Gary Perlman Computer and Information Science Ohio State University 2015 Neil Avenue, Room 395 Columbus, OH 43210-1277 Email: perlman@acm.org Phone: +1-614-292-2566 Fax: +1-614-292-2911 Georgia K. Green Advanced Technology Center First Data Corporation 2398 E. Camelback Rd., Suite 690 Phoenix, AZ 85016 Email: gkg@atcweb.atc.1dc.com Phone: +1-602-224-8086 Fax: +1-602-224-8090 Michael S. Wogalter Psychology Department North Carolina State University 640 Poe Hall Raleigh, NC 27695-7801 Email: WOGALTER@Poe.coe.ncsu.edu Phone: +1-919-851-1884 Fax: +1-919-515-1716
This is a proposal for a book of selected articles on HCI from the 1983-1994 proceedings of the HFES Annual Meeting. The organization of the proposal is to address questions posed by Lois Smith, HFES Publications Manager.
Additionally, a collection of papers on HCI will give an excellent flavor of what research in this area is like. Publishing this book will help to advertise our profession and the Society. It would be a vehicle to tell the world who is doing the finest work on HCI. Moreover, it's a relatively easy book to construct, and it's a potential way for the Society to make additional revenues.
In addition to appealing to practitioners, students and new workers in HCI will also find the collection useful. Undergraduate and graduate-level psychology, engineering, and computer science classes have assigned numerous Proceedings articles because of their quality and brevity (several papers illustrating diverse approaches can be assigned instead of one long journal article which illustrates one perspective). In addition, these articles can be used as excellent vehicles to discuss HF research methodology and design, so the book could be used in a Methods in Human Factors seminar.
As can be seen in the HFES annual meeting exhibitions, there's no shortage in the number of books and edited volumes on HCI-related topics. Nevertheless, some of the best research has been published in the Proceedings of HFES, and many of them have not appeared in other venues such as in archival, refereed journal articles, despite being of comparable quality. This collected volume will get this important work out to more people. The book will be unique.
The best known HCI-readings collection is Baecker & Buxton's "Readings in HCI," published by Morgan-Kaufmann in 1987. It is a collection of 65 papers and chapter excerpts with some excellent introductory material written for its sections by the editors. At less than $50 for almost 750 pages, it has been a popular textbook and a good desk reference. The original is now 8 years old and a revised version has been due out for 2 years, now edited by 4 leaders in the field. The updated version has much more of an emphasis on HCI for groups (e.g., CSCW, groupware) and theory; replacing much methodological and almost all empirical work in the first edition. In contrast, the work in the HFES Annual Meeting proceedings would provide many practitioners with methods and results that can be applied, so the two sources would not be in direct competition (except perhaps for money in limited budgets).
Based on an estimate of 1000 CSTG members and 3500 CHI Plus members (who overlap substantially with CSTG), we estimate that at a minimum 400 copies will be sold, but that a more likely number is closer to 800 in the first two years after printing. Initially, only a couple of hundred copies would need to be printed to see how it goes -- so that there is little risk. And we think that even more copies could be sold with good advertising in publications of other related- societies/organizations. Note that the ACM CHI'95 conference is in early May, and a promotional flyer could be distributed there at low cost and give some indication of initial demand.
Judges will be provided with abstracts of HCI-related papers, of which there are estimated to be more than 500. The papers will be partitioned so that no judge is looking at hundreds of candidate selections. Still, judges should be able to review many articles because the articles are polished and probably familiar, each having been read at one time by many of the judges. Judges will identify the best papers (most archival and timeless), except for ones to which they have contributed (to avoid conflicts of interest). Judges will rate the articles on quality (methodological and theoretical soundness). Also, these judges will also be asked to categorize the book into one or more of the categories/subtopic areas that were generated in Stage 1.
The HCI Bibliography contains abstracted entries of HCI- related work from the Annual Meeting from 1987-1994. Earlier years, back to 1983, will be included by either scanning abstracts or copying first pages. To make a positive recommendation, judges will be expected to review the entire paper, for which special arrangements may be necessary if the proceedings for a particular year are not available.
We might offer the judges in Stage 2 a free copy of the book for their time. They are likely to recommend the book to others.
The above was not approved, by the way. - GP
The following schedule is based on a goal of releasing the collection at the 1995 Annual Meeting.
2/15/95 Editorial Committee formed 3/15/95 Proposal submitted to HFES 4/ ?/95 Pubs Subcouncil decision 5/ ?/95 Executive Council approves budget request 5/ 7/95 CHI'95 begins, Editorial Committee meeting 5/15/95 Subject Judges selected, instructed 6/30/95 All reviews due from Subject Judges 7/31/95 All papers selected, Introduction / index completed 8/ 7/95 Book enters production 9/25/95 Book completes production 10/ 9/95 HFES Annual meeting begins
Table of Contents GENERAL HCI SESSIONS (e.g., MODELS, THEORIES) TECHNOLOGY: INPUT / OUTPUT Input Output Displays LIFECYCLE: ANALYSIS, DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION, EVALUATION Analysis Design Prototyping = Design / Implementation Implementation Evaluation APPLICATION AREAS CSCW AI and Expert Systems Complex Systems Information Systems
People from many disciplines have contributed to this growing body of technical literature on human-computer interaction. These scientists and practitioners have included computer scientists, psychologists, technical writers, designers, sociologists and engineers. However, a substantial portion of the work has been carried out by researchers identified with the field of human factors. In the forefront of this research is the Computer Systems Technical Group (CSTG) of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). HFES is the principal professional group in the U.S. concerned with issues of person-machine interaction; helping to make technology easier to use is one of its foremost goals. The Computer Systems Technical Group (CSTG) is the most active technical group in HFES, having the most sessions at the Annual Meeting, all with human factors specialists in academia and industry. The research deals broadly with the interface between people and computer hardware and software, but part of it has concerned closely- allied areas such as workstation design and lighting, among others. A result of this emphasis within the discipline of human factors is that many very good research articles on human-computer interaction have appeared in the Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of the Human Factors (and Ergonomics) Society.
The fact that the Proceedings have served as a primary outlet for publishing research and technical literature on this topic has resulted in a problem: People outside the Society do not have good access to these articles. Because the Proceedings are not widely distributed, researchers and other potential consumers of this work either have difficulty obtaining the publications or are simply unaware of them. In part, this is due to the fact that many on-line services that are used to access and retrieve references on various topics have not included the Proceedings into their databases. While there is an excellent way to search for HCI citations thanks to "The HCI Bibliography" at The Ohio State University, that database contains abstracts, not the full articles. Moreover, many libraries do not regularly receive the Proceedings as part of their collection, and due to cutbacks in many research libraries, the Proceedings might be even less available to potential consumers than in the past. There is a need to better distribute this work.
As a consequence of this state of affairs and in an effort to make some of the articles that have appeared in the Proceedings more available, we have assembled this collection. It consists of papers that are reprinted in their entirety, abstracts of other papers, and finally a list of references of all papers printed in the Proceedings over the last 12 years dealing with HCI issues.
Note: We are considering providing the list of references, with abstracts, on a floppy disk (DOS format 3.5" disks can be read on Mac 7.1 and later, so perhaps only DOS format is needed). This material would be drawn from the HCI Bibliography, which has the material from the years 1987-1994 already online. It might be included with the book, or sold as an add-on for an extra $5.
To include every paper in the collection that has any relationship to this topic would be unwieldy. Because of page restrictions, decisions had to be made about what to include and at what level (reprint, abstract or reference only). Several criteria were employed to select papers. First, we wanted to cover a broad range of topics that reflect research activity in the field. These topic categories were based on the names of the Computer Systems Technical Group sessions at the Annual Meetings. Second, a group of judges (acknowledge their names here) evaluated the articles on these topics on quality and assigned the article to the categories. Third, the editors used the categories and ratings to compile the articles that are included in this volume. For the most part, the final decisions on papers in the "gray area" or "breakpoint" of the exclusion/inclusion line were made with a bias toward the inclusion of archival empirical research.
Given the large number of articles on the topic, quite a few excellent individual papers could not be included in full. We have included some of the most closely relevant papers in the form of abstracts. A complete list of HCI papers in HFES Proceedings are in the bibliography in the back. Finally, we include a topic and author index. On the whole, we think the set that we have included has some of the finest work that has been done in the field.
Because this book has some of the best research in HCI, we believe that many professionals and researchers in areas related to HCI should have this book on their bookshelves. Even HFES professionals who have copies of the Proceedings will find that this book makes the articles more accessible than having them scattered across many volumes (and many members may not have all the Proceedings volumes available). In addition, these articles can serve as a ready set of readings for undergraduate and graduate HCI classes. Lastly, and where this book might find the greatest utility, this collection will introduce newcomers to research on HCI to the kinds of issues and the methods that can be employed to investigate them. We hope you find this book informative.