“We studied CAD system users to find out how they use the sophisticated customization and extension facilities offered by many CAD products. We found that users of varying levels of expertise collaborate to customize their CAD environments and to create programmatic extensions to their applications. Within a group of users, there is at least one local expert who provides support for other users. We call this person a local developer. The local developer is a fellow domain expert, not a professional programmer, outside technical consultant or MIS staff member. We found that in some CAD environments the support role has been formalized so that local developers are given official recognition, and time and resources to pursue local developer activities. In general, this formalization of the local developer role appears successful. We discuss the implications of our findings for work practices and for software design.”
“In this paper, we discuss issues in design and usability of the IBM Computer Sciences Electronic Magazine (CSEM). The CSEM is an interactive multimedia translation of a paper magazine. It contains articles describing Computer Sciences projects at the four IBM Research Labs. Combining aspects from print, television, and computers, it is a useful vehicle for studying what we see as a completely new communication medium. We report both our design rationale in creating the magazine and the results of several user studies which helped us understand our successes and failures. These studies are a part of an iterative process through which we have redesigned and improved the CSEM.”
“A belief in the efficacy of imitating face-to-face communication is an unquestioned presupposition of most current work on supporting communications in electronic media. In this paper we highlight problems with this presupposition and present an alternative proposal for grounding and motivating research and development that frames the issue in terms of needs, media, and mechanisms. To help elaborate the proposal we sketch a series of example projects and respond to potential criticisms.”
“Increasing use of automation in computer systems, such as advanced cockpits, presents special challenges in the design of user interfaces. The challenge is particularly difficult when automation is intermittent because the interface must support smooth transitions from automated to manual mode. A theory of direct manipulation predicts that this interface style will smooth the transition. Interfaces were designed to test the prediction and to evaluate two aspects of direct manipulation, semantic distance and engagement. Empirical results supported the theoretical prediction and also showed that direct engagement can have some adverse effects on another concurrent manual task. Generalizations of our results to other complex systems are presented.”
“Although computer tools for 3-D design applications are now widely available for use on personal computers, they are unnecessarily difficult to use. Conventions for establishing and manipulating views of 3-D objects require engineering-oriented dialogues that are foreign to most users. This paper describes the iterative design and testing of a new mechanism for moving 3-D objects with a mouse-controlled cursor in a space planning application prototype. Emphasis was placed on developing a design which would make 3-D interaction more intuitive by preserving users' experiences with moving objects in the real, physical world. Results of an informal user test of the current interface prototype are presented and implications for the development of a more general direct manipulation mechanism are discussed.”
“Models of human-computer interaction (HCI) can provide a degree of theoretical unity for diverse work in computing for users with special needs. Example adaptations for special users are described in the context of both implementation-oriented and linguistic models of HCI. It is suggested that the language of HCI be used to define standards for special adaptations. This would enhance reusability, modifiability, and compatibility of adaptations, inspire new innovations, and make it easier for developers of standard interfaces to incorporate adaptations. The creation of user models for subgroups of users with special needs would support semantic and conceptual adaptations.”
“Moctec is a set of interactive mockups of an interface for programming search and replace tasks by example. The user guides inference by pointing at relevant features of data.”
“We formulated a model of visual search by conducting a work flow study and task analysis of art directors as they searched for images to use in an advertisement. The analysis revealed the presence of artistic and image concepts, flexible structures which guide the search and are molded by them. Analysis results were used to build a model-based interface for visual search. Results from presenting the interface to users indicate that the interface has the potential to make significant contributions to the visual search task, both in time savings and as an aid to the creative process.”
“Browser-Soar models the perceptual, cognitive, and motor operators of a user searching for information in an on-line help browser. The model accounts for 90% of the browsing behavior observed in ten episodes. This result suggests that much of browsing behavior is a routine cognitive task, describable by GOMS, and extends the boundary of tasks to which GOMS applies to include highly interactive tasks. Further, it also suggests that GOMS analyses can be used to evaluate browser interfaces, as they have been used to evaluate text-editors and other computer applications, and to help focus design effort.”
“This paper investigates to what extent task-oriented user support based on plan recognition is feasible in a highly situation-driven domain like information retrieval (IR) and discusses requirements for appropriate task models. It argues that information seeking tasks which are embedded in some higher-level external task context (e.g. travel planning) often exhibit procedural dependences; that these dependences are mainly due to the external task; and that they can be exploited for inferring the users' goals and plans. While there is a clear need for task models in IR to account for situational determinants of user behaviour, what is required are hybrid models that take account of both its "planned" and "situated" aspects. Empirical evidence for the points made is reported from a probabilistic analysis of retrieval sessions with a fact database and from experience with plan-based and state-based methods for user support in an experimental travel planning system.”
“The motivation for our work is that even though user interface guidelines and style guides contain much useful knowledge, they are hard for user interface designers to use. We want to investigate ways of bringing the human factors knowledge closer to the design process, thus making it more accessible to designers. To this end, we present a knowledge-based tool, containing design knowledge drawn from general guideline documents and toolkit-specific style guides, capable of evaluating a user interface design produced in a UIMS. Our assessment shows that part of what the designers consider relevant design knowledge is related to the user's tasks and thus cannot be applied to the static design representation of the UIMS. The final section of the paper discusses ways of using this task-related knowledge.”
“We have augmented user interface objects (i.e. windows, menus, buttons, sliders, etc.) with preconditions that determine their visibility and their enabled/disabled status and postconditions that are asserted when certain actions are performed on the object. Postconditions are associated with each functionally different action on the object. Attaching pre- and postconditions to interface objects provides several useful features, such as selective enabling of controls, rapid prototyping, and automatic generation of explanations and help text.”
“An important issue in the evolution of hypertext is the design of such systems to optimally support user tasks such as asking questions. Few studies have systematically compared the use of hypertext to books in seeking information, and those that have been done have not found a consistent superiority for hypertext. In addition, designers developing hypertext books have few guidelines. In the present study, users performed information-seeking tasks and answered a variety of types of questions about Sherlock Holmes stories using either a conventional paper encyclopedia or a hypertext encyclopedia. The questions varied on the amount of information needed to derive an answer (fact or inference), the location of the question's key phrase in the hypertext (entry title or entry content), and the format of the information (text or map). Accuracy and time were recorded. The hypertext group excelled in answering fact questions where the information was embedded in a text entry. The book group excelled only in answering fact questions based on maps. In spite of having far more experience using books, the book group was not significantly faster overall and did not perform as well on an incidental learning task. Our results suggest that a hypertext book with a nonlinear structure and including a variety of navigational tools can equal or surpass conventional books as an information-seeking medium, even with minimal training.”
“This paper reports on the results of a survey of user interface programming. The survey was widely distributed, and we received 74 responses. The results show that in today's applications, an average of 48% of the code is devoted to the user interface portion. The average time spent on the user interface portion is 45% during the design phase, 50% during the implementation phase, and 37% during the maintenance phase. 34% of the systems were implemented using a toolkit, 27% used a UIMS, 14% used an interface builder, and 26% used no tools. The projects using only toolkits spent the largest percentage of the”
“Vision research relating to the human perception of texture is briefly reviewed with a view to arriving at the principal dimensions of visual texture useful for data display. The conclusion is that orientation, size (1/spatial frequency), and contrast (amplitude) are the primary orderable dimensions of texture. Data displayed using these texture parameters will be subject to similar distortions to those found when color is used. Textures synthesized using Gabor function primitives can be modulated along the three primary dimensions. Some preliminary results from a study using Gabor functions to modulate luminance are presented which suggest that: perceived texture size difference are approximately logarithmic, a 5% change in texton size is detectable 50% of the time, and large perceived size differences are do not predict small (just noticeable) size differences.”
“Concepts such as the logical device, taxonomies, and other descriptive frameworks have improved understanding of input devices but ignored or else treated informally their pragmatic qualities, which are fundamental to selection of input devices for tasks. We seek the greater leverage of a predictive theoretical framework by basing our investigation of three-dimensional vs. two-dimensional input devices on Garner's theory of processing of perceptual structure in multidimensional space. We hypothesize that perceptual structure provides a key to understanding performance of multidimensional input devices on multidimensional tasks. Two three-dimensional tasks may seem equivalent, but if they involve different types of perceptual spaces, they should be assigned correspondingly different input devices. Our experiment supports this hypothesis and thus both indicates when to use three-dimensional input devices and gives credence to our theoretical basis for this indication.”
“Fitts' law, a one-dimensional model of human movement, is commonly applied to two-dimensional target acquisition tasks on interactive computing systems. For rectangular targets, such as words, it is demonstrated that the model can break down and yield unrealistically low (even negative!) ratings for a task's index of difficulty (ID). The Shannon formulation is shown to partially correct this problem, since ID is always >= 0 bits. As well, two alternative interpretations of "target width" are introduced that accommodate the two-dimensional nature of tasks. Results of an experiment are presented that show a significant improvement in the model's performance using the suggested changes.”
“This panel brings together experts from TV production with those in the computer multimedia business. They will discuss what is likely to happen when the two media coexist. An exciting opportunity exists in merging the strengths of both media together synergistically to create pervasive and powerful Interactive Television.”
“TAE Plus was built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to support the building of GUI user interfaces for highly interactive applications, such as realtime processing systems and scientific analysis systems. TAE Plus is designed as a productivity tool for the user interface designer. Human factor experts and user interface designers frequently do not want to have to learn the programming details of the windowing environment before they use a GUI development tool to prototype and/or develop an application's user interface. TAE Plus has been developed with this user in mind. TAE Plus is a user interface management system that supports (1) interactively constructing the visual layout of an application screen, (2) rehearsing the UI, (3) generating the application source code to manage the UI, and (4) providing run-time services to manage the UI during application execution.”
“In addition to normal reading, knowledge can be gained from a paper document by pattern recognition and encoding of characteristics of the information media. There are reasons to believe that this can be done automatically with very little attentional demand. The knowledge gained is accessible to consciousness and can be used for task components like orientation, navigation, detection of changes and as a complement to normal reading. When information is computerized, and is read from a screen instead of from a paper, the conditions for automaticity are often radically changed. In most cases the reader has to gain the corresponding knowledge by effortful cognitive processes. This means adding to the cognitive load leaving less attentional capacity for the main task at hand. This problem can be avoided by a careful analysis of a reading task into its automatic and non-automatic components, followed by a dedicated user interface design where information relevant for orientation, navigation etc is presented in a way that the reader can perceive rather than read.”
“This paper describes a computational model of skilled use of a graphical user interface based on Kintsch's construction-integration theory [4, 8]. The model uses knowledge of a detailed representation of information on the display, a user's goals and expectations, knowledge about the interface, and knowledge about the application domain to compute actions necessary to accomplish the user's current goal. The model provides a well-motivated account of one kind of errors, action slips [14], made by skilled users. We show how information about the intermediate state of a task on the display plays a critical role in skilled performance, i.e., display-based problem solving [10].”
“A GOMS analysis was used to predict the behavior of an expert in a graphic, machine-paced, highly interactive task. The analysis was implemented in a computational model using the Soar cognitive architecture. Using only the information available in an instruction booklet and some simple heuristics for selecting between operators, the functional-level behavior of the expert proved to be virtually dictated by the objects visible on the display. At the keystroke-level, the analysis predicted about 60% of the behavior, in keeping with similar results in previous GOMS research. We conclude that GOMS is capable of predicting expert behavior in a broader range of tasks than previously demonstrated.”
“Building an interactive application involves the design of both a data model and a graphical user interface (GUI) to present that model to the user. These two design activities are typically approached as separate tasks and are frequently undertaken by different individuals or groups. Our approach eliminates redundant specification work by generating an interface directly from the data model itself. An inference engine using style rules for selecting and placing GUI controls (i.e., widgets) is integrated with an interface design tool to generate a user interface definition. This approach allows a single data model to be mapped onto multiple GUI's by substituting the appropriate rule set and thus represents a step toward a GUI-independent run-time layout facility.”
“Many tools create new user interfaces by compositing them out of smaller pieces. This usually leads to variations on the dialog box to edit a single composite object. Workspaces are a model for compositing together various editors to manipulate sets of objects and their attributes. The workspace components communicate in terms of a selected set and the attributes possessed by objects in that set. This model has been implemented as part of the Sushi UIMS.”
“At EuroPARC, we have been exploring ways to allow physically separated colleagues to work together effectively and naturally. In this paper, we briefly discuss several examples of our work in the context of three themes that have emerged: the need to support the full range of shared work; the desire to ensure privacy without giving up unobtrusive awareness; and the possibility of creating systems which blur the boundaries between people, technologies and the everyday world.”
“Most UI toolkits and UIMSs make use of widgets, e.g., buttons, text fields, sliders, menus. Designers construct user interfaces by choosing and laying out widgets, then connecting them to application semantics. This approach has four problems. First, most widgets are too low-level: constructing interfaces from them takes too much work. Second, working with widgets focuses attention on appearance and layout issues, rather than on more important semantic design issues. Third, designers, can easily make poor widget choices, yielding poor interfaces. Fourth, widgets do not mesh well with application semantics; they know nothing about the variables they control. We are developing an application construction environment in which designers and implementers work with semantic-based controls called Selectors rather than with widgets. Selectors are classified according to their interface semantics (e.g., mutually-exclusive choice), rather than their appearance. Each type of Selector can be presented in a variety of ways; this may be chosen semi-automatically. Selectors mesh well with application semantics: their values are application data-types and their views determine how to present valid values automatically.”
“This paper describes "BookWindow" that we implemented, a window system based on the "book" metaphor, that displays information not by scrolling but by using the animation of paging through. The BookWindow system equips some bookmarks, tabs, etc, by which we can access to an expected page through our requirements. BookWindow can support our work environment which navigates us through information space flexibly, because human beings are quite familiar with "books".”
“This study lays the ground work for a predictive, zero-parameter engineering model that characterizes the relationship between system delay and user performance. This study specifically investigates how system delays affects a user's selection of task strategy. Strategy selection is hypothesized to be based on a cost function combining two factors: (1) the effort required to synchronize input with system availability and (2) the accuracy level afforded. Results indicate that users, seeking to minimize effort and maximize accuracy, choose among three strategies -- automatic performance, pacing, and monitoring. These findings provide a systematic account of the influence of system delay on user performance, based on adaptive strategy choice drive by cost.”
“We describe two applications that illustrate the idea of computational wear in the domain of document processing. By graphically depicting the history of author and reader interactions with documents, these applications offer otherwise unavailable information to guide work. We discuss how their design accords with a theory of professional work and an informational physics perspective on interface design.”
“This paper explores the behavior of experts choosing among various methods to accomplish tasks. Given the results showing that methods are not chosen solely on the basis of keystroke efficiency, we recommend a technique to help designers assess whether they should offer multiple methods for some tasks, and if they should, how to make them so that they are chosen appropriately.”
“The Virtual Reality user interface style allows the user to manipulate virtual objects in a 3D environment using 3D input devices. This style is best suited to application areas where traditional two dimensional styles fall short, but the current programming effort required to produce a VR application is somewhat large. We have built a toolkit called MR, which facilities the development of VR applications. The toolkit provides support for distributed computing, head-mounted displays, room geometry, performance monitoring, hand input devices, and sound feedback. In this paper, the architecture of the toolkit is outlined, the programmer's view is described, and two simple applications are described.”
“A multi-user Virtual World has been implemented combining a flexible-object simulator with a multisensory user interface, including hand motion and gestures, speech input and output, sound output, and 3-D stereoscopic graphics with head-motion parallax. The implementation is based on a distributed client/server architecture with a centralized Dialogue Manager. The simulator is inserted into the Virtual World as a server. A discipline for writing interaction dialogues provides a clear conceptual hierarchy and the encapsulation of state. This hierarchy facilitates the creation of alternative interaction scenarios and shared multiuser environments.”
“The goal of the RENDEZVOUS project is to build interactive systems that are used by multiple users from multiple workstations, simultaneously. This goal caused us to choose an architecture that requires a clean run-time separation of user interfaces from applications. Such a separation has long been a stated goal of UIMS researchers, but it is difficult to achieve. A key technical reason for the difficulty is that modern direct manipulation interfaces require extensive communication between the user interface and the application to provide semantic feedback. We discuss several communications mechanisms that have been used in the past, and present our approach -- the Abstraction-Link-View paradigm. Links are objects whose sole responsibility is to facilitate communication between the abstraction objects (application) and the view objects (user interfaces). The Abstraction-Link-View paradigm relies on concurrency and a fast but powerful constraint system.”
“Grace is an intelligent tutoring system for COBOL which has been used to teach both novice and experienced programmers. While the tutor was quite effective in several classes and was designed with cognitive and interface principles in mind, we discuss a number of interesting issues that we have discovered when novice and experienced programmers used the tutor. Most of these problems are related to incompatibilities between the tutor interactions and the students' expectations in two areas: (1) the interactions with the tutor versus the interactions in their usual work environment and (2) the way in which experienced programmers solve problems. We describe these issues along with our solutions in the revised version of the tutor.”
“The Graphic StoryWriter (GSW) is an interactive system that enables its users to create structurally complete stories through the manipulation of graphic objects in a simulated storybook. A rule-based story engine manages character and prop interaction, guides story development, and generates text. Through the simple interface and story writing engine, the Graphic StoryWriter provides an environment for early readers to learn about story structures, to experience the relationship between pictures and text, and to experiment with causal effects. This paper describes the motivation for and design of the Graphic StoryWriter, and reports on an empirical comparison of childrens' stories generated orally and using the GSW.”
“Collaborations in organizations thrive on communication that is informal because informal communication is frequent, interactive, and expressive. Informal communication is crucial for the coordination of work, learning an organization's culture, the perpetuation of the social relations that underlie collaboration, and, in general, any situation that requires communication to resolve ambiguity. Informal communication is traditionally mediated by physical proximity, but physical proximity cannot mediate in geographically distributed organizations. The research described here evaluates the adequacy of a version of a desktop video/audio conferencing system for supporting informal communication in a research and development laboratory. The evaluation took place during a trial in which the system was used by summer employees and their supervisor-mentors. While the system was used frequently, the most common uses and users' assessments suggest that it was used more like a telephone or electronic mail than like physically mediated face-to-face communication. However, some features of its use transcended traditional media and allowed users to gain awareness of their work environment. The paper concludes with a discussion of requirements for successful technology to support informal communication.”
“Usability specialists were better than non-specialists at performing heuristic evaluation, and "double experts" with specific expertise in the kind of interface being evaluated performed even better. Major usability problems have a higher probability than minor problems of being found in a heuristic evaluation, but more minor problems are found in absolute numbers. Usability heuristics relating to exits and user errors were more difficult to apply than the rest, and additional measures should be taken to find problems relating to these heuristics. Usability problems that relate to missing interface elements that ought to be introduced were more difficult to find by heuristic evaluation in interfaces implemented as paper prototypes but were as easy as other problems to find in running systems.”
“The Cognitive Walkthrough methodology was developed in an effort to bring cognitive theory closer to practice; to enhance the design and evaluation of user interfaces in industrial settings. For the first time, small teams of professional developers have used this method to critique three complex software systems. In this paper we report evidence about how the methodology worked for these evaluations. We focus on five core issues: (1) task selection, coverage, and evaluation, (2) the process of doing a Cognitive Walkthrough, (3) requisite knowledge for the evaluators, (4) group walkthroughs, and (5) the interpretation of results. Our findings show that many variables can affect the success of the technique; we believe that if the Cognitive Walkthrough is ultimately to be successful in industrial settings, the method must be refined and augmented in a variety of ways.”
“Walkthrough techniques have been shown to be an effective supplement to empirical testing methods for evaluating the usability of software systems [3, 4]. Unfortunately, structured walkthrough procedures tend to be time-consuming and unpopular with evaluators when used on substantial tasks. To maximize the useful information obtained from walkthroughs while minimizing the overhead of the procedure itself, a fast-paced methodology was developed and used within the constraints of a real-world product development environment. By using video recording equipment and an informal, interactive evaluation session, the "cognitive jogthrough" procedure revealed significant user interface problems that could then be studied using other techniques.”
“We investigated the relative effectiveness of empirical usability testing and individual and team walkthrough methods in identifying usability problems in two graphical user interface office systems. The findings were replicated across the two systems and show that the empirical testing condition identified the largest number of problems, and identified a significant number of relatively severe problems that were missed by the walkthrough conditions. Team walkthroughs achieved better results than individual walkthroughs in some areas. About a third of the significant usability problems identified were common across all methods. Cost-effectiveness data show that empirical testing required the same or less time to identify each problem when compared to walkthroughs.”
“The Tailor project allows physically disabled users to provide real-time analog input to computer applications. We use a Polhemus tracking device and create a custom tailored mapping from each user's best range and type of motion into the analog control signal. The application is a simple video game based on Pong, where the analog input controls the position of the player's paddle. A group of able-bodied subjects was able to correctly hit the ball with the paddle 77% of the time, and a comparison group of children with Cerebral Palsy performed at the 50% level. More than half the disabled users were able to perform at a higher level than the worst able-bodied user.”
“Audio data is rarely used on desktop computers today, although audio is otherwise widely used for communication tasks. This paper describes early work aimed at creating computer tools that support the ways users may want to work with audio data. User needs for the system were determined by interviewing people already working with audio data, using existing devices such as portable tape recorders. A preliminary prototype system -- consisting of a personal tape recorder for recording and simultaneously marking audio and a Macintosh application for browsing these recordings -- was built. Informal field user tests of this prototype system have indicated areas for improvement and directions for future work.”
“The current generation of telephone interfaces is frustrating to use, in part because callers have to wait through the recitation of long prompts in order to find the options that interest them. In a visual medium, users would shift their gaze in order to skip uninteresting prompts and scan through large pieces of text. We present skip and scan, a new telephone interface style in which callers issue explicit commands to accomplish these same skipping and scanning activities. In a laboratory experiment, subjects made selections using skip and scan menus more quickly than using traditional, numbered menus, and preferred the skip and scan menus in subjective ratings. In a field test of a skip and scan interface, the general public successfully added and retrieved information without using any written instructions.”
“The notion that children learn by constructing their own knowledge is highly popular these days among educational theorists. But what are the particular abilities that enable learners to be successful? And how must computer systems, and in particular their user interfaces, be designed to foster and support those abilities? The panel members represent several nationally-recognized education projects, all designed to give children control over their own learning while, at the same time, providing supports for effective learning strategies. They will discuss the unique design issues -- resolved and unresolved -- that arise as cognitive theories meet classroom realities. CSILE, a collaborative, user-constructed database, JASPER, a video-based mathematics program, and MediaText, a multi-media authoring environment, are available for use and review by CHI92 attendees prior to the panel presentation.”
“Our on-line data capture and analysis tools include an event capture program, event data filtering programs, a multimedia data analyzer, and a retrospective verbal protocol recorder for use with the multimedia data analyzer. Off-line observation logging is also supported. Additional plans for development include the integration of an online time-synchronized observation logger, and time-synchronized eyetracking data recording. The tool set provides an integrated multi-source data collection, processing, and analysis system for: 1) comparing and evaluating software applications and prototypes; 2) evaluating software documentation and instructional materials; and 3) evaluating on-line training. The tools currently run on Macintosh computers and under Microsoft Windows. Plans are to port the tools to run under Presentation Manager and Motif.”
“On-line help systems have not paralleled recent advances in user interface technology. In particular, traditional textual help does not support visualization of the interaction processes needed to complete tasks, especially in graphical interfaces. In this demonstration, we present an experimental prototype which is capable of presenting help information in text, audio, static graphics, video, and context-sensitive animation. The prototype is used in a study on how multimedia technology enhances user performance.”
“This plenary panel will explore ideas about future user interfaces, their technology support, and their social context as proposed in the work of leading authors of science fiction characterized as the Cyberpunk movement. Respondents will react to and comment upon the authors' presentations.”
“Customer-driven design processes such as participatory design can be used to develop new presence, or virtual reality, technology. Chemists worked together with computer company engineers to develop scenarios for how presence technology could be used to support future molecular modeling work in drug design. These scenarios led to the development of a portable torque-feedback device which can be used with either workstation or virtual reality technology. This paper discusses both the experience with the participatory design process and the novel features of the portable torque-feedback device.”
“The goal of the PEN&PAD project is to design and develop a useful and usable medical workstation for day-to-day use in patient care. The project has adopted a user centred approach and direct observations of doctors, participative design and Formative Evaluation have therefore been an integral part of the process of software development. Indeed, doctors have been involved from the earliest stages of the project. The project has focussed on British General Practitioners, but the methods which have been evolved are general. This paper describes the strategy by which doctors can be involved in the successful design and development of a medical workstation.”
“PICTIVE is a participatory design technique for increasing the direct and effective involvement of users and other stakeholders in the design of software. This paper reviews a year of the use of PICTIVE on products and research prototypes at Bellcore. What we have learned is illustrated through five brief case studies. The paper concludes with a summary of our current PICTIVE practice, expressed as three developing, interrelated models: an object model, a process model, and a participation model.”
“This paper describes an approach to developing systems which can be summarised as 'analyse top-down, design middle-out, and build bottom-up'. A case study is described in which this approach is used to develop a system to support staff who select new products for a major UK company. The novelty of the approach lies in its use of task analysis to define an appropriate domain for the system and then the use of a working prototype to grow a system from the bottom up. The project involved using simple development tools which allowed the users to start getting business benefit from the system right from the start. Their use could therefore develop as the system evolved.”
“Many of the principles that guide user-interface design for commercial systems do not scale down to simple applications developed on personal computers. These "very small systems" are typically designed within a high-level application such as a database or a spreadsheet. The entire development process may take no more than a few days. In this restricted context, iterative design and usability testing are unaffordable luxuries, while detailed task analysis and early focus on users fail because the task and users will not coalesce until the system is in place. We describe our experiences with developing and using a very small system. We present suggestions for successful design in similar situations.”
“In this paper, we discuss principles for designing and testing computer systems intended to support users' thinking as they perform open-ended or ill-defined tasks. We argue that such systems inherently and inevitably implement a model of users' cognitive behaviors. Making that model explicit can provide system developers with guidance in making design decisions. However, both model and system must be tested and refined. We discuss these principles in relation to a case study in which our group developed a hypertext-based writing environment and then tested that system in a series of experimental studies of writers' strategies.”
“This study aims at developing and empirically testing hypotheses about professional designers' cognitive activities when using object-oriented methodology (OOD) versus using traditional functional decomposition methodologies (TFD). Our preliminary results indicate that OOD may achieve substantial time savings over TFD in logical design. The verbal protocols from a pilot study show that OOD may achieve these time savings: 1) by simplifying rule induction processes used in functional decomposition; 2) by guiding designers on how to build more effective problem spaces; and 3) by allowing designers to run mental simulation more efficiently and more effectively.”
“This paper reports on the first of a series of analyses aimed at comparing same room and video-mediated conversations for multiparty meetings. This study compared patterns of spontaneous speech for same room versus two video-mediated conversations. One video system used a single camera, monitor and speaker, and a picture-in-a-picture device to display multiple people on one screen. The other system used multiple cameras, monitors, and speakers in order to support directional gaze cues and selective listening. Differences were found between same room and video-mediated conversations in terms of floor control and amount of simultaneous speech. While no differences were found between the video systems in terms of objective speech measures, other important differences are suggested and discussed.”
“Key findings from empirical studies -- early design is opportunistic; critical role of pictures in design conception; impact of various cognitive limitations -- have very effectively determined requirements and design for a set of tools to support early design. Key design features of the tools include respectively: (1) The (simultaneous) display of any software modules at arbitrary levels of abstraction and from any subsystems. The unrestricted, smooth navigation between these software modules. (2) Multiple design notations -- pictorial and symbolic -- cross-referenced, editable, and maintained consistent across all views. Integrated views of control flow, data flow, and functional decomposition. (3) Automatic layout at arbitrary levels of nesting. Visual display of execution paths in the solution. Automatic completeness and consistency check. Automatic visual indication and listing of modules with constraint violations.”
“HUMANOID is a user interface design tool that lets designers express abstract conceptualizations of an interface in an executable form, allowing designers to experiment with scenarios and dialogues even before the application model is completely worked out. Three properties of the HUMANOID approach allow it to do so: a modularization of design issues into independent dimensions, support for multiple levels of specificity in mapping application models to user interface constructs, and mechanisms for constructing executable default user interface implementations from whatever level of specificity has been provided by the designer.”
“This paper introduces a novel shared drawing medium called ClearBoard. It realizes (1) a seamless shared drawing space and (2) eye contact to support realtime and remote collaboration by two users. We devised the key metaphor: "talking through and drawing on a transparent glass window" to design ClearBoard. A prototype of ClearBoard is implemented based on the "Drafter-Mirror" architecture. This paper first reviews previous work on shared drawing support to clarify the design goals. We then examine three metaphors that fulfill these goals. The design requirements and the two possible system architectures of ClearBoard are described. Finally, some findings gained through the experimental use of the prototype, including the feature of "gaze awareness", are discussed.”
“Collaboration in three-dimensional space: "spatial workspace collaboration" is introduced and an approach supporting its use via a video mediated communication system is described. Verbal expression analysis is primarily focused on. Based on experiment results, movability of a focal point, sharing focal points, movability of a shared workspace, and the ability to confirm viewing intentions and movements were determined to be system requirements necessary to support spatial workspace collaboration. A newly developed SharedView system having the capability to support spatial workspace collaboration is also introduced, tested, and some experimental results described.”
“We are investigating ways in which media space technologies can support distributed work groups through access to information that supports general awareness. Awareness involves knowing who is "around", what activities are occurring, who is talking with whom; it provides a view of one another in the daily work environments. Awareness may lead to informal interactions, spontaneous connections, and the development of shared cultures -- all important aspects of maintaining working relationships which are denied to groups distributed across multiple sites. The Portholes project, at Rank Xerox EuroPARC in Cambridge, England, and Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, California, demonstrates that awareness can be supported across distance. A data network provides a shared database of image information that is regularly updated and available at all sites. Initial experiences of the system in use at EuroPARC and PARC suggest that Portholes both supports shared awareness and helps to build a "sense of community".”
“The paper proposes that some current problems in recruiting human factors methods to system design might be alleviated by means of a structured human factors design framework. The explicit stage-wise design scope of such a framework would support the assignment of appropriate human factors methods to specific system design needs. As an illustration, the design framework of an in-house structured human factors methodology is reviewed followed by the assignment of a set of existing human factors methods against its design stages. Subsequent steps to develop the assigned methods into a similar methodology are then described. The potential of such a methodology for facilitating human factors input is discussed.”
“Five groups of developers with experience in the design of character-based user interfaces were taught graphical user interface design through a short workshop with a focus on practical design exercises using low-tech tools derived from the PICTIVE method. Several usability problems were found in the designs by applying the heuristic evaluation method, and feedback on these problems constituted a way to make the otherwise abstract usability principles concrete for the designers at the workshop. Based on these usability problems and on observations of the design process, we conclude that object-oriented interactions are especially hard to design and that the developers were influenced by the graphical interfaces of personal computers with which they had interacted as regular users.”
“This paper describes how a software development division in a large corporate environment found a creative way to integrate human factors techniques into their development processes. It discusses the limitations of a single Human Factors Engineer, the needs of a typical engineer on a software project, and how these limitations and needs produced the Product Usability Champion Program. Product Usability Champions are representatives from each software project in the division who act as usability watchdogs for their respective projects. The Human Factors Engineer's responsibility is to provide support to these Champions. This support includes access to a Usability Lab, technical advice, references, consulting, classroom training, hands-on training, Usability Champion program facilitation and support, and specific project team involvement. This paper describes the program's structure, implementation, and success.”
“The Institute for Research on Learning (IRL) is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 in Palo Alto, California, committed to understanding what leads to successful learning in the schools, the workplace, and everyday life. A basic premise of IRL research, that people learn best when they are engaged with others, leads IRL's researchers to perceive schools and workplaces as communities of learners and to focus on the design of environments, technology, and activities that support learning as a collaborative activity. IRL pursues its research in collaboration with schools, universities, corporations, and government agencies -- in the actual settings in which learning takes place.”
“Common wisdom states rapid prototyping will result in a better product. Many tools are available to assist the practitioner in producing prototypes. Yet, few indications exist to show rapid prototyping has substantially improved how products are built. This panel will look at the following issues: * Can rapid prototyping dramatically improve product development? * How do developers integrate rapid prototyping into their existing development process? * Are high fidelity tools helpful or do they actually impede development? * What is the ideal prototype and how can we build it?”
“The production of documents aimed at supporting the flow of information in an office environment is experiencing an evolution based on the most advanced automation systems which concerns substantially four aspects: 1. the production of manipulable documents showing a high quality of representation; 2. the production of documents that can be integrated (or exported) with other workstation formats on the basis of varying approaches (for instance the ISO standards); 3. the production of processable documents for storage or subsequent post-production; 4. the production of immaterial documents, i.e. documents that do not necessarily need a visual medium (paper, screen) representation for their informative content.”
“Before the advent of the personal workstation, office work practice revolved around the paper document. Today the electronic medium offers a number of advantages over paper, but it has not eradicated paper from the office. A growing problem for those who work primarily with paper is lack of direct access to the wide variety of interactive functions available on personal workstations. This paper describes a desk with a computer-controlled projector and camera above it. The result is a system that enables people to interact with ordinary paper documents in ways normally possible only with electronic documents on workstation screens. After discussing the motivation for this work, this paper describes the system and two sample applications that can benefit from this style of interaction: a desk calculator and a French to English translation system. We describe the design and implementation of the system, report on some user tests, and conclude with some general reflections on interacting with computers in this way.”
“Graphics and live video are widely employed in remotely-controlled systems like industrial plants. Interaction with live video is, however, more limited compared with graphics as users cannot interact with objects being observed in the former. Object-Oriented Video techniques are described allowing object-oriented interactions, including the use of real-world objects in live video as reference cues, direct manipulation of them, and graphic overlays based on them, which enable users to work in a real spatial context conveyed by the video. Users thereby understand intuitively what they are operating and see the result of their operation.”
“This paper describes the Liveboard, a large interactive display system. With nearly one million pixels and an accurate, multi-state, cordless pen, the Liveboard provides a basis for research on user interfaces for group meetings, presentations and remote collaboration. We describe the underlying hardware and software of the Liveboard, along with several software applications that have been developed. In describing the system, we point out the design rationale that was used to make various choices. We present the results of an informal survey of Liveboard users, and describe some of the improvements that have been made in response to user feedback. We conclude with several general observations about the use of large public interactive displays.”
“We describe enhancements to graphical search and replace that allow users to extend the capabilities of a graphical editor. Interactive constraint-based search and replace can search for objects that obey user-specified sets of constraints and automatically apply other constraints to modify these objects. We show how an interactive tool that employs this technique makes it possible for users to define sets of constraints graphically that modify existing illustrations or control the creation of new illustrations. The interface uses the same visual language as the editor and allows users to understand and create powerful rules without conventional programming. Rules can be saved and retrieved for use alone or in combination. Examples, generated with a working implementation, demonstrate applications to drawing beautification and transformation.”
“We designed, implemented and evaluated a new concept for direct manipulation of databases, called dynamic queries, that allows users to formulate queries with graphical widgets, such as sliders. By providing a graphical visualization of the database and search results, users can find trends and exceptions easily. Eighteen undergraduate chemistry students performed statistically significantly faster using a dynamic queries interface compared to two interfaces both providing form fill-in as input method, one with graphical visualization output and one with all-textual output. The interfaces were used to explore the periodic table of elements and search on their properties.”
“A user study was conducted to investigate how people deal with the flow of information in their workspaces. Subjects reported that, in an attempt to quickly and informally manage their information, they created piles of documents. Piles were seen as complementary to the folder filing system. which was used for more formal archiving. A new desktop interface element -- the pile -- was developed and prototyped through an iterative process. The design includes direct manipulation techniques and support for browsing, and goes beyond physical world functionality by providing system assistance for automatic pile construction and reorganization. Preliminary user tests indicate the design is promising and raise issues that will be addressed in future work.”
“This demo show the prototyping environment of the Ircam Signal Processing Workstation. The environment is oriented toward rapid prototyping of DSP and Musical applications.”
“The Rendezvous System is an infrastructure for building multi-user, synchronous applications. Multi-user, synchronous applications are those that are designed to be used by several people simultaneously. Examples of such applications range from collaborative debugging of software to multi-party contract negotiations to games for several players. This videotape shows a demonstration of one multi-user application we have built. The application is a card table that allows up to four people to play any card game they wish. On the tape, you will see several rounds of a game of fish. This game, though simple, serves to highlight four key capabilities that an infrastructure for building multi-user applications must support. These are: 1) support for separate, customized views for each user of the same underlying data, 2) support for public data (i.e., data shown to all users) as well as private data (i.e., data shown only to a particular user), 3) support for access control among users so that certain data is only accessible to some users, and 4) support for the direct manipulation of data objects on the users' displays. We believe that the ability for people to communicate with one another in the structured manner of multi-user applications offers an enormous opportunity for people to enrich the way they work, learn, and play. Many sorts of multi-user applications are possible and research into infrastructures like the Rendezvous System may some day allow for the rapid production of these types of systems. For more information, please see the suggested readings.”
“The Video Viewer is a communication tool that allows two users to share video information across a network. The design of this tool was based on the results of a case study involving two multimedia, collaborative workstations situated in two separate rooms. Users performed several tasks collaboratively using different media in an unstructured environment (i.e. there were four monitors to increase screen space and there was no specific interface for guidance). This video outlines the case study, the preliminary case study results and how these results effected the interface design of the Video Viewer.”
“The nature of visualizations and the social uses to which they are put rely heavily on pointing behavior. In the context of a switched telephone network visualization, this tape illustrates novel task-specific pointing facilities.”
“An interface for software that creates a natural environment for engineering graphics students to improve their spatial reasoning and 3D visualization skills is described. The skills of interest involve spatial transformations and rotations, specifically those skills that engineers use to reason about 3D objects based on 2D representations. The software uses an intuitive and interactive interface allowing direct manipulation of objects. Animation capability is provided to demonstrate the relationship between arbitrary positions of an object and standard orthographic views. A second skill of interest requires visualization of a cutting-plane intersection of an object. An interface is developed which allows intuitive positioning of the cutting-plane utilizing the metaphor of a "pool of water" in which the object is partially submerged. The surface of the water represents the cutting plane. Adjustment of the pool depth combined with direct manipulation of the object provides for arbitrary positioning of the cutting-plane. Subjective evaluation of the software thus far indicates that students enjoy using it and find it helpful. A formal testing plan to objectively evaluate the software and interface design is underway.”
“A fisheye lens is a very wide angle lens that shows places nearby in detail while also showing remote regions in successively less detail. This paper describes a system for viewing and browsing planar graphs using a software analog of a fisheye lens. We first show how to implement such a view using solely geometric transformations. We then describe a more general transformation that allows hierarchical, structured information about the graph to modify the views. Our general transformation is a fundamental extension to the previous research in fisheye views.”
“We describe an interface prototype, the Hierarchical Video Magnifier, which allows users to work with a video source at fine-levels of detail while maintaining an awareness of temporal context. The technique allows the user to recursively magnify the temporal resolution of a video source while preserving the levels of magnification in a spatial hierarchy. We discuss how the ability to inspect and manipulate hierarchical views of temporal magnification affords a powerful tool for navigating, analyzing and editing video streams.”
“Computer support for group work is a technological innovation receiving considerable attention from developmental researchers. This paper reports the preliminary results from two surveys which assessed user perceived needs for various types of group work support. The instruments, distributed to managers and professionals in a variety of organizations, described group support scenarios and associated functions/tools and asked for an assessment of their usefulness to one of the respondent's organizational work groups. Support for between meetings group work was perceived to be more useful than support for either face to face or electronic meetings. Common single user tools were generally perceived to be more useful than multi-user group tools. Individual differences and implications are addressed.”
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URL: http://www.interaction-design.org/references/conferences/proceedings_of_the_acm_chi_92_human_factors_in_computing_systems_conference.html
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Mar 22nd, 2010
