What The Sims taught me about socialising

March 2, 2009 By

For the purposes of this article, socialising means having meaningful conversations and interactions with other people (namely friends). So what’s the trick to maintaining a fairly large network of friends while still holding meaningful conversations with all (or at least most) of them?

Hold parties. Or organise group outings. Any event that involves many people and activities that engage most of them together.

Cocktail party
[image by Yuri Arcurs]

Before I started blogging, I hang out with a handful of friends. Which seem to coincide with 4, the number of friends a male can have on Facebook.

Granted, Facebook is an online social network. The reasons cited for the number are valid though. You can know many people, and once the criteria of “having 2-way meaningful conversations” come in, the number of “real” friends drop to a low number.

This is a limit on how much information about those friends a person can hold at any one time. Who are the friends of those friends, what are their favourite foods and activities, who are the mutual friends and so on.

I did some research and there’s Reed’s Law, which states that

the utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network

and there’s Metcalfe’s Law:

the number of unique connections in a network of a number of nodes (n) can be expressed mathematically as the n(n-1)/2

Regardless of the calculations involved, they just mean the value of a network grows faster than the increase in number of people involved. A social networking site might be able to hold this information. A human can’t scale as efficiently, hence the limit.

Back in my pre-blogging days, that period of time coincided with my student days. So there wasn’t a need to actively organise group outings. Just meeting up at school would do, with a few outings outside of school here and there.

Then came working life, and the people I associated with most often were my colleagues. Thus far, the interactions were face to face, or via phone calls and messages, or email (though infrequent).

But there’s a limit to those kinds of interactions because they were one to one (or one to few). Then something lit up in my brain from thinking about the game The Sims. In the game, the same social and “physical” limits on friendships are there.

In order to maintain friendships (there’s a friendship score), a Sim has to continually interact with other Sims. By calling them on the phone. By inviting them over to the house. And yes, by holding parties and going out on group outings.

So the most efficient way is to have a bunch of friends together, and interact with them all at once. Better suggestion? Have those friends interact with each other and have fun too.

And this might be why social networking sites are so popular now. They enable people to interact with a lot of other people at a fairly frequent rate. They enable people to find other people whom they’ve never met and start conversations and build friendships. There’s still a limit to how many “real” friends one can maintain, but it’s probably higher. This has the side effect of creating a lot more friends whom one interacts with infrequently. But I guess we can live with that.

With that, I’m stopping here. Let me know what you think. You can also have meaningful conversations with me on Twitter and Facebook.

Filed Under: Curiosita Tagged With: , , ,

Weaving in the crowd

January 12, 2009 By

The crowds in shopping malls have always frustrated me. I’m not the type to meander around the corridors looking for bargains or sales. If I want to buy something, usually I already know what’s the item and where I can get it.

So I’ll arrive at the entrance of the shopping mall, and I know where the shop that has my desired item. It’s a straightforward point A to point B thing. But there are so many obstacles! I feel like I’m running an obstacle course, dodging one after another, stopping to let one pass, speeding up to avoid another. What are these obstacles?

My fellow human beings.

Mall plan route

Judging from where I am, the right side of the corridor seems packed. So I move straight, and encounter a slowly moving elder. That’s easy, and I swerve around quickly to encounter…

The family of five. You never really know what kids will do. I’ve had experiences where I would be walking and minding my own business, and then out of nowhere two screaming children would materialise on my left and sprint in front of me to my right. So I swerve a bit more to my left to encounter…

The giddy teenagers, who just emerged from one of those trendy fashion stores. Don’t go near them, because they could suddenly point their fingers somewhere, and go “Oh look, ZARA!” and run enthusiastically toward said store. You need a wide buffer area to improve your chances of dodging their stampede. That, and their unforeseeable and inexplicable fits of high-pitched laughter. So swerving, I encounter…

The young parents with their 6 month old baby in a stroller. This one’s easy, because they will usually move very slow. The stroller also restricts their range of angular movement, so if it’s pointed one way, that’s the direction the parents are moving towards. Easy to predict the point they’ll reach in say, 2 seconds, which is the amount of time I have before I reach them. By which time, I’ll encounter…

The bored boyfriend. This one can be easy or hard, depending on where said boyfriend decides to wait out his girlfriend’s retail rampage in the store. If he decides not to be a free model for the store, he will move out a little onto the corridor. At which traffic will then flow around him and make my path that much harder. This one’s a bit more considerate, choosing to stand close to the store instead. Simple to pass through, and I’ll encounter…

The sentinels. They are a bunch of friends, laughing and talking. Quite ok actually, if not for the fact that their preferred battle formation is a single file moving horizontally. This isn’t a CSI search and comb; you don’t need to spread out into a line. If you want to maximise face time, the line is the worst formation. A circle is much better, like around a camp fire for example (haven’t they heard of complete graphs?). The worst thing is they’ll block a lot of the corridor, leaving you with very little maneuverability. They’re like the sentinels of some hidden treasure, who found an intruder, and are inexorably moving forward to crush the invader… Moving sharply to my left, I avoid them and finally reached my destination. *whew*

The above story was fictional. Well, I didn’t meet the characters all in one trip anyway… but they’re real. This is my long-winded way of saying, sometimes even if you know the destination, there are many unforeseen variables. Such as a software project. Ok, that analogy is a little weird…

I want to point out that, in order for me to successfully navigate around all the colourful characters who so innocently obstruct my path of least resistance, I have to read them. I have to read their body movement, posture and facial expressions to decipher what their likely directions of movement are.

That takes some practice, because you need to know that the person slowing down in front of you might change direction, or even stop completely. Of course, you will need to detect that the person is in fact slowing down…

I used to get angry because of the people blocking me. Why are they moving so slow? In time, I’ve learnt to control my anger. I’ve even turned it into a game of sorts. Here’s how you can play too.

At a moderately populated shopping mall, decide on a destination, preferably one that’s on the same level as your starting point. Your goal is to reach that destination at a more or less constant speed. Say your walking speed is 2 metres per second. You can speed up a little, or slow down a little, but you may not break into a run or stop completely.

This should test your knowledge of human behaviour, how good your reflexes are, whether you can adjust your route on the fly based on real-time data and so on. It also trains you to be more aware of your surroundings, your body position and posture, the length of your stride and so on.

I have 2 killer moves to help you: the shoulder slant and the side step. In the shoulder slant, you swivel one of your shoulders forward and the other backward. This way, you’ll be able to squeeze through some “cracks” in the obstacle run. Because sometimes, there’s never a good time, so when an opening appears, take it. With practice, you’ll learn which shoulder to swivel forward too, depending on situations (swivelling the left shoulder forward means the left foot is more natural to use for the forward leg).

The side step is particularly useful for when the idiot in front of you who don’t know where to go, decides to stop completely. At this point, you must rapidly decide if you want to go to the left or right of this confused and lost person. And then do a side step. Basically you open up your legs sideways. So instead of moving your leg forward in a normal step, you move it to the side.

You need to decide quickly because your momentum will carry you forward, and you don’t want to knock down the fella, right? Because of your forward momentum, there’s almost non-existent side-ways momentum. Thus if you move to the left, you must exert pressure on your right leg to “bounce” to the left. It takes a little practice…

Also, if you decide to go right, and your left foot is in front of you, then the natural movement is to move your right foot to the right in a wide split so as to avoid the now stationary person in front of you. Similarly for the decision to go left.

What if you decide to go right, and your right foot is in front? Uh, try to avoid this situation… Don’t try any fancy dance moves or you might entangle your legs and fall down. Just stop (and you’ll lose the game, but it’s better than public embarrassment). With some practice, you’ll learn to move in the direction based on the length of your stride and where your feet are.

And that’s some 1000+ words to tell you to be observant of human behaviour, to be conscious of your surroundings and to be aware of your body position and posture.

Filed Under: Curiosita Tagged With: , , , , , ,

When even screenshots fail

September 19, 2008 By

My best weapon for handling user queries is the screenshot.

User: Hey Vincent, I’ve got an error when doing X.
Me: Send me a screenshot.

User: Hi Vincent, sorry to disturb you. The application Y doesn’t work.
Me: Send me a screenshot.

User: Dear Sir, I cannot log in to application Z. Please advise.
Me: Send me a screenshot.

I’ve been fortunate in that I don’t have to educate my users on how to create a screenshot. Imagine the conversation with me describing where the PrintScreen button is…

User: Uh, how do I send you a screenshot?
Me: Just do a PrintScreen.
User: How do I do a PrintScreen?
Me: Just press the PrintScreen button.
User: What PrintScreen button?
Me: It’s a button on the top right corner of your keyboard, beside the Scroll Lock button.
User: Ok, I’ve pressed the PrintScreen button. Now what?
Me: Now send me the screenshot.
User: How do I do that?

I’d probably slam the phone down and throw it halfway across the hall.

PDFs, Word documents and bitmap files

Anyway, even with the absence of the kind of inane conversation above, I still receive some interesting emails. I might receive an email with a PDF file. I open the PDF file and lo and behold, there’s a screenshot inside, all shiny and black and white and kinda fuzzy and grainy due to the warping from the PDF writing software.

Yes, there are users who are more adept at creating PDFs than Word documents.

Then there are screenshots where the user diligently took a capture of the screen. With the actual error obscured by another window.

Then there are the emails with a file size of 2 megabytes. Think bitmap file attachments with a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels.

Then there are the clever users who took a screenshot, and to compress the file size, they dumped the contents into a Word document. Word automatically compresses the bitmap. I can’t blame them for not knowing how to use an image editor, even one as simple as Windows Paint. Didn’t get any fancy meta-screenshots, though I’ve gotten a screenshot in a PowerPoint file before.

Then there are the ultra-clever users who know how to take a screenshot, use an image editor to crop it, and *exclaim* save it as JPG or PNG. Even then there are problems. Let me first show you this:

Yellow screen of death

If you’re familiar with ASP.NET, that’s everybody’s favourite error screen. It has useful data such as the general error message, the line of code where the error occurred and the stack trace. The stack trace contains information such as what events were triggered so you know for example, which button was clicked.

Now I have this web application with a loading screen, played out with an animated GIF image. And when there’s an error, something like this shows up:

ASP.NET error with Now Loading

I’m terrible at drawing stick figures… It’s supposed to be a stick figure searching for files in a file cabinet, and throwing any useless files behind him.

Well, my user sent me that. Most of the useful information was below the screen. So I asked her to scroll down so I could see them.

Me: Can you scroll down and resend the screenshot?
User: How to scroll down?
Me: Just use the scrollbar and scroll down.
User: What scrollbar?

That’s the compressed version of a few emails back and forth. I didn’t quite throw my phone across the hall, but I did take a deep breath and drink some water.

Then I took her screenshot and added some comments in it.

ASP.NET error screen with comments

I accompanied that modified screenshot with more comments in my email. I can’t remember what I typed, so here’s the closest version:

Hi,

I’m sure the man throwing files all over the place is all very nice, but I can’t see the actual error below him. Please scroll down so I can see more of the error message.

Regards,
Vincent

Sometimes, you’re not just debugging code. You’re debugging human behaviour.

Filed Under: Work Stuff Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Human-first software development

April 9, 2008 By

Aaron Falloon asked in a previous post if I could write something about the actual theory behind programming.

I don’t even know where to start. I have to assume that he’s referring to the non-coding aspects, because it feels like a philosophical question more than a technical one. So I thought hard. And I got an answer.

To fully explain the answer, I’m going to go deep in philosophy, so just bear with me for a while. Of all the species on Earth, humans are the only one actively and aggressively changing our surroundings. For the sake of argument, let’s take it that we do that to make things better, for us, for the environment, for every living creature.

Ignoring the Darwinian theory of evolution and the belief that we all sprang forth from the union of a single man and woman, Nature seems content to just let things go at their own pace. Have you seen a cat work hard? Albatrosses glide over miles and miles of open ocean, and they land only because of the need to procreate or to feed their young. Bristlecone pines live for millennia. Can you imagine doing nothing the entire day except grow a fraction of an inch?

Bristlecone pine by Jon Larson at iStockphoto

Where was I? Right, so not only do we humans do something about our surroundings, we do it at an alarmingly fast rate. Buildings spring up like mushrooms. Cars are built so we travel faster. And then came computers and the need for programmers. The Internet exploded the transfer of information, and software is part of the driving force.

I believe it’s our basic nature to want to better ourselves and in relation, our surroundings. In the software development world, this means writing better programs. Perhaps because of the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, this gave the illusion that anyone can program. Everyone wants to program, because there’s the satisfaction of creation and the element (or illusion) of control. That the program will make our lives easier. It does, just not one created by anybody…

So how do we become great programmers? One way is the UI-first approach. Design your user interface first, because it’s the only thing your users care about. Then work backwards towards the code.

And so my answer to the actual theory behind programming?(yes, finally!) It has always been about humans. Programming languages come and go. Paradigms, methodologies and Internet fads. Software development life cycles, from design to coding to testing to launching. All these variables are nothing compared to the human factor. We are the most unpredictable, and paradoxically the most important part.

The human factor is involved in estimating project deadlines. It’s why I see fresh graduates struggling with the corporate environment. It’s also why I seem to write stuff about human behaviour, such as observing a hungry youth, or the reluctance for authentication. There’s the importance of understanding user queries, placing ourselves in the user’s perspective before we jump to conclusions.

The study of human behaviour greatly benefits your skills as a programmer. Because ultimately, you’re creating programs to be used by humans (The Matrix and robotic artificial intelligence aside). To create great music software, it helps if you’re a musician. To create great blogging software, it helps if you’re a blogger. To create great image editing software, it helps if you’re a graphics artist.

Program errors aren’t about the program itself. It’s about the human between the computer and chair. It’s about the programmer’s misunderstanding of human behaviour.

20 years from now, we might not have to write code at all. We might be shuffling stuff on virtual screens like in Minority Report or The Matrix. But the human part is always there. So use a human-first software development approach.

Filed Under: Curiosita Tagged With: ,

Forced to mingle

April 7, 2008 By

There was a recent company event. It was organised for the IT departments. It’s usually referred to as a dinner-and-dance or D & D (not to be confused with Dungeons and Dragons). We usually just do the first D (the dinner, not the dungeons). Everyone seems too tired at the end to do the second D.

My colleagues in my department are close-knit. There aren’t many of us anyway. So we assumed we’d be put together in the same table.

When we arrived at the event, we found that we’d been separated. 2 of us in that table, 3 of us in this table, and another 3 in another table. We were a bit miffed of course.

It’s not so much that we were separated. It’s that we were seated with people we don’t know. We were forced to mingle with people from other departments and teams. There’s nothing wrong with mingling. We just weren’t prepared to mingle.

So we went into the event room, sat down at our respective tables and started making small talk with the people at our own tables. Well, at least I made small talk with the person next to me.

Then something happened. People started changing seats. People found out where their friends were seated and a mass migration happened swiftly and quietly. It was kind of fun. So together with the 2 “known” colleagues from my table, we changed tables. The “new” table has *shock* everyone from our known clique!

I don’t know what the organisers had in mind when they rearranged everyone’s seating plans at the last minute. From what I knew, we were in the same table originally. It just shows how humans can behave when forced along some rule or restriction. Given a chance, we will find a way to rectify the situation.

So here’s a question for you to think about. When you design and write an application, do you force your users to be in an uncomfortable situation? Maybe a button that doesn’t make sense, but they have to click on it anyway. Maybe the flow of entering information doesn’t make sense, but they follow your flow because they have no choice.

Filed Under: Work Stuff Tagged With: ,
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