On the effective use and reuse of HCI knowledge

ABSTRACT

The article argues that new approaches for delivering HCI knowledge from theory to designers will be necessary in the new millennium. First the role of theory in HCI design to date is reviewed, including the progress made in cognitive theories of interaction and their impact on the design pr ocess. The role of bridging models that build on models of interaction is described, but it is argued that direct application of cognitive theory to design is limited by scalability problems. The alternative of representing HCI knowledge as claims and the role of the task-artefact approach to theory-based design are introduced. Claims are proposed as a possible bridging representation that may enable theories to frame appropriate recommendations for designers and, vice versa, enable designers to ask appropriate questions for theoretical research. However, claims provide design advice grounded in specific scenarios and examples, which limits their generality. The prospects for reuse becoming an important mode of development and the possible directions in generalizing claims for reuse are discussed, including generalizing claims beyond their original context, providing a context for reuse of claims by linking them to generic task and domain models. It is argued that generic models provide a way forward for developing reusable libraries of interactive components. The approach is illustrated from a case study of extracting claims from one information ret rieval application, generalizing claims for future reuse in information-searching tasks, and reapplying claims in the Web-based Multimedia Broker application. The article concludes by proposing that HCI knowledge should be theory-grounded, and development of reusable “designer-digestible” packets will be an important contribution in the future.

REFERENCES

• 1: Christopher Ahlberg , Ben Shneiderman, Visual information seeking: tight coupling of dynamic query filters with starfield displays, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: celebrating interdependence, p.313-317, April 24-28, 1994, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/191666.191775]
• 2: ANDERSON, J. R. AND LEBmRE, C. 1998. The Atomic Components of Thought. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, NJ.
• 3: APPLE. 1987. Human Interface Guidelines: The Apple Desktop Metaphor. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
• 4: Phil Barnard, Bridging between basic theories and the artifacts of human-computer interaction, Designing interaction: psychology at the human-computer interface, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1991
• 5: BARNARD, P. AND MAY, J. 1999. Representing cognitive activity in complex tasks. Hum. Comput. Interact. 14, 1-2, 93-158.
• 6: Elisabeth Bayle , Rachel Bellamy , George Casaday , Thomas Erickson , Sally Fincher , Beki Grinter , Ben Gross , Diane Lehder , Hans Marmolin , Brian Moore , Colin Potts , Grant Skousen , John Thomas, Putting it all together: towards a pattern language for interaction design: A CHI 97 workshop, ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, v.30 n.1, p.17-23, Jan. 1998 [doi>10.1145/280571.280580]
• 7: Victoria Bellotti, Implications of current design practice for the use of HCI techniques, Proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the British Computer Society on People and computers IV, p.13-34, October 1988, Univ. of Manchester, United Kingdom
• 8: Victoria Bellotti, Integrating theoreticians' and practitioners' perspectives with design rationale, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.101-106, April 24-29, 1993, Amsterdam, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/169059.169107]
• 9: BELLOTTI, V., BLANDFORD, A., DUKE, D., MACLEAN, A., MAY, J., AND NIGAY, L. 1996. Interpersonal access control in computer-mediated communications: A systematic analysis of the design space. Hum. Comput. Interact. 11, 4, 357-432.
• 10: Victoria Bellotti , Simon Buckingham Shum , Allan MacLean , Nick Hammond, Multidisciplinary modelling in HCI design…in theory and in practice, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.146-153, May 07-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, United States [doi>10.1145/223904.223923]
• 11: Van de velde Breuker, Common KADS Library for Expertise Modelling, IOS Press, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1994
• 12: Dermot P. Browne, STUDIO: structured user-interface design for interaction optimisation, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1994
• 13: Stuart K. Card , Allen Newell , Thomas P. Moran, The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, NJ, 1983
• 14: Stuart K. Card , George G. Robertson , Jock D. Mackinlay, The information visualizer, an information workspace, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Reaching through technology, p.181-186, April 27-May 02, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States [doi>10.1145/108844.108874]
• 15: CARROLL, J. M., Ed. 1999. Minimalism: Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
• 16: John M. Carroll, Making Use: Scenario-Based Design of Human-Computer Interactions, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000
• 17: John M. Carroll , Mary Beth Rosson, Getting around the task-artifact cycle: how to make claims and design by scenario, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.10 n.2, p.181-212, April 1992 [doi>10.1145/146802.146834]
• 18: CARROLL, J. M. AND SINGLEY, M. K. 1992. Integrating theory development with design evaluation. Behav. Inf. Tech. 11,247-255.
• 19: John M. Carroll , Wendy A. Kellogg , Mary Beth Rosson, The task-artifact cycle, Designing interaction: psychology at the human-computer interface, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1991
• 20: Peter Coad , Edward Yourdon, Object-oriented analysis (2nd ed.), Yourdon Press, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1991
• 21: COUTAZ, J. 1994. System architecture modelling for user interfaces. In Encyclopedia of software engineering, J. J. Marciniak, Ed. Wiley-Interscience, New York, NY, 38-49.
• 22: DILLON, A. AND SWEENEY, M. T. 1993. A survey of usability engineering within European IT industry: Current practice and needs. In People and Computers VIII: Proceedings of the HCI'93 Conference (HCI '93, Loughborough, England), A. Alty and S. Guest, Eds. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 81-94.
• 23: DIx, A. AND MANCINI, R. 1997. Specifying history and backtracking mechamisms. In Formal Methods in Human Computer Interaction, F. Palanque and F. Patern , Eds, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 1-23.
• 24: DUKE, D. J. AND BARNARD, P.J. 1998. Syndetic modelling. Hum. Comput. Interact. 13, 4, 337-393.
• 25: David Duke , Giorgio Faconti , Michael Harrison , Fabio Paternó, Unifying views of interactors, Proceedings of the workshop on Advanced visual interfaces, p.143-152, June 01-04, 1994, Bari, Italy [doi>10.1145/192309.192341]
• 26: David J. Duke , Michael D. Harrison, From Formal Models to Formal Methods, Proceedings of the Workshop on Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction, p.159-173, May 16-17, 1994
• 27: Martin Fowler, Analysis patterns: reusable objects models, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1996
• 28: FRAKES, W. B. 1995. Software reuse. In Encyclopedia of Microcomputers, A. Kent and J. G. Williams, Eds. Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York, NY, 179-184.
• 29: Julia Galliers , Alistair Sutcliffe , Shailey Minocha, An impact analysis method for safety-critical user interface design, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.6 n.4, p.341-369, Dec. 1999 [doi>10.1145/331490.331493]
• 30: Erich Gamma , Richard Helm , Ralph Johnson , John Vlissides, Design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1995
• 31: Margaret M. Gardiner , Bruce Christie, Applying cognitive psychology to user-interface design, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1987
• 32: GENTNER, D. 1983. Structure-mapping: A theoretical framework for analogy. Cogn. Sci. 7, 155-1780.
• 33: HARRISON, M. D. AND BARNARD, P. 1993. On defining the requirements for interaction. In Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Requirements Engineering (RE '93, San Diego, CA), S. Fickas and A. C. W. Finklestein, Eds. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 50-55.
• 34: IBM. 1991. Systems Applications Architecture: Common User Access Guide to User Interface Design. IBM Corp., Riverton, NJ.
• 35: ISO. 1997. Ergonomics requirements for office systems visual display terminals. Parts 10-16. ISO 9241. International Standards Organization.
• 36: Bonnie E. John , David E. Kieras, The GOMS family of user interface analysis techniques: comparison and contrast, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.3 n.4, p.320-351, Dec. 1996 [doi>10.1145/235833.236054]
• 37: JOHNSON, C.W. 1996. Documenting the design of safety critical user interfaces. Interact. Comput. 8, 3, 221-239.
• 38: JOHNSON, P. 1992. Human Computer Interaction. McGraw-Hill, London, UK.
• 39: KAUR, K. AND MAIDEN, N. A. M. 1999. Interacting with virtual environments: An evaluation of a model of interaction. Interact. Comput. 11, 4, 403-426.
• 40: Gerhard Keller , Thomas Teufel, Sap R/3 Process Oriented Implementation, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1998
• 41: KIERAS, D. E. AND MEYER, D. E. 1997. An overview of the EPIC architecture for cognition and performance with application to human-computer interaction. Human-Comput. Interact. 12, 391-438.
• 42: KITAJmA, M. ANn POLSON, P. G. 1997. A comprehension based model of exploration. Hum. Comput. Interact. 12, 4, 345-390.
• 43: Thomas K. Landauer, The trouble with computers, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995
• 44: LANDAUER, T. K. AND DUMAIS, S. T. 1997. A solution to Plato's problem: The latent semantic analysis theory of acquisition, induction and representation of knowledge. Psychol. Rev. 104, 211-240.
• 45: Kee Yong Lim , John Long, The Muse method for usability engineering, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1995
• 46: John Long , John Dowell, Conceptions of the discipline of HCI: craft, applied science, and engineering, Proceedings of the fifth conference of the British Computer Society, Human-Computer Interaction Specialist Group on People and computers V, p.9-32, February 1990, Univ. of Nottingham
• 47: MACLEAN, A. AND MCKERLIE, D. 1995. Design space analysis and user-representations. Tech. Rep. EPC-1995-102.
• 48: MORAN, T. P. 1981. The Command Language Grammar: A representation for the user interface of interactive systems. Int. J. Man-Mach. Stud. 15, 1, 3-50.
• 49: Michael Muller , Mary P. Czerwinski, Organizing usability work to fit the full product range, Communications of the ACM, v.42 n.5, p.87-90, May 1999 [doi>10.1145/301353.301436]
• 50: Allen Newell, Unified theories of cognition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990
• 51: Laurence Nigay , Joëlle Coutaz, A generic platform for addressing the multimodal challenge, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.98-105, May 07-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, United States [doi>10.1145/223904.223917]
• 52: NORMAN, D.A. 1986. Cognitive engineering. In User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human Computer Interaction, D. Norman and S. Draper, Eds. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., Hillsdale, NJ, 31-62.
• 53: Rubén Prieto-Díaz, Implementing faceted classification for software reuse, Communications of the ACM, v.34 n.5, p.88-97, May 1991 [doi>10.1145/103167.103176]
• 54: Alan Moore , David Redmond-Pyle, Graphical User Interface Design and Evaluation: A Practical Process, Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1995
• 55: Alistair Sutcliffe, Scenario-based requirements analysis, Requirements Engineering, v.3 n.1, p.48-65, 1998 [doi>10.1007/BF02802920]
• 56: SUTCLIFFE, A. G. AND BENNETT, I. 1995. Designing query support for multiple databases. In Proceedings of the 3rd IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT '95, Lillehammer, Norway, June 27-29), K. Nordby, P. H. Helmersen, D. J. Gilmore, and S. A. Arnesen, Eds. Chapman and Hall, Ltd., London, UK, 207-212.
• 57: Alistair G. Sutcliffe , John Carroll, Generalizing Claims and Reuse of HCI Knowledge, Proceedings of HCI on People and Computers XIII, p.159-176, January 1998
• 58: A. G. Sutcliffe , J. M. Carroll, Designing claims for reuse in interactive systems design, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.50 n.3, p.213-241, March 1999 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.1999.0245]
• 59: SUTCLIFFE, A. G. ANn DmITROVA, M. T. 1999. Claims, patterns and multimedia. In Proceedings of the 7th IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT '99, Edinburgh, Scotland), C. Sasse and C. Johnson, Eds. IFIP, Laxenburg, Austria, 329-355.
• 60: SUTCLIFFE, A. G. AND ENNIS, M. 1998. Towards a cognitive theory of information retrieval, IWC special issue: Information retrieval and human computer interaction. Res. Rep. HCID 98/2. Centre for HCI Design, City University, London, UK.
• 61: SUTCLIFFE, A. G. AND KAUR, K. 2000. Evaluating the usability of virtual reality user interfaces. Behav. Inf. Tech. 19. In press.
• 62: Alistair Sutcliffe , Neil Maiden, The Domain Theory for Requirements Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.24 n.3, p.174-196, March 1998 [doi>10.1109/32.667878]
• 63: Alistair G. Sutcliffe , Uma Patel, 3D or not 3D: Is it Nobler in the Mind?, Proceedings of HCI on People and Computers XI, p.79-94, January 1996
• 64: Alistair G. Sutcliffe , Michele Ryan, Assessing the usability and efficiency of Design Rationale, Proceedings of the IFIP TC13 Interantional Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, p.148-155, July 14-18, 1997
• 65: SUTCLIFFE, A. G. AND RYAN, M. 2000. Model mismatch analysis: Towards a deeper explanation of users' usability problems. Behav. Inf. Tech. 19, 1, 43-55.
• 66: Alistair G. Sutcliffe , Neil A. M. Maiden , Shailey Minocha , Darrel Manuel, Supporting Scenario-Based Requirements Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.24 n.12, p.1072-1088, December 1998 [doi>10.1109/32.738340]
• 67: Cathleen Wharton , John Rieman , Clayton Lewis , Peter Polson, The cognitive walkthrough method: a practitioner's guide, Usability inspection methods, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1994

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems
          Subjects: Software psychology

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors