CHI '95 WorkshopsCHI '95 WorkshopsA workshop can be productive in a number of public and not so public ways. Workshops frequently lead to publications, such as an edited book or special issue of a journal (and always in a report published in the SIGCHI Bulletin.) Less publicly, workshops are frequently credited with bringing leading-edge researchers or special communities of practitioners together and assisting in the establishment of new networks. Workshops have served as a forum where people involved with ideas, technologies, and theories that are "not-yet-ready-for-prime-time" can define terms, develop taxonomies, thrash out differences, and otherwise seek to determine if what they have is new and different or merely an interesting, but passing, fancy.
CHI '95 offers eleven workshops covering a wide range of HCI topics. Workshops will be held before the conference, on Sunday May 7 and Monday May 8. If you are interested in a topic contact the workshop organizers (do not contact the Workshop Committee!). The organizers will respond to your query by providing more detailed information on the workshop and specifications for how to apply (a typical requirement is a 2-3 page position paper demonstrating your interest or expertise in the topic). Most workshops require pre-conference activity by individual participants.
All of your correspondence should be with the organizers of the workshop in which you are interested. Application materials for all workshops must be sent directly to the workshop organizers and must be received by 6 February 1995. Submitters will be notified of their selection by March 4, 1995.
Fees are $25 for a 1-day workshop, $40 for a11/2-day workshop, and $50 for a 2-day workshop.
This workshop builds on the organizers' previous work (presented in Amsterdam at INTERCHI '93) which provides a framework for understanding bias in computer systems. As an example of such bias, consider how the interface design of computerized voting systems can contribute to the unfair discrimination of some groups over others. Under-educated groups are more likely than educated groups to misunderstand how to cast a vote properly with a computerized system. Thus, under-educated individuals on average more frequently invalidate their own votes by either not voting for a position, or by voting for more than one person per position.
In the workshop, we draw on the organizers' framework and on participants' research and design experiences (a) to identify where and how common biases arise in computer systems, (b) to develop methods to minimize such bias, and (c) to gain hands-on experience with minimizing bias in a design.
Who should attend? Participants with diverse backgrounds and design experiences are desired, including but not limited to researchers, practitioners, designers, and educators. Interested individuals should send a brief letter describing their interest in the topic and their background. A small amount of preparation prior to the workshop will be required.
The workshop is scheduled for 1 day (all day Monday, May 8th) and is limited to 15 participants. For more information contact:
Batya Friedman, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Colby College, Waterville, ME 04901 USA. E-mail: b_friedm@colby.edu. Phone: +1-207- 872-3572. Fax: +1-207- 872-3555.
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together three overlapping groups of HCI researchers: those who have used a major cognitive architecture for user modeling, those who have used more than one such architecture, and those who have developed cognitive models using either generic or handcrafted software.
The use of cognitive architectures is beginning to have an interesting but little noted effect on the types of modeling applied to HCI issues. In the past, the software used to construct models was either very generic (as in the use of OPS5) or handcrafted by the individual modeler. Recently this has changed. At first generic connectionist architectures and, more recently, symbol manipulation architectures (Soar and ACT-R) have entered the public domain as systems that are centrally supported but whose use has spread beyond their developers. What is gained and what is lost by this trend?
Presentations, exercises, and discussions will focus on appropriate use of cognitive architectures for the modeling, analysis and solution of HCI problems. Specific topics include:
Susan S. Kirschenbaum, Code 2214 Building 1171/1, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport, Newport, RI 02841-5047 USA. Phone: +1- 401- 841-3354. Fax +1-401- 841-4749. E-mail: kirch@npt.nuwc.navy.mil.
User interface design is a knowledge-intensive task, and the amount of knowledge to be mastered is prohibitive. Numerous techniques have been tried to provide knowledge support to the user interface designer. Some examples include "passive" knowledge repositories, often containing design examples; "active" design support in the form of critiquing or automatic-design modules; dynamic restriction of the design space by means of constraints.
There is, however, no unified understanding of how these techniques relate to each other and to the design task. The goals of this workshop are to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the different techniques, and to investigate how they can be combined to provide useful design support. Examples of questions to be addressed include:
The workshop is scheduled for 1.5 day (all day Sunday, May 7th, and half-day Monday, May 8th) and is limited to 16 participants. For more information contact:
Kumiyo Nakakoji, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-430, USA. Phone: +1- 303- 492-3912. E-mail: kumiyo@cs.colorado.edu
It is vitally important for us to know the end-users of our products. Who are they? What do they expect? What do they want? And how do we obtain the answers to our questions, especially when the research budget is limited? There are many methods available: how do we use them most effectively? How can we recognise and take advantage of opportunities for collecting user information, such as at conferences and exhibitions? How representative are the users who attend these events?
The aim of this workshop is to investigate and propose methods of collecting user information without a large market research budget. We will brainstorm methods of collecting information and participate in an information-gathering exercise during the CHI '95 conference. The skills learned during the workshop will be valid for any product that requires information about end-users, not only computer products!
The exercise will be the definition of user profiles for a hypothetical new product for usability professionals -- taking advantage of the large group of members of the target market segment who will be gathered together for CHI '95!
The workshop is scheduled for 1 day (all day Monday, May 8th) and will reconvene on the last day of the conference (at a time and place to be announced). It is limited to 20 participants. For more information contact:
Alison Popowicz, Network Usability Group, Grenoble Networks Division, Hewlett-Packard France, 5 avenue Raymond Chanas, Eybens, 38053 Grenoble CEDEX 9, France. E-mail: alison_popowicz@grenoble.hp.com. Phone: +33- 76.62.55.43. Fax: +33- 76.62.52.00 or +33- 76.62.15.08.
This workshop considers the design and evaluation of multiple-use, multiple-user software applications. At the end of the two day workshop, participants will have compiled a) matrices of user interface characteristics uniquely relevant to multi-user, multi-use user interfaces, b) matrices outlining the unique usability evaluation constraints on these UI's and 3) hyperlinked connections between these two sets of matrices.
The extant wealth of user interface design and usability knowledge and standards considers primarily the single user, single use product. With the advent of groupware applications, novel aspects of human-human interactions (from a application perspective) must be increasingly accommodated in the user inter-face and in its evaluation, where little has been written. This two day workshop has two goals: The first day will identify to what extent, if any, current user interface paradigms support multi-user, multi use applications by identifying those aspects of human interaction that must be accommodated by these types of applications. The second day will identify the different problems evaluators of groupware have encountered related to the uniqueness of multi-user, multi use applications and the solutions to overcome these. The product of this workshop will be a coherent series of matrices outlining UI design and evaluation criteria for multi-use, multi-user software applications.
The workshop is scheduled for 2 days (all day Sunday, May 7th, and Monday, May 8th) and is limited to 20 participants. For more information contact:
Jeanne Scholtz, 5200 NE Elam Young Parkway, MS JF2-19, Hillsboro, OR 97124, USA. Phone: +1-503-696-8533. Fax: +1-503-696-9029. E-mail: Jean_Scholtz@ccm.jf.intel.com
This one-day workshop provides an opportunity for practitioners in visual design to share ideas, techniques, and methods for developing visual designs for interfaces. It is intended to provide a focused, peer-oriented setting within which experienced practitioners can share knowledge. Toward this end, each participant is expected to present a single useful technique--through example, demonstration, or case history--to the group. Individual presentations will be followed by discussion and an opportunity to try out the tool or technique. In closing, we will compare the day's samplings.
It is believed that the workshop will surface techniques that may have been heretofore undocumented for two primary reasons: 1) visual designers do not tend to publish since incentives for doing so are minimal, and 2) visual design techniques for interface development are often improvised in the absence of specialized tools and are seen as informal and ephemeral. While this workshop seeks to provide its participants with working knowledge that can be pragmatically applied, its larger purpose is to capture these techniques for larger distribution via publication in the conference proceedings. Therefore, participants are required to submit a written description of their workshop offering for publication in the SIGCHI Bulletin.
The workshop is scheduled for 1 day (all day Monday, May 8th) and is limited to 8 participants. For more information contact:
Loretta Staples, U dot I, Inc., 444 Spear Street, Suite 213, San Francisco, CA 94105 USA. E-mail: udoti@aol.com
Direct manipulation is the dominant paradigm in modern interface design. A "model world" is created, in which graphical objects represent objects in a particular domain, and users perform domain actions with gestures of a pointing device. "Intelligent agents" usually are seen as a competitor to direct manipulation, probably because agents typically are presumed to communicate using natural language.
The goal of this workshop is to explore methods that enable agents (especially design support agents) to deliver assistance by manipulating the display of visual objects. Agents need not be "talking heads"; rather, they can communicate much information visually, e.g., by adding or deleting graphical objects and changing visual properties of existing objects. The "model world" becomes a "magic world", which changes not only in response to user actions, but also due to the workings of hidden, helpful hands.
The workshop will develop an understanding of the nature and scope of this approach. We will consider when it is appropriate, its advantages and disadvantages relative to purely textual communication, and ways to integrate textual and visual methods. We also will compare various visual communication techniques and explore the influence of factors such as the task and the type of information being communicated.
This workshop is scheduled for one day (Sunday, May 7th) and is limited to 20 participants. For more information contact:
Loren Terveen, AT&T Bell Laboratories, 2C-401, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ. 07974 USA. E-mail: terveen@research.att.com.
The workshop is scheduled for 1.5 days (all day Sunday and half day Monday) and is limited to 20 participants. For more information contact:
Alan Wexelblat, MIT Media Lab, E15-305, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA 02139 USA. E-mail: wex@media.mit.edu.
Governments spend huge resources on custom computer systems, developed by contractors to government specifications under government monitoring. In many such projects usability has little explicit requirement, depending on developers' knowledge and perseverance. Development activities receive their funding allocations very early in the life cycle, and HCI work usually gets short shrift
At a CHI '94 SIG, over 30 participants from the United States and Europe outlined HCI challenges in government contracting and explored some approaches for addressing them. The principal challenges stemmed from inadequate HCI understanding among responsible government and contractor parties. The main approaches focus on educating industry, government, and the HCI community.
This workshop will continue the work begun during the SIG. After the large group briefly discusses the challenges, small groups will form to address solutions. The groups will be tasked to devise action plans that include detailed and feasible steps that can lead to the recognition of HCI as a specific and integral part of the development process for government systems. Each small group will present its findings to the entire workshop, and the whole group will examine the solutions for practicality and appropriateness. The workshop results will be publicized to the government contracting and HCI communities.
This workshop is scheduled for one day (Sunday, May 7th) and is limited to 15 participants. For more information contact:
Ira S. Winkler, Science Applications International Corporation, 200 Harry S Truman Parkway, Annapolis MD 21401 USA. E-mail: winkler@c3i.saic.com,. Phone: +1-301-261-8424
Recently, new approaches to design have emerged. These approaches go beyond usability testing and involve learning about users' work practices before a system is designed. They use dialogue with users in their work context to elicit requirements, understand work practices, and uncover implicit knowledge; all of which serve as input into design.
This workshop provides an opportunity for practitioners of these field methods to share their experience. It will emphasize: relating field work to the development process, developing a common terminology and framework for field methods, and comparing field methods to other techniques. The workshop is designed to be highly interactive and participatory. It will not be a series of presentations.
The major requirement is that each participant have used field oriented methods for a real project and be prepared to share that experience. To make the workshop a quality experience, participants will be asked to prepared written summaries which will be shared with other participants in advance. The organizers will provide an template for preparing such summaries and an outline for the workshop events.
The workshop is scheduled for 1.5 days (all day Sunday and half day Monday) and is limited to 15 participants. For more information contact.
Dennis Wixon, Digital Equipment Corporation, 110 Spit brook Rd., MS ZK02-3/R44, Nashua, NH 03062-2698 USA. Phone: +1-603-881-2276. Fax: +1-603-881-0120. E-mail: Wixon@usable.enet.dec.com.
As user interfaces become more complex it becomes more important to communicate among the interface designers, developers, users and customers the look and functionality of the interface. This communication of the user interface is done through a specification. Often interface designers use informal or ad hoc techniques for defining the interface which are incomplete and/or ambiguous which causes developers, users and customers to interpret them differently.
For non-user interface software there are many specification techniques that are commonly used: entity relation diagrams for modeling data, structure charts for functional decomposition, and several object orient specification techniques for describing class hierarchy and communication. There are also many formal techniques available for specifying graphical user interfaces, though in practice these techniques are rarely used. The result is development of user interfaces that are different than what was intended by the designer or customer and higher costs for detection and correction of usability problems.
The goals of the workshop are to bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss: issues and problems surrounding current specification techniques, successes and failures in specification projects, how current techniques could be improved, and areas where current research should be focusing. Through this workshop it is hoped that better techniques for specifying user interfaces can be developed.
The workshop is scheduled for 1.5 day (all day Sunday, May 7th, and half-day Monday, May 8th) and is limited to 15 participants. For more information contact:
Chris Rouff, NASA GSFC, Code 522.1, Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA. E-mail: chris.rouff@gsfc.nasa.gov. Phone: +1-301-286-2938. Fax: +1-301-286-1768.