SIGCHI

Computer aided design (CAD) -- the use of computer graphics, geometric modeling and database technology to assist the automation of the design process -- has been one of the major technical advances in the engineering field in the last decade. As an ...

For ten years we have joyfully overcome our insecurity with anarchy and successfully conducted the "business" of the Software Psychology Society. Our business has always been science; to improve our understanding of how people use computers. The two-...

Sometimes studying a process can be as enlightening as studying the results. But too often, the process is either forgotten or erased in the rush to provide a finely-polished product.

The conclusion of the workshop on Planning for User Interface Standards (held at the CHI '85 conference in San Francisco) was that a reference model of human computer interaction should be developed before standards could reasonably be contemplated. ...

I would like to review and extend the discussion of the layered structure model similar to the ISO Open Systems Interconnect model in the Report on the SIGCHI Workshop on Planning for User Interface Standards published in the October, 1985 SIGCHI ...

The proliferation of personal workstations and computer networks has enabled users to develop or otherwise access an ever wider range of applications. Unfortunately, the human-computer interface has not kept pace with the available hardware, nor with ...

Recently, there has been a growing trend to develop interfaces which incorporate icons and various other visual symbols to represent system information. The idea behind this trend is that visual symbols can help reduce the complexity of the system and ...

Constructing graphical user interfaces for interactive applications is a difficult and time consuming task, typically requiring extensive programming and experimentation with many prototypes. Thus, the ability to package portions of the specification of ...

Appearing for the first time at CHI '86 were interactive poster sessions. The format, which CHI + GI 1987 will repeat, provided for active exchanges between presenters and listeners. Presenters had display space for posters or similar media and were ...

As the population and diversity of computer end-users grow rapidly, so do the need and demand for quality, accessible online help. Online help could potentially be one of the most effective information resources available to software users. In fact, ...

Novice users often have an inaccurate mental model of the UNIX system and are frequently misled by the normal UNIX response to their errors (Hanson et al, 1984). SUSI, a Smart User-System Interface, provides a supportive and intelligent interface ...

Observations of users of the Xerox NoteCards system have revealed the difficulties that occur when one must organize and keep track of large numbers of notes collected over a long period of time. Notes are almost inevitably incomplete, and if removed ...

We have developed an cognitive model of query writing, shown in Figure 1, which consists of three distinct stages. In stage one, Query Formulation, users attempt to satisfy goals by drawing on what information they may have about the stored data to ...

The Voice Operated Database Inquiry System (VODIS) project is being carried out under the auspices of the UK Alvey Initiative, Man-Machine Interface Sector. It is planned to run for 3 years, at a cost of around $3m, and is an exemplar, intended to ...

Generic commands use the same verb to invoke a given action on different kinds of objects in a computer system. For example, the command "DELETE 3" might delete 3 lines of text and "DELETE/abc/" might delete the character string "abc". In contrast, ...

Beacons, as described by Brooks [1], are key features in a program that serve as typical indicators of a particular structure or operation. Beacons are highly recognizable and "carry a lot of the meaning" in the code.

There has been considerable controversy recently concerning the characteristics of computer command terms that affect the ease with which naive users acquire and learn to use these terms. Researchers have examined command words in terms of their "...

Authoring is a general term that includes the tasks of collecting and organizing notes and ideas, documenting sources, and building information structures to produce a report, article, or book. The Xerox NoteCards system was designed to assist in the ...

We studied the use of a computer-based voice mail system within an organization, and users' attitudes toward it. This system allowed users to send and receive voice messages using pushbutton telephones. It offered editing, filing, retrieval, ...

A new approach to errors management has emerged in human factors in computer systems. A slogan for the approach was formulated by Norman (1983): "There are no errors: all operations are iterations toward a goal." At the same time, the reality of human ...

A creative, productive computer user finds novel relationships and new connections between the computer, information and self in order to solve problems. The user becomes sensitive to gaps in knowledge, deficiencies and disharmonies, and searches for ...

The computer is one of the most recent invasions of technology into the homestead. Even the phrase "personal computer" is not yet used by all manufacturers. Many of them believe that their own model names need neither augmentation nor replacement with ...

Despite the popularity of window-management systems in the marketplace, research investigating the usage and possible benefits of such systems has only recently begun to emerge (Bly and Rosenberg, 1986; Bury, Davies and Darnell, 1985; Davies, Bury, and ...

As the diversity and number of potential users of interactive computer systems increases, there is a greater awareness that the design of the user-machine interface is crucial for their efficiency and acceptability. Systems designers often talk of the ...

Navigation is a term we use to describe the process users employ to access any of several full-screen panels available in a software product interface. We conducted four studies that investigated the navigation design issues related to a product that ...

The breadth/depth trade-off in menu structure refers to advantages and disadvantages of menu breadth (having fewer levels/pages of menu selections with more selections per level) and depth (having more levels/pages with fewer selections per level). ...

Continuous improvements of algorithms for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), and the availability on the market of a variety of devices, will enhance the possibility of voice input applications in telecommunications.

This paper reports initial results from a paper and pencil study of the use of hand-drawn gestures for simple editing tasks (see Wolf, 1986, for a more detailed report). Hand-drawn gestures are of particular interest in an interface which allows the ...

Rosson believes that, theoretically, user classifications are useful, but the sheer complexity of finding the relevant factors on which to categorize users in a way that is helpful to the designer makes the process impractical. Prior experience, the ...