Gerhard Fischer
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"G. Fischer"
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Publications by Gerhard Fischer (bibliography)
» 2009 «
Fischer, Gerhard, Jennings, Pamela, Maher, Mary Lou, Resnick, Mitchel and Shneiderman, Ben (2009): Creativity challenges and opportunities in social computing. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2009. pp. 3283-3286. Available online
“There is a convergence in recent theories of creativity that go beyond characteristics and cognitive processes of individuals to recognize the importance of the social construction of creativity. In parallel, there has been a rise in social computing supporting the collaborative construction of knowledge. The panel will discuss the challenges and opportunities from the confluence of these two developments by bringing together the contrasting and controversial perspective of the individual panel members. It will synthesize from different perspectives an analytic framework to understand these new developments, and how to promote rigorous research methods and how to identify the unique challenges in developing evaluation and assessment methods for creativity research.”
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» 2008 «
Carmien, Stefan Parry and Fischer, Gerhard (2008): Design, adoption, and assessment of a socio-technical environment supporting independence for persons with cognitive disabilities. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008. pp. 597-606. Available online
“A significant fraction of persons with cognitive disabilities are potentially able to live more independently with the use of powerful tools embedded in their social environment. The Memory Aiding Prompting System (MAPS) provides an environment in which caregivers can create scripts that can be used by people with cognitive disabilities ("clients") to support them in carrying out tasks that they would not be able to achieve by themselves. To account for the great diversity among clients, MAPS was developed as a meta-design environment, empowering the caregivers to develop personalized prompting systems for the specific needs of individual clients.”
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Beringer, Joerg, Fischer, Gerhard, Mussio, P., Myers, Brad A., Paterno, Fabio and Ruyter, Boris de (2008): The next challenge: from easy-to-use to easy-to-develop. are you ready?. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008. pp. 2257-2260. Available online
“The main challenge of next years is to allow users of software systems, who are non-professional software developers, to create, modify or extend software artefacts. In this panel we want to discuss with the CHI community the key aspects in the area of End User Development and an associated research agenda, which should be then proposed to the main research agencies, such as NSF and EU ICT.”
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» 2007 «
Ye, Yunwen and Fischer, Gerhard (2007): Designing for Participation in Socio-technical Software Systems. In: Stephanidis, Constantine (ed.) UAHCI 2007 - 4th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction - Part 1 July 22-27, 2007, Beijing, China. pp. 312-321. Available online
Fischer, Gerhard (2007): Meta-design: Expanding Boundaries and Redistributing Control in Design. In: Baranauskas, Maria Cecília Calani, Palanque, Philippe A., Abascal, Julio and Barbosa, Simone Diniz Junqueira (eds.) DEGAS 2007 - Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Design and Evaluation of e-Government Applications and Services September 11th, 2007, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. pp. 193-206. Available online
Fischer, Gerhard (2007): Meta-design and Social Creativity: Making All Voices Heard. In: Baranauskas, Maria Cecília Calani, Palanque, Philippe A., Abascal, Julio and Barbosa, Simone Diniz Junqueira (eds.) DEGAS 2007 - Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Design and Evaluation of e-Government Applications and Services September 11th, 2007, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. pp. 692-693. Available online
Fischer, Gerhard (2007): HCI Themes for the Future: Collaborative Design, Social Creativity, and Meta-design. In: Baranauskas, Maria Cecília Calani, Palanque, Philippe A., Abascal, Julio and Barbosa, Simone Diniz Junqueira (eds.) DEGAS 2007 - Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Design and Evaluation of e-Government Applications and Services September 11th, 2007, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. pp. 704-705. Available online
» 2006 «
Shneiderman, Ben, Fischer, Gerhard, Czerwinski, Mary, Resnick, Mitchel, Myers, Brad A., Candy, Linda, Edmonds, Ernest, Eisenberg, Michael, Giaccardi, Elisa, Hewett, Tom, Jennings, Pamela and Kules, Bill (2006): Creativity Support Tools: Report From a U.S. National Science Foundation Sponsored Workshop. In International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (2) pp. 61-77
“Creativity support tools is a research topic with high risk but potentially very high payoff. The goal is to develop improved software and user interfaces that empower users to be not only more productive but also more innovative. Potential users include software and other engineers, diverse scientists, product and graphic designers, architects, educators, students, and many others. Enhanced interfaces could enable more effective searching of intellectual resources, improved collaboration among teams, and more rapid discovery processes. These advanced interfaces should also provide potent support in hypothesis formation, speedier evaluation of alternatives, improved understanding through visualization, and better dissemination of results. For creative endeavors that require composition of novel artifacts (e.g., computer programs, scientific papers, engineering diagrams, symphonies, artwork), enhanced interfaces could facilitate exploration of alternatives, prevent unproductive choices, and enable easy backtracking. This U.S. National Science Foundation sponsored workshop brought together 25 research leaders and graduate students to share experiences, identify opportunities, and formulate research challenges. Two key outcomes emerged: (a) encouragement to evaluate creativity support tools through multidimensional in-depth longitudinal case studies and (b) formulation of 12 principles for design of creativity support tools.”
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Fischer, Gerhard (2006): Beyond binary choices: Understanding and exploiting trade-offs to enhance creativity. In First Monday, 11 (4)
Fischer, Gerhard (2006): Distributed intelligence: extending the power of the unaided, individual human mind. In: Celentano, Augusto (ed.) AVI 2006 - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces May 23-26, 2006, Venezia, Italy. pp. 7-14. Available online
» 2005 «
Fischer, Gerhard, Giaccardi, Elisa, Eden, Hal, Sugimoto, Masanori and Ye, Yunwen (2005): Beyond binary choices: Integrating individual and social creativity. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 63 (4) pp. 482-512
“The power of the unaided individual mind is highly overrated. Although society often thinks of creative individuals as working in isolation, intelligence and creativity result in large part from interaction and collaboration with other individuals. Much human creativity is social, arising from activities that take place in a context in which interaction with other people and the artifacts that embody collective knowledge are essential contributors. This paper examines: (1) how individual and social creativity can be integrated by means of proper collaboration models and tools supporting distributed cognition; (2) how the creation of shareable externalizations ("boundary objects") and the adoption of evolutionary process models in the construction of meta-design environments can enhance creativity and support spontaneous design activities ("unselfconscious cultures of design"); and (3) how a new design competence is emerging -- one that requires passage from individual creative actions to synergetic activities, from the reflective practitioner to reflective communities and from given tasks to personally meaningful activities. The paper offers examples in the context of collaborative design and art practice, including urban planning, interactive art and open source. In the effort to draw a viable path "beyond binary choices", the paper points out some major challenges for the next generation of socio-technical environments to further increase the integration of individual and social creativity.”
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Fischer, Gerhard (2005): Distances and diversity: sources for social creativity. In: Proceedings of the 2005 Conference on Creativity and Cognition 2005. pp. 128-136. Available online
“The power of the unaided, individual mind is highly overrated: The Renaissance scholar no longer exists. Although creative individuals are often thought of as working in isolation, the role of interaction and collaboration with other individuals is critical to creativity. Creative activity grows out of the relationship between individuals and their work, and from the interactions between an individual and other human beings. Because complex problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses, it is necessary that all involved stakeholders participate, communicate, collaborate, and learn from each other. Distances (across spatial, temporal, and technological dimensions) and diversity (bringing stakeholders together from different cultures) are important sources for social creativity. This paper describes conceptual frameworks and socio-technical environments (derived from the systems that we have developed over the last decade) in which social creativity can come alive.”
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» 2004 «
Fischer, Gerhard (2004): Social creativity: turning barriers into opportunities for collaborative design. In: Clement, Andrew and Besselaar, Peter Van den (eds.) PDC 2004 - Proceedings of the Eighth Conference on Participatory Design July 27-31, 2004, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. pp. 152-161. Available online
Fischer, Gerhard, Giaccardi, Elisa, Ye, Yunwen, Sutcliffe, Alistair G. and Mehandjiev, Nikolay (2004): Meta-design: a manifesto for end-user development. In Communications of the ACM, 47 (9) pp. 33-37
» 2003 «
Fischer, Gerhard (2003): Meta-Design: Beyond User-Centered and Participatory Design. In: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2003. pp. 88-92.
Fischer, Gerhard (2003): Distributed Cognition: A Conceptual Framework for Design-for-All. In: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2003. pp. 78-82.
» 2002 «
Ye, Yunwen and Fischer, Gerhard (2002): Information delivery in support of learning reusable software components on demand. In: Gil, Yolanda and Leake, David (eds.) International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces 2002 January 13-16, 2002, San Francisco, California, USA. pp. 159-166. Available online
“An inherent dilemma exists in the design of high-functionality applications (such as repositories of reusable software components). In order to be useful, high-functionality applications have to provide a large number of features, creating huge learning problems for users. We address this dilemma by developing intelligent interfaces that support learning on demand by enabling users to learn new features when they are needed during work. We support learning on demand with information delivery by identifying learning opportunities of which users might not be aware. The challenging issues in implementing information delivery are discussed and techniques to address them are illustrated with the CodeBroker system. CodeBroker supports Java programmers in learning reusable software components in the context of their normal development environments and practice by proactively delivering task-relevant and personalized information. Evaluations of the system have shown its effectiveness in supporting learning on demand.”
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Fischer, Gerhard (2002): Beyond "Couch Potatoes": From Consumers to Designers and Active Contributors. In First Monday, 7 (12)
» 2001 «
Fischer, Gerhard (2001): Articulating the Task at Hand and Making Information Relevant to It. In Human-Computer Interaction, 16 (2) pp. 243-256
“Building truly "context-aware" environments presents a greater challenge than using data transmitted by ubiquitous computing devices: It requires shared understanding between humans and their computational environments. This essay articulates some specific problems that can be addressed by representing context. It explores the unique possibilities of design environments that model and represent domains, tasks, design guidelines, solutions, and their rationale, and the larger context of such environments embedded in the physical world. Context in design is not a fixed entity sensed by devices, but it is emerging and it is unbounded. Context-aware environments must address these challenges to be more supportive to all stakeholders who design and evolve complex design artifacts.”
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Fischer, Gerhard and Ye, Yunwen (2001): Personalizing Delivered Information in a Software Reuse Environment. In: Bauer, Mathias, Gmytrasiewicz, Piotr J. and Vassileva, Julita (eds.) User Modeling 2001 - 8th International Conference - UM 2001 July 13-17, 2001, Sonthofen, Germany. pp. 178-187. Available online
» 2000 «
Arias, Ernesto, Eden, Hal, Fischer, Gerhard, Gorman, Andrew and Scharff, Eric (2000): Transcending the Individual Human Mind -- Creating Shared Understanding through Collaborative Design. In ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 7 (1) pp. 84-113
“Complex design problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses because the knowledge relevant to a problem is usually distributed among stakeholders. Bringing different and often controversial points of view together to create a shared understanding among these stakeholders can lead to new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts. New media that allow owners of problems to contribute to framing and resolving complex design problems can extend the power of the individual human mind. Based on our past work and study of other approaches, systems, and collaborative and participatory processes, this article identifies challenges we see as the limiting factors for future collaborative human-computer systems. The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is introduced as an integrated physical, and computational environment addressing some of these challenges. The vision behind the EDC shifts future development away from the computer as the focal point, toward an emphasis that tries to improve our understanding of the human, social, and cultural system that creates the context for use. This work is based on new conceptual principles that include creating shared understanding among various stakeholders, contextualizing information to the task at hand, and creating objects to think with in collaborative design activities. Although the EDC framework is applicable to different domains; our initial effort has focused on the domain of urban planning (specifically transportation planning) and community development.”
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Fischer, Gerhard and Scharff, Eric (2000): Meta-Design: Design for Designers. In: Proceedings of DIS00: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques 2000. pp. 396-405. Available online
“One fundamental challenge for the design of the interactive systems of the future is to invent and design environments and cultures in which humans can express themselves and engage in personally meaningful activities. Unfortunately, a large number of new media are designed from a perspective of viewing and treating humans primarily as consumers. The possibility for humans to be and act as designers (in cases in which they desire to do so) should be accessible not only to a small group of high-tech scribes, but rather to all interested individuals and groups. Meta-design characterizes activities, processes, and objectives to create new media and environments that allow users to act as designers and be creative. In this paper we discuss problems addressed by our research on meta-design, provide a conceptual framework for meta-design, and illustrate our developments in the context of a particular system, the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory.”
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» 1999 «
Fischer, Gerhard (1999): Symmetry of Ignorance, Social Creativity, and Meta-Design. In: Proceedings of the third Creativity and Cognition Conference October 11 - 13, 1999, Loughborough, United Kingdom. .
» 1998 «
Fischer, Gerhard (1998): Beyond "Couch Potatoes": From Consumers to Designers. In: Third Asian Pacific Computer and Human Interaction July 15-17, 1998, Kangawa, Japan. pp. 2-. Available online
» 1997 «
Thomas, Christoph G. and Fischer, Gerhard (1997): Using Agents to Personalize the Web. In: Moore, Johanna D., Edmonds, Ernest and Puerta, Angel R. (eds.) International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces 1997 January 6-9, 1997, Orlando, Florida, USA. pp. 53-60. Available online
“Users build personal information spaces (stored as bookmarks, hotlists, or as a personal page of links) as their WWW-subset and interface to access the World-Wide Web. As the WWW is a living "creature" that evolves and grows permanently, users have to take care that their personal information spaces can be kept manageable and up-to-date. Our prototype system BASAR (Building Agents Supporting Adaptive Retrieval) provides users with assistance when managing their personal information spaces. This assistance is user-specific and done by software agents called web assistants and active views. Users delegate tasks to web assistants that perform actions on their views of the WWW, on the WWW itself, and on the history of all user actions. In this paper, we discuss aspects of the design-evaluation-redesign cycle of BASAR by focusing on questionnaires, assessment studies, and system evaluations.”
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Arias, Ernesto, Eden, Hal and Fischer, Gerhard (1997): Enhancing Communication, Facilitating Shared Understanding, and Creating Better Artifacts by Integrating Physical and Computational Media for Design. In: Proceedings of DIS97: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques 1997. pp. 1-12. Available online
“Frequently, the design of interactive systems focuses exclusively on the capabilities provided by the dynamic nature of computational media. Yet our have provided many examples in which physical models provide certain strengths not found in computational models. Rather than viewing this as a dichotomy -- where one must choose between one or the other -- we are exploring the creation of computational environments that build on the strengths of combined physical and virtual approaches. Over the last decade, we have developed different design environments to support stakeholders engaged in design processes by enhancing communication, facilitating shared understanding, and creating better artifacts. Until a few years ago, our work explored physical and computational media separately. In this paper we present our efforts to develop integrated design environments linking physical and computational dimensions to attain the complementary synergies that these two worlds offer. Our purpose behind this integration is the development of systems that can enhance the movement from conceptual thinking to concrete representations using face-to-face interaction to promote the negotiation of meaning, the direct interaction with artifacts, and the possibility that diverse stakeholders can participate fully in the process of design. To this end, we analyze the strengths, affordances, weaknesses, and limitations of the two media used separately and illustrate with our most recent work the value added by integrating these environments.”
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» 1996 «
Eden, Hal, Eisenberg, Michael, Fischer, Gerhard and Repenning, Alexander (1996): Making Learning a Part of Life. In Communications of the ACM, 39 (4) pp. 40-42
» 1995 «
Fischer, Gerhard, Redmiles, David F., Williams, Lloyd, Puhr, Gretchen I., Aoki, Atsushi and Nakakoji, Kumiyo (1995): Beyond Object-Oriented Technology: Where Current Approaches Fall Short. In Human-Computer Interaction, 10 (1) pp. 79-119
“Object-oriented (OO) technology has been heralded as a solution to the problems of software engineering. The claims are that OO technology promotes understandability, extensibility, evolvability, reusability, and maintainability of systems and that OO systems are easy to understand and use. However, this technology has not been as successful as expected. An analysis of experiences and empirical studies reveals that the problem is not the technology per se but that the technology provides no support to software developers in performing the processes the technology requires. We present a cognitive model of software development that details the challenges software developers face in using OO technology. The model focuses on three aspects of software development -- evolution, reuse and redesign, and domain orientation. We motivate this model with a variety of firsthand experiences and use it to assess current OO technology. Further, we present tools and evaluations that substantiate parts of this model. The model and tools indicate directions for future software development environments, looking beyond the technological possibilities of OO languages and beyond the context of individual developers and projects.”
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Fischer, Gerhard, Nakakoji, Kumiyo and Ostwald, Jonathan (1995): Supporting the Evolution of Design Artifacts with Representations of Context and Intent. In: Proceedings of DIS95: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques 1995. pp. 7-15.
“The design of complex artifacts is essentially an evolutionary process that requires collaboration among stakeholders. Domain-oriented design environments (DODEs) support the evolution of artifacts both by individual designers and by designers participating in long-term, indirect collaboration. DODEs provide representations for generic and specific levels of context. This context supports individual designers by making the information space relevant to the current design intent, and long-term collaboration among designers by allowing them to ground their communication around design artifacts. We demonstrate our approach using the KID (Knowing-in-Design) system, articulate principles for representations of context and intent, and discuss various approaches to represent intent and context in design environments.”
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Fischer, Gerhard, Lindstaedt, Stefanie, Ostwald, Jonathan, Stolze, Markus, Sumner, Tamara and Zimmermann, Beatrix (1995): From Domain Modeling to Collaborative Domain Construction. In: Proceedings of DIS95: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques 1995. pp. 75-85.
“Domain-oriented systems offer many potential benefits for end-users such as more intuitive interfaces, better task support, and knowledge-based assistance. A key challenge for system developers constructing domain-oriented systems is determining what the current domain is and what the future domain should be; i.e. what entities should the system embody and how should they be represented. Determining an appropriate domain model is challenging because domains are not static entities that objectively exist, but instead they are dynamic entities that are constructed over time by a community of practice. New software development models and new computational tools are needed that support these communities to create initial models of the domain and to evolve these models over time to meet changing needs and practices. We describe a specific software development model and computational tools that enable domain practitioners to participate in domain construction processes.”
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Guzdial, Mark, Kafai, Yasmin B., Carroll, John M., Fischer, Gerhard, Schank, Roger, Soloway, Elliot and Shneiderman, Ben (1995): Learner-Centered System Design: HCI Perspective for the Future. In: Proceedings of DIS95: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques 1995. pp. 143-147.
“User-centered system design (Norman & Draper, 1986) taught the HCI community to address users and their needs, but the community has learned that the needs of users are not a constant. Learner-centered design draws attention to the changing needs of users (both students and professionals) as they gain expertise and how these changes need to be reflected in the interface. The panelists will help in defining how interface design must be tailored to support users as learners with case studies of their experiences in designing adaptive and adaptable interfaces for learners.”
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» 1994 «
Fischer, Gerhard, McCall, Ray, Ostwald, Jonathan, Reeves, Brent and Shipman, Frank (1994): Seeding, Evolutionary Growth and Reseeding: Supporting the Incremental Development of Design Environments. In: Adelson, Beth, Dumais, Susan and Olson, Judith S. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 94 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 24-28, 1994, Boston, Massachusetts. pp. 292-298. Available online
“We describe an approach to acquiring information during the creation and use of domain-oriented environments. Our model consists of three phases: seeding, evolutionary growth, and reseeding. A seed for a domain-oriented design environment is created through a participatory design process between environment developers and domain designers by incorporating domain-specific knowledge into a domain-independent architecture for design environments. Evolutionary growth takes place as domain designers use the seeded environment to undertake specific projects. Reseeding is a process that reinvolves the environment developers to help domain designers better organize, formalize, and generalize knowledge added during the use phases.”
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Eisenberg, Michael and Fischer, Gerhard (1994): Programmable Design Environments: Integrating End-User Programming with Domain-Oriented Assistance. In: Adelson, Beth, Dumais, Susan and Olson, Judith S. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 94 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 24-28, 1994, Boston, Massachusetts. pp. 431-437. Available online
“Programmable design environments (PDEs) are computational environments that integrate the conceptual frameworks and components of (a) design environments and (b) programmable applications. The integration of these two approaches provides elements (such as software "critics" and "query-able objects") that assist users in learning both the application and its domain; in addition, an interactive "application-enriched" end-user programming environment stresses the values of expressiveness and modifiability. By way of illustration, we present a newly-developed programmable design environment, SchemeChart, for the domain of charting and information displays.”
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» 1993 «
Fischer, Gerhard, Nakakoji, Kumiyo, Ostwald, Jonathan, Stahl, Gerry and Sumner, Tamara (1993): Embedding Computer-Based Critics in the Contexts of Design. In: Ashlund, Stacey, Mullet, Kevin, Henderson, Austin, Hollnagel, Erik and White, Ted (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 93 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 24-29, 1993, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. pp. 157-164. Available online
“Computational critiquing mechanisms provide an effective form of computer-human interaction supporting the process of design. Critics embedded in domain-oriented design environments can take advantage of additional knowledge residing in these environments to provide less intrusive, more relevant critiques. Three classes of embedded critics have been designed, implemented, and studied: Generic critics use domain knowledge to detect problematic situations in the design construction. Specific critics take advantage of additional knowledge in the partial specification to detect inconsistencies between the design construction and the design specification. Interpretive critics are tied to perspective mechanisms that support designers in examining their artifact from different viewpoints.”
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Fischer, Gerhard (1993): Beyond Human Computer Interaction: Designing Useful and Usable Computational Environments. In: Alty, James L., Diaper, Dan and Guest, D. (eds.) Proceedings of the Eighth Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers VIII August 7-10, 1993, Loughborough University, UK. pp. 17-31.
“Human-computer interaction has refocussed many research efforts within computer science from a technology-centered view to a human-centered view. But current research efforts and systems (both prototypes and those commercially available) are just the beginning rather than the end. Conceptual frameworks and computational environments are needed that will give domain workers more independence from computer specialists. Just as the pen was taken out of the hands of the scribes in the middle ages, the power of high-tech computer scribes should be re-defined. To turn computers into convivial tools requires that end users themselves can use, change and enhance their tools and build new ones without having to become professional-level programmers. This article explores a number of future themes transcending current views of human-computer interaction. It describes domain-oriented design environments as new prototypes of computational environments which are simultaneously useful and usable by focusing on humans and their tasks.”
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» 1992 «
Fischer, Gerhard, Grudin, Jonathan, Lemke, Andreas C., McCall, Raymond, Ostwald, Jonathan, Reeves, Brent and Shipman III, Frank M. (1992): Supporting Indirect Collaborative Design with Integrated Knowledge-Based Design Environments. In Human-Computer Interaction, 7 (3) pp. 281-314
“We are developing a conceptual framework and a demonstration system for collaboration among members of design teams when direct communication among these members is impossible or impractical. Our research focuses on the long-term, indirect communication needs of project teams rather than the short-term needs of face-to-face communication or electronic mail. We address these needs with integrated, domain-oriented design environments. Our conceptual framework and our system-building efforts address two major issues: (a) How does individual work blend into project work (especially in large projects that span great distances and time)? and (b) What role do the work objects play in the coordination? We use a specific domain-oriented design environment (NETWORK-HYDRA -- for the design of computer networks) to illustrate our approach, and we discuss HYDRA as the underlying domain-independent, multifaceted architecture for design environments.”
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» 1991 «
Fischer, Gerhard, Henninger, Scott and Redmiles, David F. (1991): Intertwining Query Construction and Relevance Evaluation. In: Robertson, Scott P., Olson, Gary M. and Olson, Judith S. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 91 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 28 - June 5, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana. pp. 55-62. Available online
“Traditional information access systems generally assume that a well-articulated query exists, and that once an object is found, it can be readily understood. Although this assumption works for retrieving text objects, in more complex domains, such as retrieving software objects for reuse, queries must be incrementally constructed and support is needed for comprehending what is retrieved. Therefore, information access methods need support for query construction and relevance evaluation as an integral part of the location process. Two prototype systems are described for supporting this need: CODEFINDER for query construction and EXPLAINER for explanations of program examples. These systems interact to support the processes of locating and comprehending software objects for reuse.”
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Fischer, Gerhard and Stevens, Curt (1991): Information Access in Complex, Poorly Structured Information Spaces. In: Robertson, Scott P., Olson, Gary M. and Olson, Judith S. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 91 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 28 - June 5, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana. pp. 63-70. Available online
“Large information spaces present several problems including information overload. This research effort focuses on the domain of Usenet News, an open access computer-based bulletin board system that distributes messages and software. A conceptual framework is developed that shows the need for (a) flexible organization of information access interfaces and (b) personalized structure to deal with vocabulary mismatches. An operational innovative system building effort (INFOSCOPE) instantiates the framework. In INFOSCOPE, users can evolve the predefined system structure to suit their own semantic interpretations. The approach taken by INFOSCOPE differs from other approaches by requiring less up-front structuring by message senders.”
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Fischer, Gerhard, Lemke, Andreas C., McCall, Raymond and Morch, Anders (1991): Making Argumentation Serve Design. In Human-Computer Interaction, 6 (3) pp. 393-419
“Documenting argumentation (i.e., design rationale) has great potential for serving design. Despite this potential benefit, our analysis of Horst Rittel's and Donald Schon's design theories and of our own experience has shown that there are the following fundamental obstacles to the effective documentation and use of a design rationale: (a) A rationale representation scheme must be found that organizes information according to its relevance to the task at hand; (b) computer support is needed to reduce the burden of recording and using rationale; (c) argumentative and constructive design activities must be linked explicitly by integrated design environments; (d) design rationale must be reusable. In this article, we present the evolution of our conceptual frameworks and systems toward integrated design environments; describe a prototype of an integrated design environment, including its underlying architecture; and discuss some current and future work on extending it.”
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Fischer, Gerhard, Lemke, Andreas C., Mastaglio, Thomas W. and Morch, Anders (1991): Critics: An Emerging Approach to Knowledge-Based Human-Computer Interaction. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 35 (5) pp. 695-721
“We describe the critiquing approach to building knowledge-based interactive systems. Critiquing supports computer users in their problem solving and learning activities. The challenges for the next generation of knowledge-based systems provide a context for the development of this paradigm. We discuss critics from the perspective of overcoming the problems of high-functionality computer systems, of providing a new class of systems to support learning, of extending applications-oriented construction kits to design environments, and of providing an alternative to traditional autonomous expert systems. One of the critiquing systems we have built -- JANUS, a critic for architectural design -- is used as an example for presenting the key aspects of the critiquing process. We then survey additional critiquing systems developed in our and other research groups. The paper concludes with a discussion of experiences and extensions to the paradigm.”
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Fischer, Gerhard, Lemke, Andreas C., Mastaglio, Thomas W. and Morch, Anders (1991): The Role of Critiquing in Cooperative Problem Solving. In ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 9 (2) pp. 123-151
“Cooperative problem-solving systems help users design solutions themselves as opposed to having solutions designed for them. Critiquing -- presenting a reasoned opinion about a user's product or action -- is a major activity of a cooperative problem-solving system. Critics make the constructed artifact "talk back" to the user. Conditions under which critics are more appropriate than autonomous expert systems are discussed. Critics should be embedded in integrated design environments along with other components, such as an argumentative hypertext system, a specification component, and a catalog. Critics support learning as a by-product of problem solving. The major subprocesses of critiquing are goal acquisition, product analysis, critiquing strategies, adaptation capability, explanation and argumentation, and advisory capability. The generality of the critiquing approach is demonstrated by discussing critiquing systems developed in our group and elsewhere. Limitations of many current critics include their inability to learn about specific user goals and their intervention strategies.”
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» 1990 «
Fischer, Gerhard and Girgensohn, Andreas (1990): End-User Modifiability in Design Environments. In: Carrasco, Jane and Whiteside, John (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 90 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference 1990, Seattle, Washington,USA. pp. 183-191.
“Convivial systems encourage users to be actively engaged in generating creative extensions to the artifacts given to them. Convivial systems have the potential to break down the counterproductive barrier between programming and using programs. Knowledge-based design environments are prototypes for convivial systems. These environments support human problem-domain communication, letting users work within their domains of expertise. One of the design rationales behind design environments is to ease the construction and modification of artifacts designed within the environment. But because design environments are intentionally not general purpose programming environments, situations will arise that require modifications to the design environment itself. The rationale and the techniques for these later modifications are discussed in this paper. Our conceptual framework for end-user modifiability is illustrated in the context of JANUS, an environment for architectural design. Evaluating our system building efforts against our objectives shows the subtleties of integrating end-user modifiability in these kinds of systems.”
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Fischer, Gerhard, Lemke, Andreas C., Mastaglio, Thomas W. and Morch, Anders (1990): Using Critics to Empower Users. In: Carrasco, Jane and Whiteside, John (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 90 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference 1990, Seattle, Washington,USA. pp. 337-347.
“We describe the critiquing approach to building knowledge-based interactive systems. Critiquing supports computer users in their problem solving and learning activities. The challenges for the next generation of knowledge-based systems provide a context for the development of this paradigm. We discuss critics from the perspective of overcoming the problems of high-functionality computer systems, of providing a new class of systems to support learning, of extending applications-oriented construction kits to design environments, and of providing an alternative to traditional autonomous expert systems. One of the critiquing systems we have built -- JANUS, a critic for architectural design -- is used as an example of the key aspects of the critiquing process. We also survey additional critiquing systems developed in our and other research groups.”
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» 1989 «
Fischer, Gerhard and Doane, Stephanie (1989): Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado at Boulder. 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. 49-50.
Fischer, Gerhard, McCall, Raymond and Morch, Anders (1989): Design Environments for Constructive and Argumentative 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. 269-275.
“Design Environments are computer systems which support design by enabling cooperative problem solving between designer and computer. There are two complementary problem solving activities in design: constructive design and argumentative design. We have created two computer-supported environments, CRACK and VIEWPOINTS, to support these two activities. CRACK is a knowledge-based critic which has knowledge about how kitchen appliances can be assembled into functional kitchens. VIEWPOINTS is a hypertext system based on the IBIS design methodology and contains useful information about the principles of kitchen design. The integration of these two types of systems will eliminate shortcomings of the individual systems.”
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Fischer, Gerhard and Nieper-Lemke, Helga (1989): HELGON: Extending the Retrieval Reformulation Paradigm. 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. 357-362.
“People who attempt to use a complex information store on a computer encounter a number of problems: They do not know what information exists or how to find information, they get no support in articulating a question, and they are unable to phrase their question in terms that the system understands. HELGON, an intelligent environment that supports limited cooperative problem solving, helps people deal with complex information stores. HELGON supports retrieval and editing by reformulation with multiple specification techniques, and it acquaints the user with the system model of the information store. Within the current HELGON system, a number of different information stores have been implemented. Empirical evaluations have shown that HELGON supports effective communication. In addition, the evaluations have shown interesting extensions for future work.”
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Fischer, Gerhard, McCall, Raymond and Morch, Anders (1989): JANUS: Integrating Hypertext with a Knowledge-Based Design Environment. In: Halasz, Frank and Meyrowitz, Norman (eds.) Proceedings of ACM Hypertext 89 Conference November 5-8, 1989, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. pp. 105-117.
“Hypertext systems and other complex information stores offer little or no guidance in helping users find information useful for activities they are currently engaged in. Most users are not interested in exploring hypertext information spaces per se but rather in obtaining information to solve problems or accomplish tasks. As a step towards this we have developed the JANUS design environment. JANUS allows designers to construct artifacts in the domain of architectural design and at the same time to be informed about principles of design and the reasoning underlying them. This process integrates two design activities: construction and argumentation. Construction is supported by a knowledge-based graphical design environment and argumentation is supported by a hypertext system. Our empirical evaluations of JANUS and its predecessors has shown that integrated support for construction and argumentation is necessary for full support of design.”
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Atwood, Michael E., Fischer, Gerhard, Gray, Wayne D. and Polson, Peter G. (1989): Theoretical Models for System Design. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 33rd Annual Meeting 1989. pp. 278-280.
“In the history of human factors in computer systems, one of the most significant events of the past decade was the work on GOMS and keystroke models (cf. Card, Moran, and Newell, 1983). While a clear success in causing software developers to focus on the importance of interface design and attracting researchers to this areas, GOMS approaches have not significantly improved the quality of the systems that are developed. Why has this work, that has a great theoretical impact, had so little practical impact on existing systems? Is it that the GOMS formalism is not valid outside of laboratory contexts? Is it that it misses important aspects of behavior such as how people learn to use systems? Is it that GOMS was developed in the context of computer systems that are less powerful and interactive than we have today? Or, are there other reasons? In this panel, we argue that additional cognitive science approaches are needed to improve the quality of developed system. Dr. Gray extends this approach by reporting the first "real world": test of the GOMS-style of system modeling. Dr. Polson extends these models to how people learn to use systems. Dr. Fischer extends this style of research by focusing on cooperative, rather than passive computer systems. Audience members will have an opportunity to describe other approaches to developing theoretical models of system design.”
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» 1988 «
Fischer, Gerhard, Weyer, Stephen A., Jones, William P., Kay, Alan C., Kintsch, Walter and Trigg, Randall H. (1988): A Critical Assessment of Hypertext Systems. In: Soloway, Elliot, Frye, Douglas and Sheppard, Sylvia B. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 88 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference June 15-19, 1988, Washington, DC, USA. pp. 223-227.
» 1987 «
Fischer, Gerhard and Lemke, Andreas C. (1987): Construction Kits and Design Environments: Steps Toward Human Problem-Domain Communication. In Human-Computer Interaction, 3 (3) pp. 179-222
“Our goal is to build cooperative computer systems to augment human intelligence. In these systems, the communication between the user and the computer plays a crucial role. To provide the user with the appropriate level of control and a better understanding, we have to replace human-computer communication with human problem-domain communication, which allows users to concentrate on the problems of their domain and to ignore the fact that they are using a computer tool. Construction kits and design environments are tools that represent steps toward human problem-domain communication. A construction kit is a set of building blocks that models a problem domain. The building blocks define a design space (the set of all possible designs that can be created by combining these blocks). Design environments go beyond construction kits in that they bring to bear general knowledge about design (e.g., which meaningful artifacts can be constructed, how and which blocks can be combined with each other) that is useful for the designer. Prototypical examples of these systems (especially in the area of user interface design) are described in detail, and the feasibility of this approach is evaluated.”
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Fischer, Gerhard and Stevens, Curt (1987): Volunteering Information -- Enhancing the Communication Capabilities of Knowledge-Based Systems. In: Bullinger, Hans-Jorg and Shackel, Brian (eds.) INTERACT 87 - 2nd IFIP International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction September 1-4, 1987, Stuttgart, Germany. pp. 965-971.
“Cooperative problem solving systems support the solution of tasks which cannot be solved by the human or the computer alone. These systems need to be knowledge-based and require flexible communication paradigms allowing natural communication with both experts and novice users of the system. Natural communication (quite different from natural language) has to support mixed-initiative dialogues where information can be volunteered by the system and the user. In this paper, we present prototypical systems which assist users in rebooting a computer. REBOOTER is a rule-based system which guides the user with a strongly system-directed dialogue through this task. The use of this system has shown that the communication paradigm was too narrow to make it a worthwhile tool (especially for the expert user). The SYSTEMS ASSISTANT tries to overcome the noted shortcomings by allowing the users to interact with the system in a mixed-initiative dialogue, to volunteer information and to deviate from the system generated discourse structure.”
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Fischer, Gerhard (1987): Making Computers More Useful and More Usable. In: Salvendy, Gavriel (ed.) HCI International 1987 - Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction - Volume 2 August 10-14, 1987, Honolulu, Hawaii. pp. 97-104.
» 1985 «
Fischer, Gerhard, Lemke, Andreas C. and Schwab, Thomas (1985): Knowledge-Based Help Systems. In: Borman, Lorraine and Curtis, Bill (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 85 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 14-18, 1985, San Francisco, California. pp. 161-167.
“Our research goals are to understand the nature of, construct and evaluate intelligent interfaces as knowledge-based systems. In this paper we demonstrate the need for help systems as an essential part of human-computer communication. Help strategies are based on a model of the task (to understand what the user is doing or which goals he/she wants to achieve) and a model of the user (to guarantee that these systems are non-intrusive and that they pay attention to the needs of individual users). We illustrate that passive and active help systems have to be constructed as knowledge-based systems. Two operational systems (PASSIVIST and ACTIVIST) are described to show the usefulness of this approach.”
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» 1984 «
Fischer, Gerhard and Schneider, Matthias (1984): Computer-Supported Program Documentation Systems. In: Shackel, Brian (ed.) INTERACT 84 - 1st IFIP International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction September 4-7, 1984, London, UK. pp. 427-434.
“One of the most neglected research areas in computer system development is how to produce effective materials and reference information. Beyond the design principles developed for printed materials, there are documentation opportunities unique to interactive systems that we do not yet understand how to exploit effectively. Program documentation systems with a high-bandwidth user interface in connection with program analysis systems are necessary tools for program designers and users because they allow the monitoring of both the program and its underlying design principles and ideas.”
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Mar 21st, 2010
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