Telerobotic systems have traditionally been designed and operated from a human point of view. Though this approach suffices for some domains, it is clearly sub-optimal for tasks such as operating multiple vehicles or controlling planetary rovers. Thus, I believe it is worthwhile to examine a new teleoperation approach: collaborative control. In this robot-centric model, instead of the human always being "in charge", the robot works as a peer and makes requests of the human. In other words, the human is treated as an imprecise, limited source of planning and information, just like sensors and maps and other noisy modules. To examine the numerous human-machine interaction and system design issues raised by this new approach, I propose to build a vehicle teleoperation system based on collaborative control. In my research, I will show how this approach enables efficient teleoperation and optimizes use of human resources.

this paper, I review the history of HCI as steps toward a science of design. My touchstone is Simon's (1969) provocative book he Sciences of the Artificial. The book pre-dates HCI, and many of its specific characterizations and claims about design are no longer authoritative (see Ehn, 1988). Nevertheless, two of Simon's themes echo through the history of HCI, and still provide guidance for charting its continuing development

This essay compares activity theory (AT) with distributed cognition theory (DCOG), asking what each can do for CSCW. It approaches this task by proposing that theories – when viewed as conceptual tools for making sense of a domain – have four important attributes: descriptive power; rhetorical power; inferential power; and application power. It observes that AT and DCOG are not so different: both emphasize cognition; both include the social and cultural context of cognition; both share a commitment to ethnographically collected data. Starting with a description of the distributed cognition approach, it uses an example of a DCOG analysis to ground a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of AT and DCOG as an approach to issues in CSCW. Finally, the essay considers what theoretical work is being done by the attributes of the respective theories, and whether AT, DCOG, or any theory developed outside the context of group work, will work for CSCW.

This article shows how the concept of affordance in the user interface fits into a wellunderstood artificial intelligence (AI) model of acting in an environment. In this model AI planning research is used to interpret affordances in terms of the costs associated with the generation and execution of operators in a plan. We motivate our approach with a brief survey of the affordance literature and its connections to the planning literature, and then explore its implications through examples of common user interface mechanisms described in affordance terms. Despite its simplicity, our modeling approach ties together several different threads of practical and theoretical work on affordance into a single conceptual framework. Affordances in a planning representation 3 Contents 1 INTRODUCTION 4 2 PERSPECTIVES ON THE NATURE OF AFFORDANCES 5 3 AFFORDANCES IN PLANNING TERMS 8 4 GENERIC USER INTERFACE AFFORDANCES 13 4.1 Programmable User Models for Affordance Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . ....

Document retrieval is a highly interactive process dealing with large amounts of information. Visual representations can provide both a means for managing the complexity of large information structures and an interface style well suited to interactive manipulation. The system we have designed utilizes visually displayed graphic structures and a direct manipulation interface style to supply an integrated environment for retrieval. A common visually displayed network structure is used for query, document content, and term relations. A query can be modified through direct manipulation of its visual form by incorporating terms from any other information structure the system displays. An associative thesaurus of terms and an inter-document network provide information about a document collection that can complement other retrieval aids. Visualization of these large data structures makes use of fisheye views and overview diagrams to help overcome some of the inherent difficulties of orientation and navigation in large information structures.

This paper is about database researchers building interactive information systems. It tells the reader of their initial enthusiasm and user-induced frustration, the consequent discovery of both human-computer interaction (hci) world and the concept of system "usability", and finally their quite successful coupling of hci and databases. Key words: User Interface, Information System, Usability 1. INTRODUCTION It is now generally accepted that factors which mainly influence the success of computerized projects are human and organizational, rather than technological. The mere fact of using computer technologies, even if they are reliable, powerful and innovative, cannot solve work organization problems if the acquired instruments are not in harmony with the attitudes, motivations and competencies of workers in that organization, and also with the social and environmental context of their activities.

Abstract. Academic research in mobile and ubiquitous computing has been mainly technology-driven. There is not enough understanding on what everyday needs are related to future mobile and ubiqitous computing. In this paper we will demonstrate that qualitative user data can be successfully utilized in designing for everyday activities of largely neglected user groups like the elderly. We will show how ethnographically based research can benefit the innovation of product concepts. 1

Many tools designed to help programmers view and manipulate source code exploit the formal structure of the programming language. Language-based tools use information derived via linguistic analysis to offer services that are impractical for purely text-based tools. In order to be effective, however, language-based tools must be designed to account properly for the documentary structure of source code: a structure that is largely orthogonal to the linguistic but no less important. Documentary structure includes, in addition to the language text, all extra-lingual information added by programmers for the sole purpose of aiding the human reader: comments, white space, and choice of names. Largely ignored in the research literature, documentary structure occupies a central role in the practice of programming. An examination of the documentary structure of programs leads to a better understanding of requirements for tool architectures.

During mass casualty incidents, an enormous amount of data, including the vital signs of the patients, the location of the patients, and the location of the first responders must be gathered and communicated efficiently. The Advanced Health and Disaster Aid Network (AID-N) used participatory design methods to develop an electronic triage system that changed how emergency personnel interacted, collected, and processed data at mass casualty incidents. Through a collaboration between computer scientists, biomedical engineers, usability analysts, paramedics, and medical doctors, AID-N constructed scalable algorithms to monitor a large numbers of patients, an intuitive interface to support overwhelmed responders, and an ad-hoc mesh network that maintained connectivity to patients in ad-hoc, chaotic settings. This paper describes an iterative approach to user-centered design that allows for the collection of a massive amount of data and presents this data in a clear and understandable format to the user. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.1.2 [Information Systems]: User/Machine Systems – human

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