Munawar Hafiz ([info]munawar) wrote,
@ 2007-10-13 18:34:00
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Blame Canada and the HFI experts
The story behind my visa trouble and the entities that are responsible.

Blame HFI
=========
I believe that HCI research is for women. The men in the HCI research are only contributing garbage. This is not bad. Women are generally more aesthetic than (straight) men. It is hardly surprising that they will produce tidier UIs for a better user experience. Women should be better than men for Human Form Interaction (HFI) research. HFI focuses on creating better forms that everyone has to fill up (tax forms, visa forms, etc).

The Canadian visa form has a big design error. The end of a visa form typically has these meaningless questions - do you have guns, are you a felon, do you want to terrorize the people in the country etc. As if a felon would admit that he is a felon. Anyways, the Canadian form had that. But, hidden between these questions, like a booby trap, was another question - Have you ever applied for a visa in Canada. An unsuspecting user, who have applied for a Canadian visa before, would go ahead and answer all the questions in the negative because
 it is wrapped (and hidden) between all these questions demanding a positive answer. I was that unsuspecting user. As a result my visa application got refused.

I blame the guy who designed the visa form. A lady designing the form would have been cleaner and less confusing.  Paul once told a guy in the HCI group at UIUC that he is working in a discipline fit for women. That guy left before  finishing his Ph.D. Great job Paul, because you have saved us from another guy producing bad HCI stuff.


Blame Canada
============
My passport clearly showed that I have been to Canada before. The visa officials could have ignored my mistake. They did not do so, because they thought that my "lack of truth" would mean that I might be lying about my intention, and I would not return from Canada. I provided solid evidences showing my ties in the US, but those were not convincing enough.

I blame Canada, because they still believe that someone with a life in the US would want to go to Canada. They are living in a foolish reality.


Note. HFI is a fake acronym.

Note2. That guy in the HCI group did not leave because of Paul's comment. I exaggerated it for dramatic purposes.

(4 comments) - (Post a new comment)


(Anonymous)
2007-10-27 01:45 pm UTC (link)
Finally, a field in CS that females are suited for!! At last I feel that I belong to CS ;)
I think there is a general misunderstanding about what is HCI and it is often confused with usability, aesthetics, web design, graphics design, form design and many other designs that I can't think of right now. Let me assure you, we *do not* spend hours thinking about the color of a button or the orientation of a control on an interface. We do, however, try to address some aspect of human productivity and satisfaction through computational tools and techniques. Of course we need to pay attention to usability in the interfaces we design, but that's something that *everyone* should be doing, to ensure that their software or hardware is actually used by those it was intended for, and used successfully for the purpose it was developed for.
I do agree though that the form you were referring to was badly designed. User testing before releasing would have taken care of it and that's not even HCI, that's just Usability 101.
More people should be taking CS465 and CS565, the basic and advanced level HCI classes in our department. It's a lot of fun (also a lot of work), but you get a better sense of what HCI is, develop technology addressing some real world problem and evaluate the direct impact on the end user, and learn core concepts of design and implementation that benefits any developer.

The first and third place in the Siebel Center Computing Habitat competition this year went to two projects from the HCI group. I rest my case ;)

-Shamsi

(Reply to this) (Thread)

(Anonymous)
2007-10-27 06:10 pm UTC (link)
Note 1. The projects that won at the Siebel Center Computing Habitat Competition did not win because they were aesthetically pleasing. They won because the judges saw the scientific contributions and broader impact the projects had.

Note 2. I personally think HCI is up and coming because it makes people think more about the 'Why do I care' question before going off and start coding. Maybe females are attracted to HCI since they care about whether others care. And maybe we understand the bigger picture better. I really don't think aesthetics plays a major role, all my developed software run in the background and I couldn't care less about how they look.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2007-11-11 10:03 pm UTC (link)
AMEN. This is a beautiful post. Even a straight man can appreciate its beauty. But a real SE fanatic would spot another root cause of this problem - lack of testing. One usability tester would have immediately discovered that something ain't right.

As someone who moved from US to Argentina, I resent the comment that only non-lives would move from US to Canada. A lot of democrats did that after the last elections.

(Reply to this)


(Anonymous)
2007-11-26 10:45 pm UTC (link)
I think the VISA form is PERFECTLY designed and tested. Visa-forms are supposed to be completed carefully.

Actually a felon is supposed to admit that he is a felon.
And admit if they have a gun. Otherwise there is always a question of "well, no one asked me about it. There was no mention that I cannot bring a gun".

As Robert Half said, "The search for someone to blame is always successful."

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