mdw@inf.rl.ac.uk (Mike Wilson) (09/28/89)
Below are abstracts of
Interacting with Computers:
The Interdisciplinary Journal of Human-Computer Interaction
Volume 1, Number 3
Oct 1989
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Interacting with Computers:
The Interdisciplinary Journal of Human-Computer Interaction
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VOLUME 1 NUMBER 3 Oct 1989
(Interacting with Computers is published three times a year by Butterworths
Scientific Ltd., PO Box 63, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5BH, United Kingdom.
It provides an international forum for communication about HCI issues
between academia and industry. It allows information to be disseminated in a
form accessible to all HCI practitioners, not just to academic researchers.
This new journal is produced in conjunction with the BCS
Human-Computer Interaction Specialist Group. Its aim is to stimulate ideas
and provoke widespread discussion with a forward-looking perspective.
A dialogue will be built up between theorists, researchers and human
factors engineers in academia, industry and commerce thus fostering
interdisciplinary dependencies. For further information about this journal,
contact the publishers or the general editor: Dr Dan Diaper, Dept. of Computer
Science, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, U.K.
e-mail(janet): diaper@uk.ac.liv.cs.mva
e-mail(arpanet): diaper@uk.ac.liv.cs.mva@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk
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THE USER INTERFACE IN A HYPERTEXT MULTIWINDOW PROGRAM BROWSER
Richard Seabrook and Ben Shneiderman
Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland,
College Park, MD 20742, USA
The program browsing problem is discussed, with particular emphasis
on a multiple-window user interface and its implications for recording
acquired knowledge, navigation, and attention-tracking. Hypertext systems
are considered as an implementation of browsing techniques for
non-program text. A classification scheme for text-viewing systems is
offered, and then browsing is discussed as a nonintrusive, static
technique for program study.
Multiple techniques are synthesised into a coherent plan for a multiwindow
program study tool, based on theories of program browsing and the use of
hypertext. A test system, HYBROW, emerged from the plan for studying the
application of several hypertext multi-window techniques to program browsing,
especially window replacement. HYBROW is a hypertext, multiple-window
program browser. This generic tool is applicable to any source language,
although certain aspects of the preprocessing and the hierarchical browser
presentation are specific to the C language. The tool permits opening an
arbitrary number of text windows into an arbitrary number of files,
rapid window switching, multiple window search, placemarking, automatic
screen organisation, and services for the creation, maintenance and
production of study notes. An informal usability study was conducted.
Keywords: user interfaces, windowing systems, hypertext, browsing systems
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SHAPING USER INPUT: A STRATEGY FOR NATURAL LANGUAGE DIALOGUE DESIGN
Martin Ringle and Richard Halstead-Nussloch
IBM Corporation (WC7A), PO Box 2150, Atlanta, GA 30055, USA
Traditional approaches to natural language dialogue interface design
have adopted ordinary human-human conversation as the model for online
human-computer interaction. The attempt to deal with all the subleties
of natural dialogues, such as topic focus, coherence, ellipsis,
pronominal reference, etc. has resulted in prototype systems that are
enormously complex and computationally expensive.
In a series of experiments, we explored ways of minimizing the processing
burden of a dialogue system by channeling user input towards a more
tractable, though still natural, form of English-language questions.
Through linking a pair of terminals, we presented subjects with two
different dialogue styles as a framework for online help in the domain
of word processing. The first dialogue style involved ordinary
conversational format. The second style involved a simulation of an
automated dialogue system, including apparent processing restrictions
and 'system process messages' to inform the subject of the steps
taken by the system during query analysis. In both cases human tutors
played the role of the help system. After each dialogue session,
subjects were interviewed to determine their assessments of the
naturalness and usability of the dialogue interface.
We found that user input became more tractable to parsing and query
analysis as the dialogue style became more formalized, yet the
subjective assessment of naturalness and usability remained fairly
constant. This suggests that techniques for channeling user input in
a dialogue system may be effectively employed to reduce processing
demands without compromising the benefits of a natural language
interface. Theoretically, this data lends support to the hypothesis
that unrestricted human-human conversation is not the most appropriate
model for the design of human-computer dialogue interfaces.
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EXPLOITING CONVERGENCE TO IMPROVE NATURAL LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING
R. G. Leiser
YARD Consulting Engineers Ltd, Charing Cross Tower, Charing Cross,
Glasgow G2 4PP, UK.
Convergence is the phenomenon in human dialogue whereby participants
adopt characteristics of each other's speech. Communicants are
unaware of this occurring. If it were possible to invoke such a
phenomenon in a natural language interface it would provide a
means of keeping user inputs within the range of lexical and
syntactic coverage of the system, while keeping the dialogues 'natural'
in the sense of requiring no more conscious effort in observing
conventions of format than human-human dialogue.
A 'Wizard of Oz' study was conducted to test the feasibility of
this technique. Subjects were required to type queries into what
they thought was a natural language database querying system. On
completion of input the system presented a paraphrase for confirmation
by subjects before presenting the answer. The paraphrases were
constructed using particular terms and syntactic structures. Subjects
began to use these terms and structures spontaneously in subsequent
queries.
Observation of convergence in human-computer dialogue suggests that
the technique can be incorporated in user interfaces to improve
communication. The implementation issues for natural language
dialogue are discussed, and other applications of the technique in HCI
are outlined.
Keywords: natural language, dialogues, user interfaces, convergence.
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A KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM WITH AUDIO-VISUAL AIDS
Koichi Tabata and Shigeo Sugimoto
University of Library and Information Science, 1-2 Kasuga,
Tsukuba, 305, Japan.
A Knowledge-based System with Audio-Visual Aids (KS/AV) is presented.
KS/AV is a knowledge-based system that has multiple types of knowledge
represented not only in symbols but in audio-visual (AV) images, and
it provides an environment for human-machine communication through AV
media. We define a predicate logic in which every individual is regarded
as an object. All of the individuals including AV images are regarded as
objects. Their definitions are based on the class concepts of Smalltalk-80.
AV image objects presented in this paper include not only simple video
and graphic images, but also composite images that consist of several
component images. This paper presents the KS/AV system developed on a small
computer system with various AV equipment. As a case study, we developed
a reading advisory system for children on KS/AV, which communicates with
children through AV images and gives their favourite picture books.
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INTERACTING WITH ELECTRONIC MAIL CAN BE A DREAM OR A NIGHTMARE:
A USER'S POINT OF VIEW
Nava Pliskin
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Ben-Gurion
University, PO Box 653 Beer-Sheva 84105, Isreal.
Diffusion of electronic mail (e-mail) is not yet universal. So far,
e-mail has been implemented successfully within organisations, but its
implementation for communications between organisations has been rather
limited. This situation is surprising, given the great potential of
e-mail for interorganisational communication. E-mail encounters from
a user's point of view, reviewed in this paper, suggest that users of
BITNET, one of the predominant e-mail networks in the academic world,
face difficulties, unreliability issues, medium limitations, and
interface problems. BITNET is just one of many interorganisational
networks and may not be representative. Still, e-mail technology is
unlikely to survive if human engineering and reliability are not
uniformly satisfactory across all e-mail systems. Poorly engineered
e-mail systems frustrate not only their users, but also users of other
networks because of gateways between networks. Therefore, e-mail users
might resort to other communication media like facsimile or the
telephone, and abandon e-mail altogether.
For e-mail to be competitive in the communication arena, an
interdisciplinary effort should be directed toward standardisation
of features like better addressing conventions, international user
directories, uniform user interfaces, and sophisticated management
of e-mail messages.
Keywords: E-mail, user interface, reliability, communication media.
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THE APPLICATION OF METAPHOR, ANALOGY AND CONCEPTUAL MODELS
IN COMPUTER SYSTEMS.
Lucy Anne Wozny
College of Information Studies, Drexel University, Philadelphia,
PA 19104, USA.
People using computer systems naturally relate what they are experiencing
to what they already know. This general cognitive process can be
classified into metaphoric, analogical, and modelling processes.
Metaphor, a term applied often to today's computer systems, is the process
of representing the computer system with objects and events from a
noncomputer domain, such as the popular desktop metaphor. Analogy
is a comparison between objects or events that serve the same
purpose but have different representations. Models are representations
of the abstract conceptual structure of a computer system. This paper
outlines the differences between these three processes and applies
them to the computer domain. Implications for computer systems design
are also discussed.
Keywords: cognitive science, computer models, metaphors, analogies,
conceptual media.
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COMMENTARY
THE INDIVIDUAL 'WORKING-TO-RULES': REDUCING DETERMINISM
IN TAYLOR-MADE EXPERT SYSTEMS.
Tony Shelton
School of Information Science and Technology, Liverpool Polytechnic,
Byrom Street, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK.
Holden(1989) suggested that Taylorist scientific management principles,
based upon machine-like models of man, may influence the development
and application of expert systems. While Holden's work is a major
contribution to the debate on the effects of technology on
employment, it is argued that a similar deterministic and mechanistic
image of the users of expert systems is implicit in his paper. In addition,
this commentary also addresses some of the related issues concerning
autonomous expert systems.
Keywords: Taylorism, expert systems, scientific management.