Nadine Ozkan

Understanding a Task Model: An Experiment

The HCI community advocates task analysis as a useful technique for user requirements analysis and system design, and has shown that task models should be developed collaboratively with users. The question of the usability and readability of task models for end-users is therefore an important one. In addition, we were specifically interested in this question in the context of our current project, Isolde*. Isolde is an authoring tool for technical writers whose user interface relies heavily on a specific task notation, DIANE+. We undertook an empirical study aimed at testing the readability and usability of DIANE+. Two experimental tasks are performed by end-users with no previous exposure to task models. Results show that DIANE+ is largely readable but that its usability is somewhat more problematic. This can be attributed to the task description notation rather than to the concepts themselves.

Towards an approach for novel design

We contrast the design of traditional technology with the design of new technology. Gathering from our experience, we argue that traditional HCI design techniques are not directly applicable to the design of new technology. We review some of these techniques and show how they should be adapted to be used in the context of novel design. As part of this discussion, we show that user input in the process of novel design should come at a much later stage than for traditional design. Lastly, we suggest a process for novel design where these techniques are applied and re-interpreted.

The Design of New Technology for Writing On-line Help

This paper presents an instance of the design of new technology in the domain of technical writing. We are proposing a novel tool for technical writers called Isolde*. Isolde has the potential to change substantially the technical writing process as well as the place of technical writers in a software development team. Consequently, Isolde has been designed through the collaboration of end-users and human computer interaction specialists. This paper shows how its design has evolved from technical and user related considerations, ensuring that Isolde is both feasible and desirable. The paper also discusses the use and place of this new technology in the technical writers’ work environment.

Cross-Fertilization Between Human Computer Interaction and Natural Language Processing: Why and How

Many of the central notions and ultimate goals of both human-computer interaction (HCI) and natural language processing (NLP) are common to both disciplines. Both are concerned with communication as a core concept, and both attempt to maximize the naturalness of this communication for the end-user. A central challenge to both disciplines is the issue of the choice and adaptation of the appropriate form of communication for the specific user and context at hand. Despite these strong commonalities, we observe very little collaboration, cross-references or even mutual knowledge between the HCI and NLP communities. And, surprisingly enough, although their goals might be very similar, the methods and the evaluation frameworks used in both research and applicative work in both areas are distinct. We think that it is time to step back and re-assess the potential for collaboration between the two disciplines.In this paper, we argue that importing ideas and methods from each discipline into the other can be fruitful, and we review specific areas where this is the case. We argue that cross-fertilization between HCI and NLP is desirable in wider and in more fundamental ways than only for the design of natural language interfaces. The reflection presented in this paper is motivated by our own work over the last four years in a team comprised of both HCI and specialists in natural language generation (NLG), a subfield of NLP specifically concerned with the automatic generation of language.

A Task Oriented Approach to Delivery in Mobile Environments

The delivery of Internet content on mobile devices not only poses technological challenges, but also raises usability issues. In this paper, we propose an approach driven by tasks, where a task model is used to dynamically drive the interaction with the user and adapt the content to the device. We argue that such an approach is appropriate given the use of mobile devices for very specific tasks. We present an application to the journalistic domain: we have built a knowledge portal to assist a reporter writing an article. This portal demonstrates how a task model can be used for content adaptation on a mobile device.

Exploring the Use of the Mobile Phone

The work reported here provides insight into the practice of mobile communication. Interviews with experienced mobile phone users were conducted on specific instances of communications they placed, and the corpus gathered was analysed from the following three perspectives: why was a mobile phone used rather than another communication device; what was the intent or the goal of the communication, and, when appropriate, why was text messaging chosen over voice communication.

HCI at CSIRO: Practical Research

The CSIRO division of Mathematical and Information Sciences (CMIS) and its predecessors the Division of Information Technology and the Division of Computing Research, have a long history of research in data visualisation and data interaction. More recently, the division has also started a research focus in HCI: a group was formed in 1995 to support research in both HCI and visualisation. This paper looks at the nature of the earlier work, at the integration of HCI skills into the development of data visualisation applications and at the emergence of HCI research within the division.