HCI

At the urging of two very well informed colleagues (Sarah & Hall, who are more involved in the arts than I am) I've started reading this 1991 book by Brenda Laurel.

Given that the IT horizon is only 3-5 years off - this book was written a very long time ago (e.g. pre-our web.) Still, I'm amazed by how relevant are the issues presented! This gives me a clue that the book is going to be very much worth reading.

I'm sufficiently excited that I'm writing this before I've finished even 20% - so this can't be a "review" (although I have my suspicions that a lot of book reviews are written after reading less than 20% :-) - so I'm suggesting that I can fairly call this a Book Preview.

In this 12 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Mark Notess, Development Manager & Usability Specialist at Indiana University. He is involved in several online learning and research tool development projects including the Variations 3 Digital Music Library Project, and Integrating Licensed Library Resources with Sakai. He also co-authored an article with Lisa Lorenzen-Huber entitled, "Online Learning for Seniors: Barriers and Opportunities". He spoke with Carie Windham at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference in Seattle, Washington.

The attached MP3 provides continuing coverage of a series of interviews conducted at the 2006 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. Listen as Marilu Goodyear hosts a 30 minute interview with Phil Long, Senior Strategist for the Academic Computing Enterprise at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among other things, they take on the issue of patents, discuss Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, and tackle the prospects for continued research on learning space design.

The new issue (Volume 22, Issue 4) of Computers in Human Behavior is covering attention aware systems.  Chief among the articles of interest is coverage of the value of attention aware systems in educational settings by the University of Minnesota's David N. Rapp.

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economics
(and any of the host of blogs covering the topic)

This video is, quite simply, the most compelling demonstration I have ever seen for an alternative computer interface design.

It's beautiful, as well as intuitive.

Jeff Han's Multi-Touch Interaction Research page describes the project. See also the discussion on this NASA web forum. (Yes, that's NASA as in rocket science!)

The video has been massively popular, so you may have problems accessing the version linked from Jeff's page -- try the link I've given at the top.

The latest issue of Computers in Human Behavior (January 2006) is out and it looks like much of the journal is focused on research involving computer mediated learning.  

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/07475632

Can you imagine surfing the web without clicking your mouse?

Think about it... (or bring up another browser page, and try surfing a little). Now try this.

Alex Frank's dontclick.it site demonstrates a mouseless user interface. The site requires Flash (you'll quickly see why this is so).

I got the hang of the "clickless" navigation straight away. But, boy, does it feel weird. Alex's design demonstrates that some aspects of HCI interaction have become very, very deeply embedded ...

Besides, irrespective of how "necessary" the mouseclick is, technologically or "navigationally", surely it fulfills a psychological function? The "click" is reassuring. It gives instant feedback (particularly in terms of the sonic accompaniment). It tells us that we've successfully expressed an intention. I'm very interested to hear reports from user testing.

Of course, thanks to Javascript and CSS, these days we're all used to doing a bit of mousewaving, circling, and hovering. But that sort of browsing still feels (to me, at least) less directed. If nothing else, it's (yet) another step away from the immediacy of the keyboard shortcut.