| Departments: What's Happening | | BIB | 5-11 | |
| Looking for the Bright Side of User Interface Agents | | BIBA | 13-15 | |
| Ben Shneiderman | |||
| User interface agents offer exciting new opportunities, but progress would be greater if goals and terms were clarified. | |||
| The Importance of Designing Usable Systems | | BIBA | PDF | 17-20 | |
| Susan Dray | |||
| The author addresses factors that an organization may consider in grappling with understanding the importance of the user interface in the context of its system activities. | |||
| The Next Step in Software Internationalization | | BIBA | PDF | 21-25 | |
| Matt Belge | |||
| The author addresses software internationalization and tells us how one design study was conducted. | |||
| Database Support for Usability Testing | | BIBA | PDF | 27-31 | |
| Kara Pernice; Mary Beth Butler | |||
| The authors describe strategies for supporting extensive usability testing across a global organization. | |||
| Designing a GUI for Business Telephone Users | | BIBA | 32-41 | |
| Pamela Savage | |||
| The author discusses a case study of designing an innovative interface for business telephone users. | |||
| A Conversation with John Seely Brown | | BIBA | PDF | 42-51 | |
| John Rheinfrank | |||
| John Seely Brown is Chief Scientist and a Corporate Vice President of Xerox
Corporation. He is also Director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
(PARC).
His personal research interests include artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and organizational learning. A major focus of Brown's research over the years has been in human learning and the management of innovation. Brown is a co-founder of the Institute for Research on Learning, a non-profit institute for addressing the problems of life-long learning. | |||
| Access to Graphical Interfaces for Blind Users | | BIBA | PDF | 54-67 | |
| W. Keith Edwards; Elizabeth D. Mynatt; Kathryn Stockton | |||
| The authors describe the ongoing development of a graphical interface which addresses usability concerns of visually-impaired users. | |||
| New Directions in Human-Computer Interaction Education, Research, and Practice | | BIBA | PDF | 69-81 | |
| Gary Strong | |||
| The author identifies HCI as the main gating function to the successful use of future technologies. | |||
| "The Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability and Productivity," by Thomas K. Landauer | | BIB | 83-86 | |
| "Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats," by James D. Murray and William vanRyper | | BIB | 87 | |
| "Object-Oriented GUI Application Development," by Geoff Lee | | BIB | 87-88 | |
| "Motif Tools: Streamlined GUI Design and Programming with the Xmt Library," by David Flanagan | | BIB | 88 | |
| CHI'95: "Mosaic of Creativity" | | BIB | 91-94 | |
| Departments: Reflections | | BIBA | 96 | |
| John Rheinfrank; Bill Hefley | |||
| When interactions was first conceived, the intent was to offer a forum for new and radical ideas that would significantly influence software design and development practice. It is now clear that interactions has actually given visibility to two different kinds of ideas. One we expected, the other was a surprise. | |||
| Departments: What's Happening | | BIB | 5-10 | |
| Gaps | | BIBA | PDF | 13-16 | |
| Marc Rettig | |||
| The role of design in a software project. | |||
| Get Into the Groove: Designing for Participation | | BIBA | PDF | 17-22 | |
| A. J. Bilson | |||
| Audience participation and how lessons learned from looking at participation within an active community can be applied to designing interactive interfaces. | |||
| Python: A GUI Development Tool | | BIBA | PDF | 23-28 | |
| Matthew J. Conway | |||
| The author describes the use of the Python language and the Tk toolkit for rapidly prototyping interfaces. | |||
| Usability Support Inside and Out | | BIBA | PDF | 29-32 | |
| Randolph G. Bias; Peter B. Reitmeyer | |||
| The authors discuss factors that an organization may consider in determining the optimal organizational placement of human factors professionals. | |||
| Essential Modeling: Use Cases for User Interfaces | | BIBA | PDF | 34-46 | |
| Larry L. Constantine | |||
| Essential modeling is a systematic process for designing user interfaces that more simply and fully support what users are trying to accomplish. Essential use cases are abstract, generalized scenarios representing the essential patterns of interaction between users and a system. Use context models are abstract designs representing collections of capabilities and resources that a user interface must present to users in support of particular use cases. By keeping the focus on intent and purpose, essential models lead to user interfaces with improved usability built in from the start, thereby reducing the demands on usability testing, inspections, and iterative refinement. | |||
| A Conversation with Don Norman | | BIBA | PDF | 47-55 | |
| John Rheinfrank | |||
| Don Norman is an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, where he directs the User Experience Architecture Group. He is professor emeritus in the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California at San Diego. His books are viewed by many as establishing the definitive standard for the design of interactive products. | |||
| The Role of Ethnography in Interactive Systems Design | | BIBA | PDF | 56-65 | |
| John Hughes; Val King; Tom Rodden; Hans Andersen | |||
| The authors describe their experiences in applying ethnographic methods to understand the social nature of work in developing complex, interactive systems. | |||
| The Future of Hypertext | | BIBA | PDF | 66-78 | |
| Jakob Nielsen | |||
| Nielsen looks back at predictions from his earlier book on hypertext and looks forward with predictions regarding hypermedia -- from today through the next twenty years. | |||
| "Scenario Based Design: Envisioning Work and Technology in System Development," edited by John M. Carroll | | BIB | PDF | 79-83 | |
| "A Discipline for Software Engineering," by Watts S. Humphrey | | BIB | PDF | 83 | |
| Interactive 3D Graphics | | BIB | 85-86 | |
| Departments: Reflections | | BIBA | 88 | |
| John Rheinfrank; Bill Hefley | |||
| Communities and other social orders are interesting. Sometimes they are "interesting" as we become an integral part of the interactions of the society; other times, in is "interesting" to be able to observe these interactions. | |||
| Departments: What's Happening | | BIB | 7-10 | |
| We Can Make Forgetting Impossible, But Should We? | | BIBA | PDF | 11-14 | |
| Edwin Bos | |||
| It's always bad to forget someone's birthday or where the car keys are, but to what lengths are we willing to go to insure that everything is remembered? Edwin Bos explores the privacy and human competence issues surrounding a technology that isn't even possible yet, but, he claims, will be in the not-distant future. | |||
| Organizing Information Spatially | | BIBA | PDF | 15-20 | |
| Kevin Mullet | |||
| Two-dimensional spatial organization conveys a wealth of information. The author critiques the dialog boxes in a typical desktop program with this important and useful principle in mind. | |||
| Getting the Most from Paired-User Testing | | BIBA | PDF | 21-27 | |
| Daniel Wildman | |||
| Paired-user testing combines some of the best features of "thinking aloud" protocols while it avoids some of their drawbacks. The author describes his success using this technique. | |||
| Reversing the Charges | | BIBA | PDF | 29-33 | |
| Frank Montaniz; George V. Kissel | |||
| Finding a business justification for a new software project is often easy. Finding the business justification for human factors activities is sometimes harder, but, as the authors show, some extra thinking about dollars and sense might pay off. | |||
| SANDBOX: Scientists Accessing Necessary Data Based On eXperimentation | | BIBA | PDF | 34-45 | |
| Andrew Johnson; Farshad Fotouhi | |||
| Why should scientists have to learn the environment of databases to manipulate data, when they already know how to manipulate data in the environment of the laboratory? The authors use the University of Illinois (Chicago) CAVE virtual environment to access data using lab instruments instead of database queries. | |||
| A Conversation with Jaron Lanier | | BIBA | PDF | 46-72 | |
| Karen A. Frenkel | |||
| Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier is "leading a feloniously eclectic
life." Now living in New York City, he is a visiting scholar at Columbia
University's Computer Science Department and visiting artist at the Interactive
Telecommunication Program at New York University. He is also starting a new
company -- Talisman Dynamics Incorporated in California -- with the mandate to
create VR authoring tools. And he has been learning about traditional media,
creating a ballet and exploring opera. His dance/music video, "Muzork," is
making the rounds at festivals. He is writing several books and co-writing a
play. He is guest-editing an issue of Spin magazine. His album, "Instruments
of Change," has just been released. And he is collaborating with Vernon Reid,
formerly of the rock band Living Color, and a hip hoppish project and on
orbiting jam.
Below, Lanier discusses post-symbolic communication and whether or not there is an avant-garde today. He decries intelligent agents and calls on new media developers to influence standards and avoid such "preposterous" limitations for interaction as having to choose between four buttons. Lanier delights in the garage VR movement and in the World Wide Web, proclaiming it the first workable anarchy in history. Espousing a humanistic interpretation of technology's potential, he deplores the link between virtual reality, violence, and drugs and he describes virtual reality's application to education. He also recounts his quest for a visual programming language and how that led to creating the technology for conversations in virtual worlds. | |||
| The "Homeopathic Fallacy" in Learning from Hypertext | | BIBA | PDF | 74-82 | |
| Jean McKendree; Will Reader; Nick Hammond | |||
| Hypertext is like the brain. Hypertext is like the mind. Structural similarity leads to educational effectiveness. Underlying these three fallacies, the authors claim, lies a single underlying fallacy. Combined, they may lead us to expect more of hypertext and hypermedia that can be delivered, especially in the fields of education and training. | |||
| "Behind Human Error: Cognitive Systems, Computers, and Hindsight," by David Woods, Leila Johannesen, Richard Cook, and Nadine Sarter | | BIB | 83 | |
| "The MUSE Method for Usability Engineering," by Kee Yong Lim and John Long | | BIB | 84 | |
| "Readings in Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000, Second Edition," written and edited by Ronald M. Baecker, Jonathan Grudin, William Buxton, and Saul Greenberg | | BIB | 84 | |
| "The Capability Maturity Model: Guidelines for Improving the Software Process," by Mark Paulk, Charles Weber, Bill Curtis, and Mary Beth Chrissis | | BIB | 85 | |
| DIS'95: Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques | | BIB | 87-88 | |
| Departments: What's Happening | | BIB | 7-15 | |
| Designing in the Real World | | BIBA | PDF | 15-17 | |
| V. Balasubramanian | |||
| In interactions II.2, Marc Rettig discusses three knowledge gaps (language, example, and point-of-view). V. Balasubramanian of Hoffmann-La Roche, looks at a fourth: the lack of knowledge about the importance of design in an increasingly interaction-oriented software environment, which can cause unusable systems, frustrated users, and budget overruns for managers. | |||
| Qualitative Research Methods in Design and Development | | BIBA | PDF | 19-26 | |
| Dennis Wixon | |||
| Qualitative and ethnographic research methods aren't simply new and different methods which can be directly "plugged" into an existing development process. | |||
| Starting from Scratch: Building a Usability Program at Union Pacific Railroad | | BIBA | PDF | 27-30 | |
| Patricia A. Billingsley | |||
| At Union Pacific, in initial corporate decision to find a comprehensive, long-term solution to IT's software usability concerns has steadily evolved into a full-fledged corporate usability program. | |||
| Creative Orientations for Interface Design at Do While Studio | | BIBA | PDF | 31-35 | |
| Jennifer Hall | |||
| In the process of making their work, artists become tool builders. They create unique devices to accommodate the construction of their products. For example, traditional painters have produced their own paints, built custom brushes, and devised ways to ways to stretch canvases. | |||
| Information Design and the New Media | | BIBA | PDF | 36-46 | |
| Melinda McAdams | |||
| The ways of handling information that work well in "old media" (print and broadcast) do not always translate gracefully into new media environments. Although entertainment (in video games and CD-ROMs) and communication (on the Internet and on-line services) are finding new forms and new configurations in the new media, information (news, reference, education), which still relies largely on text, usually takes on forms native to print environments. These can appear very awkward in new media. This article compares people's relationships to digital media and print media; it also examines information and people's needs for and expectations of information, with an eye toward adapting information design to suit new media environments. This concerns not so much the death of print as it does fitting the interface to both the medium and the message -- which some would say are the same thing. | |||
| Developing Applications with the Alpha UIMS | | BIBA | PDF | 48-65 | |
| Daniel Klein | |||
| The Alpha User Interface Management System (UIMS) is a collection of programs and libraries that enables an application to be partitioned into functionally distinct component parts. This partitioning recognizes that any application is comprised of three types of components, each encompassing a separate domain of expertise: the application, display technology, and user interface. By separating the application into a dialogue utilizing a collection of agents, development time is reduced and maintainability is enhanced. Because the dialogue views the agents as black boxes, the benefits of parallel development and independent maintenance and upgrade are realized. Display technology agents can be easily reused, enabling a corporate look-and-feel. Further, an application agent can be reused with different user interfaces creating systems tailored to different classes of users. We describe the general features of the Alpha UIMS, and show how a complete application can be developed using such a user interface management system. | |||
| A Conversation with Gordon Bell | | BIBA | PDF | 66-79 | |
| Karen A. Frenkel | |||
| Gordon Bell has been a major computer industry pundit since the 1960s.
Known for his role as project leader for the VAX, Digital Equipment
Corporation's famous mini-computer, his wide expertise has influences the
design of many other products at Digital, Encore, Ardent, and a score of other
companies. He recently became a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Corporation.
Bell has also been a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
at Carnegie-Mellon University and influenced technology policy as the first
Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation's Computing Directorate.
He led the National Research and Education Network panel that became the
NII/GII, and was an author of the original High Performance Computing and
Communications Initiative.
Recognized for his contributions by the many honors he has received, Bell is an ACM Fellow and was awarded the 1991 National Medal of Technology "for his continuing intellectual and industrial achievements in the field of computer design; and for his leading role in establishing ... computers that serve as a significant tool for engineering, science, and industry." In his book, High Tech Ventures: The Guide to Entrepreneurial Success (Addison-Wesley) 1991, Bell describes the Bell-Mason Diagnostic for analyzing new ventures, an expert system for venture development to startups, entrepreneurial ventures, investors, and governments. Bell sits on the boards and technical advisory boards of Ambit Design, Cirrus Logic Inc., Disk Excellaration Systems Inc., Fakespace Inc., University Video Communications, and CSC's Vanguard Group Computer Science Corporation. Now that he is with Microsoft Research, Bell hopes to pave the way for telepresence by "colliding telephones with computers," developing "instruments" that he believes will become the next platform to change our lives. Below, he describes the evolution of the Internet, why telecommunications companies have to withhold bandwidth, and the requirements and challenges that must be met for us to be telepresent. | |||
| Why GOMS? | | BIBA | PDF | 80-89 | |
| Bonnie John | |||
| In 1983 Stu Card, Tom Moran, and Allen Newell presented the concept of
"GOMS" in their seminal book, The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction.
They suggested that, when designing a computer system, it is useful to analyze
knowledge about how to perform a task in terms of four components: Goals,
Operators, Methods, and Selection rules. At the time of their proposal, I was
a systems engineer at Bell Laboratories writing specifications for the
functionality and user interface of small-business telecommunication systems.
If I had heard this claim then, a raft of questions would have leapt to my
mind: What is GOMS? What can it do? In what situations does it apply? How do
you use it? Who can use it? Can it be trusted? Is it worth the bother of
using it?
A dozen years later, these same questions still exist for many people, for usability specialists who have not yet used GOMS, for their managers, and for computer system designers. After leaving Bell Laboratories to get a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology/human-computer interaction, I've spent the last twelve years using GOMS: reading about it, exercising it, and doing research to push the envelop of what it can do. This time around, in addition to asking the questions, I may be able to provide some of the answers. | |||
| "Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction," edited by Bonnie A. Nardi | | BIB | 90-92 | |
| "Medical Device and Equipment Design: Usability Engineering and Ergonomics," by Michael E. Wiklund | | BIB | 92 | |
| UIST '95 -- 8th Annual Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology | | BIB | 95 | |
| ACM Multimedia '95 -- 3rd International Conference on Multimedia | | BIB | 95 | |
| ... on Coming of Age | | BIBA | 96 | |
| Bill Hefley | |||
| In a rapidly maturing field such as ours, the turns that we take are often amazing. My first computers were IBM 1401s and 360s. The facilities that housed them were almost temple-like. | |||