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Norms are expected to make significant contributions towards enabling discourse in cyberspace among people of different backgrounds, just as they do in the physical world. Yet many distributed, electronically mediated groups fail to form norms successfully. Causes range from open discord to the more insidious lack of comfort people experience in groups that fail to openly address disagreements about what constitutes appropriate behavior in the online environment. We present a case study of the evolution of norms about what constitutes appropriate posts to an online discussion forum for a newly forming group. We trace the discussion sparked by a critical incident and show how a design of an online environment that promotes visibility of participants contributed towards overcoming the forces for dissolution and promoted progress towards coalescing as a group with a shared identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing context-aware mobile information systems for supporting sociality requires a solid understanding of the users' context, situated interactions, and the interplay between the two. Currently such understanding is lacking in the field of HCI research and is sought after by several authors. Addressing this gap we conducted a field study of small groups socialising in a public place. Based on a grounded analysis of our findings we present a conceptual framework of situated social interactions in public. Finally, we illustrate how this framework informed design of a mobile context-aware prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an exploration of the concept of social intelligence in the context of home dialogue systems for an Ambient Intelligence home. It reports a Wizard of Oz experiment involving a robotic interface capable of displaying several human social behaviors. Our results show that endowing a home dialogue system with some social intelligence can (a) create a positive bias in user's perception of technology in the environment, (b) increase user acceptance for the home dialogue system, and (c) trigger social behaviors of the user towards the home dialogue system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Searching for an item in a long ordered list is a frequent task when using any kind of computing device (from desktop PCs to mobile phones). This paper explores three different interfaces to support this task on the limited screen of mobile devices (e.g., PDAs, in-car systems, mobile phones). Two of the considered interfaces are based on the idea of tree-augmentation of a list proposed in Furnas' Effective View Navigation theory [6] and differ in their depth versus breadth ratio. The third interface adopts the traditional technique of list scrolling based on keyboard entry. We compare them in terms of search time, number of errors, and user's satisfaction. Results show that list scrolling based on keyboard entry outperforms both tree-augmented lists and that the broader tree-augmented list is better than the deeper one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructive interaction provides natural thinking-aloud as test subjects collaborate in pairs to solve tasks. Since children may face difficulties in following instructions for a standard think-aloud test, constructive interaction has been suggested as evaluation method when usability testing with children. However, the relationship between think-aloud and constructive interaction is still poorly understood. We present an experiment that compares think-aloud and constructive interaction. The experiment involves 60 children with three setups where children apply think-aloud or constructive interaction in acquainted and non-acquainted pairs. Our results show that the pairing of children had impact on how the children collaborated in pairs and how they would afterward assess the testing sessions. In some cases, we found that acquainted dyads would perform well as they would more naturally interact and collaborate while in other cases they would have problems in controlling the evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a study that compares the results of usability testing of mobile interfaces based on three different evaluation approaches: (i) using a computer-based mobile phone emulator inside the laboratory (ii) using a mobile phone inside the laboratory (iii) using a mobile phone linked to a wireless camera in the field. The results regarding user performance and usability problem identification showed the existence of more similarities than significant differences between the results of the three evaluation contexts. Moreover, in the simplest evaluation context of the emulator it was possible to identify a large percentage of the overall set of usability problems found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspection-based evaluation methods predicting usability problems can be applied for evaluating products without involving users. A new method (named SEEM), inspired by Norman's theory-of-action model [18] and Malone's concepts of fun [15], is described for predicting usability and fun problems in children's computer games. This paper describes a study to assess SEEM's quality. The results show that the experts in the study predicted about 76% of the problems found in a user test. The validity of SEEM is quite promising. Furthermore, the participating experts were able to apply the inspection-questions in an appropriate manner. Based on this first study ideas for improving the method are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores design concepts and principles to engage middle school girls in learning preliminary programming concepts through different media and interaction techniques. Creating a greeting card and creating a personal avatar for an Instant Messenger (IM) were two approaches that were examined. Findings suggest that an IM avatar creation tool, with guiding principles including partial manipulation of code, immediate feedback, engaging content, reinforcement exercises, and transition from concrete to abstract examples, may interest girls to start learning programming concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports from an exploratory study of means for providing feedback from a usability evaluation to the user interface designers. In this study, we conducted a usability evaluation of a mobile system that is used by craftsmen to register use of time and materials. The results of this evaluation were presented to the designers in different forms. First, the designers were presented with a traditional usability report. Second, we facilitated a dialogue where the results of the evaluation were discussed. During this process, we collected opinions from the designers on the main strengths and weaknesses of the system. The findings indicate that detailed descriptions of problems and log descriptions of the user's interaction with the system and of system interaction are useful for the designers when trying to understand the usability problems that the users have encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Users should be involved in the interactive systems development. However, involving users is difficult and rare, especially in the product development context. Guidelines for the facilitation of user involvement have been produced. However, a critical review shows that the guidelines rely on naïve notions of people and change in organizations. In this paper an interpretive research approach is utilized in the analysis user involvement in software development organizations operating in the product development context. User involvement is indirect in the organizations, and labelled as usability work. Usability specialists are conceptualized as a specific community of practice, usability work being their practice. Analysis reveals divergent ways usability work has been organized in the organizations, and divergent meanings attached to usability work. Both practical and theoretical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An evaluation of two websites with the same content but different interface styles (traditional menu-based and interactive metaphors) is described. A formative usability evaluation was carried out with heuristic assessment of aesthetics followed by post-test memory. The subjects had more problems with the metaphor-based site, but rated it more favourably on the aesthetics heuristics. There was no difference in free memory recall between the sites. The implications for website design and evaluation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technical troubleshooting is a domain that has changed enormously in recent years. Instead of relying on visits from service personnel end users facing technical problems with machinery, for example computers and printers, can now seek assistance from systems that guide them toward an autonomous solution of the problem. Systems that can be offered to them are wide in their range, but typically fall either in the category of Expert Systems or searchable databases that can be queried with keyword searches. Both approaches present advantages and disadvantages in terms of flexibility to address different levels of user expertise and ease of maintenance. However, few studies explicitly address the issue of how best to design for a balance between guidance and user freedom in such systems. In the work reported here an office equipment manufacturer's call centre was studied in order to understand the mechanisms used when human agents guide users toward a resolution. The overall aim here is not to reproduce the agent behaviour in a system, but rather to identify which interactional building blocks such a system should have. These are assessed in relation to the existing online knowledge base resources offered by the same company in order to exemplify the kinds of issues designers need to attend to in this domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of multiple monitors for personal desktop computing is becoming more prevalent as the price of display technology decreases. The use of two monitors for a single desktop has been shown to have performance improvement in several studies. However, few studies have been performed with more than three monitors. As a result, we report an observational analysis of the use of a large tiled display containing nine monitors (in a 3x3 matrix). The total resolution of the large display is 3840x3072, for a total of 11,796,480 pixels. Over the course of six months we observed the behavior and actions of five users who used the display extensively as a desktop. We relate our observations, provide feedback concerning common usage of how people do and do not use the display, provide common scenarios and results of interviews, and give a series of design recommendations and guidelines for future designers of applications for high-resolution, tiled displays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional interaction in large screen projection-based display sys tems only allows a "master user" to have full control over the application. We have developed the VRGEO Demonstrator application based on an interaction paradigm that allows multiple users to share large projection-based environment displays for co-located collaboration. Following SDG systems we introduce a collaborative interface based on tracked PDAs and integrate common device metaphors into the interface to improve user's learning experience of the virtual environment system. The introduction of multiple workspaces in a virtual envi ronment allows users to spread out data for analysis making use of the large screen space more effectively. Two extended informal evaluation sessions with application domain experts and demonstrations of the system show that our collaborative interaction paradigm improves the learning experience and interac tivity of the virtual environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple large displays are being increasingly used in interactive workspaces to enhance individual and group work. However, little research has been conducted to determine whether various configurations of large displays impact users or their tasks differently. We show that such an impact exists, and take steps towards developing guidelines for how to effectively arrange large displays in interactive workspaces. For two large displays, we manipulated their physical separation, angle between them, and symmetry when facing each other and measured time on task, subjective workload, and satisfaction for application relocation tasks. From the results, we produced three useful guidelines: (i) displays can be separated on a horizontal plane up to a subtended visual angle of 45°, (ii) a display should not be placed behind a user, but if necessary, it should be offset relative to the user, and (iii) displays should be positioned at a 45° angle relative to each other rather than being orthogonal. As the use of large displays is increasing, these guidelines should have a broad, practical impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Focus-Metaphor Approach is a novel concept for the design of adaptive and user-centric virtual environments which seeks to use a form of associativity to adapt the interface to the user whilst keeping one primary focus element and many secondary and peripheral focus elements. In this paper, the underlying theory is presented and differentiated from related research. The proposed solution has been implemented as a prototype and tested for usability issues using an online evaluation and in-laboratory eye-tracking to find some evidence that time spent off-communication is reduced. The results are reported briefly, implications considered and the areas for further work are pointed out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the reasons behind students' different responses to human versus machine tutors and explore possible solutions that will motivate students to offer more elaborated responses to computerized tutoring systems, and ultimately behave in a more "learning oriented" manner. We focus upon two sets of variables, one surrounding the students' perceptions of tutor qualities and the other surrounding the conversational dynamics of the dialogues themselves. We offer recommendations based on our empirical investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the design and user evaluation of an intelligent user interface intended to mediate between users and an Adaptive Information Extraction (AIE) system. The design goal was to support a synergistic and cooperative work. Laboratory tests showed the approach was efficient and effective; focus groups were run to assess its ease of use. Logs, user satisfaction questionnaires, and interviews were exploited to investigate the interaction experience. We found that user' attitude is mainly hierarchical with the user wishing to control and check the system's initiatives. However when confidence in the system capabilities rises, a more cooperative interaction is adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A system for automatically evaluating the usability and accessibility of web sites by checking their HTML code against guidelines has been developed. All usability and accessibility guidelines are formally expressed in a XML-compliant specification language called Guideline Definition Language (GDL) so as to separate the evaluation engine from the evaluation logics (the guidelines). This separation enables managing guidelines (i.e., create, retrieve, update, and delete) without affecting the code of the evaluation engine. The evaluation engine is coupled to a reporting system that automatically generates one or many evaluation reports in a flexible way: adaptation for screen reading or for a printed report, sorting by page, by object, by guideline, by priority, or by severity of the detected problems. This paper focuses on the reporting system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though there have been many studies of computer based text reading, only a few have considered the small screens of handheld computers. This paper presents an investigation into the effect of varying font size between 2 and 16 point on reading text on a handheld computer. By using both older and younger participants the possible effects of age were examined. Reading speed and accuracy were measured and subjective views of participants recorded. Objective results showed that there was little difference in reading performance above 6 point, but subjective comments from participants showed a preference for sizes in the middle range. We therefore suggest, for reading tasks, that designers of interfaces for mobile computers provide fonts in the range of 8-12 point to maximize readability for the widest range of users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a steady growth in the global population of elderly people, challenging researchers in the HCI community to design technologies to help them remain independent and preserve their quality of life. One approach has been to create assistive technology solutions using Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). However, some have questioned whether older people can use PDAs because of age related problems with dexterity, coordination, and vision. This paper presents an initial usability study that shows there are no major differences in performance between older and younger users when physically interacting with PDAs and completing conventional (e.g. pressing buttons, viewing icons, recording messages) and non-conventional tasks (e.g. scanning bar codes). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the strengths and weaknesses of three diverse scroll control modalities for photo browsing on personal digital assistants (PDAs). This exploration covered nine alternatives in a design space that consisted of three visual interfaces and three control modalities. The three interfaces were a traditional thumbnail layout, a layout that placed a single picture on the screen at a time, and a hybrid that placed one large photo in the center of the display, while also displaying a row of neighboring thumbnails at the top and bottom of the screen. In a user experiment we paired each of these interfaces with each of the following three scroll control modalities: a jog dial, a squeeze sensor, and an on-screen control that was activated by tapping with a stylus. We offer a simple model that classifies our experiment's interfaces by how much they provide visual context within the photo collection. The model also classifies the scroll modalities by how tightly they correlate scroll input actions to effects on the screen. Performance and attitudinal results from the user experiment are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local memory in mobile devices increases rapidly. Simultaneously, new content creation devices, such as digital cameras, are embedded. As a consequence, the amount of locally stored content is bound to increase in huge numbers. In order to provide support for end-users in managing this ever-growing pile of content, new means of accessing, organizing, and enjoying the content are needed. We investigate techniques that may be used to display more information, especially visual content, on the mobile device screen at once, as well as accessing the content with ease. We focus on visual interaction, with a media manager as a target application. We present the design factors and a prototype application running on a mobile phone. We show that it is feasible to include spatial cues in the design of mobile user interfaces, and report an initial usability study with very encouraging results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detachable user interfaces consist of graphical user interfaces whose parts or whole can be detached at run-time from their host, migrated onto another computing platform while carrying out the task, possibly adapted to the new platform and attached to the target platform in a peer-to-peer fashion. Detaching is the property of splitting a part of a UI for transferring it onto another platform. AttAaching is the reciprocal property: a part of an existing interface can be attached to the currently being used interface so as to recompose another one on-demand, according to user's needs, task requirements. Assembling interface parts by detaching and attaching allows dynamically composing, decomposing and re-composing new interfaces on demand. To support this interaction paradigm, a development infrastructure has been developed based on a series of primitives such as display, undisplay, copy, expose, return, transfer, delegate, and switch. We exemplify it with QTkDraw, a painting application with attaching and detaching based on the development infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobility of ubiquitous systems offers the possibility of using the current context to infer information that might otherwise require user input. This can either make user interfaces more intuitive or cause subtle and confusing mode changes. We discuss the analysis of such systems that will allow the designer to predict potential pitfalls before the design is fielded. Whereas the current predominant approach to understanding mobile systems is to build and explore experimental prototypes, our exploration highlights the possibility that early models of an interactive system might be used to predict problems with embedding in context before costly mistakes have been made. Analysis based on model checking is used to contrast configuration and context issues in two interfaces to a process control system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, designers of Virtual Reality (VR) applications are faced with the choice of a large number of different input and output devices leading to a growing number of interaction techniques. Usually VR interaction techniques are described informally, based on the actions users can perform within the VR environment. At implementation time, such informal descriptions (made at design time) yield to ambiguous interpretations by the developers. In addition, informal descriptions make it difficult to foresee the impact throughout the application of a modification of the interaction techniques. This paper discusses the advantages of using a formal description technique (called ICO) to model interaction techniques and dialogues for VR applications. This notation is presented via a case study featuring an immersive VR application. The case study is then used to show, through analysis of models, how the formal notation can help to ensure the usability, reliability and efficiency of virtual reality systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a new unifying workstyle model for the user-centered design process, comprised of eight dimensions that we claim as fundamental to supporting the UCD process. Our proposal is new because it is the first workstyle model tailored to UCD. We also show the usefulness of workstyle modeling when evaluating the stage/effort of a project at a given time. Our workstyle model was based on the identification of the main obstacles to UCD and SE integration, current research results and extensive observation of HCI students involved in UCD projects. Though simple, it models the designer's behavior and can be effectively and easily used to (a) choose adequate tool support for a given phase of a project and (b) drive the development of new UCD tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing amount of digital music available at desktop computers and portable media players increases the need for interfaces that facilitate efficient music navigation. Search patterns are quantified and evaluated across types of feedback and input controllers in an experiment with 12 participants. The way music is searched and the subjective factors varied significantly across input device and type of audio feedback. However, no difference in task completion time was found for the evaluated interfaces. Based on the experiments, we propose several ways in which future designs may improve searching and browsing in recorded music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Document triage is the practice of quickly determining the merit and disposition of relevant documents. This practice involves selection of documents from a document overview and quick forms of reading: skimming, reading short portions of a longer document, and navigating through headings, indices, and tables of contents. Earlier studies of document triage practice showed considerable overhead related to window management during transitions between the document overview and reading interfaces. This study examines the impact of multiple display configurations on document triage practice. In particular, it compares (1) configurations with same and different size displays, and (2) configurations with and without user control over which activity is performed on which display. Results show a significant increase in the number of transitions between activities when a multi-display configuration is introduced although there is no significant difference between the different multiple display configurations. Additionally, user activity with a document was positively correlated with an overall assessment of document value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a lightweight tool to compare the relevance ranking provided by a search engine to the relevance as actually judged by the user performing the query. Using the tool, we conducted a user study with two different versions of the search engine for a large corporate web site with more than 1.8 million pages, and with the popular search engine GoogleTM. Our tool provides an inexpensive and efficient way to do this comparison, and can be easily extended to any search engine that provides an API. Relevance feedback from actual users can be used to assess precision and recall of a search engine's retrieval algorithms and, perhaps more importantly, to tune its relevance ranking algorithms to better match user needs. We found the tool to be quite effective at comparing different versions of the same search engine, and for benchmarking by comparing against a standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 2x2 mixed design experiment (N=52) was conducted to examine the effects of search interface and task complexity on participants' information-seeking performance and affective experience. Keyword vs. natural language search was the within-participants factor; simple vs. complex tasks was the between-participants factor. There were cross-over interactions such that complex-task participants were more successful and thought the tasks were less difficult and reported more enjoyment and confidence when they used keyword search vs. natural language queries, while the opposite was found for simple-task participants. The findings suggest that natural language search is not the panacea for all information retrieval tasks: task complexity is a critical mediator. Implications for interface design and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the CAS/CAD field, the increasing adoption of Spline-based free-form methods to generate surfaces, has introduced a higher degree of freedom into the design process. However, on the other hand, this evolution has made the process of creating and manipulating surfaces more complex. For this reason a much more intuitive and intelligent task-centered and user-centered interaction paradigm is required. This paper presents a responsive interaction technique which adopts a sketch-based interface capable of exploiting the stepwise refinement process typical of conceptual designing. Further it makes use of adaptive user modeling techniques by introducing an innovative adaptive decision-tree structure for top-down designing. We illustrate the implementation of the algorithm and we highlight its efficiency and feasibility for its adoption within Sketch-Based Modeling Systems (SBMS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparison of several selection aids to improve pointing input on tabletop displays. Our previous research explored the TractorBeam-a hybrid point-touch interaction technique for tabletop displays. We found that while pointing input was preferred (over touch) by users of tabletop displays, it was slower for small distant targets. Drawing from previous work on improving target acquisition for desktop displays, we developed and tested three selection aids to improve pointing selection of small distant targets on tabletop displays: expanding the cursor, expanding the target, and snapping to the target. Our experiments revealed that all three aids resulted in faster selection times than no selection aid at all, with snapping to the target being the fastest. Additionally, participants liked snapping to the target better than the other selection aids and found it to be the most effective for selecting targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pen computing devices provide a natural interface for annotating documents with freeform digital ink. However, digital ink annotations are usually larger and sloppier than real ink annotations on paper. We present DIZI, a focus+context interface that zooms up a region of the underlying document for inking. Users write in the zoomed region at a comfortable size for the device. When the zoom region is shrunk back to normal page size, the digital ink shrinks to an appropriate size for the underlying document. The zoom region covers only a small portion of the screen so that users can always see the overall context of the underlying document. We describe several techniques for fluidly moving the zoom region to navigate the document. We show that DIZI allows users to create digital ink annotations that more closely mimic the look of real ink annotations on physical paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile devices (cellular phone, PDA, etc.) have so far been personal tools. Due to their evolution to multi-functionality, however, the devices have begun to be used by multiple people in co-located situations. This paper discusses near future technologies: a mobile device with a projector and intuitive manipulation techniques by using a video camera mounted on the device. In today's technologies, it is difficult to realize a mobile device with a small and lightweight projector that still retains the feature of mobility. Therefore, we have developed a system to project displays of mobile devices on a table, a floor, or a wall, by tracking their three-dimensional positions and orientations and using an existing LCD projector. The proposed system called Hotaru (a firefly, in English) allows users to annotate/rotate a picture or a document in a mobile device by touching its projected display with their fingers. Users can intuitively transfer a file between multiple devices by making their projected displays overlapped. Informal evaluations of Hotaru indicated that the proposed manipulation techniques could effectively support multiple people in co-located situations in conducting their tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tangible computing applications are rarely evaluated with field studies in real settings, which can contribute as formative studies to understand the challenges and benefits of tangible interfaces in real world practices. We present an AR environment for painting, with a physical brush, digital textures on physical models and creating dynamic stages for the model with spatial collages providing different backgrounds. We report on an evaluation of this AR environment in an architecture school, where 8 groups of students used it as a practical assignment. The evaluation demonstrated the benefits of specific features of the environment and of its tangible interfaces: immersiveness, public availability, supporting collaboration, flexibility, dynamicism and resulting rapidity in creating mixed media representations. Several challenges surfaced from the evaluation especially in connection to the distribution of the interface. The physical, spatial, and computational separation of interface components raised issues on accountability and ergonomics. We link our observations to design guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quick prototyping of tangible user interfaces is currently hampered by availability of toolkits and the double challenge of tinkering with software and hardware. While software may be downloaded, hardware cannot. As a work-around for a class on experimental prototyping of tangible appliances we utilized the ARToolKit that tracks optical markers. By creatively adapting it, our students quickly developed working prototypes, simulating a range of devices and tracking technologies. Our approach enabled a focus on quick prototyping, idea testing and simulation of the interaction process. We explain our reasons for using the ARToolKit, summarize its advantages and disadvantages, present four students projects, and discuss our experiences and conclusions. In particular we found that visual tracking has the advantage not to limit or determine possible interaction styles and thus fosters designing richer interaction. We discuss this as a requirement for future tangible prototyping toolkits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a model for haptizing wind on a weather map. To design the model, we examined the human sensory scale to represent wind speed and direction with appropriate haptic stimuli, and examined parameters of the stimulus that allow a user to easily recognize changes in wind speed and direction. The results of these experiments show that vibration frequency can represent wind speed while a constant reactive force represents direction. The model solves a problem users of reactive force-only systems have difficulty identifying direction when the force is small due to light wind. Based on the model, we have developed a prototype weather information system with visual and haptic information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an initial investigation into the use of Tactons, or tactile icons, to present progress information in desktop human-computer interfaces. Progress bars are very common in a wide range of interfaces but have problems. For example, they must compete for screen space and visual attention with other visual tasks such as document editing or web browsing. To address these problems we created a tactile progress indicator, encoding progress information into a series of vibrotactile cues. An experiment comparing the tactile progress indicator to a standard visual one showed a significant improvement in performance and an overall preference for the tactile display. These results suggest that a tactile display is a good way to present such information and this has many potential applications from computer desktops to mobile telephones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The abundance of data available nowadays fosters the need of developing tools and methodologies to help users in extracting significant information. Visual data mining is going in this direction, exploiting data mining algorithms and methodologies together with information visualization techniques. The demand for visual and interactive analysis tools is particularly pressing in the Association Rules context where often the user has to analyze hundreds of rules in order to grasp valuable knowledge. In this paper, we present a visual strategy that exploits a graph-based technique and parallel coordinates to visualize the results of association rule mining algorithms. This helps data miners to get an overview of the rule set they are interacting with and enables them to deeper investigate inside a specific set of rules. The tools developed are embedded in a framework for Visual Data Mining that is briefly described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Web took the world by storm, and as a result developed rapidly in many directions. However it still exhibits many aspects of its early development, such as its visual and computer-screen orientation. But the Web is still developing rapidly: there are now more browsers on mobile telephones than on desktops, and there is a vast diversity in types of devices, types and orientations of screens, and sizes (in number of pixels), and resolutions (in dpi) of screens. Dealing with this diversity is impossible to address just by keeping a list of all the possible devices, or even a list of the most-used ones, and producing different sites for them, since the complexity would be unmanageable, and because once sites started turning away browsers and devices they didn't know, the browser makers responded by disguising themselves to such sites as other browsers. On top of this diversity there is also the diversity required for accessibility. Although providing access for the visually impaired is an important reason for accessibility, we are all more or less visually impaired at one time or another. When displaying an application on a projector screen at a conference or meeting, the whole audience will typically be visually impaired in comparison to someone sitting behind a computer screen. The existence of separate socalled "Ten-foot Interfaces" (for people controlling their computers by remote control from an armchair ten feet away) demonstrates that the original applications are not designed for accessibility. Furthermore, Google (and all other search engines) is blind, and sees only what a blind user sees of a page; as the webmaster of a large bank has remarked, "we have noticed that improving accessibility increases our Google rating". The success of the Web has turned the browser into a central application area for the user, and you can spend most of your day working with applications in the browser, reading mail, shopping, searching your own diskdrive. The advent of applications such as Google Maps and GMail has focussed minds on delivering applications via the web, not least because it eliminates the problems involved with versioning: everyone always has the most recent version of your application. Since Web-based applications have benefits for both user and provider, we can only expect to see more of them in the future. But this approach comes at a cost. Google Maps is of the order of 200K of Javascript code. Such applications are only writable by programming experts, and producing an application is not possible by the sort of people who often produce web pages for their own use. The Web Interfaces landscape is in turmoil at the moment. Microsoft has announced a new markup language and vector graphics language for the next version of Windows; probably as a response Adobe has acquired Macromedia and therefore Flash; W3C have standards for applications in the form of XForms, XHTML and SVG and are working on 'compound documents'; and other browser manufacturers are calling for their own version of HTML. What are we to make of these different approaches? Are they conflicting? Have any addressed authorability, device-independence, usability or accessibility? Is it even possible to make accessible applications? HTML made creating hypertext documents just about as easy as it could be; do any of the new approaches address this need for simplicity, or has power been irretrievably returned to the programmers? This talk discusses the requirements for Web Applications, and the underpinnings necessary to make Web Applications follow in the same spirit that engendered the Web in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our society's modalities of communication are rapidly changing: we divide our activities between real and digital worlds and our daily lives are characterized by our constant access-to and processing-of a vast quantity and variety of information. These transformations of our lifestyle demand both a new architecture and interaction modalities that support the new as well as old ways of communicating and living. As a consequence of the prevalent role of information in today's society, architecture is presently at a turning point. Screens are everywhere, from the billboards which dot the contemporary urban cityscape, to the video walls which welcome us in the entry-halls of corporate headquarter buildings, to our desktop computer monitor at home, the PDA in our pocket, or the tiny private-eye screens of wearable computers. Wearable computers are starting to transform our technological landscape by reshaping the heavy, bulky desktop computer into a lightweight, portable device that's accessible to people at any time. Computation and sensing are moving from computers and devices into the environment itself. The space around us is instrumented with sensors and displays, and this tends to reflect a widespead need to blend together the information space with our physical space. "Augmented reality" and "mixed reality" are the terms most often used to refer to this type of media-enhanced interactive space. The combination of large public and miniature personal digital displays together with distributed computing and sensing intelligence offers unprecedented opportunities to merge the virtual and the real, the information landscape of the Internet with the urban landscape of the city, to transform digital animated media in public installations, in storytellers, also by means of personal wearable technology. To meet the challenges of the new information- and technology-inspired architecture we need to think of the architectural space not simply as a container but as a living body endowed with sensors, actuators, and a brain (a mind), a space capable of assisting people in the course of their activities within such spaces. On the basis of my work and research I will argue that intelligent architecture needs to be supported by three forms of intelligence: perceptual intelligence, which captures people's presence and movement in the space in a natural and non-encumbering way; interpretive intelligence, which "understands" people's actions and is capable of making informed guesses about their behavior; and narrative intelligence, which presents us with information, articulated stories, images, and animations, in the right place, at the right time, all tailored to our needs and preferences. This talk will describe and illustrate a series of models, technological platforms and installations the author developed originally at the MIT Media Lab (1994 to 2002) and later commercially for Sensing Places (2003 to 2005). They contribute to defining new trends in architecture that merge virtual and real spaces, and are currently in the process of reshaping the way we live and experience the museum, the home, the theater, and the modern city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among others, Hummels, Djajadiningrat and Overbeeke (Knowing, Doing and Feeling: Communication with your Digital Products. Interdisziplinäres Kolleg Kognitions und Neurowissenschaften, Günne am Möhnesee, March 2-9 2001, 289-308.), have expressed the notion that the real product of design is the resultant "context for experience" rather than the object or software that provokes that experience. This closely corresponds to what I refer to as a transition in focus from a materialistic to an experiential view of design. Paraphrasing what I have already said, is not the physical entity or what is in the box (the "material" product) that is the true outcome of the design process. Rather, it is the behavioural, experiential and emotional responses that come about as a result of its existence and use in the "wild". Designing for experience comes with a whole new level of complexity. This is especially true in this emerging world of information appliances, reactive environments and ubiquitous computing, where, along with those of their users, we have to factor in the convoluted behaviours of the products themselves. Doing this effectively requires both a different mind-set, as well as different techniques. This talk is motivated by a concern that, in general, our current training and work practices are not adequate to meet the demands of this level of design. This is true for those coming from a computer science background, since they do not have sufficient grounding in design, at least in the sense that would be recognized by an architect or industrial designer. Conversely, those from the design arts, while they have the design skills, do not generally have the technical skills to adequately address the design issues relating to the complex embedded behaviours of such devices and systems. Hence, in this talk, we discuss the design process itself, from the perspective of methods, organization, and composition. Fundamental to our approach is the notion that sketching is a fundamental component of design, and is especially critical at the early ideation phase. Yet, due to the temporal nature of what we are designing, conventional sketching is not - on its own - adequate. Hence, if we are to design experience or interaction, we need to adopt something that is to our process that is analogous to what traditional sketching is to the process of conventional industrial design. It is the motivation and exploration of such a sketching process that is the foundation of this presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]