Tag Archives: intention

Identity Processing Program of America

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After his initial arrest, Joe is led by a noose stick (and a police officer speaking some devolved version of copspeak) to a machine to get an identity tattoo. Joe sits in the chair and a synthesized voice says, “Welcome to the Identity Processing Program of America. Please insert your forearm into the forearm receptacle.” Joe does as instructed and it locks his arm into place. A screen in front of him shows the legend “Identity Processing Program of America” superimposed over an USA pattern made up of company names and Carls Junior amputated star logos. Five rectangles across the top are labeled: System, Identity, Verify, Imprint, and Done.

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It prompts him to “…speak your name as it appears on your current federal identity card, document number G24L8.” Joe says, “I’m not sure if—“ The machine interprets this as input and blinks the name as it says, “You have entered the name ‘Not Sure.’ Is this correct, Not Sure?”

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Joe tries to correct it, saying, “No…it’s not correct.” On the word “correct” it dings and continues, “Thank you. ‘Not’ is correct.” “Not” stops blinking in the interface.

“…Is ‘Sure’ correct?” Joe has patience and tries to correct it. “No, it’s not. My name is Joe.” It blurts out some error beeps. “You’ve already confirmed your first name is Not. Please confirm your last name, ‘Sure.’”

Joe: My…My last name is not Sure.
Kiosk: Thank you, Not Sure.
Joe: No. What I mean is my name is Joe.
Kiosk: Confirmation is complete. Please wait while I tattoo your new identity on your arm.
The machine begins to shake and make noises. Joe says, “Wait a second. Can we start over? Can I cancel this?” He sees a progress bar, labeled “Tattoo In Progress…”

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“Can we cancel this and just go back to the beginning? They’re gonna tat—Ow. Could I speak to your supervisor? Ow!” While he’s trying to wrench his arm free, the machine instructs him, “Please hold still for your photograph.” It flashes an unflattering picture of him and the clamp on his arm releases. He removes his arm to see the new tattoo. The screen shows him his identity card.

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In exasperation from the whole ordeal he mumbles, “Oh, that’s fuckin’ great.”

This scene is played for the Vaudevillian yuks, but it does illustrate some problems with conversational design. And note that, if you’re interested in this topic, let me make an early shout out to the book Conversational Design by Erika Hall, published earlier this year.

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Understanding intent

When it hears Joe say “I’m not sure…” it takes it as a literal answer. It does not recognize that Joe isn’t answering the question. It is one meta-level up. He has a question about the question being asked. Humans are pretty good at recognizing when another human is breaking the usual logic of adjacency pairs and not providing an answer to the question. (This was discussed in Make It So in Chapter 5, “Gestural Interfaces” in relation to Minority Report) Computers have a harder time of it. If this kiosk understood it, it would be know that he’s not answering the question, and resolve what conversational analysis calls “the expansion” before returning to the question. (Disclosure: I work there and know the guy who wrote that.)

Aside: Douglas Hofstadter in his mind-expanding book Godel, Escher, and Bach, writes about the trick question “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” for which neither “yes” nor “no” are good answers, but the only “correct” answers according to the binary frame of the question. In that text he introduces the eastern answer of “mu” (or “wu” in Chinese languages) that means roughly “the answer does not fit the question.” So it can be said that computers have a hard time understanding mu.

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Designers of digital assistants have to wrangle with this, but it’s rarely a problem that the individual designer must wrestle with. Language and naming are informal, slippery notions as far as computers are concerned, so it’s understandably a hard problem. It’s entirely possible that someone has chosen “Not Sure” as a name, but it’s highly unlikely. And that’s another problem.

Understanding likelihood

Understanding intent might be a little easier if the computer could recognize that “Not” and “Sure” are unlikely values for a name. (Even in Idiocracy where names tend to be brands like Lexus, and Frito, and Biggiez. More on this later.) If it knew that, it would have a low confidence that it “heard” correctly, and shift into a repair or at least clarification mode. “‘Not’ would be very uncommon name. Let me be extra careful, here…” It could even shift into a more deliberate mode of input, like a keyboard, or asking him to spell his name out (or, you know, cancel the whole thing.)

Catching not

When the kiosk is asking for confirmation, it hears Joe say, “No it’s not correct” and registers the keyword “correct” but misses the function word “not” which completely flips the meaning.

Again, avoiding this speech-to-text error would be a developer’s task, but dealing with the back-and-forth would definitely fall to a designer. When clarifying low-confidence input, users should be able to provide discrete high-confidence feedback.

Joe could, for instance, be shown the kiosk’s (stupid) understanding of his input and—since this has a pretty permanent consequence—wait on his confirmation and providing the simple option to redo it so he can try some other tactic to getting “Joe Bauers” in there until he gets it right.
But, of course, this is Idiocracy, and Joe is stuck with it.

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Sorry, Joe.

But we’re not

I mean, Republicans have done all they can to suppress votes that don’t favor them. They don’t care about Democracy or the will of the American people as they do staying in power to serve their 1% overlords. But research shows that people who have a plan to vote are more likely to actually do it, and if we all do it, we can overwhelm them with sheer numbers.
There are lots of tools to help you make a plan, but let’s send some traffic to our friends at Planned Parenthood. They’ve been under a lot of pressure during this administration. Maybe throw them a few sheckles while you’re there. Not for the election, but because you’re a good person. And vote all of them out.

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Vaulting Boots of Valtor

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Mordo wears the Vaulting Boots of Valtor throughout the movie and first demonstrates their use to Dr. Strange when they are sparring. The Boots allow the user to walk, run, or jump on air as if it were solid ground.

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When activated, the sole of each boot creates a circular field of force in anticipation of a footfall in midair, as if creating free-floating stepping stones.

How might this work as tech?

The main interaction design challenge is how the wearer indicates where he wants a stepping-stone to appear. The best solution is to let Mordo’s footfall location and motion inform the boots when and where he expects there to be a solid surface. (Anyone who has stumbled while misjudging the height or location of a step on a stairway knows how differently you treat a step where you expect there to be solid footing.)

If this were a technological device, sensors within the boots would retain a detailed history of the wearer’s stride for all possible speeds and distances of movement. The boots would detect muscle tension and flexion combined with the owner’s direction and velocity to accurately predict the placement of each step and then insert an appropriately elevated and angled stepping stone. The boots would know the difference between each of these styles of movement, walking, running, and sprinting and behave accordingly.

As a result, Mordo could always remain upright and stable regardless of his intended direction or how high he had climbed. And while Mordo may be a sorcerer with exceptional physical training, he isn’t superhuman. With the power of the boots he is only able to run and step as high as he could normally if for example he was taking a set of stairs two or three at a time.

As a magical device, the intelligence imbued in the boots is limited to the awareness of the intent of the sorcerer and knows where to place each force-field stepping-stone.

Vaulting-boots-of-valtor-07-levels.png Continue reading →

The ritual interfaces

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We know in the film that Control has been working behind the scenes long before the event takes place. The Chem department, for example, has somehow gotten Jules to bleach her hair, and the hair dye “works its way into the blood” as a way to slow her cognition, and make her conform more the Whore archetype. Additionally, they have been lacing Marty’s marijuana to keep him dazed & confused. (Though, key to the plot, they missed his secret stash.) There’s even an actor placed en route to the eponymous cabin who unsettles the victims with his aggression and direct violent insults to Jules, setting the stage for their suffering. Though these things occur “off stage” of the actual cabin (and the Chem team works off screen), they help tell the story about how deeply embedded Control is in the world, and set the stage for the surveillance interfaces on stage.

Marking the deaths: on screen & ritually

The goal of the scenario is the suffering and death of the victims, in the right order. To provide a visual marker on the monitoring screens, a transparent red overlay is placed over victims who are believed to have been killed.

The choice of red has a natural association with the violence, but red has a number of problems. Visually, it vibrates against blue (according to opponent process of color theory, the red and blue receptors in our retinas are in the same place and can’t perceive both at the same time). It’s also typically used to grab attention, which in this case is the exact wrong signal. Jules is no longer in the picture, and so specifically no attention is needed for her. Better would be to dim her section on the monitor, or remove her altogether, if marking progress is unimportant.

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In addition to marking the deaths in the digital interfaces, the deaths must be marked ritually for the system to work. To this end, Sitterson and Hadley act as the human interface that transfers the information from the electronic systems to the Bronze-Age mechanical systems behind him. Though this could be accomplished mechanically, there are ritual words that must be spoken and an amulet that must be kissed by a supplicant.

Sitterson, the senior of the two, recites, “This we offer in humility and fear / For the blessed peace of your eternal slumber / As it ever was.”

After these ritual actions, Hadley raises a roll top wooden panel to reveal a simple switch. Pulling it down initiates a chain of mechanics that ultimately break a vial of blood into a funnel, which channels the blood into grooves carved into a sacrificial slab.

Sitterson and Hadley mark the first sacrifice

The roll top door acts as a physical barrier against accidental activation, and the mechanical switch requires a manageable, but deliberate, amount of force. Both of these features in the interface ensure that it is only done when intended, and the careful mechanical construction ensures that it is done right.