From the Publisher:
Written by the author of the best-selling HyperText & HyperMedia, this book provides an excellent guide to the methods of usability engineering. Special features: emphasizes cost-effective methods that will help developers improve their user interfaces immediately, shows you how to avoid the four most frequently listed reasons for delay in software projects, provides step-by-step information about which methods to use at various stages during the development life cycle, and offers information on the unique issues relating to informational usability. You do not need to have previous knowledge of usability to implement the methods provided, yet all of the latest research is covered.

Usability Engineering

Groupware reflects a change in emphasis from using the computer to solve problems to using the computer to facilitate human interaction. This article describes categories and examples of groupware and discusses some underlying research and development issues. GROVE, a novel group editor, is explained in some detail as a salient groupware example

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Groupware: some issues and experiences

This introduction presents the main motivations for the development of Description Logics (DLs) as a formalism for representing knowledge, as well as some important basic notions underlying all systems that have been created in the DL tradition. In addition, we provide the reader with an overview of the entire book and some guidelines for reading it. We first address the relationship between Description Logics and earlier semantic network and frame systems, which represent the original heritage of the field. We delve into some of the key problems encountered with the older efforts. Subsequently, we introduce the basic features of DL languages and related reasoning techniques. DL languages are then viewed as the core of knowledge representation systems, considering both the structure of a DL knowledge base and its associated reasoning services. The development of some implemented knowledge representation systems based on Description Logics and the first applications built with such systems are then reviewed. Finally, we address the relationship of Description Logics to other fields of Computer Science.We also discuss some extensions of the basic representation language machinery; these include features proposed for incorporation in the formalism that originally arose in implemented systems, and features proposed to cope with the needs of certain application domains.

https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/76254/frontmatter/9780521876254_frontmatter.pdf

The Description Logic Handbook

Giant strides in information technology at the turn of the century may have unleashed unreachable goals. With the invention of groupware, people expect to communicate easily with each other and accomplish difficult work even though they are remotely located or rarely overlap in time. Major corporations launch global teams, expecting that technology will make "virtual collocation" possible. Federal research money encourages global science through the establishment of "collaboratories." We review over 10 years of field and laboratory investigations of collocated and noncollocated synchronous group collaborations. In particular, we compare collocated work with remote work as it is possible today and comment on the promise of remote work tomorrow. We focus on the sociotechnical conditions required for effective distance work and bring together the results with four key concepts: common ground, coupling of work, collaboration readiness, and collaboration technology readiness. Groups with high common ground and loosely coupled work, with readiness both for collaboration and collaboration technology, have a chance at succeeding with remote work. Deviations from each of these create strain on the relationships among teammates and require changes in the work or processes of collaboration to succeed. Often they do not succeed because distance still matters.

Distance matters

Existing models for describing a process (such as a business process or a software development process) tend to focus on the "what" or the "how" of the process. For example, a health insurance claim process would typically be described in terms of a number of steps for assessing and approving a claim. In trying to improve or redesign a process, however, one also needs to have an understanding of the "why"--for example, why do physicians submit treatment plans to insurance companies before giving treatment? and why do claims managers seek medical opinions when assessing treatment plans? An understanding of the motivations and interests of process participants is often crucial to the successful redesign of processes.
This thesis proposes a modelling framework i* (pronounced i-star) consisting of two modelling components. The Strategic Dependency (SD) model describes a process in terms of intentional dependency relationships among agents. Agents depended on each other for goals to be achieved, tasks to be performed, and resources to be furnished. Agents are intentional in that they have desires and wants, and strategic in that they are concerned about opportunities and vulnerabilities. The Strategic Rationale (SR) model describes the issues and concerns that agents have about existing processes and proposed alternatives, and how they might be addressed, in terms of a network of means-ends relationships. An agent's routines for carrying out a process can be analyzed for their ability, workability, viability and believability. Means-ends rules are used to suggest methods for addressing issues, related issues to be raised, and assumptions to be challenged. The models are represented in the conceptual modelling language Telos. The modelling concepts are axiomatically characterized.
The utility of the framework is illustrated each of four application areas: requirements engineering, business process reengineering, organizational impacts analysis, and software process modelling. Advantage of i* over existing modelling techniques in each of these areas are described.

Modelling strategic relationships for process reengineering

A key constraint on the effectiveness of window-based human-computer interfaces is that the display screen is too small for many applications. This results in “window thrashing,” in which the user must expend considerable effort to keep desired windows visible. Rooms is a window manager that overcomes small screen size by exploiting the statistics of window access, dividing the user's workspace into a suite of virtual workspaces with transitions among them. Mechanisms are described for solving the problems of navigation and simultaneous access to separated information that arise from multiple workspaces.

Rooms: the use of multiple virtual workspaces to reduce space contention in a window-based graphical user interface

Workstations and personal computers are increasingly being delivered with the ability to handle multimedia data; more and more of us are linked by high-speed digital networks. With multimedia communication environments becoming more commonplace, what have we learned from earlier experiences with prototype media environments? This paper reports on some of our experiences as developers, researchers and users of flexible, networked, multimedia computer environments, or “media spaces”. It focusses on the lessons we can learn from extended, long-term use of media spaces, with connections that last not hours or days, but months or years. We take as our starting point a set of assumptions which differ from traditional analytical perspectives. In particular, we begin from the position that that real-world baseline is not always an appropriate point of comparison for new media technologies; that a set of complex and intricate communicative behaviours arise over time; and that media spaces connect not only individuals, but the wider social groups of which they form part. We outline a framework based on four perspectives — individual, interactional, communal and societal — from which to view the behaviour of individuals and groups linked by multimedia environments. On the basis of our long-term findings, we argue for a view of media spaces which, first, focuses on a wider interpretation of media space interaction than the traditional view of person-to-person connections, and, second, emphasises emergent communicative practices, rather than looking for the transfer of face-to-face behaviours.

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Your place or mine? Learning from long-term use of audio-video communication

In this organizational overview we cover some of the critical aspects of human interfaee research and application at Apple or, as we prefer to call it, the “User Experience.” We cover what we do, where we are going (as much as we are permitted to say in public), and how we are organized. Some of our innovations in the product process and in the transfer of research from the laboratories to product should be of special interest to the HCI community.

What you see, some of what's in the future, and how we go about doing it: HI at Apple Computer

In recent years system engineers, product designers, and human interface designers have become increasingly interested in developing ways of involving users in the design and evolution of computer-based systems Some have turned for guidance and inspiration to an approach to systems design pioneered in Scandinavia and often referred to as Participatory Design In this paper we examine the development of a computer-based design tool, Trillium, which on the surface looked like an example of Participatory Design in that users were directly involved in the development of the technology Our analysis leads us to conclude, however, that Trillium's development departed in critical ways from our current model of Participatory Design and to suggest that the manner in which users are involved in the development effort plays an important role in the success of the endeavor

Reflections on participatory design: lessons from the trillium experience

An interface is presented that is designed to help users switch among tasks on which they are concurrently working. Nine desirable properties for such an interface are derived. It is argued that a key constraint to building interfaces that support task switching is that low user-overhead switching among tasks requires a large amount of display space, whereas actual display space is limited. A virtual workspace design is presented that greatly speeds the inevitable task-switching induced window faulting. The resulting interface is presented as a study in theory-based human-interface design. It is shown how in this case theory is important in inspiring a design, but design entailments outside the theory raise new issues that must be faced to make the design viable. These design experiences, in turn, help inspire new theory.

Austin Henderson

Papers

Rooms: the use of multiple virtual workspaces to reduce space contention in a window-based graphical user interface

Your place or mine? Learning from long-term use of audio-video communication

What you see, some of what's in the future, and how we go about doing it: HI at Apple Computer

Reflections on participatory design: lessons from the trillium experience

A multiple, virtual-workspace interface to support user task switching