Gary Perlman

Asynchronous design/evaluation methods for hypertext technology development

A process model used in the design and evaluation of hypertext systems is discussed. The model includes asynchronous processes of task analysis, document analysis, literature survey and systems evaluation, interpretation of data, designing and building systems, and collecting data. For each process, experiences with NaviText™ SAM, a hypertext interface to a reference source, are discussed. A variety of new methods for evaluation of experimental systems are presented along with several empirical results.

The HCI Bibliography project

The HCI Bibliography project has just released its first collections of a free-access online extended bibliography on Human-Computer Interaction. The basic goal of the project is to put an online bibliography for most of HCI on the screens of all researchers and developers in the field through anonymous ftp access, mail servers, and Mac and DOS floppy disks. Through the efforts of volunteers, the bibliography is approaching 1000 entries, with abstracts and/or tables of contents; eventually, citation information and hypertext access will be added. The first release contains the complete contents of all the ACM CHI conference, the complete journal Human-Computer Interaction, and several other important sources. Eventually, all of HCI will be online and freely accessible around the world.

Practical usability evaluation

Practical Usability Evaluation is an introduction to cost-effective, low-skill, low-investment methods of usability assessment. The methods include (1) Inspection Methods (e.g., heuristic evaluation), (2) Observational Skills and Video (including user testing with think-aloud protocols), (3) Program Instrumentation, and (4) Questionnaires. The tutorial features many step-by-step procedures to aid in evaluation plan design.

Teaching user interface development to software engineers

Teaching User Interface Development to Sojiivare Engineers is an overview of the analysis, design, implementation and evaluation topics to teach and the resources to teach them to sotlsvare engineers, the people who make most of the user interface design decisions. The goal is to improve the quality of user interface development instruction for software engineers and in turn improve the quality of the user interfaces they build.

System design and evaluation with hypertext checklists

A discussion is presented of how hypertext software can aid in the utilization of technical reference sources in system design and evaluation. Technical reference sources such as collections of guidelines and standards can contain hundreds or thousands of points to which system designers should or must conform. Important points can be used to define system specific design rules, and can later be used as checkpoints in a checklist to evaluate conformance. Hypertext access to technical reference sources can make it easier to find checkpoints that are relevant to specific system requirement areas. Hypertext can encode ratings of importance of and conformance to checkpoints. NaviText SAM implements the checklist method of system design and evaluation in a hypertext interface to a large design reference source. Experience with the method and the system indicates that checklists are useful aids to conform to checkpoints and that hypertext provides advantages over manual checklists.<<ETX>>

Update on the HCI Education Survey

The HCI Education Survey was originally designed to collect and maintain a databse of information on courses, faculty and programs that focus on Human Computer Interaction in higher education. The database was intended to provide prospective students (particularly graduate students) information about educational opportunities, and secondarily, to provide HCI educators information about other HCI educators. The survey also was designed to be accessed and updated in electronic form. It was based upon a review of other surveys (Ferguson, 1989; Human Factors Society, 1991; Mantei &amp; Smelcer, 1984; Software Engineering Institute, 1991) and field-testing.

Information retrieval techniques for hypertext in the semi-structured toolkit

The Semi-Structured Toolkit (SST) is a C library that provides universal functions based on abstractions for storage formatand data type-dependencies of semi-structured/frame-based information units. The SST provides searching, sorting, viewing, and linking operations for data stored in its native formats, without requiring proprietary formats or conversion. Hypertext capabilities such as linking and outlining are implemented in the SST with inverted indices for each of the fields in semi-structured records. This paper describes the implementation of hypertext capabilities in the SST.

Evaluating hypermedia systems (panel)

Hypermedia systems provide online access to complex networks of information with the goal of making it easier to find and use information. To validate the utility of their systems, several researchers and system developers have attempted to collect evaluation data on the usability and effectiveness of their systems and the features in their systems. Because of the potential complexity of hypermedia systems and the information structures they may represent, a variety of evaluation measures and methods have been used. These trade off the need for timely feedback in the development of new technology, the difficulty of controlling one or two variables in systems with dozens or hundreds of components, and the goal of gaining an understanding of hypermedia systems.

Designing menu display format to match input device format

We report the results of an experiment designed to measure the effects of modeling menu format to match the format of input devices. Subjects were presented with menus in layouts of varying compatibility with two common input devices: IBM PC function keys in a matrix format and the digit keys at the top of standard keyboards. The results showed that the better the match between formats of menus and devices, the lower the selection times. Guidelines for the design of displays suggest that the best way to show items is in a vertical sorted list, which is incompatible with the format of IBM function keys. We conclude that software designers should model menu display formats after the selection hardware.

The HCI bibliography: past, present, and future

The HCI Bibliography is a free-access online bibliographic database on Human-Computer Interaction. The basic goal of the project is to put an electronic bibliography for most of HCI on the screens of all researchers, developers, educators and students in the field through anonymous ftp access, mail servers, and Macintosh and DOS floppy disks. In 1994, through the efforts of over 100 volunteers from 13 nations, the bibliography has grown to a resource of over 10,000 entries occupying over 10 megabytes, used by over 350 sites in 23 nations. This notice describes the contents of the database, how to access it. and its history.