aram’s blog

• What is the purpose of this product?

• Who are its users?

• What aspects of the product are objects, communications, environments, services, or systems?

1. Objects:
2. Communications:
3. Environments:
4. Services/Systems:

• What are the product’s features and functions, and what user needs do they address?

• How were physical, cognitive social, cultural, and emotional human factors considered in the design? How are these successful or not?

• How could the product be more user-centered?

iPod is a portable mp3 music player designed and branded by Apple. The product line of iPod varies from video-playing, web-browsing enabled one from screenless one which only plays random sequence of musics. As with many other digital music players, iPods also can be used as external hard drives. When synchronized with iTunes, a digital media player/platform, users can organize, play, and purchase music online.

iPods have become unique, generic-looking device standing alone, gaining momentum from young, media-driven and casual consumers. This user base define their own ‘narrative’ of daily life through iPods’ capacity to store, organize and play digital media files. Passers-by wearing iPods’ ear-phone reminds the clever advertisement where white ear-buds contrasts human silhuettes.

Most significant features of iPod is a ‘click-wheel’ navigation interface. Its buttons perform basic functions such as play, next track, etc. Other operations such as scrolling through menu items and controlling the volume are performed by using the click wheel in a rotational manner. Ever since Apple introduced very first generation iPod on 2001, Apple kept this click-wheel physical interface, updating few improvements such as moving five control buttons beneath the wheel until they announced iPod Touch on 2007. Eliminating ‘outer’ buttons reflects Apple’s ‘less is more’ design philosophy, enabling users experience a luxury feeling of navigating and playing digital media files.

While Apple claims that iPod’s physical interface is human-centered and intuitive so that most users can grasp a sense of using it within a short amount of time, there has been some issues around. In fact, these issues are rather ‘love/hate’ thing, so many of them couldn’t be absolute ‘cons’ of iPods. For physical interface, some users found the power on and off function counter-intuitive. iPod doesn’t come with separate power on/off button, instead, it is powered on and off by holding down ‘play’ button for three or more seconds. Considering many other mp3 players come with normal on/off button, this could be subtle, while many ‘podsters’ would find this beauty. Click-wheel is also controversial, hatching numerous arguments from users. As I stated above, since Apple chose to design the device with minimal approaches, several features have dual-functions that dictate the users to go over ‘few’ steps unavoidably.(i.e. to disable ’shuffle’, users should go five steps back to first menu in the middle of listening music)

So, are these all ‘unsuccessful’ features of Apple iPod?  It is hard to say that way.  Mp3 player market nowadays they keep inventing so called ‘iPod killers’, however, iPod’s sell through is still increasing. With all ‘cons’ from haters and even possible ‘planned obsolescence’ suspect, many loyal podsters still believe that iPod is elegant, luxury digital media device that makes you keep buying it.

Yeah… I have absolutely no idea how I am going to figure this out:regular expression. So, I decided to read the e-book first, but reading the book also turns out to be a long road to go!

The first code below is just about Pattern and Matcher, not even goes further to regex details (meta-characters, character class, quantifiers and etc.).

//wk2 assignment
//my name matching + regex
//aram chang 2008 02 05

import java.util.regex.*;

public class RegexAssignName {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String inputtext = “aram chang is aramcee in Korean.”; // Step #1
String regex = “aramcee”; // Step #2
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex); // Step #3
Matcher m = p.matcher(inputtext); // Step #4
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group()); // Step #5
} else {
System.out.println(”No match!”); // Step #6
}
}
}

output: aramcee

Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex); // Compile Regex
Matcher m = p.matcher(content); // Create Matcher
while (m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group()); —> try to memorize this pattern and matcher code….

Next step is getting email address by regex-ing. I’ve had trouble compiling it, eclipse kept showing red underline on my regex. Dannie helped me out just putting one more slash per each and making a2z case insensitive.

//wk2 assignment
//email matching + regex
//aram chang 2008 02 05
import java.util.regex.*;

public class RegexEmailMatching {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String inputtext = “aramcee@gmail.com abc@hanmail.com ddd@hexmail.com”; // Step #1
String regex = “\\b[A-Z0-9._%-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\\.[A-Z]{2,4}\\b“; // important to put one more “/”

Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex,Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE); // a -z has to be lowercase

Matcher m = p.matcher(inputtext); //

if (m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group()); //

} else {
System.out.println(”No match!”); //

}
}
}

output: aramcee@gmail.com