Current interactive user interface construction tools are often more of a hindrance than a benefit during the early stages of user interface design. These tools take too much time to use and force designers to specify more of the design details than they wish at this early stage. Most interface designers, especially those who have a background in graphic design, prefer to sketch early interface ideas on paper or on a whiteboard. We are developing an interactive tool called SILK that allows designers to quickly sketch an interface using an electronic pad and stylus. SILK preserves the important properties of pencil and paper: a rough drawing can be produced very quickly and the medium is very flexible. However, unlike a paper sketch, this electronic sketch is interactive and can easily be modified. In addition, our system allows designers to examine, annotate, and edit a complete history of the design. When the designer is satisfied with this early prototype, SILK can transform the sket...

User-interruption in human-computer interaction (HCI) is an increasingly important problem. Many of the useful advances in intelligent and multitasking computer systems have the significant side effect of greatly increasing user-interruption. This previously innocuous HCI problem has become critical to the successful function of many kinds of modern computer systems. Unfortunately, no HCI design guidelines exist for solving this problem. In fact, theoretical tools do not yet exist for investigating the HCI problem of user-interruption in a comprehensive and generalizable way. This report asserts that a single unifying definition of user-interruption and the accompanying practical taxonomy would be useful theoretical tools for driving effective investigation of this crucial HCI problem. These theoretical tools are constructed here. A comprehensive analysis is conducted through the existing literature. Theoretical constructs from several relevant but diverse fields are identified and discussed. A unifying definition of user-interruption is synthesized. This new definition is supported with an array of postulates, assertions, and a taxonomy of human interruption to facilitate its practical application.

Large information spaces present several problems including information overload. This research effort focuses on the domain of Usenet News, an open access computer-based bulletin board system that distributes messages and software. A conceptual framework is developed that shows the need for (a) flexible organization of information access interfaces and (b) personalized structure to deal with vocabulary mismatches. An operational innovative system building effort (INFOSCOPE) instantiates the framework. In INFOSCOPE, users can evolve the predefined system structure to suit their own semantic interpretations. The approach taken by INFOSCOPE differs from other approaches by requiring less up-front structuring by message senders.

"I have coasted this lake, in search of skins, afore the war, and have been here already; not at this very spot, for we landed yonder, where you may see the oak that stands above the cluster of hemlocks." "How, Pathfinder, can you remember all these trifles so accurately?" "These are our streets and houses---our churches and palaces. Remember them, indeed! . . ." The Pathfinder, James Fenimore Cooper (1840) Just as the Pathfinder used the lake and the oak tree to reconstruct his environment, so do we structure our environment with streets and houses, landmarks and guiding principles to aid spatial orientation and wayfinding. The basic process of navigation---extracting information, forming mental representations, and using that representation for route planning and moving about---transcends the physical elements of the environment itself. In practice, we use whatever the environment gives us to solve navigation problems as they arise, in the process, continually refining and updating our internal model of the external environment. Although the virtual environments we speak of may be vastly different in their appearance from Pathfinder's world, the principles underlying spatial orientation and wayfinding in large-scale virtual spaces have many commonalities.

The methods that provide a structured approach to user interface design, often more or less ignores the aspects of display design. The structured display design approaches that exist, seems to have problems coping with conceptually complex interfaces. Building on the relationship between the system data model and the display design, this article proposes a structured approach to display design. The design is divided into three steps: conceptual design, logical window design and physical window design. This structure seems to be a way of coping with the design of conceptually complex user interfaces.

Much recent research and funding have focused on building Internet-based repositories that contain collections of high-quality learning resources, often called ‘learning objects. ’ Yet little is known about how non-specialist users, in particular teachers, find, access, and use digital learning resources. To address this gap, this article describes a case study of mathematics and science teachers ’ practices and desires surrounding the discovery, selection, and use of digital library resources for instructional purposes. Findings suggest that the teacher participants used a broad range of search strategies in order to find resources that they deemed were age-appropriate, current, and accurate. They intended to include these resources with little modifications into planned instructional activities. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for improving the design of educational digital library systems, including tools supporting resource reuse.

We provide a research agenda for the International Cartographic Association's Commission on Visualization and Virtual Environment working group on Cognitive and Usability Issues in Geovisualization. Developments in hardware and software have led to (and will continue to stimulate) novel methods for visualizing geospatial data. It is our belief that these novel methods will be of little use if they are not developed within a theoretical cognitive framework and iteratively tested using usability engineering principles. We argue that cognitive and usability issues should be considered in the context of six major research themes: 1) geospatial virtual environments (GeoVEs), 2) dynamic representations (including animated and interactive maps), 3) metaphors and schemata in user interface design, 4) individual and group differences, 5) collaborative geovisualization, and 6) evaluating the effectiveness of geovisualization methods. A key point underlying our use of theoretical cognitive principles is that traditional cognitive theory for static 2D maps may not be applicable to interactive 3D immersive GeoVEs and dynamic representations thus new cognitive theory may need to be developed. Usability engineering extends beyond the traditional cartographic practice of user testing by evaluating software effectiveness throughout a lifecycle (including design, development, and deployment). Applying usability engineering to geovisualization, however, may be problematic because of the novelty of geovisualization and the associated difficulty of defining the nature of users and their tasks. Tackling the research themes is likely to require an interdisciplinary effort involving geographic information scientists, cognitive scientists, usability engineers, computer scient...

. In this position paper we review the historical emergence of Agents

yuwei {at} ylin {dot} org This is the draft version of the paper submitted for the encyclopedia “Gender and IT”

E-government includes electronic communication between citizens and governmental agencies. In the present on-going research project, we have focused on asynchronous communication that handling officers establish and maintain with citizens through the use of e-mail. In particular, we are designing and developing a language technology-based system to support communication that handling officers carry out at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA). The SSIA receives about 10 000 e-mails per week from citizens. The e-mails are handled by handling officers distributed over four customer centers located in different parts of Sweden. The findings so far indicate that very frequent and simple questions can be answered by automatic means, and that text clustering can facilitate the process of semi-automatic answering of citizens ’ e-mails. Furthermore, we report on the use of interaction design methods applied from the beginning of the software development in the project.