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CapCHI Activities
Past Activities 2004-2005
- 2005/06/16 - Experimental Research in Human-Computer Interaction, HCI project presentations by Shelley Roberts, Adam Murray, and Bruce Tsuji.
- 2005/05/26 - Planning for World Usability Day in Ottawa, presented by Amy Dillon and Helen Maskery.
- 2005/03/30 - Natural Language Processing and Voice User Interfaces: Playing with Voice Technologies, presented by Dr. Leo Ferres from Carleton University.
- 2005/02/23 - Creating Software Engineering Tools That Are Useable, Useful, and Actually Used, presented by Janice Singer from the IIT at NRC.
- 2005/01/26 - Wiki as a Tool for Web-based Collaborative Story Telling in Primary School, a case study presented by Alain Desilets from the NRC.
- 2004/12/16 - Annual Holiday Social Event 2004.
- 2004/11/17 - Web Site Accessibility and Usability, presented by Derek Featherstone, a special OEG meeting co-hosted by CapCHI.
- 2004/11/03 - Exploring and Discovering Geographical Facts Using Geographical Storytelling, presented by William Cartwright.
- 2004/10/14 - Instructive Interaction, a full-day tutorial presented by Larry Constantine.
- 2004/09/01 - Failure Reconsidered, presented by Professor Tom Hewett.
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Experimental Research in Human-Computer Interaction
HCI project presentations by Shelley Roberts, Adam
Murray, and Bruce Tsuji
Thursday, June 16, 2005 at Adobe Systems Canada
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What?
Our final CapCHI meeting of the season will feature HCI project presentations by three students from the Carleton University and from the University of Ottawa:
Shelley Roberts, PhD candidate, HOT
Lab at Carleton University
Shelley presented her comprehensive essay on "Adaptive
User Interfaces and Automation: Finding the balance between user control
and workload."
Her supervisor was Dr. Avi Parush and her committe members were Dr. Joanna
Pozzulo, Dr. Gitte Lindgaard, Dr. Chris Herdman and Dr. Jo Wood.
Adam Murray, PhD candidate, University
of Ottawa
Adam presented his work on "Cognitive Patterns
for Software Comprehension".
Bruce Tsuji, PhD candidate, HOT
Lab at Carleton University
Bruce presented his work which he calls "MAPS,
MIPS, and MOBLOGS".
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Planning for World Usability Day in Ottawa
Presented by Amy Dillon and Helen Maskery
Thursday, May 26, 2005 at Adobe Systems Canada
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What?
The Usability Professionals Association (UPA) has declared November 3rd to be World Usability Day. In the words of the UPA: "The goal of World Usability Day is to promote the fields of usability engineering and user-centered design. We aim to do this by encouraging, organizing, and sponsoring activities at the local level around the globe, all occurring on November 3, 2005."
This meeting was for CapCHI to consider how we should participate in the day by organizing an event here in Ottawa. A small team has been meeting to consider the options, and we now feel it is time for groups such as CapCHI to begin planning specific events. Amy Dillon and Helen Maskery explained the background and outlined some of the ideas that have been discussed for making the day a success in Ottawa. People who came to the meeting shared some ideas, and saw how they or their organization can play a role in highlighting the importance of usability for a wide audience.
For more details on World Usability Day, see the UPA web site at:
http://www.upassoc.org/worldusabilityday/
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Natural Language Processing and Voice User Interfaces: Playing with
Voice Technologies
Presented by Dr. Leo Ferres from Carleton University
Wednesday, March 30, 2005 at Adobe Systems Canada
Download poster (PDF file 87K)
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What?
This talk will address a few issues in Language Engineering (LE) and HCI. Dr. Leo Ferres will demo and discuss a system that the Human-Oriented Technology Lab is currently developing: The inspectGraph system. This prototype is an application that provides both an automatic description of line graphs and the ability to interact with them. The architecture is centered around a FOL (first order logic) semantic description of a given graph. The current prototype takes an XML file as input and outputs a natural language (NL) description of that graph. We believe that the translation and summarization of data graphs into more interactive data structures such as value matrices or even text is a natural topic to relate to software for business intelligence and e-commerce analysis. We also expect the field of graph summarization to continue growing as a significant field.
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Who?
Dr. Leo Ferres has a PhD in Cognitive Science from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He has worked extensively in Canada, Germany and Spain as a consultant in language engineering and speech recognition and has done research on language and cognition applied to speech recognition engines and non-native accents of English. He is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Human-Oriented Technology Laboratory at Carleton University and an instructor of computational linguistics at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. More details can be found at http://www.carleton.ca/~lferres.
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Creating Software Engineering Tools That Are Useable, Useful, and Actually
Used
Presented by Janice Singer, IIT at NRC
Wednesday, February 23, 2005 at Adobe Systems
Canada
Download poster (PDF file 83K)
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What?
Increasingly in Software Engineering research, we are trying to create tools that can be transferred to industry settings and provide real support to software engineers. In this talk, Janice reviewed her own and others research to try to describe how to go about this process. She provided examples leading to principles leading to guidelines for the development of tools. This talk was meant to encourage discussion by making explicit some of our ideas, thus bringing them forward for inspection and improvement.
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Who?
Janice Singer is a senior research officer at the National Research Council Canada. She leads the Human Computer Interaction Programme, and is additionally a member of the software engineering group. She has a wide variety of interests and has conducted research in CSCW, HCI, psychology, software engineering, and most recently, research ethics. Dr. Singer received her PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh.
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Wiki as a Tool for Web-based Collaborative Story Telling in Primary
School
A Case Study presented by Alain Desilets from the
NRC
Wednesday, January 26, 2005 at Adobe Systems Canada
Download poster (PDF file 86K)
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What?
Wikis are simple to use collaborative hypertext authoring systems. In recent years, these systems have caught the attention of the education community, because they embody many aspects of personal empowerment and communication between learners. To date, most work on Wiki in education has focused on use for information creation and sharing by students at the post-primary level. In this talk, we presented a case study where primary level students (Grade 4-6) used a Wiki for collaborative storytelling. The paper reports on our experience with this activity in the course of 5 semesters since 2002, each semester comprising 9 hours of class time. We discussed observations on the collaborative and creation processes that took place during the activity. We also described ongoing work on a more formal study of usability issues encountered by children during the activity. The talk concluded with recommendations for teachers and tool builders for how to best support web-based collaborative storytelling in the classroom.
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Who?
Alain Desilets is a researcher at the Institute for Information Technology of the National Research Council of Canada. His main research area is the development, deployment and evaluation of Human Language Technologies (Speech Recognition, Computer Assisted Translation, Text Mining) in real work environments.
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Annual Holiday Social Event 2004
A social and interactive gathering at MacLaren's
on Elgin
Thursday December 16, 2004
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What?
A social & interactive evening of billiards was planned for this year's event. Friends of CapCHI and their guests were invited for finger foods, billiards and prizes. CapCHI sponsored the cost of the food, billiard tables and the prizes.
MacLaren's on Elgin
301 Elgin Street
Ottawa, Ontario
(613) 236-2766
www.maclarens.com
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Web Site Accessibility and Usability
Presented by Derek Featherstone, WATS.ca
A special Ottawa Ergonomics Group meeting co-hosted by CapCHI
Wednesday, November 17, 2004 at Adobe Systems Canada
Download poster (PDF file 88K)
Find the presentation here: http://www.wats.ca/oegcapchi/
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What?
While Ergonomics and Web Accessibility/Usability are different fields of pursuit, they share a common bond: the Human Factor. This session introduced the fundamental concepts of Web Accessibility and Usability and their influence on the people we try to reach with our web sites. We experienced a demonstration of common assistive technology and looked at proposed new legislation in Ontario to better address web accessibility and what it will mean to you and your organization.
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Who?
Derek Featherstone, whose area of specialty is accessible web sites and usability, is a graduate of the University of Waterloo. Check out Derek's company at www.Wats.ca. You can check out an article on Derek in the latest UW Alumni magazine.
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Exploring and Discovering Geographical Facts Using Geographical Storytelling
Presented by William E. Cartwright School of Mathematical
and Geospatial Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Wednesday, November 03, 2004 at Adobe Systems Canada
Download poster (PDF file 92K)
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What?
New methods for depicting the earth and its cultural and natural attributes have developed and many New Media formats have been used to complement maps for presentation of geographical facts and information. This includes the production of multimedia atlases, audio-guided city guides, 3D virtual landscapes, etc. These methods have been used with much success, but, it is argued, that when used in conjunction with other New Media approaches that encourage users to 'explore' and discover geography, then products offered are much more powerful. But, how can we ensure that, when New Media installations are employed, that users see essential views of geography? A project is currently being conducted to evaluate the appropriateness of the application of 'Geographical Storytelling', providing New Media artifacts that are delivered as a 'story' and the focus of parts of the story are defined by geographical location.
This presentation provided information regarding how this concept has been used to build a prototype for evaluation. It also reported on the initial findings from the research regarding the appropriateness of this method for geographical information provision. It then develops the idea of Engineered Serendipity, and how it might be further explored as a means of allowing users perceived freedom when using New Media cartographic products, but ensuring that they do not overlook essential information. Finally, it proposes how the concept of geographical storytelling might be realised through the application of Engineered Serendipity.
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Who?
William Cartwright is an Associate Professor of Cartography and Geographical Visualization in the School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences at RMIT, where he specialises in the application of New Media technologies to Cartography. He joined the University after spending a number of years in both the government and private sectors of the mapping industry. He is a Vice-President of the International Cartographic Association and a National Councillor of the Mapping Sciences Institute, Australia. He is a member of the International Cartographic Association's Commission on Visualization and Virtual Environments and the Commission on Maps and the Internet. His major research interest is the application of New Media to cartography and the exploration of different metaphorical approaches to the depiction of geographical information.
More about William Cartwright:
http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse?SIMID=qxkt0wbautw7&STATUS=A
http://geography.uoregon.edu/buckley/aag/2000/cartwright.htm
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Instructive Interaction: Making Innovative
Self-Teaching Interfaces
A full-day tutorial presented by Larry Constantine
Thursday, October 14, 2004 in the Courtside 'B' meeting room at the RA
Centre
For more information on instructive interaction read an interview with Larry Constantine in the HOT Topics newsletter.
See also an interview with Larry Constantine in Builder AU online publication (03/16/2004).
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Abstract
Designing for user performance means creating systems that better support rapid and reliable achievement of user objectives. Effective support requires close attention to details in how the organization and behaviour of the user interface fit the way users work and solve problems. Experiences in designing world-class products have shown that radical improvements in support of user performance often require unconventional design approaches. Industry-leading products do not come from producing designs based on slavish adherence to standards and conventions.
Through the right visual and interaction design, even radically non-standard user interfaces can be made completely intuitable to users. Instructive interaction is a proven approach that has been used successfully in complex commercial products to enable users to master novel features immediately. Through a combination of both novel and established techniques, user interfaces can be made self-teaching.
This full-day tutorial will show how to achieve genuine breakthroughs in user performance through innovative designs that are finely tuned to support user tasks. It will show how insight into how users learn new task skills can be used to shape innovative and unconventional designs that do not compromise ease of learning or support for new users. The tutorial will cover:
- How to capture essential details of user task needs
- Strategies for design innovation and creative breakthroughs
- Anticipatory learning, a new model of single-trial learning
- Examples of instructive interaction techniques
- Hands on application to real-world design problems
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Biography
Larry Constantine is an innovator whose pioneering work on design methods helped lay the foundations of modern software engineering practice. His contributions to HCI include essential use cases, now widely regarded as a best practice in user requirements and task modeling, and canonical abstract prototypes. In collaboration with Lucy Lockwood he developed the usage-centered design process, a highly successful approach to designing for enhanced user performance. Internationally recognized for his technical innovation and professional leadership, he is an award-winning visual and interaction designer with multiple patents in human-machine interaction to his credit. In great demand as a presenter and teacher, Constantine has keynoted numerous major international conferences and has taught in 17 countries around the world. Among his publications in both the computer sciences and human sciences are over 150 articles and papers plus 17 books, including the award-winning Software for Use (Addison-Wesley, 1999), written with Lucy Lockwood; The Peopleware Papers (Prentice Hall, 2001); and the software engineering classic, Structured Design (Prentice hall, 1979), written with Ed Yourdon. Constantine is Chief Scientist with Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd. (www.foruse.com), the international design and consulting firm he co-founded, and has been a Professor of Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney (Australia).
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Failure Reconsidered
The Importance of Failure Analysis for Human-Computer
Interaction Design
Presented by Professor Tom Hewett, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA,
USA
Wednesday, September 01, 2004 at Cognos Incorporated
Download poster (PDF file 84K)
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What?
After exploring some general considerations about the process of design, Professor Hewett argued that failure avoidance is a desirable goal and that the analysis of Interface design failures is a rich and neglected source of learning about how to improve design. Utilizing examples from Civil Engineering, Psychology, and Interface Design Professor Hewett explored the issues of when it is appropriate to use engineering design as a model for interface design and whether design failures can be completely eliminated. He then suggested ways in which design failures can be reduced or even turned to advantage.
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Who?
Tom Hewett is Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Drexel University where he teaches courses on Cognitive Psychology, The Psychology of Human Computer Interaction, The Psychology of Human Computer Interaction Design, and Problem Solving and Creativity. Tom regularly offers a professional development tutorial on cognitive aspects of interactive computing system design to interface designers at both conferences and in-house training sessions.
Some of Tom's research papers have described the structure and implications of a taxonomy for thinking about instructional computing and have explored pedagogical and institutional implications of universal student access to personal computers. Other research papers have focused on the evaluation of interactive computing systems and the impact of evaluation on the design process.
Tom chaired the ACM SIGCHI Curriculum Development Group that wrote recommendations for undergraduate curricula and courses for Human Computer Interaction and has participated in several other curriculum development projects. He served for four years as Vice Chair for Operations of SIGCHI.
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