H. Rex Hartson
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Publications by H. Rex Hartson (bibliography)
» 2003 «
Hartson, H. Rex (2003): Cognitive, physical, sensory, and functional affordances in interaction design. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 22 (5) pp. 315-338
“In reaction to Norman's (1999) essay on misuse of the term affordance in human-computer interaction literature, this article is a concept paper affirming the importance of this powerful concept, reinforcing Norman's distinctions of terminology, and expanding on the usefulness of the concepts in terms of their application to interaction design and evaluation. We define and use four complementary types of affordance in the context of interaction design and evaluation: cognitive affordance, physical affordance, sensory affordance, and functional affordance. The terms cognitive affordance (Norman's perceived affordance) and physical affordance (Norman's real affordance) refer to parallel and equally important usability concepts for interaction design, to which sensory affordance plays a supporting role. We argue that the concept of physical affordance carries a mandatory component of utility or purposeful action (functional affordance). Finally, we provide guidelines to help designers think about how these four kinds of affordance work together naturally in contextualized HCI design or evaluation.”
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Hartson, H. Rex, Andre, Terence S. and Williges, Robert C. (2003): Criteria For Evaluating Usability Evaluation Methods. In International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 15 (1) pp. 145-181
“The current variety of alternative approaches to usability evaluation
methods (UEMs) designed to assess and improve usability in software systems is
offset by a general lack of understanding of the capabilities and limitations
of each. Practitioners need to know which methods are more effective and in
what ways and for what purposes. However, UEMs cannot be evaluated and compared
reliably because of the lack of standard criteria for comparison. In this
article, we present a practical discussion of factors, comparison criteria, and
UEM performance measures useful in studies comparing UEMs. In demonstrating the
importance of developing appropriate UEM evaluation criteria, we offer
operational definitions and possible measures of UEM performance. We highlight
specific challenges that researchers and practitioners face in comparing UEMs
and provide a point of departure for further discussion and refinement of the
principles and techniques used to approach UEM evaluation and comparison.”
Copyrights may apply
» 2001 «
Andre, Terence S., Hartson, H. Rex, Belz, Steven M. and McCreary, Faith A. (2001): The User Action Framework: A Reliable Foundation for Usability Engineering Support Tools. In International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 54 (1) pp. 107-136
“Although various methods exist for performing usability evaluation, they lack a systematic framework for guiding and structuring the assessment and reporting activities. Consequently, analysis and reporting of usability data are ad hoc and do not live up to their potential in cost effectiveness, and usability engineering support tools are not well integrated. We developed the User Action Framework, a structured knowledge base of usability concepts and issues, as a framework on which to build a broad suite of usability engineering support tools. The User Action Framework helps to guide the development of each tool and to integrate the set of tools in the practitioner's working environment. An important characteristic of the User Action Framework is its own reliability in term of consistent use by practitioners. Consistent understanding and reporting of the underlying causes of usability problems are requirements for cost-effective analysis and redesign. Thus, high reliability in terms of agreement by users on what the User Action Framework means and how it is used is essential for its role as a common foundation for the tools. Here we describe how we achieved high reliability in the User Action Framework, and we support the claim with strongly positive results of a summative reliability study conducted to measure agreement among 10 usability experts in classifying 15 different usability problems. Reliability data from the User Action Framework are also compared to data collected from nine of the same usability experts using a classic heuristic evaluation technique.”
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Hartson, H. Rex, Andre, Terence S. and Williges, Robert C. (2001): Criteria For Evaluating Usability Evaluation Methods. In International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 13 (4) pp. 373-410
“The current variety of alternative approaches to usability evaluation
methods (UEMs) designed to assess and improve usability in software systems is
offset by a general lack of understanding of the capabilities and limitations
of each. Practitioners need to know which methods are more effective and in
what ways and for what purposes. However, UEMs cannot be evaluated and compared
reliably because of the lack of standard criteria for comparison. In this
article, we present a practical discussion of factors, comparison criteria, and
UEM performance measures useful in studies comparing UEMs. In demonstrating the
importance of developing appropriate UEM evaluation criteria, we offer
operational definitions and possible measures of UEM performance. We highlight
specific challenges that researchers and practitioners face in comparing UEMs
and provide a point of departure for further discussion and refinement of the
principles and techniques used to approach UEM evaluation and comparison.”
Copyrights may apply
» 1999 «
Brandenburg, Jeff and Hartson, H. Rex (1999): Timetrees: A Branching-Time Structure for Modeling Activity and State in Human-Computer Interaction. In Human-Computer Interaction, 14 (3) pp. 245-282
“The design and construction of usable interactive systems requires a user-centered approach to system development. Such an approach requires tools and representations reflecting a behavioral view of the interface -- a view centered on user activities and the system activities and states that the user can perceive. We present a model of these behavioral phenomena well suited for defining, extending, and analyzing behavioral representations. Our model is based on the timetree, a novel tree-based structure representing tasks, user actions, system activity, and system and interface state, all within a framework of branching sequential timelines. We introduce the timetree model by relating it to well-known interactive behaviors. We present a formal definition of timetrees and some of the operations they support, and we show some ways in which the model has contributed to our understanding of behavioral descriptions.”
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Hartson, H. Rex, Andre, Terence S., Williges, Robert C. and Rens, Linda van (1999): The User Action Framework: A Theory-Based Foundation for Inspection and Classification of Usability Problems. In: Bullinger, Hans-Jörg (ed.) HCI International 1999 - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction August 22-26, 1999, Munich, Germany. pp. 1058-1062.
» 1998 «
Hartson, H. Rex (1998): AVI '98: Advanced Visual Interfaces -- An International Working Conference. In ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 30 (4) pp. 83-84
“As described by Stefano Levialdi, the conference General Chair, the objectives of AVI'98 were to embrace both formal methods and concrete applications pertaining to information visualization, graphical and pictorial communication tools, virtual reality, multimedia, the Web, visual languages, adaptive interfaces, and metaphors. All this, and more, was brought together under a common interest in the design, evaluation, and management of visual interfaces at AVI'98.”
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Hartson, H. Rex and Castillo, Jose C. (1998): Remote evaluation for post-deployment usability improvement. In: Catarci, Tiziana, Costabile, Maria Francesca, Santucci, Giuseppe and Tarantino, Laura (eds.) AVI 1998 - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces May 24 - 27, 1998, LAquila, Italy. pp. 22-29. Available online
» 1996 «
Hartson, H. Rex, Castillo, Jose C., Kelso, John and Neale, Wayne C. (1996): Remote Evaluation: The Network as an Extension of the Usability Laboratory. In: Tauber, Michael J., Bellotti, Victoria, Jeffries, Robin, Mackinlay, Jock D. and Nielsen, Jakob (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 96 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 14-18, 1996, Vancouver, Canada. pp. 228-235. Available online
“Traditional user interface evaluation usually is conducted in a laboratory where users are observed directly by evaluators. However, the remote and distributed location of users on the network precludes the opportunity for direct observation in usability testing. Further, the network itself and the remote work setting have become intrinsic parts of usage patterns, difficult to reproduce in a laboratory setting, and developers often have limited access to representative users for usability testing in the laboratory. In all of these cases, the cost of transporting users or developers to remote locations can be prohibitive. These barriers have led us to consider methods for remote usability evaluation wherein the evaluator, performing observation and analysis, is separated in space and/or time from the user. The network itself serves as a bridge to take interface evaluation to a broad range of networked users, in their natural work settings. Several types of remote evaluation are defined and described in terms of their advantages and disadvantages to usability testing. The initial results of two case studies show potential for remote evaluation. Remote evaluation using video teleconferencing uses the network as a mechanism to transport video data in real time, so that the observer can evaluate user interfaces in remote locations as they are being used. Semi-instrumented remote evaluation is based on critical incident gathering by the user within the normal work context. Additionally, both methods can take advantage of automating data collection through questionnaires and instrumented applications.”
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Downey, Laura L., Laskowski, Sharon J., Buie, Elizabeth and Hartson, H. Rex (1996): Usability Engineering: Industry-Government Collaboration for System Effectiveness and Efficiency. In ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 28 (4) pp. 66-67
» 1994 «
Hix, Deborah, Hartson, H. Rex and Nielsen, Jakob (1994): A Taxonomy for Developing High Impact Formative Usability Evaluation Methods. In ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 26 (4) pp. 20-22
Hartson, H. Rex and Mayo, Kevin A. (1994): A Framework for Precise, Reusable Task Abstractions. In: Paterno, Fabio (ed.) DSV-IS 1994 - Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems94, Proceedings of the First International Eurographics Workshop June 8-10, 1994, Bocca di Magra, Italy. pp. 279-297.
» 1993 «
Hix, Deborah and Hartson, H. Rex (1993): Developing User Interfaces: Ensuring Usability Through Product and Process. New York, New York, John Wiley and Sons
Hartson, H. Rex and Boehm-Davis, Deborah A. (1993): User Interface Development Processes and Methodologies. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 12 (2) pp. 98-114
Hartson, H. Rex and Hix, Deborah (eds.) (1993): Advances in Human-Computer Interaction. Norwood, NJ, Intellect
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Chase, J. D., Paretti, Marie, Hartson, H. Rex and Hix, Deborah (1993): Task-Oriented User Documentation Using the User Action Notation: A Case Study. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 1993. pp. 421-426.
“Good documentation is a critical component of usable systems. While documentation commonly focuses on system features and functions, it is often more effective when based on a user- and task-oriented view. It must also keep pace with rapid changes in the design of a system during an iterative development process. The User Action Notation (UAN), a user- and task-oriented notation that describes the behavior of the user and the interface during their cooperative performance of a task, helps support these requirements. We present a case study of an industrial software development project that used the UAN as part of the documentation process, and show how the UAN supported translation from an interface design to user documentation.”
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Chase, J. D., Hartson, H. Rex, Hix, Deborah, Schulman, Robert S. and Brandenburg, Jeffrey L. (1993): A Model of Behavioral Techniques for Representing User Interface Designs. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 1993. pp. 861-866.
“A user-centered approach to interactive system development requires a way to represent the behavior of a user interacting with an interface. While a number of behavioral representation techniques exist, not all provide the capabilities necessary to support the development process. Based on observations of existing representations and comments from users of the User Action Notation (UAN), a user- and task-centered behavioral representation, we have developed a model that classifies behavioral representations according to scope, in terms of activities they support within the development process; content, in terms of components of interaction designs they can represent; and requirements for documentation and communication within and among various development activities. We present results demonstrating the model's reliability in the context of two problems, critical incident classification and evaluation of existing techniques.”
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Mayo, Kevin A. and Hartson, H. Rex (1993): Synthesis-Oriented Situational Analysis in User Interface Design. In: East-West International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Proceedings of the EWHCI93 1993. pp. 134-150.
“Analytic evaluation is a term describing a class of techniques for examining a representation of a user interface design, and discovering design flaws and/or predicting user task performance. In our work with analytic evaluation, we have observed limitations on the effectiveness and efficiency of analytic techniques for formative evaluation supporting the iterative design and re-design cycle. Here we support those observations with arguments based on theoretical limitations of the models underlying these techniques. By way of comparison we discuss desirable characteristics for an alternative approach. In our search for such an alternative, we have developed the Task Mapping Model, a substantively different approach to analysis for supporting the user interface design. We briefly describe the Task Mapping Model and give some examples illustrating its desirable characteristics.”
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» 1992 «
Hartson, H. Rex and Gray, Philip (1992): Temporal Aspects of Tasks in the User Action Notation. In Human-Computer Interaction, 7 (1) pp. 1-45
“The need for communication among a multiplicity of cooperating roles in user interface development translates into the need for a common set of interface design representation techniques. The important difference between design of the interaction part of the interface and design of the interface software calls for representation techniques with a behavioral view -- a view that focuses on user interaction rather than on the software. The User Action Notation (UAN) is a user- and task-oriented notation that describes physical (and other) behavior of the user and interface as they perform a task together. The primary abstraction of the UAN is a user task. The work reported here addresses the need to identify temporal relationships within user task descriptions and to express explicitly and precisely how designers view temporal relationships among those tasks. Drawing on simple temporal concepts such as events in time and preceding and overlapping of time intervals, we identify basic temporal relationships among tasks; sequence, waiting, repeated disjunction, order independence, interruptibility, one-way interleavability, mutual interleavability, and concurrency. The UAN temporal relations, through the notion of modal logic, offer an explicit and precise representation of the specific kinds of temporal behavior that can occur in asynchronous user interaction without the need to detail all cases that might result.”
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Chase, Joseph D., Casali, Sherry Perdue and Hartson, H. Rex (1992): The Predictability of Cursor Control Device Performance Based on a Primitive Set of User Object-Oriented Cursor Actions. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 36th Annual Meeting 1992. pp. 306-310.
“The ability to predict performance with a cursor control device on a complex task by measuring performance on a simple task would be useful in evaluating alternative input devices in many types of novel situations. A user would simply have to perform simple cursor movements with each candidate device, and predictions could be made of his/her performance with the devices on any given software application. Such an approach would reduce tedious trial and error procedures, as well as eliminate the time necessary to first learn various software applications. The current study employed the User Action Notation (UAN), a task-oriented notation that describes the behavior of the user and the interface during their cooperative performance of a task, to decompose complex tasks into primitive components. A set of primitive cursor actions was developed which contains the elementary cursor actions found in complex tasks. A graphics software application was then evaluated, using the UAN, with respect to the frequency of occurrence of each of the primitive user-cursor actions. Individual's ability to perform each primitive user-cursor action with three different input devices was then be measured. These measures were used to form estimates of the individual's ability to perform the graphics task with each input device. Correlations between predicted performance and measured performance on the graphics task were found to exceed 0.9. Results demonstrate the success of the method described herein for predicting complex task performance based on simple task performance, as well as, the usefulness of the UAN for decomposing complex tasks into primitive components.”
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» 1991 «
Hartson, H. Rex and Smith, Eric C. (1991): Rapid Prototyping in Human-Computer Interface Development. In Interacting with Computers, 3 (1) pp. 51-91
“Some conventional approaches to interactive system development tend to force commitment to design detail without a means for visualizing the result until it is too late to make significant changes. Rapid prototyping and iterative system refinement, especially for the human interface, allow early observation of system behaviour and opportunities for refinement in response to user feedback. The role of rapid prototyping for evaluation of interface designs is set in the system development life-cycle. Advantages and pitfalls are weighed, and detailed examples are used to show the application of rapid prototyping in a real development project. Kinds of prototypes are classified according to how they can be used in the development process, and system development issues are presented. The future of rapid prototyping depends on solutions to technical problems that presently limit effectiveness of the technique in the context of present day software development environments.”
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» 1990 «
Hartson, H. Rex, Siochi, Antonio C. and Hix, Deborah (1990): The UAN: A User-Oriented Representation for Direct Manipulation Interface Designs. In ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 8 (3) pp. 181-203
“Many existing interface representation techniques, especially those associated with UIMS, are constructional and focused on interface implementation, and therefore do not adequately support a user-centered focus. But it is in the behavioral domain of the user that interface designers and evaluators do their work. We are seeking to complement constructional methods by providing a tool-supported technique capable of specifying the behavioral aspects of an interactive system-the tasks and the actions a user performs to accomplish those tasks. In particular, this paper is a practical introduction to use of the User Action Notation (UAN), a task- and user-oriented notation for behavioral representation of asynchronous, direct manipulation interface designs. Interfaces are specified in UAN as a quasihierarchy of asynchronous tasks. At the lower levels, user actions are associated with feedback and system state changes. The notation makes use of visually onomatopoeic symbols and is simple enough to read with little instruction. UAN is being used by growing numbers of interface developers and researchers. In addition to its design role, current research is investigating how UAN can support production and maintenance of code and documentation.”
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» 1989 «
Hartson, H. Rex and Hix, Deborah (1989): Human-computer interface development: concepts and systems for its management. In ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 21 (1) pp. 5-92
Siochi, Antonio C. and Hartson, H. Rex (1989): Task-Oriented Representation of Asynchronous User Interfaces. 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. 183-188.
“A simple, task-oriented notation for describing user actions in asynchronous user interfaces is introduced. This User Action Notation (UAN) allows the easy association of actions with feedback and system state changes as part of a set of asynchronous interface design techniques, by avoiding the verbosity and potential vagueness of prose. Use within an actual design and implementation project showed the UAN to be expressive, concise, and highly readable because of its simplicity. The task- and user-oriented techniques are naturally asynchronous and a good match for object-oriented implementation. Levels of abstraction are readily applied to allow definition of primitive tasks for sharing and reusability and to allow hiding of details for chunking. The UAN provides a critical articulation point, bridging the gap between the task viewpoint of the behavioral domain and the event-driven nature of the object-oriented implementational domain. The potential for UAN task description analysis may address some of the difficulties in developing asynchronous interfaces,”
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Hartson, H. Rex and Hix, Deborah (1989): Toward Empirically Derived Methodologies and Tools for Human-Computer Interface Development. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 31 (4) pp. 477-494
Hartson, H. Rex, Hix, Deborah and Stoff, Susan (1989): Empirically Determined Guidelines for Use of Human-Computer Interface Recording Techniques. In: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 1989. pp. 667-674.
“This paper reports on a study to explore the feasibility of creating state diagrams and supervised flow diagrams (SFDs) from human-computer dialogue scenarios. The goal was to facilitate a dialogue developer with this process and to produce a means by which developers can create consistent, correct diagrams. Diagrams produced by experimental subjects were analyzed for consistency and correctness, and a set of guidelines was empirically produced to clarify issues underlying the diagrammatic errors that were discovered. Then, use of these guidelines by subjects with previous experience in producing the diagrams was shown to result in more consistent and accurate diagrams.”
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» 1988 «
Hartson, H. Rex and Hix, Deborah (eds.) (1988): Advances in Human-Computer Interaction. Norwood, NJ, Intellect
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» 1987 «
Hix, Deborah and Hartson, H. Rex (1987): A Structural Model for Hierarchically Describing Human-Computer Dialogue. 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. 695-700.
“A variety of "dialogue models" has sprung into existence over the last decade in response to the need for organizing the process of human-computer dialogue development. Structural models describe the generic process of human-computer interaction, and can be used to guide a dialogue developer in constructing the dialogue. The dialogue transaction model presented in this paper is such a structural, descriptive model. It identifies linguistic objects in the behavioral domain, and defines linguistic processing of those objects in the constructional domain of the dialogue. This paper presents the model, how it was derived, and how it is used to describe human-computer dialogues.”
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» 1986 «
Hix, Deborah and Hartson, H. Rex (1986): An Interactive Environment for Dialogue Development: Its Design, Use, and Evaluation; or, Is AIDE Useful?. In: Mantei, Marilyn and Orbeton, Peter (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 86 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 13-17, 1986, Boston, Massachusetts. pp. 228-234.
“The Author's Interactive Dialogue Environment (AIDE) of the Dialogue Management System is an integrated set of direct manipulation tools used by a dialogue author to design and implement human-computer interfaces without writing source code. This paper presents the conceptual dialogue transaction model upon which AIDE is based, describes AIDE, and illustrates how a dialogue author develops an interface using AIDE. A preliminary empirical evaluation of the use of AIDE versus the use of a programming language to implement an interface shows very encouraging results.”
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» 1984 «
Hartson, H. Rex, Johnson, Deborah H. and Ehrich, Roger W. (1984): A Human-Computer Dialogue Management System. In: Shackel, Brian (ed.) INTERACT 84 - 1st IFIP International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction September 4-7, 1984, London, UK. pp. 379-383.
“The Dialogue Management System (DMS) of Virginia Tech is a comprehensive system for designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining interactive software systems with human-computer interfaces. A concept called dialogue independence, in which the dialogue component of a system is separate from the computational component, forms the fundamental philosophy of DMS. Dialogue independence is manifest at the highest level of DMS in three ways: by providing a comprehensive design methodology for the production of interactive systems, by providing separate sets of automated tools with which the dialogue and computational components are implemented, and by providing separate execution environments for each of the components.”
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» 1982 «
Roach, John, Hartson, H. Rex, Ehrich, Roger W., Yunten, Tamer and Johnson, Deborah H. (1982): DMS: A Comprehensive System for Managing Human-Computer Dialogue. In: Nichols, Jean A. and Schneider, Michael L. (eds.) Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems March 15-17, 1982, Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States. pp. 102-105.
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Mar 22nd, 2010
Changes to this page (author)
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