Thomas Erickson

Working with interface metaphors

Publisher Summary This chapter describes working with interface metaphors. Metaphor is an integral part of language and thought. It appears not only in poetry and novels, but also in everyday speech about common matters. Metaphor is such a constant part of speech and thought that it is invisible. The characteristics of metaphor in language are the same that govern how metaphor works in an interface. Just as metaphors invisibly permeate everyday speech, they also occur throughout the interfaces that humans use and design. This chapter presents a deeper understanding of what metaphor is, and how to use it when designing an interface. It discusses some of the characteristics of metaphor in language. These characteristics provide insights on how metaphor works in an interface. The chapter also presents an example of a poorly chosen interface metaphor and how it decreases the usability of the system.

Social interaction on the Net: virtual community as participatory genre

The phrase virtual community is often used to describe long term, computer-mediated conversations amongst large groups. This paper suggests that such conversations may be better viewed as instances of a participatory genre, rather than as community. A genre-oriented analysis is useful because it encourages a focus on the medium within which the discourse is embodied. As an example we analyze an online conversation from the perspective of genre: we identify its communicative purpose, regularities of form and substance (such as word play and affirmation), and the situation which gives rise to these regularities. We then examine ways in which the discourse medium supports these regularities and enables participants to establish and reinforce the conversations underlying conventions. More generally, we believe that genre-oriented analyses such as this can play an important role in the design of participatory media.

The World-Wide-Web as social hypertext

S omething curious is happening on the World-Wide Web. It is undergoing a slow transformation from an abstract, chaotic, information web into what I call a social hypertext. Initially, I didn’t pay much attention to the Web. After all, it was just a new take on distributed information server systems, such as WAIS [8] and Gopher [1]. True, it was easier to use than WAIS, and the ability of Web browsers to display formatted text and graphics with embedded links made it more attractive and engaging than either WAIS or Gopher. But there was nothing really new; it was an incremental advance, a new combination of well-known functionality. So I mentally categorized the Web as just the latest fashion to sweep the Internet. In this I was quite wrong, although the phrasing of my dismissal in terms of fashion contained a deep truth. This isn’t to say I ignored the Web. As a user-experience specialist in Apple’s Advanced Technology Group, one of my jobs is to stay abreast of new things. So I occasionally browsed it to see what was happening. Early in 1995 I had a conversion experience. The cause of my change of heart was the widespread appearance of personal pages. Personal pages are similar to informal resumes, except that in addition to professional material they often contain personal information. Hobbies, research interests, pets, professional publications, children, politics, friends, colleagues, all are grist for the personal page. I believe this seemingly frivolous blending of the professional and the personal is the key to why the Web is becoming a fundamentally different creature from the systems of information servers that preceded it. Personal pages and the Web are not being used to “publish information”; they are being used to construct identity—useful information is just a side effect. A personal page is a carefully constructed portrayal of a person. This insight leads me to characterize the Web as a social hypertext. The nodes—at least some of them—are becoming representations of people. And this, in turn, enables another critical feature to emerge: links from a personal page often point to socially salient pages. A common feature of the personal page is a list of pointers to “interesting people and places.” What and who count as interesting? That depends on the person, and hence also tells us more about the person. Thus, the links, The World-Wide Web as Social Hypertext

From interface to interplace: the spatial environment as a medium for interaction

Todays human-computer interfaces are cumbersome, sterile, and uninviting; they stand in stark contrast to the richness and depth of the everyday world. The thesis of this paper is that spatial environments have great potential as interface metaphors, particularly as computers begin to serve as a medium through which human-human interaction occurs. One section of the paper focuses on ways in which MUDs—textbased, multi-user dialog systems—use spatial metaphors to support social interaction. Then the paper examines how real spaces structure and enrich human interaction, drawing on observations from the literature on urban design, landscape architecture, and related disciplines. Ultimately, we hope that a better understanding of these issues can lead to the development of spatially-based interfaces which support human-human interaction.

The design and long-term use of a personal electronic notebook: a reflective analysis

This article describes the design and use of a personal electronic notebook. The findings provide a useful data point for those interested in the issue of how to design highly customizable systems for managing personal information. After a description of the notebooks interface and the usag6 practices that have co-evolved with the interface, I discuss some of the features which have made the notebook useful over the long term, and trends in the evolution of its design.

Designing a desktop information system: observations and issues

This paper describes the first phase of a project to create a desktop information system for general users. The approach was to observe the problems, needs, and practices of several groups of information users, and to use these observations to drive the interface design of a prototype. In the first section of the paper, we describe problems which arise in the use of a relevance feedback system for information retrieval. In the second and third sections, we look at the needs and practices of users of both electronic and paper-based information systems. In the final section, we briefly describe the resulting design.

Interfaces for distributed systems of information servers

Interfaces for information access and retrieval are a long way from the ideal of the electronic book that you can cuddle up with in bed. Nevertheless, todays interfaces are coming closer to supporting browsing, selection, and retrieval of remote information by nontechnical users. This article describes five interfaces to distributed systems of servers that have been designed and implemented: WAIStation for the Macintosh, XWAIS for X‐Windows, GWAIS for Gnu‐Emacs, SWAIS for dumb terminals, and Rosebud for the Macintosh. These interfaces talk to one of two server systems: the Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) system on the internet, and the Rosebud Server System, on an internal network at Apple Computer. Both server systems are built on Z39.50, a standard protocol, and thus support access to a wide range of remote databases. The interfaces described here reflect a variety of design constraints. Such constraints range from the mundane—coping with dumb terminals and limited screen space—to the challenging. Among the challenges addressed are how to provide passive alerts, how to make information easily scannable, and how to support retrieval and browsing by nontechnical users. There are a variety of other issues which have received little or no attention, including budgeting money for access to “for pay” databases, privacy, and how to assist users in finding out which of a large (changing) set of databases holds relevant information. We hope that the challenges we have identified, as well as the existence and public availability of source code for the WAIS system, will serve as a stimulus for further design work on interfaces for information retrieval.

Artificial Realities as Data Visualization Environments: Problems and Prospects

Publisher Summary This chapter describes ways in which artificial realities can enable one to deal more effectively with data. Visualization is one of the best hopes for making more effective use of data. The goal of visualization is to represent data in ways that make them perceptible and thus, able to engage human sensory systems. The three, nonexclusive ways in which visualization can help one in using and interpreting data are: (1) selective emphasis, (2) transformation, and (3) contextualization. Nonvisual data can be transformed into a visual image by mapping its values into visual characteristics. A system takes on the aura of artificial reality as it exhibits an increasingly tight coupling between an expanded range of input and a broader range of feedback options. In conventional graphic user interfaces, users are restricted to a keyboard and a single-point input device such as a mouse, with visual feedback, and generally no sonic feedback beyond that of a system beep or two.

Telework: when your job is on the line

A t first I [Jean Scholtz] became interested in the prospects of telecommuting when I worked as a usability engineer for a group developing a desktop video conferencing product. Although I saw many diverse uses for this product, I did not see it being used for telecommuting. Several years later, when I suggested that I use this product and be a telecommuter, my manager was firmly convinced that such an arrangement would not work and my request was denied. A short time later I moved to the East Coast and worked successfully on a large project in the Chicago area, taking only three airline flights in four months.

Putting it all together: pattern languages for interaction design

Interaction design is becoming increasingly complex and diverse. Complexity increases because existing technologies are becoming smaller and cheaper and thus more ubiquitous, even as new I/O devices are invented. This complexity is increased by the task of integrating technologies into workplaces which we are recognizing as filled with existing customs and practices. Simultaneously, interaction design is becoming more diverse. Within CHI, it is well accepted that anthropologists, psychologists, and visual designers, as well as engineers and computer scientists, have roles to play in systems design. And as new technologies and application domains appear on the scene, the need for disciplines such as industrial and product design, architecture, interior design, music and film becomes evident. Another factor driving diversity is customization. As systems become increasingly customizable, more design is done in-house by MIS departments, outside consultants, or the end users. In many cases, these participants lack the time, resources, training or inclination to engage in research on the needs and practices of their users.