Thomas Rodriguez

A comparison of face-to-face and distributed presentations

As organizations become distributed across multiple sites, they are looking to technology to help support enterprisewide communication and training to distant locations. We developed an application called Forum that broadcasts live video, audio, and slides f rom a speaker to distributed audiences at their computer desktops. We studied how distributed presentations over Forum differed from talks g iven in face to face sett ings. We found that Forum attracted larger audiences, but the quality of interaction was perceived to be lower. Forum appeared to provide more f lexib le and e f f ec t ive use of sl ides and other visual materials. On the whole, audiences preferred to watch talks over Forum but speakers preferred to give talks in a local setting. The study raises issues about how to design this technology and how to help people discover effective ways of using it.

Systematic output modification in a 2D user interface toolkit

In this paper we present a simple but general set of techniques for modifying output in a 2D user interface toolkit. We use a combination of simple subclassing, wrapping, and collusion between parent and output objects to produce arbitrary sets of composable output transformations. The techniques described here allow rich output effects to be added to most, if not all, existing interactors in an application, without the knowledge of the interactors themselves. This paper explains how the approach works, discusses a number of example effects that have been built, and describes how the techniques presented here could be extended to work with other toolkits. We address issues of input by examining a number of extensions to the toolkit input subsystem to accommodate transformed graphical output. Our approach uses a set of “hooks” to undo output transformations when input is to be dispatched.

Lessons Learned from a Successful Collaboration Between Software Engineers and Human Interface Engineers

Most software applications are difficult to use because the development process emphasizes the quality of the architecture and not the usability of the application. Programs can be both well engineered and usable if software engineers work with human interface engineers who not only design the user interface but advocate architectural decisions that help make tasks more natural for users. Our group used a process that reduced the workload of the software engineers and yet produced a particularly usable and well-engineered application. This process included designing the UI before coding, developing the applications user interface in a UI builder, and regularly testing the application with users under realistic conditions. This latter point was an important achievement because it is critical and yet particularly difficult to test collaborative applications. Carrying out these activities enabled the software engineers and human interface engineers to work closely together as a cooperative team because everyone was able to contribute valued components to the effort.