Jimmy Ho
Keith Farinella
Reference Information
Minyoung Song, CHI 2010 Atlanta, GA, April 2010
Summary
The topic of this article was to address the problem that humans seem to have when it comes to perceiving numbers and sizes of objects that are not relative to our own size. So things that are astronomically large or microscopically small in size or number cause our mind to not usually able to process it. TAVR is a program on the microscopic end to allow for users to grasp the meaning of the size of cells or similarly small objects. The program will play an audio clip every time a cell comes into existence on the the head of a pin. This queues the user to know the exact number occurring. After a period of time, a large enough group of cells will be seen by the user and realize how many can fit on such a small area.
Discussion
This is a very interesting topic that I have experience personally a number of times. I think this idea is an interesting way to get people to understand these kind of numbers. However, I believe that this idea needs to be expanded on greatly. I think there is an innate characteristic for all humans to simply not understand these relatively weird sizes and numbers. To truly grasp this, I think a lot more needs to be done in the realm of learning physics, biology, etc. Having said that though, this program is a good way to start out and allow children to learn how vastly different these sizes and numbers are and then this could be built upon later.
This sounds like a very interesting idea. It is difficult to grasp the concept of how small things such as cells are, and I think this could be a good way to demonstrate that. Just playing an audio clip many times seems like it would express quantity more than size, so further expansion may be necessary.
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