Sharon L. Greene

Characteristics of applications that support creativity

Creativity typically involves some novel change to a symbolic domain and the production of some artifact judged by domain experts, in some manner, to be creative [1, 2]. An understanding of basic principles and preexisting knowledge helps one know what, when, where, and how to tweak a pattern in order to produce something creative. Creative tweaks may be seen in art, in science, and indeed, in everyday life. The role of preexisting knowledge is recognized as critical to evaluation in one of the more formal mechanisms for recognizing creative inventions—patents. While patentable inventions must be sufficiently creative and novel, they must also be described well enough for someone skilled in the art to be able to build them. Having an environment where it is easy to learn, in which existing bodies of knowledge can be readily accessed, examined, visualized, related, and discussed, would seem to be a key component in enabling creativity. Shneiderman [7, 8] talks of these aspects in terms of a “genex framework” in which there are four phases for generating excellence: collect, relate, create, and donate. He also describes a number of primary activities that occur in those phases that could potentially be supported by computer tools. Computer tools can facilitate creativity on at least two fairly distinct levels: they can aid in knowledge gathering, knowledge sharing, knowledge integration, and ultimately, idea generation; and they can enable the generation of creative artifacts in a particular domain by providing critical functionality in clear, direct, and useful ways. The optimal computer tool will provide support on both of these levels and indeed, provide seamless integration between them. The Cognitive HCI department at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center has developed various tools and systems that could be differentiated by the nature of their target audiences and the kinds of activities in which the users are engaged. On the one hand, tools (the ITS system, [9]) were developed for the application designer/developer. The goal of these tools was to support the development of creative end-user systems. On the other hand, a number of highly used and wellreceived public access systems were designed and developed using these tools. Several of these systems were aimed at engendering creativity in their end users [3–6]. This work, spanning more than a decade, has helped yield insights into the kind of environment—both social and technological—that encourages and supports creativity [4].

Perspectives on HCI patterns: concepts and tools

This workshop will explore a diversity of perspectives on Patterns and Patterns Languages for HCI as well as the requirements for software tools needed to improve the effectiveness of both pattern creation and pattern use. Through discussion of conceptual and methodological issues of why (and how) patterns are identified and in what circumstances they are useful in the design process we hope to map out the conceptual landscape of HCI patterns. By moving closer and examining pattern-related behavior and experiences we hope to identify the requirements for tools to make progress through that landscape.

Using a touchscreen for simple tasks

Abstract This work was done in the context of an interdisciplinary project (called ITS) aimed at producing new tools for computer application development. One motivation is to provide designers with a computer-based toolkit from which they can select human-computer interaction techniques appropriate to various contexts and conditions. These experiments extend our work to touchscreens, and provide a basis of comparison with keyboards and arrow keys. Three human-computer interaction methods, including basic entry and autocompletion, were studied in two simple laboratory scenarios: participants specified dates and airlines reservations. Autocompletion was preferred over, and was faster than, basic entry. The a priori countable, minimum number of touches required to use a particular interaction method is a good predictor of how much time people will need to use that interaction method on a particular task. Similar results were found previously with keyboards and arrow keys.

Transformations on a dialog tree: rule-based maping of content to style

Over the past ten years a broad consensus has developed that decomposing applications into separate computational and interface modules is desirable. The motivations for modularity in user interfaces are similar to those elsewhere in computer science, and center around the benefits of hiding internal implementations from other modules in a system. Modularity allows reuse of each component with compatible versions of the other components, and allows separate development processes for each component. In user interfaces, modularity allows the reuse of applications with different interfaces, perhaps for different user classes, window systems, or devices. Modularity also allows application and interface experts, including human factors engineers and graphic designers, to cooperate while minimizing the coordination required among them.

Extending User-Centered Methods beyond Interface Design to Functional Definition

The contributions of human factors or usability practitioners to application development often begin with a functional specification handed down from an external source. User-centered design methods are commonly applied to how function is delivered but not what functions will be delivered. We in the Interactive Transaction Systems (ITS) group at the T.J. Watson Research Division of IBM have succeeded, during several application development efforts, in expanding the scope of our user-centered, iterative design approaches to include functional as well as interface definition for both software and hardware (kiosk/workstation) design. By learning our customers business and owning the entire development process, we can better design our solutions to solve their problems (and their clients problems in the case of service industry solutions). We achieve this by including the functional definition in the first of four phases we have defined for all of our development projects. A significant facilitation for this in the arena of software development has been the CADT (Customer Access Development Toolset) development platform we use to build our applications. This set of tools for iterative application design and development gives us the flexibility to quickly and effectively address emerging functional requirements.

Entry and selection-based methods of human-computer interaction

The merits of entry and selection interaction methods were compared using an airline flight reservation scenario with a relatively small data base. For both experienced and inexperienced users, the most effective method was entry combined with autocompletion (i.e., string completion). Users took the least amount of time to carry out tasks with this method and also preferred it over both entry without autocompletion and selection from either a one-item menu or an N-item menu. Entry with autocompletion was not affected by increases in the underlying data base size. Both the entry with autocompletion methods and the selection method were not affected by the spelling difficulty level involved in making a reservation, but the unaided entry methods were. The results are discussed in the context of the Interactive Transaction System (ITS) project, which is a user-interface management system that separates the content of the user interface from the style of the interface.

Iterative development in the field

In this paper, we describe Iterative Development in the Field (IDF), a User-Centered Design approach for developing interactive applications. This approach is characterized by repeated evaluation and redesign cycles that are carried out throughout the product life cycle, from initial discovery and gathering of requirements to beyond deployment in the field. The evaluation is based on the use of interactive prototypes and is performed by actual users in the field. We describe how IDF has evolved over the past 13 years through the experience gained from four major projects and offer a set of guidelines for successful IDF that we illustrate with examples from our experience. We discuss limitations in the applicability of IDF and conclude with some comments regarding the future of IDF.

MoMA and the three-legged stool: fostering creative insight in interactive system design

We view the design of interactive systems as a three-legged stool. The legs are: an understanding of technology, an understanding of the users and the use context, and creative insight. As the metaphor implies, if any of the legs is missing, the stool will not stand. Although much work has gone into the effort to develop tools and methodologies to enable programmers and designers to create outstanding applications, we believe the hard truth is that good design requires skill, and creative insight is an essential ingredient that must be recognized and supported. Although it is difficult to manage, plan for, and control insight and creativity, we can create an atmosphere in which creative insight is encouraged, recognized and valued. In this design study, we offer guidelines for creating this environment and present some examples of their application to a project on which we are currently working with The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The project explores learning by ddiscovery and grows out of our research into cognitive HCI.

Entry-Based versus Selection-Based Interaction Methods

Five different human-computer interaction techniques were studied to determine the relative advantages of entry-based and selection-based methods. Gould, Boies, Meluson, Rasamny, and Vosburgh (1988), found that entry techniques aided by either automatic or requested string completion, were superior to various selection-based techniques. This study examines unaided as well as aided entry techniques, and compares them to selection-based methods. Variations in spelling difficulty and database size were studied for their effect on user performance and preferences. The main results were that automatic string completion was the fastest method and selection techniques were better than unaided entry techniques, especially for hard-to-spell words. This was particularly true for computer-inexperienced participants. The database size had its main influence on performance with the selection techniques. In the selection and aided-entry methods there was a strong correlation between the observed keystroke times and the minimum number of keystrokes required by a task.

Its a New Method for Computer Application Development and Prototyping

Perhaps the one thing that user interface designers most want is tools that will help them (a) quickly visualize their work; (b) carry it out more efficiently and faster; and (c) do iterative design; and (d) allow them to do more work without the need of programmers. An on-going research project (called ITS) is responding to these challenges by developing software tools for user interface and application development, together with providing a run-time environment for application execution. There are four key concepts. First, ITS separates the style of an application from the content of an application. Human-computer interface styles are general, rule-based, under parameter control, and designed to handle a variety of applications. Second, ITS envisions four general work roles in application design and development: content experts, content programmers, style experts, and style programmers. Third, end users do four operations: make choices, fill in forms, manipulate lists, and read information blocks. Fourth, ITS aims at creating software tools for each work role.