Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millenium 83
| Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millenium | |
| author | John M. Carroll (Editor) |
| pages | 703 |
| publisher | Addison-Wesley |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | Cliff Lampe |
| ISBN | 0-201-70447-1 |
| summary | Academic HCI lovefest. |
Reviewer's Note:
Most of the people in the book I'm reviewing could crush me beneath their heels, given I'm a lowly doctoral student in the HCI field. However, it's not a simple question of whether the collection is good or bad, but whether it will be good for the reader in their context. Besides, I can give you good inside information on lots of the authors. Like George Furnas, as cool a cat as you'll meet, gets nervous when he does magic tricks and Paul Resnick picks a mean fiddle. Yep, I got tons of dirt.
The Scenario
Anyone who has taken an HCI class has probably come across a gigantic blue paperback book called Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000, which has acted as a de facto text in HCI classes in the past. In 1998, leaders in the HCI field realized that this book would soon be obsolete, and started organizing the players who would contribute to this worthy successor. This book is a collection of 29 articles from the lead researchers in the HCI academic research community, and it attempts to outline the research programs that will dominate the HCI field, if not for the next millennium as advertised, then at least for the next 10 years. The book is divided into seven sections:
- Models, Theories, and Frameworks
- Usability Engineering Methods and Concepts
- User Interface Software and Tools
- Groupware and Cooperative Activity
- Media and Information
- Integrating Computation and Real Environments
- HCI and Society
Each section has 3-5 articles on the section's topic. Examples of the research included:
- Terry Winograd proposes a conceptual framework for the design of interactive spaces, or more basically computing environments built into the architecture of a space and seamlessly integrated with personal context.
- Hollan, Hutchins and Kirsh follow up some of Hutchins work on distributed cognition as an HCI research area, including a call for more ethnographic studies in the area and a better understanding of how people and tools interact.
- Olson and Olson outline the problems of distant work collaboration, and outline situations in which distant work makes more sense than not.
- Terveen and Hill give a great review of work in collaborative filtering, and then outline several approaches to making recommender systems better able to return positive hits.
- Doug Schuler in one article and Paul Resnick in another argue how HCI issues go beyond desktop computing or small groups and can be applied to larger groups, including communities both online and off.
Other topics include situated computing, participatory design, new user interfaces like tangible user interfaces or gesture recognition, cognitive modelling and so on. Some common themes that emerge are the expectation that user interface needs to go beyond the desktop environment, the application of HCI principle to things other than the individual or small group, the importance of groupware and the development of a unifying theory for the field.
Really, one could write a pretty long review on any of the 29 chapters, since each one does have serious weight, as well as an innovative edge as these investigators attempt to outline directions for the next several years. Some of the articles included here have already struck a chord in this research community and have become widely cited in their draft forms, or from appearances in special journals. Each section of the book typically appeared as as journal article in Human-Computer Interactions, or were specifically solicited by John Carroll.
The Good and the Bad
These are some heavy hitters. The authors list reads like my general prelims, and it takes someone like Carroll to pull together a group like this. Each of the 29 articles stands strong on its own, though one may quibble with claims here and there, yet still manage to paint a remarkably cohesive picture of the area as a whole. This book contains serious research in a single bound volume that should grace the desk of any person interested in HCI issues. It is simply unarguable that this is going to be the HCI book for the foreseeable future.
The book bears some of the problems of the field, which is that it comes from a specific set of disciplines like cognitive psychology and computer science, so may preclude applicable theories from other disciplines. That is the nature of academic boundary making, and is not the specific fault of the book. Just so you are aware of it.
And speaking of academics, some readers may be turned off by the academic edge of this book. HCI in general has always had a foot in both the university and the corporate sector, as evinced by the list of speakers at this year's ACM-SIGCHI conference, but this book tends towards the academic side. Although specific applications get mentioned here, large parts of the book may be a turn off to people like my brother-in-law who is a sysadmin and definitely not interested in new macrotheory for HCI research. Or shaving.
This book takes commitment. It is not for lily-livered pedants who want something to fill the space until the next Harry Potter book comes out. That's neither good nor bad, just fair warning. Don't expect this to be as eminently accessible as a Don Norman book. Still, like in most things the work is very worthwhile.
So What's In It For Me?
It seems that in every field there is That One Book that people will point you to as the ultimate source to quickly get a sense of what it is all about. This book plays that role for the HCI field. If you are at all interested in the state of HCI research, mostly in the U.S. of course, then this is the book you should get. Even if you are already some tricked out, super-HCI guru, there is likely to be some research in here from outside your specific area that you will get value from.
This is not a book for someone who has to do a usability test for the boss next week and needs to know how to conduct one. Nor will this book tell you how to make your website look really cool. What it will do is give you incredible insight into the history and future of an exceedingly interesting field of endeavor.
Cliff is a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Information, studying in their Human-Computer Interaction program. He plans to be a contributing author in the next version of this book. You can purchase the Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millenium from bn.com. Want to see your own review here? Just read the book review guidelines, then use Slashdot's handy submission form.
In a nutshell... (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer to the above question will mold the ideas of how computers are made. To some degree you can see this train of thought happening on both sides already. IE, Apple's styling suggests the computer as its own appliance. It's friendly, but obviously its own class of household machine. But it's made to integrate into the household environment (in other words, their computers don't look ugly).
On the other hand, you have the ideas of appliances like the Maytag Neptune, for instance. The on-board computer can solve any of your stain dilemmas, but lacks the capabilities of a full-blown desktop computer.
In the end I think the school of thought which advocates molding the computer to more traditional appliances will ultimately become a niche market, and the computer will remain as its own appliance, with the learning curve becoming less sharp as interface design is advanced.
One of the more interesting HCI projects (Score:2, Interesting)
Alice is primarily a scripting and prototyping environment for 3D object behavior, not a 3D modeler, so Alice is much more like LOGO than AutoCAD. By writing simple scripts, Alice users can control object appearance and behavior, and while the scripts are executing, objects respond to user input via mouse and keyboard.
I see an opportunity here for a free (as in speech) version. It could go a long way in the acceptance of Linux at the elementary school level.
Re:In a nutshell... (Score:2, Interesting)
Low-end computing (web browsing, email, word processing) will become the domain of new applieances. While these machines will become eaiser to use. They will severly restrict what a user can do with them. (RIAA, DMCA, etc..)
The all purpose devises we currently own will live on in the hands of power users. However, they will not see significant improvements in what is traditionally considered 'usability'. If anything the learning curve will get steeper. The problem is that truely complex tasks cannot be made self evident. No amount of HCI research will make them simpler. The best we can hope for is increased consistancy and predictability.
Re:One of the more interesting HCI projects (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me know when the neurocouplers are ready, so I can try out a 0d UI. It sounds wonderful.
Re:More accessible HCI-type books (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I have to say that Raskin's The Humane Interface is relatively - alien. I don't agree with some of his tenets, most notably his aversion to modality. Even so, it's worth reading. Ironically, the cover of the edition I read had a tendency to curl annoyingly, and was one of the most inhumane book interfaces I've ever seen...
Re:More accessible HCI-type books (Score:4, Interesting)
This is to some extent fair, but academic researchers are usually well aware of this issue. Their work is (usually) not intended to be applicable to today's day-to-day problems. It either provides the theory you transform into day-to-day practice or it is work that will solve problems that will occur ten years from now.
Most importantly if you understand the scientific underpinnings of the field you will get a lot more from the "practitioners" books you mention (which are all good recommendations).
I spent 7 years as an academic HCI/AI researcher. I have spent the last 10 years as a commercial software developer. Having an academic understanding of the theory of HCI makes me a profoundly better user interaction designer in the "real world".
Re:One of the more interesting HCI projects (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone remember all those cool 3D images the Pathfinder/Sojourner robots returned from Mars? [nasa.gov] My lab participated in a NASA field test for future Mars robotic explorers, trying to decide what tools should be included on the robot, command structures, how to do distributed science with a 24 hour turn around time, things like that. Turns out the geologists were MUCH more interested in the high-res, 2D pictures than in the interactive-immersive-photorealistic-insert buzzword VR environment created from the robot.
The technology was awesome. The computer churns for a couple hours, you put on your 3D goggles, or step into the Cave, and you can look around and see the remote environment from the vantage of the camera (in the field test, the camera was placed about average human eye height). I think distances/measurements were accurate to 5mm at 5m.
But the geologists only used the technology like 0.5% of the time. When the data first came back, they'd look at the VR and say, "whoa...cool!" but then go to do their 'real work' from the 2d images. The people who really did use it were the people that planned the path of the robot (how deep is that ridge? how far to that rock?).
I think there were a lot of factors that contributed to that. First, the resolution wasn't that great, or more accurately still light years from the resolution of the eye. We're a LONG way from telepresence, so the geologists weren't motivated to act like it was available. Second, there was a high learning curve to the user interface. Not to someone w/VR experience, but if you've never put on 3D goggles, or used a Magellan device, or thought about how to 'rotate the world' so you can see what you want, its hard. So they had to find someone to 'drive' the interface for them, and they weren't motivated to do that either.
Like to See Even Simpler Presentation For Masses (Score:2, Interesting)
I confess that HCI does not hold much interest for me personally but I would like to see a very simple "popular science" treatment of what types of HCIs are being considered for future generations. Not completely content-free but something very basic that would communicate to the public that HCI is an active field of research and that they shouldn't expect that tomorrow's UI will look anything like today's. The public at large thinks that the way we interact with computers today is representative of how we will tomorrow as well and so parents are forking over big bucks to make sure their kids get "computer training". It always breaks my heart whenever I see one of those news stories where they interview some low-income single-mother-of-three who is wasting good money on computer classes for her 10 year old kids. She makes the sacrifice because she thinks she's giving her kids a head-start on the supposedly-valuable computer skills they'll need to compete in the job market. What she doesn't realize is that by the time her kids enter the workforce, most of the stuff her kids learned will be obsolete.
A book that makes parents think twice about the value of modern-day computer "training" and applicability to future systems is seriously needed, in my view.
GMD
hmmmmm (Score:2, Interesting)