This commentary discusses the article "The meaning of interactivity—some proposals for definitions and measures" by Lars-Erik Janlert and Erik Stolterman (Human-Computer Interaction). This article is very timely as user interfaces are at an interesting nexus between direct manipulation paradigms, which offer interactivity, and notification-based systems, which demand interactivity. Neither seems to capture the spirit of man-computer symbiosis (sic) in Licklider's vision over 50 years ago [Li60]. This is precisely the interactability dimension introduced in the article.
Janlert and Stolterman raise many fascinating issues: for example, the idea of fixed time budgets, although work on early email uptake [FO89] and anecdotal evidence on Facebook use suggest this may not be true for communication technologies. The article also resonated with so many areas I have worked on in the past and in this commentary I will pick up a few of these threads from my own work and those of others.
Keywords: human-comouter interaction, interactivity, agency, pace and attention.
References
- [Bu05] Robbins Burling (2005). The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved. Oxford University Press
- [Cl98] Clark, A. 1998. Being There: Putting Brain, Body and the World Together Again. MIT Press.
- [DS01] A. Dey, D. Salber and G. Abowd (2001). A Conceptual Framework and a Toolkit for Supporting the Rapid Prototyping of Context-Aware Applications. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Journal, 16(2-4):97–166.
- [Dx97] Alan Dix, Roberta Mancini, and Stefano Levialdi. 1997. Communication, action and history. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI '97). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 542-543. DOI: 10.1145/258549.259023
- [Dx92] A. J. Dix (1992). Pace and interaction. Proceedings of HCI'92: People and Computers VII, Eds. A. Monk, D. Diaper and M. Harrison. Cambridge University Press. 193-207. http://alandix.com/academic/papers/pace/
- [DA96] A. Dix and G. Abowd (1996). Modelling status and event behaviour of interactive systems. Software Engineering Journal, 11(6) pp. 334-346.
- [Dx03] A. Dix (2003,2005). A Cybernetic Understanding of Fitts' Law. HCI book online! (accessed 3 June 2016). http://www.hcibook.com/e3/plain/online/fitts-cybernetic/
- [DF04] A. Dix, J. Finlay, G. Abowd and R. Beale (2004). Modelling Rich Interaction. Chapter 18 in Human-Computer Interaction, third edition. Prentice Hall. (See also additional material in HCI book online! Car courtesy lights - designing incidental interaction. http://www.hcibook.com/e3/casestudy/car-lights/)
- [DL15] A. Dix and J.Leavesley (2015). Learning Analytics for the Academic: An Action Perspective. Journal of Universal Computer Science (JUCS), 21(1):48-65
- [DG17] A. Dix and S. Gill with J. Hare and D. Ramduny-Ellis (2017). TouchIT: exploring the physicality of the world and the design of digital products. (in production) http://www.physicality.org/TouchIT/table-of-contents/
- [Fi54] P. Fitts (1954): The Information Capacity of the Human Motor System in Controlling the Amplitude of Movement. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47:381-391.
- [FO89] P. Fung , T. O'Shea , S. Bly. Electronic mail viewed as a communications catalyst. IEE Colloquium on Human Factors in Electronic Mail and Conferencing Systems, 3 Feb 1989, pp.1/1--1/3. INSPEC: 3381096
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=197821
- [Go76] Nelson Goodman (1976). Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Hackett Publishing Company
- [HK94] Stephen José Hanson, Robert E. Kraut, and James M. Farber. 1984. Interface design and multivariate analysis of UNIX command use. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 2, 1 (January 1984), 42-57. DOI: 10.1145/357417.357421
- [HC86] D. Austin Henderson, Jr. and Stuart Card. 1986. Rooms: the use of multiple virtual workspaces to reduce space contention in a window-based graphical user interface. ACM Trans. Graph. 5, 3 (July 1986), 211-243. DOI: 10.1145/24054.24056
- [HH85] Edwin L. Hutchins, James D. Hollan, and Donald A. Norman. 1985. Direct manipulation interfaces. Hum.-Comput. Interact. 1, 4 (December 1985), 311-338. DOI: 10.1207/s15327051hci0104_2
- [Jo07] W. Jones. 2007. Keeping Found Things Found: the Study and Practice of Personal Information Management: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, USA.
- [Kl13] Matjaz Kljun (2013). Managing and preserving personal project related information. PhD Thesis, Lancaster University
- [Li60] J. C. R. Licklider, "Man-Computer Symbiosis," in IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, vol. HFE-1, no. 1, pp. 4-11, March 1960. doi: 10.1109/THFE2.1960.4503259
- [Ma97] R. Mancini (1997). Modelling Interactive Computing by Exploiting the Undo. Dottorato di Ricerca in Informatica, IX-97-5, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza". http://www.hcibook.net/people/Roberta/
- [MV80] H. Maturana and F. Varela (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the Living. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 42. Dordecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co.
- [Sa57] Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) Course in General Linguistics. (tr. W. Baskin, 1959). https://archive.org/details/courseingenerall00saus
- [SW63] C. Shannon and W. Weaver (1963). A Mathematical Theory of Communication. University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL, USA.
- [Sh83] Shneiderman, B. (1983). Direct Manipulation: A step beyond programming languages, IEEE Computer, 16(8), 57-69.
- [Te72] Warren Teitelman. 1972. Automated programmering: the programmer's assistant. In Proceedings of the December 5-7, 1972, fall joint computer conference, part II (AFIPS '72 (Fall, part II)). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 917-921
|
|
-
|