Your Ergonomics Are a Piece Of Shit: Oh the humanities!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > Your Ergonomics Are a Piece Of Shit: Oh the humanities!

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rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Expo70 posted:

does your chair make you think in different ways?

yeah ... it makes me think i need a new chair!!! lmbo.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2022 18:35

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# ¿ Apr 18, 2024 03:17

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

So i posted this about VR in the other thread and a bunch of whiners told me it was behind a paywall(???) so here it is again

https://qz.com/192874/is-the-oculus-rift-designed-to-be-sexist/

quote:

In the fall of 1997, my university built a CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) to help scientists, artists, and archeologists embrace 3D immersion to advance the state of those fields. Ecstatic at seeing a real-life instantiation of the Metaverse, the virtual world imagined in Neal Stephenson�s Snow Crash, I donned a set of goggles and jumped inside. And then I promptly vomited.

I never managed to overcome my nausea. I couldn�t last more than a minute in that CAVE and I still can�t watch an IMAX movie. Looking around me, I started to notice something. By and large, my male friends and colleagues had no problem with these systems. My female peers, on the other hand, turned green.

What made this peculiar was that we were all computer graphics programmers. We could all render a 3D scene with ease. But when asked to do basic tasks like jump from Point A to Point B in a Nintendo 64 game, I watched my female friends fall short. What could explain this?
At the time any notion that there might be biological differences underpinning computing systems was deemed heretical. Discussions of gender and computing centered around services like Purple Moon, a software company trying to entice girls into gaming and computing. And yet, what I was seeing gnawed at me.

That�s when a friend of mine stumbled over a footnote in an esoteric army report about simulator sickness in virtual environments. Sure enough, military researchers had noticed that women seemed to get sick at higher rates in simulators than men. While they seemed to be able to eventually adjust to the simulator, they would then get sick again when switching back into reality.

Being an activist and a troublemaker, I walked straight into the office of the head CAVE researcher and declared the CAVE sexist. He turned to me and said: �Prove it.�

The gender mystery

Over the next few years, I embarked on one of the strangest cross-disciplinary projects I�ve ever worked on. I ended up in a gender clinic in Utrecht, in the Netherlands, interviewing both male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals as they began hormone therapy. Many reported experiencing strange visual side effects. Like adolescents going through puberty, they�d reach for doors�only to miss the door knob. But unlike adolescents, the length of their arms wasn�t changing�only their hormonal composition.

Scholars in the gender clinic were doing fascinating research on tasks like spatial rotation skills. They found that people taking androgens (a steroid hormone similar to testosterone) improved at tasks that required them to rotate Tetris-like shapes in their mind to determine if one shape was simply a rotation of another shape. Meanwhile, male-to-female transsexuals saw a decline in performance during their hormone replacement therapy.

Along the way, I also learned that there are more sex hormones on the retina than in anywhere else in the body except for the gonads. Studies on macular degeneration showed that hormone levels mattered for the retina. But why? And why would people undergoing hormonal transitions struggle with basic depth-based tasks?

Two kinds of depth perception

Back in the US, I started running visual psychology experiments. I created artificial situations where different basic depth cues�the kinds of information we pick up that tell us how far away an object is�could be put into conflict. As the work proceeded, I narrowed in on two key depth cues � �motion parallax� and �shape-from-shading.�

Motion parallax has to do with the apparent size of an object. If you put a soda can in front of you and then move it closer, it will get bigger in your visual field. Your brain assumes that the can didn�t suddenly grow and concludes that it�s just got closer to you.

Shape-from-shading is a bit trickier. If you stare at a point on an object in front of you and then move your head around, you�ll notice that the shading of that point changes ever so slightly depending on the lighting around you. The funny thing is that your eyes actually flicker constantly, recalculating the tiny differences in shading, and your brain uses that information to judge how far away the object is.

In the real world, both these cues work together to give you a sense of depth. But in virtual reality systems, they�re not treated equally.

The virtual-reality shortcut

When you enter a 3D immersive environment, the computer tries to calculate where your eyes are at in order to show you how the scene should look from that position. Binocular systems calculate slightly different images for your right and left eyes. And really good systems, like good glasses, will assess not just where your eye is, but where your retina is, and make the computation more precise.

It�s super easy�if you determine the focal point and do your linear matrix transformations accurately, which for a computer is a piece of cake�to render motion parallax properly. Shape-from-shading is a different beast. Although techniques for shading 3D models have greatly improved over the last two decades�a computer can now render an object as if it were lit by a complex collection of light sources of all shapes and colors�what they they can�t do is simulate how that tiny, constant flickering of your eyes affects the shading you perceive. As a result, 3D graphics does a terrible job of truly emulating shape-from-shading.

Tricks of the light

In my experiment, I tried to trick people�s brains. I created scenarios in which motion parallax suggested an object was at one distance, and shape-from-shading suggested it was further away or closer. The idea was to see which of these conflicting depth cues the brain would prioritize. (The brain prioritizes between conflicting cues all the time; for example, if you hold out your finger and stare at it through one eye and then the other, it will appear to be in different positions, but if you look at it through both eyes, it will be on the side of your �dominant� eye.)

What I found was startling. Although there was variability across the board, biological men were significantly more likely to prioritize motion parallax. Biological women relied more heavily on shape-from-shading. In other words, men are more likely to use the cues that 3D virtual reality systems relied on.

This, if broadly true, would explain why I, being a woman, vomited in the CAVE: My brain simply wasn�t picking up on signals the system was trying to send me about where objects were, and this made me disoriented.

My guess is that this has to do with the level of hormones in my system. If that�s true, someone undergoing hormone replacement therapy, like the people in the Utrecht gender clinic, would start to prioritize a different cue as their therapy progressed.

We need more research

However, I never did go back to the clinic to find out. The problem with this type of research is that you�re never really sure of your findings until they can be reproduced. A lot more work is needed to understand what I saw in those experiments. It�s quite possible that I wasn�t accounting for other variables that could explain the differences I was seeing. And there are certainly limitations to doing vision experiments with college-aged students in a field whose foundational studies are based almost exclusively on doing studies solely with college-age males. But what I saw among my friends, what I heard from transsexual individuals, and what I observed in my simple experiment led me to believe that we need to know more about this.

I�m excited to see Facebook invest in Oculus, the maker of the Rift headset. No one is better poised to implement Stephenson�s vision. But if we�re going to see serious investments in building the Metaverse, there are questions to be asked. I�d posit that the problems of nausea and simulator sickness that many people report when using VR headsets go deeper than pixel persistence and latency rates.

What I want to know, and what I hope someone will help me discover, is whether or not biology plays a fundamental role in shaping people�s experience with immersive virtual reality. In other words, are systems like Oculus fundamentally (if inadvertently) sexist in their design?

# ¿ Jan 19, 2022 18:40

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Silver Alicorn posted:

this is a good thread even if I don�t understand it. I use a trackball

i swap between a mouse and a wacom tablet

# ¿ Jan 19, 2022 18:53

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Expo70 posted:

this does make me wonder if the cornea has some sort of difference from estrogenic vs androgenic dominant bodies, given i know a number of people have experienced changes in their prescriptions when undergoing hrt. i think its something that really does need to be studied more, and better understood.

one of the most interesting lines in that whole thing to me was:

quote:

Along the way, I also learned that there are more sex hormones on the retina than in anywhere else in the body except for the gonads.

who knew? not me.

yeah i thought the studies she mentioned on people undergoing hormone therapy was interesting and id really like to see more rigorous research

# ¿ Jan 19, 2022 19:00

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

someday steve jobs will be held to account for his crimes

# ¿ Jan 19, 2022 19:01

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

HCI has its roots in time & motion studies and jesus christ if you ever wanted to see what hell looks like take a look at the output of some of those studies commissioned for industry

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 00:03

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

rotor posted:

HCI has its roots in time & motion studies and jesus christ if you ever wanted to see what hell looks like take a look at the output of some of those studies commissioned for industry

or, you know, turn off your monitor

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 00:03

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

bob dobbs is dead posted:

there's the group of peeps who do it and there's the logical consequents of the subject at hand: we are really talkin about the group of peeps who do it, an academic eternal fistfight. SIGCHI, for example, split off from the SIG for "Behavioral Computing" in the 80s, so these peeps are not direct descendants of the peeps who were doing time and motion studies. but the HFES, who do the main journal in hfe nowadays, started off in WW2 doin em time and motion studies

i mean i understand thats what you're talking about, yes

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 00:08

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

you can even get The Clapper if ur too lazy to get up

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 03:25

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

also i feel fairly certain that .... ugh, i cant belive i'm typing this ... I feel fairly certain your smart bulbs expose some sort of interface that there are already tools for and ... euugh ... you could probably just write an internal webapp for ... [vomits into wastepaper basket]

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 03:28

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

i like the lights that have little tank circuits so you just touch em anywhere to turn em on and off

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 03:52

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

the peel & stick LED tape that takes 12v is really good and makes making your own weird lamps really easy

i made my girl a nice light out of just a straight 1x4" cherry board just covered on one side with LEDs. Just bounce the light off the ceiling and its bright af

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 03:54

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Sapozhnik posted:

the iphone and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 04:01

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

leper khan posted:

How many lumens do you want? A quick Google revealed these 7500 lumen gems for that Fury of the Day Star look

https://www.amazon.com/ZP-Equivalen...42739284&sr=8-5

thats a whole lotta leds

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 07:37

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Truman Peyote posted:

do trackballs work for shooters?

No.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 08:45

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

like there will 100% be people who play their fave FPS with a trackball and think they're super good at it, but no, they dont work for FPSes.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 08:48

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

PokeJoe posted:

I used to play TF2 with a trackball guy and he could only play pyro with any success at all

yep, same with qwtf. Its a pyro-only controller, and its not even good at it, it was very dependent on where he was on the map

# ¿ Jan 21, 2022 08:51

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

a microwave should have one control: a knob for setting how long you want it to run

# ¿ Jan 22, 2022 00:48

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Progressive JPEG posted:

I have a panasonic where you tell it how many watts to use and I normally set it to 400-600 territory, seems to cook more evenly

if you're one of the 5% of users that use power levels, a second control will be allowed which is a knob that controls the power output ranging from 0 to max

# ¿ Jan 22, 2022 01:04

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Expo70 posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTzn37Usa-U

ooooo

haptics are super cool

# ¿ Jan 22, 2022 18:54

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

notation is all made up anyway

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 03:16

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

bob dobbs is dead posted:

so are words, and you'd better be as good at writing as shakespeare if you wanna make up as much poo poo as shakespeare

people make up words every day, get over yourself.

expo, if you need anyones blessing to make up your own symbols to represent your own theories - which you 100% do not, but in case you think you do - you have mine.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 07:30

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

like where do you think all those fuckin symbols came from in the first place? mathematicians got tired of writing out a bunch of poo poo and said "oh gently caress it, lets just call it ⟄"

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 07:32

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

bob dobbs is dead posted:

it wasn't "mathematicians", is the rub

it was like 10 mathematicians who determined nearly all of it

nah. if there isn't a symbol for what you want, you get to make one up, that's the rule.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 07:35

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

maybe no one else uses it, that's fine. But in language and especially in mathematics you are free to make up your own symbols if current notation is lacking.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 07:36

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

I bid you good night.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 07:36

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Shame Boy posted:

i think a bunch of people are here specifically for the weird poo poo

not me, I'm just here for arguments about brace styles, languages and what kind of bagels are best (salt)

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 22:12

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

PCjr sidecar posted:

you can still get these dials on cheap small microwaves

its actually very hard to find microwaves with dial interfaces now. I have one on my wishlist for when i finally get tired of the POS i have now, and its entirely aimed at people who have trouble with fine manipulation skills.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 22:17

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Achmed Jones posted:

oh man i saw some old infomercial for microwave cooking and it was hilarious how much of it was "get a ceramic plate really hot in the microwave, now grill poo poo on it." i couldn't figure out how it could be superior to just getting a hot plate in anything but the most dire no-counter-space circumstances

dorms and rvs and such

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 22:20

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

^^^^^^ lovely

Achmed Jones posted:

so you mean dire no-counter-space circumstances?

plus the hot plate is still better

some dorms specifically outlaw hotplates, which is why i mentioned them

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 22:23

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Sagebrush posted:

the circuitry for it is literally just a capacitive oscillator iirc

catpacitive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dnUZE58UBg

# ¿ Feb 3, 2022 20:49

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

bring back the SpaceOrb imo

# ¿ Feb 7, 2022 21:32

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Expo70 posted:

I love the space-orb but it made zero sense.

we had someone using it as a 6 DoF controller and it took some getting used to but after a while you could be pretty precise.

Like if your game depends on super precise input then idk but for stuff like Descent it was [img-chef-kissyfingers]

# ¿ Feb 7, 2022 22:18

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

you could also get one of the cheap knockoffs that were almost as good

# ¿ Feb 7, 2022 22:20

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

PokeJoe posted:

what kind of controller is good for the laziest possible use

# ¿ Feb 8, 2022 04:28

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

Expo70 posted:

as someone into 6dof, the issue is that in Descent most combat happens at reasonably close ranges and the contradictions make finer inputs much harder.

I mean it was a long time ago and maybe i'm not a pro level descent player or whatever but as i remember it seemed good to me. Maybe i'm just remembering the novelty, idk. Have you ever tried one?

# ¿ Feb 8, 2022 19:13

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

idk what your issue(s) is/are but in my experience engineering is often to afraid to push back on product or too ineffective at doing so.

The analogy i always try to use is that PMs creating feature lists are shopping in a store without price tags. Engineering must have a seat on those committees if only to tell the PMs "wow actually that feature is really expensive just fyi."

# ¿ Feb 15, 2022 21:13

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

MononcQc posted:

mostly it was the idea that dashboard metrics have to be chosen carefully because during an outage people have less bandwidth, not more, so you have to pick a restricted set of values that are likely to generally be useful to provide vitals (which are interpreted based on current context) rather than trying to add tons of metrics that provide their own context to an ongoing incident.

Someone during the discussion did mention something like the ribbon, but the difference is that the ribbon idea is that "everyone is a slightly different power user" whereas this study is about "everyone using the system under high pressure restricted their use of the device's capabilities and stuck with familiar paths to require less mental bandwidth"

Both result in users vastly under-using the system's capabilities, but for very different reasons.

this is a great argument for producing simpler, less capable systems.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2022 01:19

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

MononcQc posted:

One paper I love probably states it best through its title: "I want to treat the patient, not the alarm"

its the same for any toolmaker. Fundamentally you need to realize that the tools you make are not center stage, the things they're using the tools to make are.. Toolmakers who haven't internalized this deep wisdom consistently make bad tools.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2022 05:46

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# ¿ Apr 18, 2024 03:17

rotor: Jun 11, 2001; Can't post for 5 hours!

hahaha dr. weiner hahaha

# ¿ Mar 2, 2022 06:05

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > Your Ergonomics Are a Piece Of Shit: Oh the humanities!

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