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

The concept of an agent has become important in both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and mainstream computer science. Our aim in this paper is to point the reader at what we perceive to be the most important theoretical and practical issues associated with the design and construction of intelligent agents. For convenience, we divide these issues into three areas (though as the reader will see, the divisions are at times somewhat arbitrary). Agent theory is concerned with the question of what an agent is, and the use of mathematical formalisms for representing and reasoning about the properties of agents. Agent architectures can be thought of as software engineering models of agents;researchers in this area are primarily concerned with the problem of designing software or hardware systems that will satisfy the properties specified by agent theorists. Finally, agent languages are software systems for programming and experimenting with agents; these languages may embody principles proposed by theorists. The paper is not intended to serve as a tutorial introduction to all the issues mentioned; we hope instead simply to identify the most important issues, and point to work that elaborates on them. The article includes a short review of current and potential applications of agent technology.

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Intelligent Agents: Theory and Practice

From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

Erik Eriksen is a remarkable individual. He has no college degrees yet is Professor of Human Development at Harvard University. He came to psychology via art, which explains why the reader will find him painting contexts and backgrounds rather than stating dull facts and concepts. He has been a training psychoanalyst for many years as well as a perceptive observer of cultural and social settings and their effect on growing up. This is not just a book on childhood. It is a panorama of our society. Anxiety in young children, apathy in American Indians, confusion in veterans of war, and arrogance in young Nazis are scrutinized under the psychoanalytic magnifying glass. The material is well written and devoid of technical jargon. The theme of the volume is that it is human to have a long childhood which will leave a lifelong residue of emotional immaturity in man. Primitive groups and

Childhood and Society.

How to ... be a reflective practitioner.

Email overload is a growing problem for many users in the workplace [1]. Users often have trouble in retrieving messages for later use or in remembering to reply or to act on a particular message. There are two causes. The first is due to the problems associated with maintenance and retrieval in a semantic hierarchical structure. The second is due to the fact that current email systems are designed around the assumption that messages are informational and are read upon arrival, and that important messages are filed. The use of a semantic hierarchy for filing presents many problems for dealing with a large volume of data. Filing and maintenance is very time consuming and cognitively intensive. Since there can be hundreds of new messages arriving each day, it is difficult to file and maintain a reasonable hierarchy that facilitates efficient retrieval. Moreover, categories can become obsolete over time, and messages in different categories may become semantically related. Therefore, users must spend time periodically to reorganize their mail hierarchies. People use email for more than communication. On the surface, email is a form of asynchronous communication. In reality, email are actually used for purposes such as document delivery and archiving, work task delegation, storing personal names and addresses, and scheduling appointments [1]. Also people need better tools to remind them of their tasks [2, 3] and current email systems lack such support.

A time-based interface for electronic mail and task management

Individuals with cognitive deficits and their families are prime examples of collaborative "systems" that seek to perform everyday tasks together. Yet there has been little investigation into how these families communicate and coordinate in basic tasks like remembering appointments. In this paper we take a distributed cognition approach to studying ten families struggling with amnesia through nonparticipant observation and interviews. Our data show that the families work closely together as cognitive systems that must compensate for memory volatility in one of the members. We explore our participants' strategies for overcoming these difficulties and present lessons for the design of assistive technologies, highlighting the need for redundancy, easy and frequent synchronization, and awareness of updates. We conclude with implications for distributed cognition theory.

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Collaborating to remember: a distributed cognition account of families coping with memory impairments

In order to make computer programs more comprehensible, the presentation of program source text, program documentation, and program execution needs to be enhanced over its conventional treatment. The paper describes a number of new techniques and tools developed to achieve these ends. One of these is a novel design for the effective presentation of source text in the C programming language using high quality digital typography, and a processor which implements the design. Some experimental evidence is summarized to demonstrate that the resulting source text presentation is significantly more readable and comprehensible than the presentation conventionally used today. Brief descriptions are also given of two other techniques, the development of a novel system of structured program documentation incorporating both text and graphics, and the portrayal of program execution with coloured computer animation.

Enhancing program readability and comprehensibility with tools for program visualization

In this paper we describe TableTalk Poker, an online social gaming environment designed for seniors. In addition to text chat among all the players, the system supports voice conversations between each player and a non-playing partner, who may assume various roles such as peer, mentor, or learner. This paper reports on our user-centred design process, which included significant field work; the resulting system design; and the results of preliminary testing. We found that allowing seniors' participation by assuming various roles improves game accessibility and aids learning. Our pilot subjects enjoy this playing format and the opportunities for conversation that it provides.

TableTalk Poker: an online social gaming environment for seniors

The use of interactive computer graphics in the construction of animated visual displays is investigated. In interactive computer-mediated animation, movies are formed from direct console commands, algorithms, free-hand sketches, and real-time actions (such as mimicking a movement or rhythm with a stylus or a push-button). The resulting movies can be immediately viewed and altered. In picture-driven animation, the animator may sketch and refine (1) static images to be used as components of individual frames of the movie, and (2) static and dynamic images that represent movements and rhythm. These latter pictures drive algorithms to generate dynamic displays. Since each such picture determines critical parameters of a sequence of frames, a single sketch or action controls the dynamic behavior of an entire interval of the movie. The dissertation also outlines the design of a multi-purpose, open-ended, interactive Animation and Picture Processing Language. APPL is a conversational language which accepts free-hand sketches, real-time actions, and actions and algorithms that control interactive dynamic displays.

Ronald M. Baecker

Papers

A time-based interface for electronic mail and task management

Collaborating to remember: a distributed cognition account of families coping with memory impairments

Enhancing program readability and comprehensibility with tools for program visualization

TableTalk Poker: an online social gaming environment for seniors

Interactive computer-mediated animation