creative Commons Generic 2.0 license. Please credit Ian Lamont and link to ilamont.com if you use this picture.

Teaching Computer Science Through WoW Scripts

2012-02-04T22:22:00.003-05:00

The following paper is a curriculum for learning basic computer science concepts using World of Warcraft and the scripting language Lua. I wrote the paper with two other MIT students while taking Eric Klopfer's course "Computer Games and Simulations for Education and Exploration" (11.127/CMS.590) in March, 2011. It was originally published on my MIT site. I am archiving it here for anyone who is interested in learning how video games can be used for education. See "A curriculum for learning computer programming in WoW" for background on this project.

Curriculum: Teaching Computer Science through WoW Scripts

Andrew Hsiao, Ian Lamont, Michele Pratusevich

CMS.590: Professor Klopfer

1 March 2011

Introduction

For decades, games have introduced young people to computer programming. Early exposure to programming games has been a stepping stone to careers in computer science and technology-related entrepreneurship. There are many well-known examples. Long before he built Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg reveled in creating computer games with his friends, and Salesforce.com cofounder Marc Benioff got his start in the computer industry as a teenage designer of games for Atari home computers.

But even among young people who don't become programmers or found startups, there is a widespread awareness of the role in programming in creating games. There comes a point in the life of a typical primary school student that he or she will wonder how handheld, console, or web-based games are made, and the answer will come back that someone - or a group of people - entered a series of instructions into a computer to make it display images, play sounds, and perform functions that make up the gameplay. Some of the more dedicated gamers or curious tinkerers may be compelled to take things a step further by designing their own games, or modifying existing games ("modding") to extend the gameplay in some fashion. In doing so, these youths learn many elementary programming concepts, including computer languages, software tools, and fundamental computer science building blocks such as variables and functions.

Many others, however, will never take that next step. They will be aware of the role of programming in creating games and other software, but will never learn specific concepts or the practical aspects of computer programming.

Teaching Computer Science through WoW Scripts is designed to help non-programmers bridge the gap. The following series of four exercises is designed to be the beginning of a course in teaching high-school students basic computer science concepts, as well as critical thinking skills, using the online role-playing game World of Warcraft and the scripting language Lua. The curriculum is aimed at teenagers who have never been exposed to computer programming or played the game, although those with some experience may be able to develop more advanced scripts to use in the game. Students will learn how computer languages work, including core concepts such as if statements, loops, and variables.

With these foundations, students can then learn more complicated programming concepts such as functions to develop their own complex customizations of WoW. In a more comprehensive computer science curriculum, the concept of saving scripts that can be run much more easily using macros would be explained. For an advanced curriculum, the creation of add-ons would provide a practical purpose to programming and scripting. However, because add-on creation is involved and complicated, it is not one of the exercises described here.

Definitions

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a sword-and-sorcery fantasy world that lets anyone with a PC or laptop and an Internet connection battle monsters, find virtual treasure, and play with other people who are online at the same time. The world is not unlike J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, or the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons. It was launched by Blizzard in 2004, and is one of the top online role-playing games, with millions of users in the United States, China, and elsewhere.

Lua is a powerful, lightweight programming language that is known as a "scripting language." Scripting languages enable control of an application (in this case, World of Warcraft) but Lua has also been used for other games, industrial applications, and consumer hardware platforms.

"Scripts" are small computer programs that perform a very specific function. Typically, they are a very precise set of instructions that the software environment (i.e., WoW or some other program) can understand. Sometimes they are as short as a few sentences of text. In a game like WoW, a script might display extra information about a monster that is attacking a player, or help a player find a new route to a certain destination. Many first curricula in computer science use scripting languages to teach fundamental computer science concepts because they have more gradual learning curves than other kinds of programming languages. Scripts do not require installing compilers and interpreters that come with more complex programming languages. After learning basic programming concepts in a scripting language, more complicated programs can be written using multiple scripts.

Specific computer science topics, exercises, and outcomes in the WoW programming curriculum are listed below.

Why WoW?

Instructors may wonder why a gaming environment is being used to learn programming concepts, as opposed to textbooks and traditional classroom lectures. Besides the obvious interest that games hold for young people (according to a recent survey, 80% of American teens aged 12-17 own a game console ), the practice of experimenting in a game world reinforces what James Paul Gee refers to as the Probe, Hypothesis, Reprobe, Rethink Cycle. As noted by Gee in What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy, this cycle is required to learn complex and fast-moving video games in immersive 3D environments, like the one found in WoW. The four-stage cycle works as follows:

The player must probe the virtual world, which involves looking around the current environment, clocking on something, or engaging in a certain action.
Based on reflection during and after probing, the player must form a hypothesis about what something (a text, object, artifact, event, or action) might mean in a usefully situated way.
The player reprobes the world with that hypothesis in mind, seeing what effect he or she gets.
The player treats this effect as feedback from the world and accepts or rethinks his or her own original hypothesis.

But the process is not limited to learning how to survive an attack by a monster or find a certain treasure in a video game. The Probe, Hypothesis, Reprobe, Rethink Cycle can be applied to a variety of extracurricular learning situations. It is part of humans' innate ability to recognize patterns, self-reflect on outcomes based on success/failure feedback cycles, and derive powerful learning experiences. "It's how children learn," Gee writes, "when they are not learning in school."

For the WoW programming curriculum, the Probe, Hypothesis, Reprobe, Rethink Cycle will take place on two levels. Learning to program requires cycles of experimentation and testing on the code, in order to make sure it works and improve the functionality. There is also the effect of the scripts on the gameplay itself, which students can also probe and test in a shared environment with their classmates. Some students may want to share their "mods" with each other, or cooperatively work on more complex tasks (for instance, dividing up coding and testing responsibilities). Such behavior adds to the learning experience and encourages critical thinking and teamwork in a shared environment of peers.

Tools you will need

Students will need to have World of Warcraft installed on the laptop or PC they are using for class. They should register their game, create a player, and experiment with the world before starting the exercises. We recommend that each player spend at least three hours in WoW and reach at least level 3 before starting the first exercise. Before attempting an exercise, students' characters should be in a town or other place where they will not be attacked or disturbed.

The basic tool needed to create scripts in Lua is the WoW game itself. Very simple yet powerful scripts can be created right in the chat box of WoW. The first exercise describes in some detail how this is done. For creating more complex scripts, a basic text editor like Notepad (that comes standard with every PC) or TextEdit (included with every Mac) can be used to edit the scripts before pasting them into the WoW chat box. Students will not need to use external text editors (outside of the WoW chat box) to create scripts until they are at a level where they are using macros to hold their scripts.

Before starting on the exercises, students should be aware that there are a plethora of resources available online about writing Lua scripts, macros, and add-ons. World of Warcraft has built-in functions that are available through an "application programming interface" (shorted to API) that can be used in any script. An API is just a collection of functions and properties of the language that can be used by the programmer. Information about the WoW API can be found here.

Summary of class exercises

1. Beginning programming concepts and Hello World

Creating a simple program that displays the text "Hello World" is a long tradition in teaching new computing languages to students. In this exercise, students will use the Lua scripting language to display "Hello World" in the WoW chatbox.

In the first activity the student will learn how to accomplish one of the simplest tasks in programming: outputting a message. With this program, the student will be able to "print" statements. Explain to the student the meaning of "print" in programming jargon: being able to "print" refers to being able to output text to some sort of interface the programmer can see. When programming in Lua in World of Warcraft, that interface is the chat box. An important thing to note when printing to the chat box is that whatever is printed will not be broadcast to the world. Rather, it is only printed in the chat box of the user who is running the script. The student should be shown this script to print a message to the chat box:

/script print("Hello World!");

Take a look at the components of this program. First the statement "/script" is typed into the chat box to denote the start of a Lua script. All scripts you type into the chat box will start with this statement.

Next there is the statement "print". This function is provided by the World of Warcraft API to give the programmer the opportunity to print statements to the chat box. Built-in functions can be used in any program to accomplish tasks the programmer does not want to hard-code himself. Many of the built-in functions in any environment or programming language accomplish tasks that would be very difficult to code by the programmer.

When a function such as "print" is used by the programmer, it is referred to as a function call. The function calls using the built-in functions in WoW are straightforward - the function call "print("Hello World!")" takes the chat frame at the bottom left of the screen and adds the message "Hello World!" to it.

The ""Hello World!"" between parentheses immediately after the function is what is called the argument of the function. Arguments are parameters that are used by the function to accomplish a specific task and usually vary between function calls. In this particular case, the text can be changed to anything that the programmer wants to be output to the chat box.

The semicolon at the end of the statement denotes the end of a logical statement in the script. A semicolon is required at the end of every logical statement. This is a confusing concept to first-time programmers, but hopefully the examples provided in the exercises will give more insight about this. It is up to the discretion of the teacher how much they want to enforce and encourage the use of semicolons.

Note that the text must be put between quotation marks to be recognized as a valid text input. Each function requires its own special formatting for the arguments, but for outputting text to a chat box, the text must be enclosed in quotation marks. Notice how the text is printed on one line in the chat box. To print something that spans multiple lines, use the sequence of characters "\n" (it means "new line", back from the days of the first programming languages). When this sequence is inserted into a block of text, the text that comes after it will be on a new line. So the code:

/script print("Hello \n World!");

will print "Hello" and "World!" on different lines. Finally, the statement is closed with a semicolon. In Lua, a semicolon denotes the end of a line of code. When typing scripts into the chat box, the semicolon is necessary for the chat box to understand that it is finished running the script and can begin taking normal chat box input again.

Text is not the only thing that can be printed to the chat box. Text in the context of programming is referred to as a string. The reason that the text must be put between quotation marks in the print statement is that the script only recognizes strings when they are put between quotation marks.

Strings are only one type of input that the script recognizes. If a script sees a number, it treats it differently than a string. A whole number in the context of programming is referred to as an int (short for integer). Ints can be used in arguments of function calls, but they do not need to be surrounded by quotation marks. This idea of strings and ints brings up a more advanced concept in computer science that would be revisited in a more advanced exercise: the idea of types of input that the script sees. The students learning computer science through WoW Scripts do not need to understand the idea of types, but they should know that the script treats numbers and text differently.

Using print statements are useful in programming for a variety of reasons. When needing to test outputs of programs that are more complicated or wanting the user to see a certain message, print statements are a simple way of achieving this goal.

As an additional exercise, a student should modify the above code to print his or her name into the chat box. Modify the code to print numbers as well - keep in mind that numbers do not need to be surrounded by quotation marks.

2. Conditional statements

This section is intended to introduce students to basic control flow using if statements. Explain to students what control statements do: if statements take a conditional statement, and then execute a specific section of code depending on if the conditional statement is true or false. Present the following script to the students:

if (IsPartyLeader()) then

print("I am the leader of my party!");

else

print("I am not the leader of my party.");

end

In one line for in-game use the script would look like:

/script if (IsPartyLeader()) then print("I am the leader of my party!"); else print("I am not the leader of my party."); end;

"IsPartyLeader()" is a function like "print", except this function does not take any arguments because it does not need information from the user to perform its task. All the information it needs is automatically gathered from the game. In this case, it will be true if the player calling the function is the leader of a party, and false otherwise. The reason for the "()" at the end of the function call is that all function calls must contain these parentheses. However, not all function calls require arguments between the parentheses.

Have the students log on to WoW and pair up. Have one student in each pair create a party and invite the student they are paired with. Then have both students run the script and verify that the one that is the leader has the message "I am the leader of my party!" in their chat window and the other student has the message "I am not the leader of my party." Then have the second student invite the first student to a party and have them both run the script again, and verify that both students have the other message printed out to their chat window. After the students have had a chance to try it out themselves, walk them through the execution of this script, pointing out how the control flow differs for each case, and how the game decides which message to print.

Now have the students modify the script so that if they are outdoors, the script prints out "I am outdoors!" otherwise the script prints out "I am indoors." The relevant function you should have them use is the IsOutdoors() function. The end result should look similar to the following code:

if (IsOutdoors()) then

print("I am outdoors.");

else

print("I am indoors.");

end

To run the script in-game the following should be typed into the chat window:

/script if (IsOutdoors()) then print("I am outdoors."); else print("I am indoors."); end;

To have students test out their scripts, have them use their hearthstones to get to a town or city, and then stand outside the doorway to a building. Run the script while outside, then walk into the building and run the script again. The two messages should print out into their chat windows.

At the end of this module students should understand how if statements work.

3. Variables

This section details how to introduce students to variables, both in terms of what kinds of variables there are (types) and how to use them in scripts. The concepts of ints and strings were introduced in the first exercise but are given a more thorough (but not complete) examination here. Explain the concept of variables to students: variables are placeholders for other values, and are usually used to allow for easier manipulation of whatever data you are working with. Show the following code snippet to the students:

local a=3;

local b=4;

print(a*b);

When showing how to translate the expanded code into the one liner for in-game usage, make sure to point out that since we are putting all of the code into one line, we have to include a semicolon between the statements as a delimiter for where one statement ends and the next begins. The in-game code would be the following:

/script local a=3; local b=4; print(a*b);

Have the students run the script on their own machines. Next explain the difference between local variables and global variables. Local variables only exist for the one single run of the script, while global variables persist even after the script has finished running. Local variables must be specifically declared as such; if there is no "local" keyword before the variable is defined, the game will assume you want the variable to be a global variable. To demonstrate, have the students enter the following:

/script print(a); print(b);

They should get "nil" as a result both times. "nil" means that there is nothing there, that the game thinks the variable is undefined. Now have them run the first script with the local keywords taken out:

/script a=3; b=4; print(a*b);

And then run:

/script print(a); print(b);

This time they should get "3" and "4" printed to their chat boxes instead of "nil".

Finally we want to teach the students that there are different types of variables. This is explaining with an example the difference between an int and string that was introduced in the first exercise. Show them the following script and ask them what they think will happen:

local c=2;

local d="Hello, World!";

print(c*d);

After having them guess, have them run it in-game:

/script local c=2; local d="Hello, World!"; print(c*d);

They should have nothing print out at all. This is because "c" is representing a number while "d" is representing a string, and the game has no idea how to multiply a number to a word; it only knows how to multiply if it has two numbers. When something goes wrong in a "/script" command, the game will simply stop running the script, which is why nothing is being printed out.

At the end of this exercise students should understand that variables are placeholders for other concrete values, and that there are both local and global variables as well as different kinds of variables. As an exercise, have the students do some basic calculations with print statements based on the experience points and money awarded by a quest. An example of such an exercise would be printing the name of a quest and then the ratio of the number experience points to the number of money awarded by the quest.

4. Loops

Loop statements repeat a specific computing task. By the end of this activity, students will be able to create a loop that goes through their players' extensive inventories of weapons, armor, treasure, and other objects, and displays them in the chat box.

The outcome for this second activity is to teach students the basic programming control flow of for loops. A for loop is a control flow used in computer science to complete a repeated action. Automating this process instead of typing out the same line of code or executing the same action multiple times saves time and effort. A simple version of a for loop can be used to for example print 10 messages to the chat box:

/script for i = 1, 10 do print("Again!") end;

What is happening in this script is simple: the for loop syntax counts from 1 to 10 inside the loop, executing whatever statements are between the "do" and "end" tags. There can be more than one statement between the "do" and "end" tags, since any action can be executed inside of a loop.

The use of "i" in the for loop is called a counter. It is a variable (taught in the previous activity) that keeps track of the number of times the for loop has been executed. To change the number of times the for loop is executed, simply change the numbers after the variable "i". This variable can be used inside the statements of the for loop (between the "do" and "end" tags) to do any number of things - for example, you can print the variable itself inside the for loop:

/script for i = 5, 8 do print(i); print("\n"); end;

And the script will print the numbers 5, 6, 7, 8 in the chat box on separate lines. There are many things you can do with for loops in the context of the game. For example, try the following exercises:

6 times, if the player is the party leader, print "I am the party leader!"
Challenge: using online resources and the World of Warcraft API to write a script that loops through all the items in your bags and prints out their names in the chat box.

Timescale

Students should be level 3 or higher in World of Warcraft and have active accounts prior to starting the lessons. Explaining some of the basic definitions (Lua, script, chat box, etc.) and discussing the test environment (i.e., WoW) should take no more than 45 minutes. Each exercise should take one 45-minute class session to complete, although instructors may want to devote more time to certain lessons if students need more time to experiment with the scripts.

An important thing to note about learning programming is the self-help portion. To become proficient programmers knowledgeable about programming concepts and execution, students should spend time experimenting with writing their own scripts. The more time students spend on the exercises, the better of an understanding of computer science concepts they will have.

Once the lessons are complete, some students may be interested in progressing beyond the curriculum exercises. A good place to start is the WoW API, which will provide many interesting built-in functions to experiment with. To get started with macros, please visit http://www.wowwiki.com/Making_a_macro .

Assessment

The simple exercises that follow will reinforce some of the basic concepts described above. Any subset of these exercises can be used as an assessment of concepts learned. The teacher can decide which exercises to use as an assessment and which can be used as additional practice assignments. Exercises are grouped by concepts. In all exercises, students should be encouraged to test the scripts they have written. For example, for the first conditional statement exercise below, students should be encouraged to run the script first when they are targeting another character and then later when they are not targeting another character.

Built-in functions:

Ask the students to use print to display the first names of three of their classmates on three separate lines in the chat box

Example solution:

/script print("Andrew"); print("Ian"); print("Michele");
Ask the students to use print as a calculator to calculate the amount of copper they have in their possession. The conversion rate is 1 silver piece equals 100 copper pieces. They should just manually open their bag to see how much silver and copper they have, converting and adding the numbers to calculate the total amount of copper they have.

Example solution:

/script print("I have ");print(3*100+52);print(" copper.");

Conditional statements:

Using the WoW API, find the relevant functions to accomplish the following task: check to see whether you have a character targeted. If you do, print a statement saying so. If you don't print an alternate statement.

Example solution:

/script if(UnitHealth("playertarget")~=0) then print("TARGET ACQUIRED!!"); else print("I don't have a target..."); end;
Using the WoW API, find the relevant functions to accomplish the following task: if you are swimming or not swimming, print a relevant statement.

Example solution:

/script if(IsSwimming()) then print("I am swimming."); else print("I am not swimming."); end;

Variables:

Design a simple script using variables and the built-in function GetMoney() to print the number of silver pieces in your possession. This is building on one of the additional exercises from the built-in functions - automating finding the amount of money you have in your possession instead of having to look in the bag yourself. Use print() to give context to the number displayed. GetMoney() returns the number of copper pieces in the player's possession. The conversion rate is 1 silver piece equals 100 copper pieces.

Example Solution:

/script a=GetMoney(); b=100; print("You have "); print(a/b); print(" silver pieces");

For loops:

Design a script that prints out how much money you would make if you sold every item in your backpack. Use the following code snippet to get the sell price of an item:

local itemSellPrice=select(11, GetItemInfo(itemID));

Every time the previous line of code is run, the variable itemSellPrice will contain the sell price in copper of the item with the ID of itemID. The function GetContainerItemID will be useful here; read its documentation in the WoW API.

Example solution:
/script local total=0; for i=1,9 do local itemSellPrice=select(11,GetItemInfo(GetContainerItemID(0,i))); total=total+itemSellPrice; end; print("My items are worth"); print(total); print("copper.");

Note that the ending index of the for loop must equal the number of items in the student's backpack, and that all the items must be packed as tightly towards the top of the backpack as possible (i.e. there can be no gaps).

This document was co-authored by MIT students Andrew Hsiao, Ian Lamont, and Michele Pratusevich for 11.127/252/CMS.590, Computer Games and Simulations for Education and Exploration in March, 2011.

Mobile app competition and App Store SEO

2012-02-03T00:14:00.002-05:00

Over on the Invantory blog, I have a review of Craigslist Mobile. It's one of many apps that let mobile phone users browse Craigslist and submit new listings. I describe how it works and explain some of the shortcomings (particularly around UX).

But one of the most interesting things I discovered as I was researching the tool was the hyper-competitive landscape in both the iPhone App Store and Android Market. Craigslist doesn't make its own app, so dozens of developers have hacked together mobile apps that piggyback on top of Craigslist's Web-based service. It's led to an oversupply of similarly named apps, all doing the same thing. Take a look at the screenshot below, from the iPhone App Store:

How can all of the apps have the same name? They don't -- if you look closely, you'll notice that different punctuation has been added:

Craigs-list
Craigslist
Craigslist.
Craigslist!
Craigslist`

The reason why the developers used this name is because A) they know end-users will search for Craigslist in the App Store and B) they want to rank higher in the results than the competition. It's extreme SEO, except it's using the iPhone App Store search engine instead of Google. Note, however, that unlike Google results, Apple App Store rankings depend on human inputs. Every app in the Apple App Store has been reviewed by human beings before being accepted, which means that Apple isn't paying attention, or doesn't really care what shows up in the search results.

The Android Market is similarly crowded with apps having similar names and functionality. To further confuse things, Craigslist Mobile on Android is made by a completely different company than Craigslist Mobile for the iPhone.

I don't know who is copying who, but it makes a mess for users.

Up and down days in the life of a startup

2012-01-30T22:10:00.001-05:00

After writing a post about the Startup Roller Coaster on the Invantory blog, many friends asked me questions like this:

"So did you write that on an up day, or a down day?"

Truth of the matter is that post was prompted by a really "down" day coming right after a really "up" day. A few days later, after my co-founder and I had talked over the situation, and got some great advice and support from our mentors, the feeling changed. The boat started to right itself, and the sails once again started to fill with wind.

As you can imagine, life gets very stressful in a startup. The ups and downs are only part of the picture -- we also have to deal with crazy work schedules, shifting priorities, and a lack of startup capital, among other problems. It's hard, but also invigorating. As I tell many friends, I look forward to getting started every day, even if I've only had a few hours of sleep and I know there are a lot of tough obstacles to overcome. It's a good feeling to be able to move fast, and making progress can help turn a bad day on the startup roller coaster into a good day.

What's with the CIC references?

2012-01-09T00:08:00.003-05:00

People following my @ilamont and @invantory Twitter feeds may have noticed frequent references and updates relating to the CIC. It stands for "Cambridge Innovation Center," an office building in Kendall Square that is hugely important to the local startup scene and to our startup as well.

More than 200 companies and individuals (including my business partner) rent office space in the CIC. Even for the cheapest co-working space (currently $250/month), wi-fi, coffee, and access to conference rooms and printers are included in the no-lease rental price. Most of the companies are tech startups that are developing businesses around software, hardware, and devices, although there are also investors and supporting firms (such as lawyers) in the building. We are in the CIC on a regular basis for meetings and events.

Besides being large, the community at the CIC is also very supportive. I've contacted numerous startup founders in the CIC to ask questions, and have never been turned down for a meeting. Some founders even make a point of helping others, either through free events or "entrepreneur's office hours". One example that stands out is a CEO of a small digital marketing firm who held such a session for me at 7 o'clock in the evening, which meant that she wouldn't be getting home until quite late. Such is the life of startup people, but I was touched nonetheless -- she didn't have to do this, but she did anyway, because she wanted to help other founders.

If you're interesting in learning more, I've written about the Cambridge Innovation Center and can share my opinion about the environment there. However, for specifics or more in-depth reviews of the CIC, it's necessary to contact old hands or the CIC operating company itself.

Roomba vs. vacuum cleaners: The robot wins!

2012-01-03T22:24:00.003-05:00

Every once in a while an invention comes along that changes the way people live their lives. Computers, mobile phones, television, washing machines and cars are but a few examples. I'd like to add to the list robot vacuum cleaners ... specifically, the iRobot Roomba Model 530 that we got last month. It has changed the way we do housework, and has really freed up a lot of time for us to do other things.

A lack of time was the reason we got the robot. I have been cranking away on starting a new company producing a classifieds app and simply don't have the bandwidth to vacuum the house every week, and neither do other family members. I had heard about the Roomba for years but never considered buying one, owing to the expense and the fact that one of us usually had enough time to vacuum every week using a 15-year-old Sharp upright model. But when we both began new careers, the problem suddenly presented itself. Around the same time, I saw a brief side-by-side review of three robotic vacuum cleaners by America's Test Kitchen, and noted that the prices were coming down. I did some additional online research, and decided on the Roomba 530

We put it to work right away. The results were impressive -- it cleaned up our bedroom, even getting underneath dressers and night tables, in less than 30 minutes. It got into corners and redid each spot multiple times, resulting in lots of debris in the dirt and dust traps. Next was the bathroom and hallway, and then the kids' rooms, and finally the downstairs area, including the kitchen. We have mostly hardwood floors throughout the house, which really suits the Roomba, although we've noticed it takes care of medium-sized rugs as well.

The greatest thing about the Roomba is it's pretty much fire-and-forget. You spend a minute or two prepping the rooms to be cleaned (moving toys out of the way, putting up loose electrical cords, shutting doors where you don't want the robot to go) press the button on the top, and let the robot do its thing. It seems to be moving randomly, but there is a method to its cleaning path, driven by trigonometry and some sophisticated algorithms. It's actually a great feeling being able to work in one part of the house while hearing the Roomba whirring away. Yesterday we even went out shopping and left the Roomba to clean the whole downstairs. When we came back the floor was clean and the robot had automatically returned to its charging station.

Are there drawbacks? Sure. One thing that some people will hate is having to clean the robot. Unlike a standard vacuum, which only requires changing bags or shaking out a dirt trap every now and then, the Roomba requires regular maintenance that contains about a half-dozen distinct tasks. You have to manually empty the dirt and dust traps (typically after a large room or the entire floor) and periodically unscrew the brush and rollers to remove tangled hair and dust. It doesn't take long, but it's dirty (with pets it would be even worse). It is also absolutely necessary to keep all of the parts moving.

There are some other minor irritants as well. It can get stuck on high barriers or under furniture that has hanging springs or rods, like our sofa bed. Cords and strings can mess it up. One time it brought down a heavy plug that I had placed on a table. It landed on top of the robot and shut it down, but there was no permanent damage (the robot is actually pretty sturdy). Another time I had to shut it down just before the end of a long string of yarn got swiped into its brushes. You can buy electronic barriers to keep it out of certain areas, but I've found the range on those are only about 10 feet, which means it can get around them if you're trying to block off part of a big room. As an alternative, I sometimes lay chairs on their sides to stop the robot from passing certain areas.

But overall, the Roomba is a remarkable invention. It's a huge timesaver. I estimate it saves us about 5-10 hours of labor per month. The cost is comparable with many upright models -- less than $300 when we bought ours. And while the maintenance is a minor pain, it's worth it.

What people are selling on Craigslist

2011-12-12T22:50:00.000-05:00

I've started a new series of posts on the Invantory blog about what people are selling on Craigslist. The first post, "Craigslist Boston: What are people selling?" lists the top 20 categories for Craigslist Boston and generally give a good summary of what people are selling elsewhere in the state.

Not surprisingly, cars make it to the top of the list, and furniture, too, as well as computers, electronics, and cell phones. With the exception of phones, I've been using Craigslist (and before that, newspaper classifieds and the Want Ads) to buy and sell items in the other categories for many years.

In fact, one of the triggers for Invantory was my frustrating Craigslist experience selling an old Mac mini my parents gave me earlier this year. I wasn't the only one who had experienced similar hassles -- my partner, Sam Chow, was also familiar with Craigslist problems, after moving overseas and needing to sell all the stuff in his apartment.

Anyway, check out the blog post. I will be sharing more information in the months to come about how people use online classifieds, and then we plan to launch our own mobile classifieds service and build a solid Mass Craigslist alternative. Stay tuned!

Outer Limits, Moody Street: A 20th-century shop thrives in the digital age

2011-12-05T05:11:00.041-05:00

Comic book stores are one of those 20th century retail holdouts that will continue to hold on to their tight little niche. I realized this as I was browsing the aisles of Outer Limits, located on the bustling old-school shopping district along Moody Street in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Economists and e-commerce experts may be skeptical. How is it possible, they might ask, that a store that specializes in analog media and obscure toys, carries tens of thousands of dollars worth of inventory, and is generally regarded as a lifestyle business has any hope in the plugged-in, digital age?

My answer: It's not just that Outer Limits has an amazing collection of sci-fi toys, pop-culture memorabilia, Mad books, Dungeons & Dragons manuals, 45 RPM records, and (of course) several thousand comic books.

It's also because the collection is browsable and tactile in a way that eBay and Amazon are not.

It's because Outer Limits leverages these online channels to support customers outside of eastern Massachusetts -- and does so with near-perfect customer satisfaction rates.

It's because the owner, Steve, can answer questions about practically any obscure comic book author/artist, and has samples or collections of many of them.

It's because the store has a wide range of customers, mostly males from about age 5 to 50, but some women, and many foreign visitors.

And it's because customers can find things that they probably wouldn't even know to look for on most e-commerce sites. To wit:

Angry Birds stuffed toy? Check!

Darth Vader bobblehead? Check!

Model Clone Wars troop carrier? Check!

Newly published collection of Spy vs. Spy escapades? Check!

Die-cast Aston-Martin car from an old 007 movie? Check!

Collections of seemingly every well-known American comic book character, from Archie to the X-Men? Check!

Complete Neal Adams collection, from the 1960s to the 1990s? Check!

Large plastic Godzilla action figure? Check!

Large plastic Mecha-Godzilla action figure? Check!

I am not the only fan. I was in the shop recently and it was packed with kids, teens, and adults. Everyone was finding something that interested them. And as long as there is a supply of unique items that tug at people's sense of nostalgia, pop culture, and fun, Outer Limits will continue to hold on to its special niche.

The shop is located on 437 Moody Street in Waltham, Massachusetts (two doors down from the popular Patel Brothers Indian supermarket).

Startup blog mistakes no entrepreneur should make

2011-11-24T14:48:00.030-05:00

I am the author of a startup blog -- the Invantory blog, which we launched last month. But I've also been looking at a lot of other companies' startup blogs as we researched startup accelerator programs like Y Combinator and TechStars. One thing I noticed during my review of some of the companies that had participated in the programs in the past was a moderate number of company blogs that have been neglected or outright abandoned.

Company blogs are a very well-known and important channel for informing users, recruiting customers, and sharing expertise, so I was surprised to see this trend. Blogs that haven't been updated in months or even years without any explanation prompt some users (and customers) to wonder if something's wrong, and outdated information that hasn't been corrected with newer posts can be a source of misunderstandings. These issues can have a negative effect on the business.

As I looked into why this was happening, it was clear that there were several causes. One unsurprising reason was many startups are too busy to regularly update the blog. Others had folded, but for whatever reason left the blog up and running. A few decided that blogging wasn't a good fit for them, or didn't deliver much value.

Whatever the reason, the fact that startup blogs are not updated is a major mistake for the companies that operate them. Fortunately, there are a number of solutions, and many of them are relatively easy to implement. I've outlined a list on the Invantory blog -- be sure to read and share it.

Choosing customers: What our startup learned

2011-10-19T09:44:00.000-04:00

I'm in the process of starting a software company. My co-founder and I are targeting the online classifieds marketplace, but for a few months were considering how our technology might serve the struggling newspaper industry. Yesterday, I posted a very long account on the official Invantory blog that discusses why we changed our minds. It's located here:

Why our online classifieds startup decided not to pursue the newspaper industry

One reader emailed me after seeing the post and asked what was the biggest lesson I had learned from this experience. My response:

"The biggest lesson in terms of targeting the newspaper industry was how bad the technology picture really is. When we hear about the problems that are bringing down these great companies, there's a lot of talk about demographics, advertising, consolidation, business models, staffing levels, alternate information channels, etc. But I think technology infrastructure is one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated elements that have contributed to the slide. The blog post I sent you talks a little bit about this (lack of standards, integration woes, technology vendors), but there is a great business case or Wired article waiting to be written ..."

If you want to follow the progress of Invantory as we attempt to provide an alternative to Boston Craigslist, please regularly check the company blog (links above) or follow us on Twitter at @invantory.

Prospect Hill, Waltham: Before the leaves turn ...

2011-10-09T14:47:00.002-04:00

Scenes from a mid-autumn walk in Waltham, Massachusetts. It's been a strange fall, with lots of moisture in September and temperatures in the 80s in mid-October. Usually by this time, the leaves are turning but not this year. Still, it's quite beautiful ...

Overcoming the technical cofounder problem

2011-10-04T23:11:00.000-04:00

An acquaintance recently contacted me about an idea for a Web startup, using social media to bringing together people interested in humanitarian causes, art, positive change, etc. She knew I have been heavily involved in digital media/online communities and asked for my advice. The problem she had, and it's a problem that I think is quite widespread, is she doesn't have the required coding skills. I responded with the following message:

Regarding your idea for a social media site (or network?) it sounds pretty interesting, and there are definitely niches out there that are not being well served by Facebook, Linkedin Groups, or existing Web forums.

That being said, I would be very careful about what area you target, as there are many existing services that address some of the areas that you named below -- Jumo, http://www.humanitarianforum.org/, some specific art-oriented communities, etc. Convincing users to join your site when there are already compelling services out there with large user communities is more difficult than targeting an unserved or underserved population.

In addition, in my experience creating user communities and blogs in the past, I have found that very tight niches ("South Florida Artists for Peace") are much easier to gain traction than broad communities ("Worldwide Artists for Positive Change and Humanitarian Causes").

As for the nuts and bolts of creating the community, the good news is that there are many existing software platforms out there that make it much easier to get started, and good coders will know how to use them.

The bad news is that good coders can be hard to find -- there is definitely a shortage of engineering talent, and you will be competing against larger companies and funded startups for them.

But there is a silver lining: There are many software developers who are currently working as employees who are interested in co-founding a company. The question then arises of how to find one who likes your idea, recognizes the skills/connections you are bringing to the table, can brainstorm/collaborate on how to move the project forward, and finds the opportunity worth pursuing.

In my opinion, the co-founder has to be someone you can meet in person on a regular basis -- that's how trust gets built, and ideas can move forward much more quickly than by sending emails or relying on Skype. You can work your local networks, or start attending local entrepreneurial meetups (preferably technology-oriented events). If there are none in your area, try organizing one and bring in one or two speakers that startup founders would want to hear from (for instance, a local lawyer talking about LLC vs S-Corp formation, or someone who has founded a successful startup in the past).

Plan B would involve outsourcing all of the coding using Guru.com, Elance, or remote developers recommended to you by someone else. The problem with this approach, besides the cost, is working out the software specifications and deliverables can be very frustrating if you've never done it before. It's possible to find developers who can help walk you through the process, but even still the chance for misunderstandings and "scope creep" is very high -- another reason to find a technical co-founder.

I didn't get into the details of some of the software components that could be used to make such a site, but when I heard the idea I immediately thought of open-source content-management systems such as Joomla and Drupal, and authentication tools such as Facebook Connect and Twitter's xAuth/OAuth that would let people use their existing social media identities to authenticate/register and easily distribute the site's content and discussions elsewhere.

Rules for photography in public: The ACLU view

2011-09-22T00:11:00.002-04:00

The ACLU has a great page that explains what's allowed and what's not when it comes to taking photos and video in public places. It's an issue that's very important to anyone living in a free and open society, but is especially important now, considering nearly every mobile phone sold today has a digital camera buit in, and most of them can also take video (even my low-tech Nokia handset that came for free with my AT&T prepaid plan can shoot video, albeit at 128x96). The result is anyone with such a phone can photography anything or video any event that they happen to witness, whether it's mundane or extraordinary. Not everyone appreciates being photographed/videoed, however, and there is always a worry about getting in some sort of trouble for taking photographs. What are our rights?

The ACLU page lays it out very clearly. In terms of photography:

When in public spaces where you are lawfully present you have the right to photograph anything that is in plain view. That includes pictures of federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police. Such photography is a form of public oversight over the government and is important in a free society.

When you are on private property, the property owner may set rules about the taking of photographs. If you disobey the property owner's rules, they can order you off their property (and have you arrested for trespassing if you do not comply).

Police officers may not generally confiscate or demand to view your photographs or video without a warrant. If you are arrested, the contents of your phone may be scrutinized by the police, although their constitutional power to do so remains unsettled. In addition, it is possible that courts may approve the seizure of a camera in some circumstances if police have a reasonable, good-faith belief that it contains evidence of a crime by someone other than the police themselves (it is unsettled whether they still need a warrant to view them).

Police may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances.

And:

If you are stopped or detained for taking photographs:

Always remain polite and never physically resist a police officer.

If stopped for photography, the right question to ask is, "am I free to go?"
If the officer says no, then you are being detained, something that under the law an officer cannot do without reasonable suspicion that you have or are about to commit a crime or are in the process of doing so. Until you ask to leave, your being stopped is considered voluntary under the law and is legal.
If you are detained, politely ask what crime you are suspected of committing, and remind the officer that taking photographs is your right under the First Amendment and does not constitute reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.

The underlined emphasis is mine. I was not aware of these issues until I read this page, and the phrase "Am I free to go?" is one worth remembering. Note also that not all officials (including police) understand the law when it comes to taking pictures in public places.

It's also worth remembering that public spaces include streets, parks, and many other exterior spaces. Further, these rights don't only apply to photographing police, but also anyone who happens to be in them. While someone may demand that you "put that camera down" or "stop taking pictures of me" and you are in a public space, you are legally within your rights to keep shooting -- although the polite thing to do may be different.

When it comes to shooting video, however, wiretapping laws have clouded the picture, and have been abused by police in Massachusetts and other states. Stories of people videoing an arrest on the street or even from their own property only to be arrested themselves have become disturbingly commonplace, and has a chilling effect on public behavior. There are signs the courts are coming around, but in the meantime reading the ACLU's take is helpful for understanding what's at stake:

With regards to videotaping, there is an important legal distinction between a visual photographic record (fully protected) and the audio portion of a videotape, which some states have tried to regulate under state wiretapping laws.

Such laws are generally intended to accomplish the important privacy-protecting goal of prohibiting audio "bugging" of private conversations. However, in nearly all cases audio recording the police is legal.

In states that allow recording with the consent of just one party to the conversation, you can tape your own interactions with officers without violating wiretap statutes (since you are one of the parties).

In situations where you are an observer but not a part of the conversation, or in states where all parties to a conversation must consent to taping, the legality of taping will depend on whether the state's prohibition on taping applies only when there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. But that is the case in nearly all states, and no state court has held that police officers performing their job in public have a reasonable expectation. The state of Illinois makes the recording illegal regardless of whether there is an expectation of privacy, but the ACLU of Illinois is challenging that statute in court as a violation of the First Amendment.

As for the question of whether it's OK to photograph or video the TSA, the answer is yes you can, as long as you are not interfering with the screening process or taking photos of their baggage scanner screens. Read the ACLU page for more information.

You may also be interested in some other blogging I've done, including:

Image: Protests in San Francisco, August 2011. Photo by flickr user tedeytan, posting here under the terms of the creative commons license used: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0).

North Country: St. Lawrence County

2011-08-31T23:39:00.000-04:00

"North Country" is the upper tier of counties in New York state bordering Canada and including the northern part of the Adirondack Park. It's a very rural place, and very special. All the pictures below were taken in St. Lawrence County, ranging from abandoned farms in the town of Hammond to a Civil War re-enactment in Massena. Most of the water pictures were taken around Morristown, looking over to Brockville, Ontario, on the Canadian side of the river. I hope you can appreciate the great beauty here, and not just in the sunsets. I have a few additional notes at the bottom of the post, after the photos:

I've been coming here on a regular basis for most of my life, and have many relatives who live or summer in St. Lawrence county. Change is slow. Sometimes it mirrors what is happening elsewhere in America -- seemingly everyone has gotten a mobile phone, "for sale" signs are commonplace, and Wal-mart and national franchises dominate the retail landscape on the outskirts of Ogdensburg, Massena, and a few other small cities. But sometimes the change is unpredictable. In the 1990s, Amish started buying cheap farms in the North Country, and now they are ubiquitous. The influx has somewhat offset the downward trend in the locally born population, and have helped to reinvigorate the farming economy in St. Lawrence county.

Images: I am licensing the photos of St. Lawrence County under Creative Commons 3.0 CC-BY, which basically means you are free to copy them, place them on your own website, use them for commercial purposes, and adapt them, as long as you attribute them to Ian Lamont and link back to this post on ilamont.com.

The graphic of the North Country counties was uploaded to Wikipedia by Jondude11. I am reproducing it here under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, as described here.

Visualizing your professional LinkedIn networks

2011-08-28T22:22:00.002-04:00

This is cool. LinkedIn has developed a visualization for members' professional networks. I spotted an example on a blog that I was browsing, and was curious to see what turned up for me. I was kind of surprised by the results:

What's going on here? In a nutshell, my map reflects two major networks I am a part of: My MIT Sloan Fellows class (blue) and IDG Enterprise (orange).

The Sloan Fellows group of about 100 people are so connected with each other (i.e., nearly everyone is connected with everyone else in the group) that the lines between them form a nearly solid mass of blue. A few people on the outside of the blue mass are MIT students from other programs (e.g., the two-year Sloan MBA) who have a few connections with others in my class.

The orange network consists of former colleagues at IDG Enterprise -- mostly editors and technical staff but also some business executives. There are also many lines between them, but not nearly to the same degree as the Sloan Fellow network. That's because the IDGers are more likely to be connected to people in their own publications (Network World, Computerworld, The Industry Standard, etc.) and/or to people having similar roles (editors with editors, developers with developers, etc.). As I worked at three IDG publications and in many cross-functional teams from 1999 to 2010, I am pretty well connected across these groups.

There are some interesting small groups near the center of my galaxy. They aren't necessarily close to me; rather, it appears smaller networks (light orange, green, and magenta) or single connections (gray lines) are shown nearer to the center of the visualization. The colored networks include a group of a half-dozen people (green) I met at the State of Play conference in 2007 and connected with on LinkedIn immediately afterwards. I haven't had much contact with any of them since then.

Another group (magenta) consists of high school pals who I have had regular contact with over the years, but are barely noticeable on the map, owing to the fact there are only four of them. Actually, there should be five magenta dots, but one of the guys who is connected with me is not connected with any of the others, and therefore shows up as a single grey dot -- even though he happens to be one of my closest friends.

Not reflected at all is my extensive network in Taiwan, which I developed over a six-year period in the 1990s when I lived in Taipei. If it were visualized, it would have about 20-30 people with slightly less density than my IDG network. Why isn't it there? Two reasons that come to mind are the network predates LinkedIn by many years, and many of the people who I know from that period of life are Taiwanese and are therefore less likely to be LinkedIn users (social network usage in Taiwan evolved much differently than it did in the U.S. and other countries). While I have still connected with about a half-dozen people from my time in Taiwan, they show up as gray dots because I knew them from different settings (social, music, different jobs, etc.) and they are not connected with each other.

Nevertheless, it's an interesting visualization and makes me wonder if I need to develop other professional networks in new ways. You can try it out by visiting InMaps, which will require you to authenticate through your LinkedIn account.

How to become a good writer

2011-08-14T10:21:00.000-04:00

I have a one-word piece of advice for anyone who wants to learn how to write:

Blog.

Don't worry about which software to use, how to customize your template, or how to promote your thoughts. Just find a service that lets you start writing right away, and then start writing about what interests you or inspires you.

If you feel intimidated by formatting or structure, a trick that works well is pretend you are writing an email to a friend, explaining to that friend something that he or she may not understand very well. Real friends or strangers may start to read your posts. How do they respond to your presentation of facts, observations, and arguments? Use the feedback to tweak your approach.

Your organization and "voice" may seem awkward at first, but regular practice -- every day, if you can manage -- will help you develop your skills. After 100 hours you'll notice a big improvement. After 1000 hours, you will be well on your way to being a master.

Educational iPhone game development: Our experience with Egg Drop

2011-07-13T12:31:00.005-04:00

It's an exciting feeling to be a part of a team that creates something special. It's even more exciting when you see early users not only getting a kick out of the product, but asking to use it again and again.

That was our experience with Egg Drop on the iPhone, an educational game and our student team's final project for 11.127/252/CMS.590, Computer Games and Simulations for Education and Exploration (see also my post on an earlier student project from the same class, "A curriculum for learning computer programming in WoW"). Our assignment, which built on nearly three months of instruction, theory, readings, and other projects, was to design and produce a digital game that is playable for 15-20 minutes. "You should identify clear learning goals and map them onto game dynamics," we were told. To actually develop the game, it took about 24 days from the initial ideation sessions to the final presentation at class demo day.

There is a lot of flexibility in the term "digital game," and the half-dozen student teams in the class pursued all kinds of ideas. On demo day, we saw Terminus, a text-based adventure to teach terminal commands ("Zork meets terminal," was one way of describing it). Another student team created a PC game called Rocketmouse that taught children the fundamentals of gravity.

The class had a lot of Course 6 undergraduates, including some who had written games in the past. But the instructors (Eric Klopfer and Jason Haas) made an effort to balance out the teams with experienced programmers and people who couldn't program, but were able to handle other tasks.

Our team didn't go into the project thinking that we would make a mobile game. The ideation process started with the class brainstorming on potential learning topics; those ideas were put on a whiteboard and then people could choose which team they wanted to join. Inspired by a recent engineering documentary about the construction of a helipad on top of a wind-blown skyscraper, I suggested doing some sort of construction-based game that would teach basic architectural concepts. At the time, I was thinking of something on a PC or the Web, which would allow for a more sophisticated interface.

Alec, a Course VI classmate with whom I had worked on a “digital gates” board game earlier in the semester, was interested, along with a few other undergraduates. We discussed how to improve the concept. One of the first suggestions was to do it as an iPad game. The idea was to use a touch-screen interface to build a skyscraper, and then testing the strength of the construction with various environmental forces such as wind, earthquakes, and other disasters. Alec came up with a clever twist: How about turning the game into a variation of Angry Birds? Instead of being the birds trying to get at the pigs, the player would be the pig, trying to protect the egg from being knocked down, by building a strong-enough structure.

The “Reverse Angry Birds” proposal (also known as “Reverse Upset Avians”, or RUA) was put on a whiteboard with about a dozen other ideas. It got some votes from the class, and was chosen as a finalist project. Five people joined the team in all, and we started to refine the idea and discuss the practicalities of implementing them.

One decision that we had to make right away concerned the platform. While the iPad sounded promising, there was a problem: Aside from me, no one had an iPad, which would make life difficult for our developers when it came time to test the app. The iPhone seemed like a better idea, because:

Three of us had iPhones or an iPod touch
Three of us had Macs, which meant we could work in Xcode, Apple’s developer tool for the iOS SDK
Alec had experience developing games and developing on the iPhone platform, and was also familiar with a 2D game engine for the iPhone called cocos2D.

The team agreed that the iPhone/Xcode path was the way to go. Clearly, myself and the one other person who were not Course VI would be unable to build a game, but there was room for us to do “code-like” activities, ranging from building artwork and sound files to creating levels in XML. I was capable of doing those tasks (and had some prior experience with level design in our 6.898/Linked Data final project), and could do user testing/QA (I had two young subjects who were willing to pitch in, as described below).

In the proposal document submitted to our instructors, we described the game as follows:

Egg Drop is a physics-based game designed for the iOS platform that attempts to teach basic intuition of physics and stable structures.

Because it is an iOS game, the only way to play Egg Drop (barring a release on the Apple app store) is to download and compile the source. The source of the game is hosted publicly on Github and can be found at:

https://github.com/alect/Digital-Egg-Drop

Learning Goals:

Gain a rudimentary understanding of physics, construction and other principles involved in building structures

Learn strategies for building stable structures that can survive the elements.

Learn to use resources in an optimal way to meet construction goals.

Develop the hypothesize -> experiment -> redesign strategy of designing, which is a useful skill in many wider disciplines than construction. The flow of the game should lead the player to use this strategy inherently, and hopefully bring the strategy with them from the game.

Our plan was approved, and we got started on RUA. MIT has built up a culture around experimentation and prototyping and we all got to work pretty quickly. Alec was the lead developer, and took on tasks relating to integrating the physics engines, building the objects and resource manager, and creating a sound engine. He built a working prototype within a few days and uploaded it to github, which let those of us with Macs download it and try it out in Xcode’s iPhone simulator.

Another Course Sixer, Sarah, hadn’t used Xcode or Objective C before, but got up to speed very quickly. She was responsible for much of the final design as well as an in-game tutorial, which really helped make the game more appealing (you can see the tutorial in the gameplay video at the bottom of this post). She also created the system to import levels in XML format, which made it easy for me to do some age-appropriate level design and implementation on my own for our user testing -- before the XML engine was built, in order to alter levels during testing I had to change values in arrays and arguments in ResourceManager.mm. These changes were difficult to share with the rest of the team and prone to error, so Sarah’s work was very helpful. A third Course Six concentrator, Stephen, didn’t have a Mac (a requirement for Xcode) but worked on artwork, sound files, and documentation. The other member of the team worked on level design.

The game evolved from our original vision of creating a variation of Angry Birds. Creating the gameplay and artwork for the pigs and birds would have been extremely difficult and time-consuming (we only had a few weeks before demo day on May 10). We settled for a slimmed-down version of the game in which the goal was to build a structure that would protect a single egg from an onslaught of natural disasters at the end of each round. For instance, the kid-friendly level #3 used the following XML as inputs:

On the screen of the iPhone simulator, this translated to an egg resting on the plain at the start of the game (posx and posy describe its starting position). The player could place, in order, two vertical wooden planks, a horizontal straw block, and a horizontal brick, before the disaster (a meteor falling from the sky, directly on top of the egg) occurred. The only way to survive: Placing the two vertical wooden planks next to the egg and the horizontal brick resting on top of the plank, over the egg. Any other combination resulted in the egg breaking and “game over” for the player.

As the game evolved, we dropped “Reverse Upset Avians” and started calling it EggDrop. It was an instant hit with my kids, even before we had meteors and earthquakes. The simple physics of placing planks around the egg was entertaining enough in sandbox mode (see screenshots, below). But when better artwork, different building materials, nails and other elements were added, it was addictive. My younger child in particular would ask to play it when he came from school, and after I came home from a long international trip, one of the first things he asked to do was play the game on the iPhone simulator.

One interesting element of game design that came up with the Egg Drop project was the target audience. I thought we should really be clear who we were targeting at the outset. Segmentation and “Total Addressable Market” exercises are part and parcel of the Sloan way in classes such as New Enterprises. But we ended up taking a much more flexible approach, as described in our proposal:

“One advantage of iOS and other touch devices is that they support a very wide age range. We hope the game will be playable by children as young as five or six while still being entertaining to adults. Young children will most likely reap the most benefit from the educational concepts the game presents. In addition, we found that we could cater levels to fit different age ranges, making the game customizable for all learning levels.”

While age customization was possible, for the purposes of testing we only had two versions: One for us and college-aged friends, and a simpler version for younger elementary school students. I worked extensively on the kid version, and developed new age-appropriate levels based on regular user testing. Here are a few excerpts from my user testing diary, which was submitted as part of our final project:

4/30/11

The kids had a fun time with a modified version of alect-Digital-Egg-Drop-3357c7c (I added about 30 extra block and nail objects, so they could play longer). They definitely get the nailing aspect of the construction, and used it to protect their egg almost immediately.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5/4/11

Tested alect-Digital-Egg-Drop-9f0fc79 on my son. This was the first time he had seen the disasters, which he really enjoyed (especially the earthquake, which sometimes sends blocks flying).

I was also surprised to see that he right away figured out the solution to the wind disaster (nailing something to the floor) which vexed me when I saw it the first time.

He also used extensive experimentation to try to solve all of the problems he observed. For instance, for the earthquake, he tried positioning the blocks close to and further away from the egg, nailing different size blocks to the floor, etc. He gave up after 4-5 unsuccessful tries, at which point I showed him how to do it. Then he played to the end (two tall planks).

He noticed and liked the new egg [artwork].

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5/6/11

Played build alect-Digital-Egg-Drop-d3eb420, which has some memory issues that Alec addressed. However, we noticed a bug after the second level that prevented us from going to the third level -- the level up button didn't respond on the emulator.

The gameplay is fun, and as a proof of concept it is good, but I wonder if the learning couldn't be more robust. Maybe if we had more time ...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5/9/11

Building out levels in XML. I am using Google Docs spreadsheet to track the progressive difficulty of the challenges, and using my own judgement and gameplay to see how they work.

The advantage of using oneself for testing is I can quickly rearrange the blocks or disasters, reinsert them into ResourceManager.mm, and play the new version on the emulator.

I am going to try to introduce it to my son tomorrow morning ... I unfortunately won't see him for the rest of the day.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5/10/11

My son hadn't seen the new designs, so he was very happy to see the artwork. He also liked the meteor, cushion blocks, and the idea of the termites. He got up to speed pretty quickly on the simple progressive levels I set up for him. On the quake level, which requires surrounding the egg with cushions and nailing them together in a certain way, he couldn't solve it, and took an interesting area of experimentation that I hadn't considered -- reinforcing the cushions with wood braces.

The other thing that I am conscious of is the game really has to be customized to age/ability. What appealed to him as a 6-year-old wouldn't appeal to older players.

One thing that’s worth mentioning about the testing is I didn’t need to pressure my kids to help out. Both of them love games. My son has probably tried a few dozen age-appropriate titles on my iPod touch, and regularly returns to the ones that are most entertaining. It was clear that Egg Drop fell into the same league as favorite games such as Angry Birds, Cro-Mag, Fruit Ninja, and the Simpsons game. He simply couldn’t get enough of Egg Drop, even during the early builds when the game was still rough around the edges. Here’s a video of him trying out an early version, about one week into the development process:

Beyond the experience of working on iOS game design, there were several other takeaways from the project. One was being able to participate in a rapid prototyping process integrated with user testing. This combination is held up as an ideal at MIT and elsewhere, but getting the right team and the right testers in place can be difficult. Before coming to MIT, I worked in Web media for years. Even on those rare occasions when my employers had adequate engineering resources in place to develop new products, testing was usually handled in-house and at a very late stage. Sometimes this was because testing was not considered a crucial part of the product development process, but at other times it was difficult to find actual users or the product had to be kept under wraps out of fear of premature leaks or tipping off the competition.

For Egg Drop, not only was the team technologically top-heavy (three out of five were programmers), but we had access to real users in our target audience, which let us observe gameplay, hangups, and other aspects of the user experience. This feedback loop led to better gameplay and helped us eliminate speed bumps and outright bugs at a relatively early stage.

A second takeaway related to gameplay theory. While the Egg Drop project was focused on real gameplay issues and the practicalities of developing a game for a mobile device, I did find myself looking back to some of the research that we had studied in class earlier in the semester, in particular the readings from James Paul Gee. He articulated a lot of modern thinking about models, video games, and learning in his 2008 paper, Learning and Games (e.g., “Video games offer people experiences in a virtual world ... and they use learning, problem solving, and mastery for engagement and pleasure”). His “situated learning matrix” for understanding how context-based learning in games can be applied to the world at large was described in terms of first-person shooters in 3D worlds. But one can see how a modeling experience in a 2D world like Egg Drop (such as my son’s experimentation with reinforcing braces that I observed in the user testing diary) might also be internalized, generalized, and applied to other situations, even if protecting eggs from meteors never figures into his daily life. This ties back to our proposal to "develop the hypothesize -> experiment -> redesign strategy of designing, which is a useful skill in many wider disciplines than construction."

Gee introduced another interesting concept in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. The concept of “Semiotic Domains,” as it applies to video games, basically says that players will find it easier to transition to new scenarios that have similarities to old scenarios they have already encountered. In terms of gameplay, this not only helps explain the continued popularity of RPGs, "shooters," and other genres, but also how specific features work for some gamers and not for others. For instance, my son was already familiar with the iPod touch and physics-based games such as Ragdoll Blaster and Angry Birds, which made it easy for him to get into Egg Drop. However, he was perplexed by the preview of the next object in the upper right corner of the screen. This convention dates from 80s-era games like Tetris, which he had never tried. He therefore applied his own gaming experiences to Egg Drop, and attempted to drag the preview pieces onto the playing area (this can be seen in the video of game testing, above). In a commercial development project, such an observation among many early testers might be a cue to re-evaluate that feature.

A third takeaway from the Egg Drop concerned the design of the game, not only as it relates to gameplay, but also the artwork used in the game. While the cocos2D physics were slick, the graphic elements were very simple (I should know -- I made the bricks and a few other elements using Preview in OS X). But to our young testers, it didn’t matter. The game art was enough to convey the concept, and the gameplay was addictive.

Fourth takeaway: As our instructors mentioned at one point late in the semester, sandbox mode can really work for younger players. I saw proof with my testers on the first few builds, before Alec had integrated the disasters and win states for levels. In the proto-Egg Drop, it was possible to drop a practically unlimited number of horizontal planks around the egg, but there were no disasters or special materials to work with. It didn’t matter. The kids simply liked the physics of the game, which allowed them to fill up the screen and sometimes model strange situations, such as a mountain of planks for the egg to roll down. I have many screenshots from early versions that show the playing area filled with planks:

Now the reality check: The analysis and observations above are based upon an extremely small userbase playing with test versions of the game. The ultimate excitement for Egg Drop would be refining it and releasing it to the wild, to see how a much larger population of players reacts. Of course, “refining it” would involve not only working on some of the issues identified earlier (level design, artwork, etc.) but also considering the original educational vision of the game -- teaching concepts related to construction and physics. We were not able to do enough basic research around how kids might best learn such concepts, which is unfortunate, because I believe the game is a marvelous vehicle for learning. But this also leads to the question of how to balance desired learning outcomes with gameplay. More experimentation would be required.

In the meantime, here’s a video of the gameplay and design, based on the final build in mid-May:

If you are interested in finding out more about the class, take a look at the course website. You may also be interested in reading about another mobile educational game development project I worked on in Linked Data (6.898) last year. More posts and videos relating to my MIT experience are listed below:

Buttons won't solve the fundamental flaws of Wikipedia's editing policy

2011-07-04T16:13:00.003-04:00

Wikipedia is rolling out a new tool called "WikiLove Buttons." The experiment, as explained by Howie Fung, Erik Moeller, and other top editors, is a weak response to a rather significant problem: Ordinary people ("new editors") don't like being shut out of articles, and when their edits are removed (or even savagely put down by experienced editors) they are less likely to want to contribute again. This undermines the crowdsourcing mission upon which Wikipedia was founded, and erodes quality. Unfortunately for Wikimedia, Inc. and its hundreds of millions of users, this roundabout way of showing appreciation for newbie edits by using a love button won't solve the problem of condescending uber-editors putting down perfectly good edits based on misguided policies, poor/incomplete understanding of topic issues, or inflated ego.

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother writing about this, but what prompted me to was the ReadWriteWeb review of the love button by Marshall Kirkpatrick. I generally like Kirkpatrick's writing but I really dislike when Wikipedia is unquestionably held up as a reliable source of information -- especially by people who speak with authority. While it can be considered a starting place for basic facts, it's hardly a reliable or complete source of information, as I described in my comment left at the bottom of the RWW article:

Disagree with the statement that Wikipedia is an "undeniably good source of information on almost any topic." For some topics, yes. But many others are flawed.

For instance, articles about famous living people are often sanitized by their handlers or supporters. Non-Western topics on English-language Wikipedia are shallow and/or unable to cite primary and secondary sources in other languages. Wikipedia editors do not view blogs as reliable sources, even if the authors are experts in said topic. And attempting to correct mistakes or add information to certain articles often brings up an array of badges, warnings, and restrictions that make it practically impossible for "the crowd" to edit.

As for the new feature, the love icons seem to be designed in a way that they make browsing and contributing more difficult. This may make things better for "top nerds at Wikipedia" but I doubt it will lead to a better product or experience for the rest of us.

GI Bill benefits exploited by for-profit and online colleges

2011-06-29T01:34:00.012-04:00

(Update: Someone writing from the University of Phoenix's corporate parent attempted to post an anonymous comment. Scroll to the end for details) I knew that the multibillion dollar for-profit college industry had some ethical failings (see "ACICS accreditation and for-profit education: What's at stake"), but this takes the cake. According to Frontline's "Educating Sergeant Pantzke" (scroll down to see the video), the ways in which for-profit and mostly online colleges such as Westwood, University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, Gibbs College, DeVry University, Ashford University, and Art Institutes are exploiting military vets are absolutely shameful -- and motivated by a desire to scoop up billions in generous GI Bill benefits for veterans. The vets have served their country, and want to use the educational benefit to get a solid education and a good job following their service. However, the online degrees provide questionable educational value and Frontline found that hiring managers look down on them. In other words, it's a scam -- and taxpayers are paying for it. A few low points in the report:

An Army vet who attended Gibbs College (owned by Career Education Corporation) to study computer animation was promised that the college had connections had connections with the biggest Hollywood studios, including Pixar. The student claims Gibbs never provided proper computer animation training. He blew his GI Bill benefit (which you can apparently only spend on one institution) and took out tens of thousands of dollars in private student loans before realizing his education was useless. His conclusion: "Honestly, I'll regret going to college for the rest of my life."

Another combat veteran, Sergeant Pantzke (pictured) wanted to study photography and was sucked in by the Art Institute's pitch. He was accepted as soon as he filled out the school's online form to inquire about the online bachelor's program. Despite having PTSD, he was promised full support to help him with his studies, which he never received (according to Daniel Golden, an investigative journalist who interviewed him for Bloomberg, "He had preserved a string of e-mails between himself and officials at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, and included in those e-mails were several in which he had asked for help. He had asked for face-to-face tutoring; he had asked for simplified homework assignments. And they had told him that they wouldn't make those accommodations for him"). The school took $70,000 of his GI Bill money, then flunked him.
At these rates, soldiers are paying more for their education than a single year's tuition at Harvard Business School. Why are the for-profit, mostly online colleges schools so expensive? According to BusinessWeek, "American Military University, [University of] Phoenix, and closely held Grantham charge $250 a credit, or $750 a course, which allows them to receive the maximum reimbursed by U.S. taxpayers without service members having to pay any out-of-pocket tuition." By comparison, "Publicly funded community colleges offer classes on military bases for as little as $50 a credit."
Golden also recounted the tale of an ~~unnamed~~ for-profit college (turns out it's Ashford University) that sent a female recruiter to the Wounded Warriors barracks in Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to sign up brain-injured Marines.
Ashford University (remember them?) has 9,000 current or ex-military students, and uses vets for recruiting. Two former recruiters spoke on-screen to Frontline and said they can help establish a rapport with prospective students and convince them to enroll.
Westwood College recruiters lie about job prospects to potential students: On one recording of a phone conversation provided to Frontline, the recruiter told a prospect "Right out of the box you have the ability to make between $72 and $82 thousand dollars."
How much do University of Phoenix and other graduates of for-profit colleges really make? The answer, according to survey data from PayScale cited by Frontline, is military graduates earn 12-15% less at for-profit colleges compared to military graduates of public state schools. The salary levels shown on screen look to be in the $30,000 to $45,000 range.
Ted Daywalt of VetJobs was even more blunt about the prospects for graduates of for-profit schools, and said online degrees have a poor reputation in industry. The Navy vet said he talked with 30 HR managers and asked if they were presented with two job candidate with similar work backgrounds, but one graduated from an online school, and one from a well-known "brick and mortar school," which would they choose? All of the HR managers would choose the brick and mortar school, he said.
The for-profits have done a skillful job of gaming online search results and Web pages that curious vets might look at. For instance, GIBill.com only directs students to for-profit colleges. I looked them up on the site -- the choices are American Military University (owned by American Public Education, Inc.), Strayer University (owned by Strayer Education, Inc.), Ultimate Medical Academy Online, Grantham University, Virginia College (owned by Education Corporation of America), Walden University (owned by Laureate Education), Kaplan University (operated by Iowa College Acquisition Corporation, which is owned by Kaplan Inc., which is in turn owned by the Washington Post), DeVry University (owned by DeVry Inc.), University of Phoenix (owned by Apollo Group), Ashford University (owned by Bridgeport Education), Capella University (owned by Capella Education Co.), Westwood College (owned by Alta Colleges), Art Institutes (owned by Education Management Corporation), and Full Sail University.
According to the Veterans Administration, graduation rates at private for-profits stand at 28%, half the rate for public colleges.
Even if students realize their mistake and try to leave the online and for-profit programs for a public brick-and-mortar school, they won't be able to start their GI benefits at a new school. Even worse, the credits don't always transfer, either because there is no comparable coursework at the state school or community college, or the for-profit school is nationally accredited (see my post on regional accreditation vs national accreditation).

There's more in the Frontline documentary, which you can watch below. It's only about 20 minutes long. I also urge you to watch Frontline's "College Inc." and read some of the other blog posts I've written about the University of Phoenix, online math classes, and distance education, which are listed below the video (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Update: Someone attempted to leave a comment on the site stating the Frontline report is "misleading" and claiming that certain for-profit colleges "like University of Phoenix" are different, specifically when it comes to transferring credits. However, there are some notable examples of schools that do not accept UoP transfer credits ("CIT does not accept courses from the University of Phoenix", "the University of Phoenix is not an accredited institution"). The author was anonymous, but when I checked out my web logs, what did I see? It turned out that the comment was left by someone from UoP's corporate parent, Apollo Group (see screenshot below, which shows the origin of the comment).

I don't mind if executives from for-profit schools leave comments on my blog, but they must clearly identify their association -- or the comment will be rejected and I will expose the incident. It's happened before, as this bizarre attempt at astroturfing or ridiculing UoP students (apparently by another UoP employee) shows.

For further reading about online education and for-profit colleges, I would suggest the following posts:

WorldTV

2011-06-27T01:12:00.005-04:00

One of the more interesting class projects I took part in during my last semester at MIT was the final deliverable for MAS 571 ("Social TV: Creating New Connected Media Experiences"). The project was called WorldTV, and with my team (Jungmoo Park, MBA '11, and Giacomo Summa, MSMS '11), we created a pretty slick video demonstration of the proposed software UI. The video was shown at the MAS 571 demo day at the Media Lab (you can watch it below) and we wrote an accompanying concept paper that we are in the process of preparing for an IEEE CCNC workshop. In the following post, I'll describe not only what WorldTV is, but its genus and some of the reaction we've received so far.

WorldTV is a television app and accompanying mobile app for browsing user-generated video from one's social circle, as well as event video produced by strangers that tie into one's news and cultural interests. Instead of using traditional browsing methods -- scrolling through channels or searching for videos -- the proposed service uses a 3D globe as a navigational tool. WorldTV is aimed at people with global networks, which might include people with friends, relatives, and colleagues from other countries; people who spend a fair amount of time travelling; or people who are interested in news or culture in other countries.

The concept had great appeal to the entire team, not only because of our backgrounds (Giacomo is from Italy, Jungmoo is from Korea, and I spent most of the 1990s living overseas) but also because all of us have observed the exponential growth of user-generated video and realize its power and appeal to ordinary people. In 2006, I wrote about the potential of geotagged, time-stamped online photos to give insights into local events. I expanded the idea to include tweets and user-generated video in a proposal for my Linked Data Ventures class called PPP (PixPeoplePlaces). When I began the Social TV class, I took the PPP concept even further with user-generated video, emphasizing the social aspect of plotting event video on a local map (this was the basis of my first assignment for Social TV -- you can see the poster here).

I envisioned all of these ideas as Web apps displayed on a computer monitor. For one of the early poster sessions for the Social TV class, Giacomo independently came up with a different approach. He asked, why not use a full-sized television screen to display a map of the entire earth with hot spots that reflected breaking hard news events that might be captured by amateur shooters? (This happened as anti-authoritarian demonstrations were breaking out across the Middle East in early 2011). Instead of being a "Lean Forward" experience (something that requires user input or interaction, such as a video game) this would be a "Lean Back" experience, in which the viewer could sit on the couch and take in the video. Giacomo also considered how video could be differentiated on the global map with different sized or colored markers, and how "likes", social networks, or newspaper articles could determine what appeared on the screen. He called it "WorldTV".

There was clearly some overlap between our ideas, and we decided to team up for the final project. We expanded the concept to include not only video from breaking news in other countries, but also cultural events (festivals, parades) and entertainment (sports, performances, etc.). The social filter would not only display streaming/recent videos from one's social circle, but could also reflect the collective interests of the social circle.

An additional requirement for the final project was a business model. I had already been thinking about using phone and laptop cameras as a way for ordinary people to access amateur expertise all over the globe, for a price. Examples of amateur expertise might be a power user demonstrating how to use a new gadget, advice on registering a company in a certain state by an experienced business owner, practicing foreign language conversation with a native speaker, etc. I dubbed the scheme Real Time Requests. (RTR). A live auction and reputation system would determine prices paid by people seeking expertise, and match them up with sellers. We decided to fold it into the proposal. The idea was then debuted at another MAS 571 poster session in April:

Jungmoo, who had a background as a professional television reporter for a Korean broadcaster, was intrigued by our poster session presentation and joined the team. Our next task was to take the concept and make a demo to show at demo day at the MIT Media Lab in the last week of class in May. For the final deliverable, we didn't have the skills to produce a working prototype. However, we did have the skills to produce a software mockup and accompanying video demo.

The team got to work. I created a simple WorldTV television UI using HTML and CSS, built the maps with Google Earth, and mocked up a mobile UX on an iPhone "remote". Giacomo wrote the script and starred in the video. Jungmoo took the raw video and graphics and used his professional editing skills to create a really slick video demo, which is shown below:

We presented the video and an accompanying slideshow on the business model last month at the Media Lab. Our Media Lab instructors, Marie-José Montpetit and Henry Holtzman, invited a group of industry pros from major cable and national broadcasters (including NBC and WGBH) to watch all six student presentations. After seeing our team present, one of the NBC visitors was interested in the idea of "shared experiences." Giacomo explained that user-generated video around sporting events and concerts could populate the global view, depending on how one's filters were set up. This prompted another executive, who I believed was from HBO, to question the legality of using amateur concert video. I responded that copyright law was decades behind the technological and social reality, but she was skeptical. I then said that there would always be artists who want to exercise strong control over this content, but there were also many artists who recognized the value of fan content to generate additional interest or loyalty, and in my opinion, the latter group would have a competitive advantage. But as I thought about it later, it was clear that addressing the entertainment industry's copyright concerns would be a huge issue, regardless of how outdated the laws are.

Our team also heard from Henry, who thought the Real Time Requests business model was really a separate concept that did not match WorldTV. We agreed. Jungmoo and Giacomo had actually raised the same concern in our planning discussions, but I felt we needed a business model that did not involve standard subscriptions. Henry noted that a subscription might actually work for some people.

So what's next for WorldTV? All members of the team have graduated, and none of the industry visitors seemed interested in taking it further. We hope, however, that if our paper is accepted to the IEEE CCNC '12 conference, it might get some traction. In the draft that we are now preparing, I outlined the "Future Work" required to make WorldTV a reality:

The next steps for WorldTV would be to create a working prototype using Google Earth, YouTube and Facebook APIs, the Android or iPhone SDKs, and other existing software and hardware components. Besides using the prototype to evaluate functionality and performance, ordinary users in the target audience (people having global networks) could also test the system with an eye toward determining which features and use cases hold the most promise. When the product is ready for wider distribution, identifying suitable “TV App” platforms and partnerships could take place. In the long run, creating a scalable architecture with its own API and opening up WorldTV to outside developers (much like Facebook and Twitter have done) would help unleash the greatest potential of the platform. This would require significant investments, but in the long run would help realize innovations for the next age of television.

If the paper is published, I will share a link on this space. In addition, if anyone is interested in learning more or helping to develop the idea, my contact information can be found here.

More posts about my MIT experience:

Why new data visualizations fail to catch on

2011-06-08T11:22:00.002-04:00

Eric Hill, a buddy of mine from my old Industry Standard days, sent me a link to a RWW article about a cool new iPad application from Bloom Studio that comes up with an interesting way of visualizing a digital music collection. The app is called Planetary, and here's what it looks like:

Planetary (voiceover) from Bloom Studio, Inc. on Vimeo.

I was impressed with what they've done, but I am afraid it won't go far in the marketplace. At one time I had so much hope for data visualizations changing the way we browse and understand information -- in fact, Eric and I spent a lot of time discussing how Industry Standard site content (news and prediction market data) could be presented in new and potentially useful ways. But in the past several years, after checking out dozens of new interfaces and data visualization schemes, I've come to the conclusion that most will never catch on.

It's not the fault of the designers, but rather the limitations of audiences. For many consumers, simple formats (e.g., longitudinal line graphs, like the inset image of the US$/Euro exchange rate over the past three months) and plain ol' headlines are all they need. I think part of the problem is grokking a new visualization requires new mental models. In my opinion, most people simply aren't willing to expend the effort, especially considering the huge amounts of information out there and limited time that people have to consume it. I've seen so many interesting, creative visualizations out there but most never make it in the marketplace. Planetary is cool, but is a solar system/galactic metaphor for browsing music inherently better than an alphabetically ordered list of artists/albums/songs?

See also:

Want to buy an iPad in Malaysia?

2011-05-19T10:40:00.002-04:00

Good luck. Local supplies are hard to come by, judging by the display in this pseudo-Apple Store in the mall below the Petronas Twin Towers.

A curriculum in computer programming, reviewed

2011-05-01T10:42:00.009-04:00

You may remember the class exercise for CMS.863J (Computer Games and Simulations for Investigation and Education, taught by Eric Klopfer and Jason Haas) in which our student team created a curriculum for teaching basic computer science concepts and programming skills in World of Warcraft. In late April, an NYU class completed their review of the curriculum and let us know where it was strong, and where it was lacking. Here’s what they had to say:

So our class just finished reviewing several of your curricula to be used within the World of Warcraft environment. We like your concept of teaching computer programming through a process similar to learning gameplay. Your rationale is definitely solid.

You also chose and defined very specific learning objectives. From the perspective of a fellow programmer, these are basic concepts in computer programming that computer science learners would need to know.

Several times in your curriculum, you do a nice job at incorporating built-in functions into the lesson plan, which in turn facilitates better gameplay for the student. This could be a major draw for already experienced WoW players who are looking for ways to improve. What about someone who has less experience/interest in the game?

This brings up a possible limitation with your curriculum: whom do you expect to take your class? You mentioned that young people in general are interested in video games, but it is a specific player that is interested in WoW. Although a learning environment like the one you designed has obvious appeal to those already interested in WoW, those who are not interested in this game might have no motivation to improve their gameplay and therefore learn built-in functions or other commands. It would help if you were more specific when identifying your learner. Then once your learner is defined, do they have the necessary motivation or prior knowledge to complete this curriculum? If not, what kinds of support can you provide to make this learning task intrinsically motivating?

Now from the perspective of an educator, although you have clearly outlined specific learning tasks, your plan on implementing these tasks into a formal learning environment is rather vague. As of now, instructions for your teacher include “ask the students to do…” which is left as is for a lesson plan is not very dynamic. Perhaps you could incorporate actual quests/goals of the game to the lesson objectives. For example, it’s great that you teach certain programming objectives that indirectly teach the player certain built-in functions (e.g. item info, total worth of items in your bag, etc). Wouldn’t it be more motivating if you chose a quest in which knowing what you have in your bag or the price of copper, etc. and being able to pull that information up quickly serves as an obvious advantage in gameplay.

One suggestion is playing on the social aspect of the WoW. It’s unfortunate that the printed scripts only are visible to the individual player. Wouldn’t it be cool if a script your published resulted in actual interchange between players? Or just have another player react to your printed commands? Obviously you are most likely limited by the API or programming language in what a learner can actually change in the WoW environment, but what we want to emphasize is more exercises that result in direct feedback from the printed commands.

After seeing these comments, I totally agree that we missed an opportunity to create a dynamic learning experience with better instructions for teachers and in-world exercises for students. However, regarding the comment about learners who may not have interest in the game, I felt that the boundaries of the assignment were limiting. We were told to create a curriculum around concepts that had to be taught in a classroom environment, using WoW specifically. The fact that some students may have no interest in playing wasn’t something that we had much flexibility to work around, any more than a high school science teacher has flexibility to work around the requirements of using test tubes and Bunsen burners to teach bored students the fundamentals of chemistry. Ideally, a teacher will be able to use the required tools in a way that generates interest and good learning outcomes.

In summary, I think a game like WoW is better than traditional textbooks for engaging students. Besides the fact that almost all college-aged students are familiar with video games, the ability of WoW to allow social interaction, team activities, rewards for better play, and an environment for experimentation makes it a tool that is well-suited for teaching computer programming and other topics. I agree, however, that the curriculum we designed needs better exercises to engage unmotivated students and make the overall learning outcomes better for students and teachers alike.

More blog posts about my MIT experience:

Spark Capital investor on Twitter: "Depending on what day it is, they’re profitable"

2011-04-25T00:38:00.018-04:00

On April 13, Todd Dagres of Spark Capital came to speak at our New Enterprises class. Todd is a former instructor of the class, and an established venture capitalist -- his VC bio lists Akamai and a host of investments in other networking companies dating back to the 1990s. He is also one of the much-lauded early investors in Twitter, and after his presentation, he fielded questions from the class. I raised my hand, and popped two questions that I thought were relevant to the discussion about building a profitable enterprise (our assignment that week was a go-to-market strategy for our own business ideas): I asked Todd how the Twitter team sold him on the costs and the revenue potential, and whether or not the company was profitable.

Todd responded:

“The second question I can’t answer. I can say that ... let’s put it this way: Depending on what day it is, they’re profitable. So they’re generating lots of revenue (see, that’s the revenue right there). And depending on how much comes in that day, they can be profitable. So they are monetizing, put it that way.

As far as, did they have a plan? Absolutely. They had a plan that said, 'we're going to grow subscribers, we're going to monetize subscribers.' So they had a plausible plan. By the time we invested, they had decent momentum. They had under ... (trails off)

When we invested, by the way, you’ve got to understand. It’s not like it is now. Back then when we invested, Facebook was a fraction of what it is now. Zuckerberg had yet to be on the cover of a magazine, and Twitter, had, probably when we invested, 600,000 subscribers. Which if you look at it , 600,000 subscribers, that’s a lot. 'Why did you wait until they had 600,000 subscribers?' Back then, it wasn’t as obvious as it is now that you can monetize the subscribers.

When we made the Twitter investment, there were articles in the press that outnumbered the other articles in the press, relative to social networking. And basically what the articles said on the negative side, is 'social networking advertising CPMs suck.' And I even saw one table that said, 'here is the CPM hierarchy.' And down at the bottom, along with the nastiest stuff you can imagine, was social networking advertising CPMs. And the reason given was, 'you have no idea what people care about on social networks. But if they go to a car site, ho ho ho!’

So cars, financial services, things like that had the highest, high tech blogs and magazines and things like that had the highest CPMs, and way down at the bottom was social networking because no one could understand why advertisers would advertise against social networking, ‘you never know what you are going to get.’ Someone talks about what they did last night, 'who cares, who would ever care about that?' But as we know now, Facebook knows a lot about you, and they can target ads against you, better than probably Google can. All of a sudden, social networking CPMs have gone way up, and it’s pretty obvious. ... (trails off)"

I wasn't able to ask a follow-up question, but there are problems with some of the arguments he used to defend Twitter and its revenue potential:

Facebook may know a lot about its users, but Twitter does not. Real names and other demographic data are not required for registration. Many people on Twitter deliberately obscure their identities.
Facebook CPMs may be higher, but not by much, and surely not approaching the levels that I see Federated Media charging vendors to post display advertising in its network of online publishers (food blogs currently command $5-$12 CPMs, and Business Insider gets >$20 for display advertising). In my own small advertising tests using Facebook's self-serve advertising platforms, I paid for $0.14 CPMs in February 2010 and $0.20 CPMs in April 2011.
If it wasn't obvious back in 2006 or 2007 that it was possible to monetize Twitter's subscribers, why invest in the company?
Regarding the claim that "depending on how much comes in that day, they can be profitable": Such a defense would never be accepted by the current instructors for New Enterprises (Bill Aulet and Howard Anderson) for our class projects. It's also the sort of thinking that got lots of people in trouble in the late 1990s. Private market trading has valued Twitter at close to $8 billion, not based on real earnings or a plausible business model, but rather the premise that the people behind Twitter will somehow figure out a way to make it work. They haven't so far.

The unsaid argument for investing in Twitter was never mentioned by Todd, and indeed is seldom mentioned in the classes we have on building innovative businesses: A VC's primary responsibility -- or, should I say, fiduciary duty -- is to produce returns for their funds. If the exit is tied to actual revenue or profitability of their portfolio companies, that's great. But if not, who cares, as long as the exit is for a comfortable multiple of the initial investment?

As we have seen many times throughout history with everything from tulip bulbs to dot-coms selling bags of dog food, if enough people think that a popular product or service will be The Next Big Thing, a bevy of dreamers, flippers, and suckers will surely come a-running. Of course, the problem with the sale of unprofitable companies at logic-defying valuations is someone will end up getting burned. While the party is still going, however, no one wants to hear the sour notes. In Twitter's case, its status as a game-changing platform creates value on a different dimension for partners in the ecosystem. But this value does not easily translate to revenue, which once again takes us back to the question of Twitter's long-term value to investors.

More blog posts about my MIT experience:

Infinite Corridor Walkthrough

2011-04-23T21:15:00.007-04:00

You may have heard of it before: MIT's Infinite Corridor, which runs more than 800 feet from 77 Mass. Ave, through four or five buildings in the classic campus, before emptying into a large courtyard that overlooks the giant earth sciences building designed by I.M. Pei in the early 60s (It's also possible to continue east indoors through a connector to another long hallway that leads to the chemistry department and Ames Street, but that extension is not as fun as the Infinite Corridor).

The corridor has been used for physics experiments and to observe other phenomena (for example, MIThenge) but I find it to be a great place to see a cross-section of daily life at the institute, from student activities to working laboratories. For instance, walking eastward down the corridor through the war memorial room in building 10, I recently happened across some sort of gaming club that built steampunkish robots and dressed up as Japanese video game characters. Last week, on the way to the Stata Center for the Jason Pontin/Bill Joy talk, I noticed flashing signs over a room just off the eastern end of the corridor warning of laser testing inside. These are just a few examples of the things that always seem to be happening in and around the lengthy corridor.

The video I ended up shooting below shows a walker's view of the Infinite Corridor last Thursday afternoon, from 77 Mass Ave. to building 8 and a view of the earth science building. Total time: Just over 3 minutes:

Other posts about my MIT Sloan Fellows experience: