HF Perspectives on HCI

Book Proposal

Document URL: http://www.acm.org/~perlman/hfeshci/proposal.html
Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction: Selections from the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society Annual Meetings
	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.

1. Why is this book needed?

1.1 HCI is an Important Area of Work

Computer technology has grown tremendously in the past two decades. Yet only in the last decade has there been substantial, serious interest in the industry concerning the design of usable, ergonomic (human factored) interfaces. Computer hardware and software companies now recognize that increasing functionality without adequate concern to the product's human interface just won't cut it in today's market. If the technology isn't usable, people won't buy it. It is likely to be "panned" by trade and consumer magazines, and the resulting lower-than-expected sales can bankrupt companies. It is expensive to send out minor updates to bugs, and for designers and programmers to deal with consumer complaints after the product has been released. Usable human-computer interfaces are necessary for the acceptance, sales, and future development in advanced technology products.

1.2 Conference Proceedings are Often the Only Source of Work

There are many sources of published work on HCI: journals for archival material, conference proceedings for more current material, and recently, Internet sites for ongoing work. Many organizations have conferences with HCI material (ACM SIGCHI, IFIP Interact, British Computer Society HCI Group, and HFES CSTG). Much of that work is only available in conference proceedings because it has not been republished in archival journals (perhaps because many of the people doing work in HCI are applied and get little benefit from journal publication).

1.3 Focused Conference Proceedings are Popular

Conference proceedings, particularly ones that are attractively priced, are very popular with many association's members. For example, about half of ACM SIGCHI's 7000 members pay extra for the CHI+ option to receive conference proceedings. Most of these people would be interested in HCI material from the HFES Annual Meetings, but are understandably reluctant to purchase the entire proceedings. A specialized selection of HCI material from the Annual Meetings would be cheaper, smaller, and require less searching for this large audience. Within the HFES itself, a substantial proportion of the sessions at the annual meeting concern HCI. In particular, the Computer Systems Technical Group (CSTG) is the largest and most active group. They produce the majority of papers on HCI at the Annual Meeting, but many CSTG members do not attend the annual meeting and do not buy the proceedings; they would be an ideal audience for a selection of the Annual Meeting proceedings.

1.4 A Focused Collection of Papers would be More Accessible/Useful

The HFES Proceedings are often not available in libraries (including many research university collections), and titles/abstracts are generally not available in the largest computer-search data base services. While there is a useful computer-based data base available on the topic (e.g., The HCI Bibliography), it only contains abstracts, not full papers. A compiled "best of" book will make some of the most outstanding work on the topic available to more people and in relatively complete form (not just abstracts).

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.

2. Does something already exist in the literature that is similar to what you're are proposing? What is it?

The book would be similar in format to the recently published book Human Factors Perspectives on Warnings published by HFES, except it will be focused on HCI papers.

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).

3. What is your best guess as to the size of the audience (a) within the HFES membership and (b) outside the membership?

The Computer Systems TG is the largest technical interest group in the Society with over 1000 members. Members of this group could probably support decent sales by themselves (who will want it for their collection and because it contains many of the best articles in one volume). In particular, authors of included articles will want a copy. Moreover, many others interested and working in the field of HCI who are not members of HFES will want the book, particularly ACM SIGCHI Plus members, who pay extra to received proceedings. Moreover, many research libraries, and technology-based companies would also be interested in having the book available for their patrons and staff. In addition, individuals in several other fields should find the collection of HCI articles useful (technical writers, computer scientists, etc.). Lastly, the volume could be used a readings book for an HCI seminar or a part of training of new employees/interns in co-op HCI work.

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.

4. What is your proposed method of selecting papers? What criteria will you use? Who will be involved?

The following three-stage procedure will be used to select papers. This procedure builds upon and improves the procedure used in selecting the Warnings collection articles. The three stages, each of which will be discussed in turn, are:
  1. Determination of Dimensions of HCI Research
  2. Evaluation of Quality and Assignment to Categories
  3. Final Inclusion/Exclusion Decisions

4.1 Determination of Dimensions of HCI Research

There already exist some taxonomies of HCI in sources such as the ACM SIGCHI "Curricula in HCI" report, and these can be modified to reflect the focus of work in the HFES. The names of computer-related sessions (not just CSTG) at the HFES Annual Meeting from the last eight years are available from the HCI Bibliography. These will be extracted by the editors and sorted into similar categories, each with a substantial number of papers, to produce a taxonomy of work that has been presented at the Annual Meeting. The final organizational assignment of selected papers will depend on a variety of factors such as the number of papers in different areas, the appropriateness of the session where a paper originally appeared, etc. A first stab at the session names by Gary Perlman yielded:

4.2 Evaluation of Quality and Assignment to Categories

The editors will recruit a group of 15-20 judges who will evaluate the quality and category of articles. Direct requests will be made to the most published authors from the CSTG sessions, supplemented by experts in areas not well represented. The CSTG-L mailing list will probably be used to contact members who can volunteer their time.

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

4.3 Final Inclusion/Exclusion Decisions

The editors will rank order the articles and assign the best ones to the subtopic categories. Categories will be dropped if there are not enough high quality papers to represent them. (A Potpourri section may be included if there are a few truly excellent papers not fitting any populated category). In cases where there are numerous high quality articles in the category, the editors will make the final decisions for inclusion (based on research quality and limiting topic redundancy as criteria).
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

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

5. How long do you think the book will be?

400 pages. We anticipate a collection of 75 papers, at 5 pages per paper, filling 375 pages, to which at most 25 pages of introductory material and comprehensive references will be added. In comparison, the Warnings collection was 281+vi pages.

6. Please send along a draft introduction and tentative table of contents.

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

Introduction (Draft)

In the past dozen years, computer technology has advanced at a tremendous rate. Never has there been a tool (or, if you will, an appliance) so complex and flexible. In the days of their infancy, computers were frightfully difficult to use. Today computers are easier to learn and navigate, and there is no doubt that this trend towards increased usability will continue and that computers will be even more closely integrated into people's daily lives than they've now become. Everyone uses computers today. Part of the increase in usability (despite so many technological advances), is attributable to research on people's interaction with computers.

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.

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