Perception

[Note: This entry was written for the module, CS3216]

The video conferencing session with Google Wave’s Pamela Fox truly underlined the excitement of taking this module. To have a core member of the Wave team review our applications and personally share with us the new attractive APIs sweetened the deal of being in this awesome class.

It also once again highlighted the sheer proficiency of Professor Ben’s networking skills and web of contacts, and his undeniable ability in outsourcing nearly all his lectures to external, credible professionals. Excessive reverence of this module and the professor aside, I did take away something valuable from this two-hour session, although it wasn’t what I’d initially expected.

The technical bits were fairly interesting, as Pamela described the various capabilities of the new Active Bots API. I think what has always been exciting about Wave is the protocol beneath, in which the real-time transmission and reaction to events would allow for more efficient interactions than the current implementations that use AJAX. The ability to utilise this protocol without being constrained to the Wave interface does bring about more possibilities than before.

What I felt was a greater lesson was the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) challenges that a real-time interface would have. Pamela reiterated quite a couple of times the importance of guiding the user on how to use the application, and also the significance of showing the user the visibility of his or her current position within the gadget as well as providing visual feedback in response to the user’s action.

While one might regard this as arguably common sense, the implications of real-time interactions on interface design is indeed an interesting and challenging proposition. I think as developers, it is important to always be aware of the constraints of the platform like in terms of size (browser vs. mobile). Now with Wave, interactions not just with the system but other players within the system can be in real-time, and with that its own set of problems and possibilities are presented.