Bill Buxton
Personal Homepage:
http://www.billbuxton.comCurrent place of employment:
Buxton DesignBill Buxton is an interaction designer and researcher. He is Principal of the Toronto-based design and consulting firm, Buxton Design. Bill is one of the pioneers in computer music, and has played an important role in the development of computer-based tools for film, industrial design, graphics and animation.As a researcher, he has had a long history with Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Center and the University of Toronto (where he is still an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, and Visiting Professor at the Knowledge Media Design Institute). During the fall of 2004, he was a lecturer in the Department of Industrial Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and during the Spring of 2005, he was a Visiting Scientist at Microsoft Research, Cambridge.
From 1994 until December 2002, he was Chief Scientist of Alias|Wavefront, and from 1995, its parent company SGI Inc. In 2001, the Hollywood Reporter named him one of the 10 most influential innovators in Hollywood. In 2002 Time Magazine named him one of the top 5 designers in Canada, and he was elected to the ACM’s CHI Academy.
Publications by Bill Buxton (bibliography)
Hinckley, Ken, Yatani, Koji, Pahud, Michel, Coddington, Nicole, Rodenhouse, Jenny, Wilson, Andy, Benko, Hrvoje and Buxton, Bill (2010): Manual deskterity: an exploration of simultaneous pen + touch direct input. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2010. pp. 2793-2802.
“Manual Deskterity is a prototype digital drafting table that supports both pen and touch input. We explore a division of labor between pen and touch that flows from natural human skill and differentiation of roles of the hands. We also explore the simultaneous use of pen and touch to support novel compound gestures.”
© All rights reserved Hinckley et al. and/or their publisher
Venkatacharya, Patanjali S., Kessler, Jonathan, Hardeman, Tami, Seiber, Ed and Buxton, Bill (2010): What makes a good design critic?: food design vs. product design criticism. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2010. pp. 3131-3134.
“This panel will bring together leading food design and product design critics. The panelists will include: a leading Atlanta-based food critic and writer, a food stylist, a restaurant architect&designer, and a well-known product design critic familiar with the field of user experience. Together, the panel will compare and contrast how design experts from these two disciplines provide design criticism, and whether there are any novel learning points from each perspective.”
© All rights reserved Venkatacharya et al. and/or their publisher
Pahud, Michel, Inkpen, Kori, Benko, Hrvoje, Tang, John C. and Buxton, Bill (2010): Three's company: understanding communication channels in three-way distributed collaboration. In: Proceedings of ACM CSCW10 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2010. pp. 271-280.
“We explore the design of a system for three-way collaboration over a shared visual workspace, specifically in how to support three channels of communication: person, reference, and task-space. In two studies, we explore the implications of extending designs intended for dyadic collaboration to three-person groups, and the role of each communication channel. Our studies illustrate the utility of multiple configurations of users around a distributed workspace, and explore the subtleties of traditional notions of identity, awareness, spatial metaphor, and corporeal embodiments as they relate to three-way collaboration.”
© All rights reserved et al. and/or their publisher
Hinckley, Ken, Yatani, Koji, Pahud, Michel, Coddington, Nicole, Rodenhouse, Jenny, Wilson, Andy, Benko, Hrvoje and Buxton, Bill (2010): Pen + touch = new tools. In: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 2010. pp. 27-36.
“We describe techniques for direct pen+touch input. We observe people's manual behaviors with physical paper and notebooks. These serve as the foundation for a prototype Microsoft Surface application, centered on note-taking and scrapbooking of materials. Based on our explorations we advocate a division of labor between pen and touch: the pen writes, touch manipulates, and the combination of pen + touch yields new tools. This articulates how our system interprets unimodal pen, unimodal touch, and multimodal pen+touch inputs, respectively. For example, the user can hold a photo and drag off with the pen to create and place a copy; hold a photo and cross it in a freeform path with the pen to slice it in two; or hold selected photos and tap one with the pen to staple them all together. Touch thus unifies object selection with mode switching of the pen, while the muscular tension of holding touch serves as the "glue" that phrases together all the inputs into a unitary multimodal gesture. This helps the UI designer to avoid encumbrances such as physical buttons, persistent modes, or widgets that detract from the user's focus on the workspace.”
© All rights reserved Hinckley et al. and/or their publisher
Khan, Azam, Matejka, Justin, Fitzmaurice, George, Kurtenbach, Gord, Burtnyk, Nicolas and Buxton, Bill (2009): Toward the Digital Design Studio: Large Display Explorations. In Human-Computer Interaction, 24 (1) pp. 9-47.
“Inspired by our automotive and product design customers using large displays in design centers, visualization studios, and meeting rooms around the world, we have been exploring the use and potential of large display installations for almost a decade. Our research has touched on many aspects of this rich design space, from individual tools to complete systems, and has generally moved through the life cycle of a design artifact: from the creation phase, through communication and collaboration, to presentation and dissemination. As we attempt to preserve creative flow through the phases, we introduce social structures and constraints that drive the design of possible point solutions in the larger context of a digital design studio trail environment built in the lab. Although many of the interactions presented are viable across several design phases, this article focuses primarily on facilitating collaboration. We conclude with critical lessons learned of both what avenues have been fruitful and which roads to avoid. This article lightly covers the whole design process and attempts to inform readers of key factors to consider when designing for designers.”
© All rights reserved Khan et al. and/or Taylor and Francis
Greenberg, Saul and Buxton, Bill (2008): Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the time). In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008. pp. 111-120.
“Current practice in Human Computer Interaction as encouraged by educational institutes, academic review processes, and institutions with usability groups advocate usability evaluation as a critical part of every design process. This is for good reason: usability evaluation has a significant role to play when conditions warrant it. Yet evaluation can be ineffective and even harmful if naively done 'by rule' rather than 'by thought'. If done during early stage design, it can mute creative ideas that do not conform to current interface norms. If done to test radical innovations, the many interface issues that would likely arise from an immature technology can quash what could have been an inspired vision. If done to validate an academic prototype, it may incorrectly suggest a design's scientific worthiness rather than offer a meaningful critique of how it would be adopted and used in everyday practice. If done without regard to how cultures adopt technology over time, then today's reluctant reactions by users will forestall tomorrow's eager acceptance. The choice of evaluation methodology -- if any -- must arise from and be appropriate for the actual problem or research question under consideration.”
© All rights reserved Greenberg and Buxton and/or ACM Press
Baecker, Ronald M., Harrison, Steve, Buxton, Bill, Poltrock, Steven and Churchill, Elizabeth F. (2008): Media spaces: past visions, current realities, future promise. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008. pp. 2245-2248.
“Established researchers and practitioners active in the development and deployment of media spaces review what seemed to be promised twenty years ago, what has actually been achieved, and what we might anticipate over the next twenty years.”
© All rights reserved Baecker et al. and/or ACM Press
Izadi, Shahram, Butler, Alex, Hodges, Steve, West, Darren, Hall, Malcolm, Buxton, Bill and Molloy, Mike (2008): Experiences with building a thin form-factor touch and tangible tabletop. In: Third IEEE International Workshop on Tabletops and Interactive Surfaces Tabletop 2008 October 1-3, 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. pp. 181-184.
Buxton, Bill (2008): The Role of the Artist in the Laboratory. In: (ed.). "Meisterwerke der Computer Kunst". pp. 29-32
Cited on the following page:
» Aesthetic Computing: [Not yet published]
Hodges, Steve, Izadi, Shahram, Butler, Alex, Rrustemi, Alban and Buxton, Bill (2007): ThinSight: versatile multi-touch sensing for thin form-factor displays. In: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology October 7-10, 2007, Newport, Rhode Island, USA. pp. 259-268.
“ThinSight is a novel optical sensing system, fully integrated into a thin form factor display, capable of detecting multi-ple fingers placed on or near the display surface. We describe this new hardware in detail, and demonstrate how it can be embedded behind a regular LCD, allowing sensing without degradation of display capability. With our approach, fingertips and hands are clearly identifiable through the display. The approach of optical sensing also opens up the exciting possibility for detecting other physical objects and visual markers through the display, and some initial experiments are described. We also discuss other novel capabilities of our system: interaction at a distance using IR pointing devices, and IR-based communication with other electronic devices through the display. A major advantage of ThinSight over existing camera and projector based optical systems is its compact, thin form-factor making such systems even more deployable. We therefore envisage using ThinSight to capture rich sensor data through the display which can be processed using computer vision techniques to enable both multi-touch and tangible interaction.”
© All rights reserved Hodges et al. and/or ACM Press
Buxton, Bill (2007): Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. Morgan Kaufmann
Buxton, Bill (2007): Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (Interactive Technologies). Morgan Kaufmann
“Bill Buxton and I share a common belief that design leadership together with technical leadership drives innovation. Sketching, prototyping, and design are essential parts of the process we use to create new products. Bill Buxton brings design leadership and creativity to Microsoft. Through his thought-provoking personal examples he is inspiring others to better understand the role of design in their own companies
--Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft"
Informed design is essential." While it might seem that Bill Buxton is exaggerating or kidding with this bold assertion, neither is the case. In an impeccably argued and sumptuously illustrated book, design star Buxton convinces us that design simply must be integrated into the heart of business--Roger Martin, Dean, Rotman School of Management, University of TorontoDesign is explained, with the means and manner for successes and failures illuminated by engaging stories, true examples and personal anecdotes. In Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton clarifies the processes and skills of design from sketching to experience modeling, in a lively and informative style that is rich with stories and full of his own heart and enthusiasm. At the start we are lost in mountain snows and northern seas, but by the end we are equipped with a deep understanding of the tools of creative design.--Bill Moggridge, Cofounder of IDEO and author of Designing Interactions"Like any secret society, the design community has its strange rituals and initiation procedures. Bill opens up the mysteries of the magical process of design, taking us through a land in which story-telling, orange squeezers, the Wizard of Oz, I-pods, avalanche avoidance, bicycle suspension sketching, and faking it are all points on the design pilgrim's journey. There are lots of ideas and techniques in this book to feed good design and transform the way we think about creating useful stuff". -Peter GabrielI love this book. There are very few resources available that see across and through all of the disciplines involved in developing great experiences. This is complex stuff and Buxton's work is both informed and insightful. He shares the work in an intimate manner that engages the reader and you will find yourself nodding with agreement, and smiling at the poignant relevance of his examples.--Alistair Hamilton, Symbol Technologies, NYBooks that have proposed bringing design into HCI are aplenty, though books that propose bringing software in to Design less common. Nevertheless, Bill manages to skilfully steer a course between the excesses of the two approaches and offers something truly in-between. It could be a real boon to the innovation business by bringing the best of both worlds: design and HCI. --Richard Harper, Microsoft Research, CambridgeThere is almost a fervor in the way that new products, with their rich and dynamic interfaces, are being released to the public-typically promising to make lives easier, solve the most difficult of problems, and maybe even make the world a better place. The reality is that few survive, much less deliver on their promise. The folly? An absence of design, and an over-reliance on technology alone as the solution.We need design. But design as described here depends on different skillsets-each essential, but on their own, none sufficient. In this rich ecology, designers are faced with new challenges-challenges that build on, rather than replace, existing skills and practice. Sketching User Experiences approaches design and design thinking as something distinct that needs to be better understood-by both designers and the people with whom they need to work- in order to achieve success with new products and systems. So while the focus is on design, the approach is holistic. Hence, the book speaks to designers, usability specialists, the HCI community, product managers, and business executives. There is an emphasis on balancing the back-end concern with usability and engineering excellence (getting the design right) with an up-front investment in sketching and ideation (getting the right design). Overall, the objective is to build the notion of informed design: molding emerging technology into a form that serves our society and reflects its values. Grounded in both practice and scientific research, Bill Buxton's engaging work aims to spark the imagination while encouraging the use of new techniques, breathing new life into user experience design.. Covers sketching and early prototyping design methods suitable for dynamic product capabilities: cell phones that communicate with each other and other embedded systems, "smart" appliances, and things you only imagine in your dreams;. Thorough coverage of the design sketching method which helps easily build experience prototypes-without the effort of engineering prototypes which are difficult to abandon;. Reaches out to a range of designers, including user interface designers, industrial designers, software engineers, usability engineers, product managers, and others;. Full of case studies, examples, exercises, and projects, and access to video clips (www.mkp.com/sketching) that demonstrate the principles and methods.About the AuthorTrained as a musician, Bill Buxton began using computers over thirty years ago in his art. This early experience, both in the studio an on stage, helped develop a deep appreciation of both the positive and negative aspects of technology and its impact. This increasingly drew him into both design and research, with a very strong emphasis on interaction and the human aspects of technology. He first came to prominence for his work at the University of Toronto on digital musical instruments and the novel interfaces that they employed. This work in the late 70s gained the attention of Xerox PARC, where Buxton participated in pioneering work in collaborative work, interaction techniques and ubiquitous computing. He then went on to become Chief Scientist of SGI and Alias|Wavefront, where he had the opportunity to work with some of the top film makers and industrial designers in the world. He is now a principal researcher at Microsoft Corp., where he splits his time between research and helping make design a fundamental pillar of the corporate culture. * Covers sketching and early prototyping design methods suitable for dynamic product capabilities: cell phones that communicate with each other and other embedded systems, "smart" appliances, and things you only imagine in your dreams;* Thorough coverage of the design sketching method which helps easily build experience prototypes-without the effort of engineering prototypes which are difficult to abandon;* Reaches out to a range of designers, including user interface designers, industrial designers, software engineers, usability engineers, product managers, and others;* Full of case studies, examples, exercises, and projects, and access to video clips that demonstrate the principles and methods.”
© All rights reserved Buxton and/or Morgan Kaufmann
Owen, Russell, Kurtenbach, Gordon, Fitzmaurice, George W., Baudel, Thomas and Buxton, Bill (2005): When it gets more difficult, use both hands: exploring bimanual curve manipulation. In: Graphics Interface 2005 May 9-11, 2005, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. pp. 17-24.
“In this paper we investigate the relationship between bimanual (two-handed) manipulation and the cognitive aspects of task integration, divided attention and epistemic action. We explore these relationships by means of an empirical study comparing a bimanual technique versus a unimanual (one-handed) technique for a curve matching task. The bimanual technique was designed on the principle of integrating the visual, conceptual and input device space domain of both hands. We provide evidence that the bimanual technique has better performance than the unimanual technique and, as the task becomes more cognitively demanding, the bimanual technique exhibits even greater performance benefits. We argue that the design principles and performance improvements are applicable to other task domains.”
© All rights reserved Owen et al. and/or their publisher
Buxton, Bill (2005): The renaissance is over: long live the renaissance. In: Proceedings of the 2005 Conference on Creativity and Cognition 2005. p. 3.
Fitzmaurice, George W., Khan, Azam, Pieke, Robert, Buxton, Bill and Kurtenbach, Gordon (2003): Tracking menus. In: Proceedings of the 16th annural ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology November, 2-5, 2003, Vancouver, Canada. pp. 71-79.
“We describe a new type of graphical user interface widget, known as a
"tracking menu." A tracking menu consists of a cluster of graphical buttons,
and as with traditional menus, the cursor can be moved within the menu to
select and interact with items. However, unlike traditional menus, when the
cursor hits the edge of the menu, the menu moves to continue tracking the
cursor. Thus, the menu always stays under the cursor and close at hand. In this
paper we define the behavior of tracking menus, show unique affordances of the
widget, present a variety of examples, and discuss design characteristics. We
examine one tracking menu design in detail, reporting on usability studies and
our experience integrating the technique into a commercial application for the
Tablet PC. While user interface issues on the Tablet PC, such as preventing
round trips to tool palettes with the pen, inspired tracking menus, the design
also works well with a standard mouse and keyboard configuration.”
© All rights reserved Fitzmaurice et al. and/or ACM Press
Grossman, Tovi, Balakrishnan, Ravin, Kurtenbach, Gordon, Fitzmaurice, George W., Khan, Azam and Buxton, Bill (2002): Creating principal 3D curves with digital tape drawing. In: Terveen, Loren (ed.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2002 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota. pp. 121-128.
Tsang, Michael, Fitzmaurice, George W., Kurtenbach, Gordon, Khan, Azam and Buxton, Bill (2002): Boom chameleon: simultaneous capture of 3D viewpoint, voice and gesture annotations on a spatially-aware display. In: Beaudouin-Lafon, Michel (ed.) Proceedings of the 15th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology October 27-30, 2002, Paris, France. pp. 111-120.
“We introduce the Boom Chameleon, a novel input/output device consisting of a
flat-panel display mounted on a tracked mechanical boom. The display acts as a
physical window into 3D virtual environments, through which a one-to-one
mapping between real and virtual space is preserved. The Boom Chameleon is
further augmented with a touch-screen and a microphone/speaker combination. We
present a 3D annotation application that exploits this unique configuration in
order to simultaneously capture viewpoint, voice and gesture information.
Design issues are discussed and results of an informal user study on the device
and annotation software are presented. The results show that the Boom Chameleon
annotation facilities have the potential to be an effective, easy to learn and
operate 3D design review system.”
© All rights reserved Tsang et al. and/or ACM Press
Fitzmaurice, George W., Balakrishnan, Ravin, Kurtenbach, Gordon and Buxton, Bill (1999): An Exploration into Supporting Artwork Orientation in the User Interface. In: Altom, Mark W. and Williams, Marian G. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 99 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. pp. 167-174.
“Rotating a piece of paper while drawing is an integral and almost subconscious part of drawing with pencil and paper. In a similar manner, the advent of lightweight pen-based computers allow digital artwork to be rotated while drawing by rotating the entire computer. Given this type of manipulation we explore the implications for the user interface to support artwork orientation. First we describe an exploratory study to further motivate our work and characterize how artwork is manipulated while drawing. After presenting some possible UI approaches to support artwork orientation, we define a new solution called a rotating user interface (RUIs). We then discuss design issues and requirements for RUIs based on our exploratory study.”
© All rights reserved Fitzmaurice et al. and/or ACM Press
Kurtenbach, Gordon, Fitzmaurice, George W., Baudel, Thomas and Buxton, Bill (1997): The Design of a GUI Paradigm Based on Tablets, Two-Hands, and Transparency. In: Pemberton, Steven (ed.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 97 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference March 22-27, 1997, Atlanta, Georgia. pp. 35-42.
“An experimental GUI paradigm is presented which is based on the design goals of maximizing the amount of screen used for application data, reducing the amount that the UI diverts visual attentions from the application data, and increasing the quality of input. In pursuit of these goals, we integrated the non-standard UI technologies of multi-sensor tablets, toolglass, transparent UI components, and marking menus. We describe a working prototype of our new paradigm, the rationale behind it and our experiences introducing it into an existing application. Finally, we presents some of the lessons learned: prototypes are useful to break the barriers imposed by conventional GUI design and some of their ideas can still be retrofitted seamlessly into products. Furthermore, the added functionality is not measured only in terms of user performance, but also by the quality of interaction, which allows artists to create new graphic vocabularies and graphic styles.”
© All rights reserved Kurtenbach et al. and/or ACM Press
Buxton, Bill (1995): Proximal Sensing: Supporting Context Sensitive Interaction. In: Robertson, George G. (ed.) Proceedings of the 8th annual ACM symposium on User interface and software technology November 15 - 17, 1995, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. p. 169.
“This talk addresses the issue of increasing complexity for the user that accompanies new functionality. Briefly, we discuss how complexity can, through appropriate design, be off-loaded to the system -- at least for secondary commands. Consider photography, for example. The 35 mm SLR of a decade ago was analogous to MS-DOS. You could do everything in theory, but in practice, were unlikely to do anything without making an error. When we think of photography, however, we see that there are only two primary decisions: "what" and "when", which correspond to the two primary actions: "point" and "click". By embedding domain-specific knowledge, modern cameras off-load all other decisions to the computer (a.k.a. camera) with the option of overriding the defaults. The net result is that the needs of the novice and expert are met with a single apparatus device. What we do in this presentation is talk about how this type of off-loading can be supported, and why this should be done. We do this by example, drawing mainly on the experiences of the Ontario Telepresence Project.”
© All rights reserved Buxton and/or ACM Press
Buxton, Bill (1995): Integrating the periphery and context: A new model of telematics. In: Graphics Interface 95 May 17-19, 1995, Quebec, Quebec, Canada. pp. 239-246.
Buxton, Bill (1993): HCI and the Inadequacies of Direct Manipulation Systems. In ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 25 (1) pp. 21-22.
“The Direct Manipulation (DM) style of user interface made popular by the Macintosh is becoming a de facto standard. Rather than being taken as a point of departure, it appears to be taken more as a standard to achieve. Using the specification of scope as an example, DM interfaces are shown to be deficient in supporting a transaction fundamental to word processing, information retrieval and CAD. This essay is a plea for designers to break out of the complacency that surrounds the DM approach. It also calls into question the methodologies of HCI for the very limited degree to which they have challenged the DM approach and their paucity of ideas for generating strong new alternatives.”
© All rights reserved Buxton and/or ACM Press
Sellen, Abigail, Buxton, Bill and Arnott, John (1992): Using Spatial Cues to Improve Videoconferencing. In: Bauersfeld, Penny, Bennett, John and Lynch, Gene (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 92 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference June 3-7, 1992, Monterey, California. pp. 651-652.
Kurtenbach, Gordon and Buxton, Bill (1991): GEdit: A Test Bed for Editing by Contiguous Gestures. In ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 23 (2) pp. 22-26.
Mountford, S. Joy, Buxton, Bill, Krueger, Myron W., Laurel, Brenda K. and Vertelney, Laurie (1989): Drama and Personality in User Interface Design. In: Bice, Ken and Lewis, Clayton H. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 89 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 30 - June 4, 1989, Austin, Texas. pp. 105-108.
“The title of this panel immediately leaps out as being out of place. Of all the things that come to mind when one thinks of computers and user interfaces, drama and personality are among the last. The point here is not to make using computers more dramatic, per se, but to learn and borrow from the performing arts about techniques that could improve main stream interface design. The contributions described in this panel are borrowed from the theatrical world, film producing and music. In all the panelists work, the user is at the very center of creating the actual user interface experience, either through direct user participation or via engaging the individual viewer's personality. The panelists' pioneering research has produced and created several examples of new user interface experiences and designs. The discussion will focus on what techniques offer the most promise for facilitating the design of really new experiential user interfaces.”
© All rights reserved Mountford et al. and/or ACM Press
Buxton, Bill (1989): On the Road to Brighton. In ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 20 (4) pp. 16-17.
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