People and Computers XVII — Designing for Society

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. Doing the Right Thing in the Right Place: Technology, Theory and Design for Multiple and Group Activities

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Understanding Task Grouping Strategies

      • Peter J. Wild, Peter Johnson, Hilary Johnson

      Pages 3-19

   3. Two Phenomenological Studies of Place

      • Phil Turner, Susan Turner

      Pages 21-35

   4. The Interaction Character of Computers in Co-located Collaboration

      • Mattias Arvola

      Pages 37-51

3. Information Retrieval

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 53-53

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   2. How Knowledge Workers Gather Information from the Web: Implications for Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Tools

      • Jennifer Hyams, Abigail Sellen

      Pages 55-71

   3. Evaluation of a Prototype Interface for Structured Document Retrieval

      • Jane Reid, Mark D. Dunlop

      Pages 73-86

   4. Comparing Speed-dependent Automatic Zooming with Traditional Scroll, Pan and Zoom Methods

      • Andy Cockburn, Joshua Savage

      Pages 87-102

4. Design Methods and Principles

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103

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   2. The Application of Urban Design Principles to Navigation of Information Spaces

      • David Benyon, Bettina Wilmes

      Pages 105-125

   3. A Method for Organizational Culture Analysis as a Basis for the Implementation of User-Centred Design into Organizations

      • Netta Iivari, Kaisu Juntunen, Ilkka Tuikkala

      Pages 127-142

5. Evaluation Methods

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 143-143

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   2. Changing Analysts’ Tunes: The Surprising Impact of a New Instrument for Usability Inspection Method Assessment

      • Gilbert Cockton, Alan Woolrych, Lynne Hall, Mark Hindmarch

      Pages 145-161

   3. Ontological Sketch Models: Highlighting User—System Misfits

      • Iain Connell, Thomas Green, Ann Blandford

      Pages 163-178

6. Interaction Techniques: Looking, Listening, Pointing, Stroking

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 179-179

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   2. Improving the Acquisition of Small Targets

      • Andy Cockburn, Andrew Firth

      Pages 181-196

   3. A Directional Stroke Recognition Technique for Mobile Interaction in a Pervasive Computing World

      • Vassilis Kostakos, Eamonn O’Neill

      Pages 197-206

   4. Look or Listen: Discovering Effective Techniques for Accessing Speech Data

      • Steve Whittaker, Julia Hirschberg

      Pages 207-222

7. E-commerce

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 223-223

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HCI is a fundamental and multidisciplinary research area. It is fundamental to the development and use of computing technologies. Without good HCI, computing technologies provide less benefit to society. We often fail to notice good HCI. Good HCI passes us by without comment or surprise. The technology lets you do what you want without causing you any further work, effort or thought. You load a DVD into your DVD player and it works: why shouldn't it? You take a photograph with your digital camera and without any surprise you easily transfer and view these on your computer. You seamlessly connect to networks and devices with a common interface and interaction style. Yet when HCI is wrong the technology becomes useless, unusable, disrupts our work, inhibits our abilities and constrains our achievements. Witness the overuse and inconsistent use of hierarchical menus on mobile phones; or the lack of correspondence between call statistics on the phone handset itself and the billed call time on the account bill; or the lack of interoperability between file naming conventions on different operating systems running applications and files of the same type (e. g. the need for explicit filename suffixes on some operating systems). Those programmers, designers and developers who know no better, believe that HCI is just common sense and that their designs are obviously easy to use.

• Human computer interaction
• Multi-media interaction
• collaboration
• human-computer interaction (HCI)
• interactive system
• usability
• user interface

• Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, Bath, UK

  Eamonn O’Neill, Peter Johnson

• Universite Paul Sabatier, LIIHS-IRIT, Toulouse Cedex, France

  Philippe Palanque

Policies and ethics