#7: Alarm Clock

My past alarm clock was very simple. It just had the basic features. Setting an alarm, playing a radio, snooze, and that was about it. I decided to splurge and try using an exciting alarm clock when I was shopping for college before my freshman year. I saw this one that's pictured below. It had various nature sounds and a projector that shined the time onto the ceiling. I thought these unnecessary features were cool and was curious if I would actually use them. It turns out I have. The "Ocean" sound is very nice to wake up to. I also enjoy simply opening my eyes and seeing what time it is on the ceiling instead of turning over and looking at the clock face.

I hoped that since this alarm clock had more features, that it would be more user-friendly than my old simple one. This has not been the case. There are two main issues, the brightness and setting the alarm. The clock face is just too bright. My old alarm clock never bothered me with its brightness, but this clock is noticeably brighter. An alarm clock is one clock that you do not want to be too bright, but this one errs in that way. I usually cover the clock face with a sock or something so it doesn't bother me.

The second issue is setting the time of the alarm. Setting the alarm mode or turning it off is easy. To set the alarm time, I have to press those two small buttons in the lower right labeled "HOUR" and "MINUTE." The problem is that if I want to change the alarm for a five minutes earlier, then I have to press that little button 55 separate times. The same goes for setting the hour (press 23 times for one hour earlier). This is frustrating because these buttons do not press easily. My old alarm clock had one hour and one minute button, but they were easier to use. They were stand alone buttons that were easier to press, and if you held one down it would start to fast forward your selection. This allowed me to quickly get to a specific minute setting 55 minutes away. Maybe the alarm clock designer should have focused on perfecting the main uses of the product before thinking about additional features.

#6: The Palacard!

Most of my posts have been discussing design pitfalls, but I want to dedicate this post to a great object and system. I really appreciate my Palacard. It has very useful information on it, it has good uses, and it is easy to deal with. The information on this card is very relevant. It has my birth date, Furman ID, and picture. These are all great for any identification issues. I am pretty surprised the stores around here don't ask for a Furman ID when kids try to buy alcohol. The information that pleasantly surprised me is the phone numbers on the back of the card for important Furman departments such as public safety, the infirmary, and university housing. I was locked out of the tennis center once and had to call FUPO. I did not know the number but checked my Palacard and it was conveniently there. Below is the card y'all are familiar with. I blocked out my face because the picture is funny. People's pictures are actually a good source of humor because everyone picked different types of photos from high school.

One of my favorite features of this card is its versatility. This card can be both swiped and scanned by certain card readers outside secure doors. I do not know how it works. There must be something inside the card that communicates with a card reader because I do not have to take my card out of the wallet for it to work. This seems pretty fancy for a simple ID card, and it is definitely convenient. It took me a while to find this out though since a card does not afford it being read without swiping it.

This card is easy to deal with because it can used seamlessly around campus. The thing I like the most about how Furman handles these cards is that they are free to replace if you turn in an old one. It is like 20 dollars to replace a lost card, but completely free to replace a worn out one. Since the cards can wear down fairly easily, I have taken advantage of this free replacement, and it only takes a few minutes.

#5: DH Microwave

The DH microwave is so simple. It is either old or cheap. Either way, I am surprised the DH has not purchased a different one. One of the odd characteristics of this microwave is that there is no turning plate inside it. Most microwaves nowadays have a plate that turns in order to evenly heat the food. This lack of a turning plate can cause specific parts of a food item to warm while others remain cooler. I will admit that the lack of a turning makes the cleaning of the inside of a microwave easier though. This picture shows that there is some food residue on the inside of the microwave, and I wonder if the lack of a turning plate makes food more likely to splatter.

Another bad design aspect of this microwave is how the user sets the microwave's behavior. Most microwaves have a keypad of some sort. This pad will have the ability to choose various presets. I usually use the keypad to enter a time and a power level. There are usually buttons with the ten digits on them so I can input a specific time or power level. This microwave's input mechanism is very simple. It is one dial with tick marks of seconds you can set it to. Setting the time is intuitive with this dial because a dial affords turning and the numbers on the dial are clear. This microwave lacks a power level setting which is important if a user wants to cook food at a certain power level so they do not burn it, etc.

The main issue I have with the dial is that it does not work until I turn it past the first tick mark which is 15 seconds. I have only used this microwave for heating small pastries like muffins and donuts, and the first time I tried to do this I became very confused. The microwave recommends heating these items for 7-12 seconds, so I tried turning the dial to just before the 15 second mark. For some reason the microwave did not turn on to heat my pastry. I tried setting the dial to 10 seconds a few more times but it kept not working. I finally figured out that I had to turn it past the 15 second mark and then count 10 seconds in my head until I needed to remove my pastry. This is not intuitive for low time settings, and the microwave's recommendation of 7-12 seconds is misleading. Below you can see the dial. On a positive note, notice how the handle clearly affords pulling open the microwave door.

I/O: Smartphone Brain Scanner

This article describes a brain scanner that can be used with smartphones and tablets across different platforms. The brain scanner is shown below along with the application on the mobile devices. This scanner is a "low-cost wireless 14-channel Emotiv EEG neuroheadset." A scanning system like this allows the scanning to be minimally invasive and continuously capturing data. Little attention has been given to continuous brain imaging within the personal informatics realm because traditional imaging methods are heavy, complex, uncomfortable, and lack mobility. These traditional methods include MRIs and PET scans. This scanner provides a way to more deeply understand brain activity outside of laboratory environments and in everyday settings.


Technologies that monitor brain function are called Brain Machine Interfaces, and their use has been limited by cost, setup, and mobility. This brain scanner offers a consumer grade neuroheadset along with in-depth real-time analysis on a smartphone or tablet. The scanner can perform functions such as 3D brain activity visualization, logging, brain state decoding, and data acquisition. The system gives bio-feedback with a 3D model of active cortical EEG sources as seen above. Just like most wireless devices, the main issue limiting its use is power consumption. The scanner can run for 7.5 hours with local data analysis but only 3.5 hours with online data analysis.

The authors tested the effectiveness of this scanner through two experiments. The first experiment tested if the scanner could differentiate between a participant thinking about tapping an object with a finger from the right hand or left hand. The system had an accuracy of 64%. The second experiment tested if the scanner could determine if a participant was being shown pleasant or unpleasant images. For 6 out the 8 participants, the system performed better than random. The authors conclude that this system can consistently capture simple brain patterns despite a fewer number and less accurate placement of electrodes than traditional brain imaging methods. This system provides a great step forward for continuously capturing brain activity in normal settings outside of a laboratory.

Reference: "A Cross-Platform Smartphone Brain Scanner." Jakob Larsen, Michael Kai Petersen, Arkadiusz Stopczynski, Lars Kai Hansen, Carsten Stahlhut.
http://personalinformatics.org/docs/chi2012/larsen.pdf

#4 "The Door"

If you are a computer science student at Furman or have spent any time in the second floor of the Riley academic building, then you know this door. This door has seen better times, but it is currently in the doldrums. It personally might be the most frustrating thing on Furman's campus currently. The main problem with this door is that it does not close easily by itself. This does not seem like a big problem, but it is since this door is supposed to always remain closed. When it remains open for more than about a minute, an extremely annoying siren goes off. This siren always scares me and catches me off guard when I am in the lab.

The problem must lie in the door handle mechanism. The part on the side of the door that goes into the door frame and moves when I turn the handle is what I will call the latch. This latch gets caught on the door frame's corresponding part. This causes the door to be propped open, and then the alarming siren goes off until someone hurriedly shuts the door in annoyance. The problem seems to be that this latch cannot smoothly slide into its proper spot within the door frame. If the friction could be reduced or the latch somehow built so so these parts slide past each other more easily, then the door would close more fluidly. It seems that this latch is backwards as shown in the picture below. Most doors I have seen have the bigger curve of the latch making contact with the door frame while closing, but this door seems to have the latch set up so it cups the door frame in a sense as it closes. I am not a door engineer, but I would assume that a door intended to remain closed would close very easily.

I have two additional comments about the door, one bad and one good. I wish there was a bigger window on the door. The window on the door is only an inch wide, so a person can barely see into the lab. It would be cool if there was a bigger window, so people could see the awesome computer lab we have here at Furman. There is one part of the door that I love though, the card reader. Card access is required for entry into the lab. I just recently found out that I do not have to swipe my card but can simply pass the card over the swiper. I found out even more recently that I do not even have to take the card out of my wallet but can simply pass wallet over card reader. This is awesomely convenient, and I feel really cool whenever I do this.