Complex design problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses because the knowledge relevant to a problem is usually distributed among stakeholders. Bringing different and often controversial points of view together to create a shared understanding among these stakeholders can lead to new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts. New media that allow owners of problems to contribute to framing and resolving complex design problems can extend the power of the individual human mind. Based on our past work and study of other approaches, systems, and collaborative and participatory processes, this article identifies challenges we see as the limiting factors for future collaborative human-computer systems. The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is introduced as an integrated physical and computational environment addressing some of these challenges. The vision behind the EDC shifts future development away from the computer as the focal point, toward an emphasis that tries to improve our understanding of the human, social, and cultural system that creates the context for use. This work is based on new conceptual principles that include creating shared understanding among various stakeholders, contextualizing information to the task at hand, and creating objects to think with in collaborative design activities.

The fundamental challenge for human-computer interaction (HCI) is to invent and design a culture in which humans can express themselves and engage in personally meaningful activities. Cultures are substantially defined by their media and tools for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating. New media change (1) the structure and contents of our interests, (2) the nature of our cognitive and physical tools, and (3) the social environment in which thoughts originate and evolve, and mindsets develop. Unfortunately, a large number of new media are designed from a perspective of seeing and treating humans primarily as consumers. The possibility for humans to be and to act as designers (in cases in which they desire to do so) should be accessible not only to a small group of high-tech scribes, but rather to all interested individuals and groups. 1. Introduction Cultures are substantially defined by their media and their tools for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating. A large...

In 1995, Boehm predicted that by 2005, there would be “55 million performers ” of “end user programming ” in the United States. The original context and method which generated this number had two weaknesses, both of which we address. First, it relies on undocumented, judgment based factors to estimate the number of end user programmers based on the total number of end users; we address this weakness by identifying specific end user sub populations and then estimating their sizes. Second, Boehm's estimate relies on additional undocumented, judgment based factors to adjust for rising computer usage rates; we address this weakness by integrating fresh Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data and projections as well as a richer estimation method. With these improvements to Boehm’s method, we estimate that in 2012 there will be 90 million end users in American workplaces. Of these, we anticipate that over 55 million will use spreadsheets or databases (and therefore may potentially program), while over 13 million will describe themselves as programmers, compared to BLS projections of fewer than 3 million professional programmers. We have validated our improved method by generating estimates for 2001 and 2003, then verifying that our estimates are consistent with existing estimates from other sources.

Cultures deal with their environments by adapting to them and simultaneously changing them. This is particularly true for technological cultures, such as the dynamic culture of computer users. To date, the ability to change computing environments in non-trivial ways has been dependent upon the skill of programming. Because this skill has been hard to acquire, most computer users must adapt to computing environments created by a small number of programmers. In response to the scarcity of programming ability, the computer science community has concentrated on producing general-purpose tools that cover wide spectrums of applications. As a result, contemporary programming languages largely ignore the intricacies arising from complex interactions between different people solving concrete problems in specific domains. This dissertation describes Agentsheets, a substrate for building domain-oriented, visual, dynamic programming environments that do not require traditional programming skills. It discusses how Agentsheets supports the relationship among people, tools, and problems in the context of four central themes: (1) Agentsheets features a versatile construction paradigm to build dynamic, visual environments for a wide range of problem domains such as art, artificial life, distributed artificial intelligence, education, environmental design, and

This paper introduces the special issue of Knowledge-Based Systems on HumanComputer Collaboration (HCC). It derives a set of fundamental issues from a definition of collaboration, introduces two major approaches to HCC, and surveys each approach, showing how it formulates and addresses the issues. It concludes by proposing some themes that should characterize a unified approach to human-computer collaboration. 1 Introduction Collaboration is a process in which two or more agents work together to achieve shared goals. Thirty researchers came together in Raleigh, North Carolina in October of 1993 for a AAAI Fall Symposium dedicated to this topic. The goal of the symposium was to achieve a better understanding of Human-Computer Collaboration (HCC), collaboration involving at least one human and one computational agent. In particular, the symposium sought to explore the fundamental nature of collaborative problem solving, understand the constraints brought to bear by the differing charac...

We identify a problem with the process of research in the HCI community -- an overemphasis on "radical invention" at the price of achieving a common research focus. Without such a focus, it is difficult to build on previous work, to compare different interaction techniques objectively, and to make progress in developing theory. These problems at the research level have implications for practice, too; as

Although visual programming techniques have been used to lower the threshold of programming for end users, they are not sufficient for creating end user programming environments that are both easy to use and powerful. To achieve this, an environment must support the definition of programs that are not just static representations of behavior, but are instead dynamic collections of program objects which can be applied in a number of contexts rather than just a program editor. We describe an approach to end user programming called tactile programming which extends visual techniques with a unified program manipulation paradigm that makes programs easy to comprehend, compose and, most importantly, share over the World Wide Web. Tactile programming’s inherent ability to support the social context in which programming takes place along with its ability to ease program comprehension and composition is what differentiates this approach from others. In the context of the Agentsheets programming substrate, we have created an instance of a tactile programming environment called Visual AgenTalk which is used to create interactive simulations.

this paper is to put that anecdotal observation on firmer footing. 1.1 Studies of Exploratory Learning The potential value of exploratory learning has been recognized since interactive computing first began to enter the work place. Malone (1982), Carroll (1982), and Sl-meiderman (1983) all noted the success of computer games and argued that other computer software should have some of the same characteristics. Mastering the software should be intrinsically motivating, features should be revealed incrementally, and the system should be at least minimally useful with no formal training

Complex design problems often cannot be solved by individuals or by homogenous groups. Communities of interest (CoIs) (defined by their collective concern with the resolution of a problem) bring together stakeholders from different communities of practice (CoP). Reaching a common understanding between these stakeholders is a major challenge due to the "symmetry of ignorance" caused by their respective cultures and their use of different knowledge systems. Our research has focused on the development of conceptual frameworks and innovative socio-technical environments to exploit the "symmetry of ignorance" as a source for social creativity among CoIs. Gerhard Fischer 2 IRIS'24, Norway 1

One fundamental challenge for the design of the interactive systems of the future is to invent and design environments and cultures in which humans can express themselves and engage in personally meaningful activities. Unfortunately, a large number of new media are designed from a perspective of viewing and treating humans primarily as consumers. The possibility for humans to be and act as designers (in cases in which they desire to do so) should be accessible not only to a small group of “high-tech scribes, ” but rather to all interested individuals and groups. Meta-design characterizes activities, processes, and objectives to create new media and environments that allow users to act as designers and be creative. In this paper we discuss problems addressed by our research on meta-design, provide a conceptual framework for metadesign, and illustrate our developments in the context of a particular system, the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory.