Category Archives: Emerging Technologies

Jun 24 2 comments
Emerging Technologies, Hardware, Innovation

What we can learn from Nike’s Persuasive Technology

The cover story of the latest issue of WIRED Magazine is dedicated to the success of the Nike+ sensor system. Nike+ allows users to track and share the time, speed, and distance of their runs using an iPod or Nike+ wristband. I can personally attest to the motivational power of such feedback. I ran fairly regularly when I used it but when my wristband sensor died, I used its untimely death as an excuse to stop running. (I’m waiting for a free replacement of a next gen model. The WIRED article fails to mention the high failure rate of the first batch of the  system’s technology.)

My friend who runs marathons doesn’t need a Nike+ system to help her keep track of her runs – shes uses a pen and paper. But I, like most people, find that just this extra bit of little work feels like a huge burden. Like Nike, libraries need to strive to create systems that feel as effortless as possible (just one example: writing down a 20 digit call number isn’t hard but it feels hard).

I think there are other things we can distill from the Nike+ experience. Its worth noting how rich an experience Nike+ is able to generate for its 1.2 million users with just three data points.  We should consider what information we could capture to help motivate our students. Privacy advocates tells us that no one likes to be watched but that’s not exactly the case. “The gist of the idea is that people change their behavior – often for the better – when they are being observed (which is why it’s sometimes called the observer effect).”

Visual feedback helps reinforce positive behaviour. From the above WIRED article, “a 2001 study in the American Journal of Health Behavior showed that personalized feedback increased the effectiveness of everything from smoking-cessation to interventions for problem drinkers to exercise programs.” The Prius dashboard encourages better driving for high fuel efficiency. Recently there’s been some folks creating library dashboards but they haven’t been developed yet to provide individual user feedback of their borrowing or reading habits.

Video game designers are masters at presenting user data and creating rewards for user behaviour and Jane McGonigal thinks we can use what they’ve learned to improve our happiness and our future in the real world. In her IGDA Education Keynote 2009, McGonigal makes a number of book recommendations including Persuasive Technology by B. J. Fogg (2003) in order to learn more about the ramifications of using computers to try to change user behaviour. I’ve got the book on my lap right now at a page in which Fogg describes a hypothetical library-related example of persuasive technology:

Because she’s serious about school, Pamela runs an application on her device called Study Buddy. Here’s what the application does: As Pamela begins her evening study session, she launches the Study Buddy system and views the display. Study Buddy congratulates her for studying for the third time that day, meeting the goal she set at the beginning of the academic quarter. The device suggests that Pamela start her study session with a five-minute review of her biology vocabulary words, then read two chapters assigned for tomorrow’s sociology lecture. As Pamela reviews biology, the Study Buddy screen shows a cluster of shapes, which represents her classmates who are currently studying. This motivates her to continue studying.

Later that evening, as Pamela wraps up her work, she’s curious about her mentor, Jean so she turns to Study Buddy for information. Jean also subscribes to the Study Buddy system and has invited Pamela into her “awareness group” (1). Pamela sees a symbol on the display that indicates that Jean in currently in one of the campus libraries. Jean is a good role model; she’s a senior who was recently admitted to a top graduate school. Being a study mentor means that Jean has agreed to let Pamela remotely view Jean’s studying habits. Using Study Buddy, Jean can send simple sounds and tactile cues such as vibration patterns to Pamela to encourage her to study.

I should note that I haven’t actually read the rest of this book. I’m hoping by posting writing about it I’ll shame motivate myself to do so.

May 26 1 comments
Emerging Technologies

My new fave search engine is Zotero

While Zotero – “the free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources” – isn’t exactly new, the program recently made the jump from 1.0 to 2.0 (beta) and with in doing so, has become social software and something more: it’s becoming a favourite search engine of mine.

But let me back it up a bit so I can say a little bit about custom or personalized search engines. I think they’re great and I wish more people would find them so they could enjoy their greatness too.

For example, I use LISZEN to search the library blogosphere and search my own homemade Google Custom Search Engine of OCUL libraries whenever I wonder if someone up the highway has some insight on the matter at hand. The University of Winnipeg uses a Custom Google Search Engine for its Canadian Art Library Guide, which I think is a brilliant application and breathes new life into the traditional library subject guide. And at one time, I entertained the notion that libraries could use Google Custom Search Engines as an alternative to the proprietary indexes that we offer, but after trying out The Economics Search Engine of 23 000 economics web sites  its pretty clear that this technology doesn’t scale. That’s too bad because I think we need a prominent index of the open access journal content out there.

OK. Back to Zotero.

I had waited to try out Zotero properly only after Zotero turned 2.0 because I was waiting for its automatic backup and synch features. And in the last handful of weeks, I’ve been slowly adding material into my Zotero library as a way to get a feel for the software. And then it just today that I realized that Zotero was indexing not just the metadata of the websites and journal articles I was planting into it – it was indexing the fulltext of the saved snapshots as well as and the text in the saved pdfs.

So, I plunked in the annual literature reviews dedicated to Library Instruction and Information Literacy from Reference Services Review and voila! I had myself my own little Information Literacy Research Index in my browser!

If you haven’t tried out Zotero yet, I wholeheartedly encourage you to do so. Zotero has some big plans they are working on including a partnership with the Internet Archive. That’s the project that really intrigues me. Not only will scholars be able to add material from the Internet Archive into their personal Zotero libraries but they will also be able to contribute their own digital work contributions into its commons.

When I think I of the future of libraries, I can’t help but think our future dovetailing into Zotero somehow.

May 24 12 comments
Emerging Technologies

Do you Poken? (Or have business cards gone the way of the dodo?) #techuncamp

A few weeks ago, I went to my first library-related conference, the Tech Camp unConference that was held at Michigan State. I was coerced by Heidi to join her and other peeps from WSU (and beyond) for a day long conference on all things library related tech stuff and it also happened to be FREE so I was sold. Since I agreed more or less at the last minute, I was a bit at a loss as to what to bring with me, so I of course asked Heidi who clued me in. One of the things I should bring, she said, was business cards although they were not totally necessary as this was a casual ‘do. But one never knows and one should be prepared for any eventuality.

Since my lib school orientation this past August, one thing that had been drilled by then current students and alum were business cards: Many students were hitting conferences before starting school, others were working in libraries or in information organizations or just plain networking at social events and the like. On my global to-do list, getting business cards has been hovering at the top for months now as I either keep forgetting or am too lazy to order them. Now two days before the conference, I had to whip some up together and thus, at the last minute bought business card stock and color ink and spent an hour or two designing business cards to print from home the night before. Satisfied with my handy work, I printed about 30 or so cards and neatly stacked them in my wallet.

Except — I shouldn’t have bothered. Since the entire conference was Twittering, I was connected to nearly everyone at the conference within an hour. And that’s how social networking works, in a nutshell: You find X person at one social networking site and you are almost literally connected to their entire world. Thank $deity I brought my laptop with me because not only was I adding new peeps to my follower list but also adding them via various other sites as well. Who needs business cards when you have the interwebs?

A few days later, a follow librarian tweeple twittered about Poken – essentially a tiny USB flash drive that is configured to hold all of your social network info in one spot. No more hunting and pecking through various sites, Poken is essentially your business card and connector in one easy to use application.

For someone like me, who is on every major social network, this is brilliant as I may be @pnkrcklibrarian on Twitter, but I’m academichussy on LiveJournal or modgirl on Last.Fm. I have have different user names on various sites depending on what nom de plume I was using at the time I signed up. And if you just met me, you wouldn’t, obviously, know that. But with Poken, and using various privacy settings depending on whom I’m meeting, all that guesswork is taken away.

As conferencing is looking to be more likely in the future, I will eventually order Moo cards for my business card needs, but I’ll also will have a Poken with me as well. But I’m hoping, no betting, that Poken-ing (or something similiar) will become the new de facto way of
giving people information about me, because portals are so 1999.

P.S. I once did a presentation for a small group on Jane Austen and the use of tea as a social construct in Georgian times and one thing that surprised me during my research was the use of calling cards, which were in fashion during her life time (late 18th and early 19th centuries) and had been around for quite some time before that. Calling cards are also apparently making a come-back of sorts and while I don’t think the concept is ever going to go away, the new technology will definitely improve how we convey social introductions to each other. Everying old is apparently new again.