Seattle interaction museum symposium

Sunday, 23 October 2005 Westin Hotel, Seattle, Washington Michel Beaudouin-Lafon & Wendy Mackay Caroline Appert, Emmanuel Pietriga insitu.lri.fr/imuseum

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contents agenda ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................3 interaction museum overview ........................................................................................................................................................................................4 project timeline ...............................................................................................................................................................................................................7 what is an entry? ............................................................................................................................................................................................................8 describing an entry .........................................................................................................................................................................................................9 uploading an entry........................................................................................................................................................................................................11 abstract .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................12 entry formats.................................................................................................................................................................................................................13 storyboard .....................................................................................................................................................................................................................14 final discussion topics ..................................................................................................................................................................................................15 sample scenarios: ........................................................................................................................................................................................................16

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agenda

9:00 10:30 Introductions and Interaction Museum overview plenary presentation

10:30 11:00 Break

11:00 12:30 Create an entry describing an interaction technique small group exercise

12:30 14:00 Lunch

14:00 15:00 Submit an entry to the interaction museum small group exercise

15:00 15:30 Present new entries and give feedback on submission process flash session

15:30 16:00 Break

16:00 17:30 Discuss open issues and next steps plenary discussion

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interaction museum overview Interactive system researchers and designers face a common problem: unlike other design fields (architecture, industrial design, graphic design), we have no shared repository for viewing and comparing interaction techniques. We have no common access to the history of our field, nor is it easy to show students or designers specific examples of good practice. Interaction is dynamic: thus we need a dynamic and interactive medium to view and understand it. Videos and interactive software are ideal for illustrating interactive systems, but to date, no coherent, complete and easily-accessible collection exists. Earlier attempts, such as the SIGCHI video series, were not produced systematically and are difficult to access. Our goal is to create a process and structure that encourages on-going collection of new material and to facilitate access for a variety of users. The Interaction Museum will collect a wide variety of interaction techniques and systems and make them available to research and industry. We will take advantage of recent advances in networked video technology to present videos and software applets via an on-line website, making the techniques easy to search, compare and present. The foundation of the Interaction Museum will be an indexed collection of entries, each summarized with a text description and accompanying image, with links to associated material including: storyboards, video clips, software applets, research document abstracts, references to full papers, and links to related entries. However, we believe that such a collection, while useful, is not sufficient. We chose the term Interaction Museum because we also have the notion of exhibits, composed by specialists who provide overviews, analyses or tutorials from selected collections entries. For example, one exhibit might compare and contrast interaction techniques for small displays, while another might organize entries along a taxonomy and another might provide a historical analysis of GUI interfaces from the Xerox Star to today's interface. Initially, our focus will be on capturing historical and current advances in interactive systems, while the materials can still be obtained. In the longer term, we view the Interaction Museum as an on-line publication, with opportunities for researchers and developers to contribute new entries and exhibits. We would like to work with appropriately themed conferences, such as UIST, so that authors could co-publish their research in the Interaction Museum. We are also

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working with acm/interactions magazine, to provide a print outlet for exhibits, in conjunction with the on-line version in the Interaction Museum.

audiences The Interaction Museum is intended for industry practitioners, professors, students and researchers. Practitioners will gain access to a wide collection of existing interaction techniques, which will serve as inspiration or comparison as they develop their own designs as well as a resource for evaluating patent claims. The Interaction Museum will also provide an outlet for practitioners to share their ideas with the research and design community, without going through the standard print publication process. Professors will be able to select from existing courses or create their own, obtaining specific examples that illustrate HCI concepts. Students will be able to search the Interaction Museum to help them with course projects and theses. Ph.D. students may also use the Interaction Museum as an outlet for publishing the state-of-the-art chapters of their theses. Researchers will be able to illustrate their academic articles with a richer set of materials and will benefit from being able to compare their work more easily. The Interaction Museum may also become a resource for providing benchmark tests to facilitate comparisons among systems in both research and industry.

contents The Interaction Museum will first be made available through the Convivio Website. We will create a standard format for meta-data about each entry, to facilitate searching and comparison. We will begin with graphical interaction techniques, because they are of interest to both practitioners and researchers and are the easiest to define. In the future, we plan to include input and output devices, more general interactive systems, tools, etc. Users will be able to search individual entries directly or via exhibits. For example, a historical exhibit would present a chronological view of certain interaction techniques. An exhibit on interaction with small-screen devices, such as PDAs, might include both examples of specific designs as well as research results on human sensorimotor capabilities relevant to small-screen displays. Researchers and graduate students will be encouraged to publish different ways of classifying the contents of the Interaction Museum, e.g., taxonomies of interaction techniques or the use of Fitts' law to compare pointing-based interaction techniques. We also plan to publish a regular column in ACM's interactions magazine to highlight new exhibits.

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Our goal is to create a living museum in which anyone can contribute both new entries and exhibits. A volunteer editorial board will monitor new entries, ensuring that they are accurate and sufficiently distinct from other entries, with appropriate cross-references and metadata. They will also check new entries and exhibits for validity. The review process must be as lightweight as possible but is necessary to ensure the high quality of the interaction museum's content.

process Phase I: (completed) We have created an initial prototype and held the first interaction museum symposium in

France. Phase II: (current - August 2006) We have integrated the graphic design, initial infrastructure and initial content into

a working prototype, and are holding a second symposium in Seattle (with UIST 2005) to collect additional material, solicit feedback and begin recruiting the editorial board.

Phase III: (Sept. 2006) We will launch the Interaction Museum via the Convivio website, with publicity at HCI conferences and organisations and through our contacts in academia and industry. Phase III will begin 'normal operations', in which we will systematically solicit and incorporate new and historical material into the Interaction Museum. In January 2007, we will hand off the interaction museum.

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project timeline 1. Phase I:Initial development of Prototype 0.1 (March - May 2005)

Create initial prototype using existing material with initial graphic design. Entries will consist of text descriptions with illustrations, interactive demos, videos, images, keywords, references to published work, etc.

2. Symposium I (17-18 June 2005, Paris) Organise 2-day symposium with invited key contributors to evaluate, prototype, collect and organise additional material.

3. Symposium II (23 October, 2005, Seattle) Evaluate prototype, collect and organise new material, and establish initial editorial board.

4. Infrastructure development (October 2005 - February 2006) Incorporate Symposium II feedback. Implement working infrastructure to support submission, review and editing process in a scalable, robust form. Generate call for participation for new exhibits (to be published in ACM/interactions).

5. Beta-test launch (April 2006) Publicise the launch of the beta-test version. Begin process of accepting, reviewing and editing new contributions from external participants. Collect use data and suggestions. (Consider a CHI 2006 presentation and meeting.)

6. Phase III:Prototype 1.0 launch (September 2007) Editorial Board in place, to review new material (via submission or from related HCI conferences). Refine infrastructure as required.

7. Hand-off (proposed: ACM Digital Library) (January 2007) We are currently discussing the possibility of handing off the interaction museum to ACM, but must still work out issues of access, maintenance, etc.

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what is an entry? Entries are the building blocks of the interaction museum. All entries have a name, a short text description, an illustrative 'key image', and a set of keywords. Entries must also include a storyboard as part of the more detailed description, to ensure that visitors understand the interactive nature of the technique. The interaction museum also encourages a variety of other types of material to explain or illustrate entries, including videos, and software applets. Interaction Museum visitors may browse entries directly via search queries, hypertext links from other entries or from exhibits that organize and explain groups of entries, based on history, taxonomies, etc. Each must be able to stand alone, like an entry in an encyclopedia, but they should also be accessible for reuse in exhibits and teaching materials. Our goal is to make the museum accessible not only to experts in the field but also to developers in industry, so the writing style should be as clear and direct as possible. If you are the author of an interaction technique, you probably have most of what you need on your laptop: research article(s) that introduce the technique, additional references, images, video clips and even software applets. Some material can be used directly, but other text will have to be edited to fit the interaction museum style and to make sense when read out of context. If you are not the author of the technique, you will need to extract the relevant information from research articles, working systems or prototypes and information available on the web or from the author.

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describing an entry

abstract "identification card" and summary of the entry • short text description of the technique • key image to illustrate the technique • keywords (either selected or created)

detailed description explain how the technique works • storyboard (step-by-step explanation, using 2-5 images with text • primary video (1-3 minutes) that best illustrates the technique • software applet (stand-alone downloadable code) • multimedia presentation with text, images, video and/or applets

usage advantages & limitations, I/O & implementation recommendations • multimedia format, may include text, images, video, external links and software applet

annotated bibliography how the technique has been and should be used • text overview of references • primary reference plus others (.bibTeX or plain text)

see also links to other relevant information • internal links to other interaction museum entries or exhibits

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• external links to relevant information on the web

history background leading to the technique • multimedia format, may include text, images, video, external links and software applets

intellectual property license arrangements and patents • text description and links

products commercial applications • text description and links contributing authors author of the technique and of the entry • author name, contact information

comments & forum remarks from interaction museum visitors • text description and links

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uploading an entry We recommend that you place all relevant files, including videos and software applets, into a single directory and create a .zip archive. From the interaction museum home page, click on “add entry” and then click on the “resources” tab. From there, you can browse your files and upload either one file at a time or the zip archive. Once uploaded, you can select any of these files to create your entry. After uploading the resources for your entry, click on the “edit" tab. You will be able to copy-paste or type in text directly and select relevant files as needed. We have four pre-defined formats for presenting information: a storyboard, which is a series of individual images and associated descriptive text, plain text, illustrated text, and a ‘multimedia’ option, that allows you to include, text, images, video and/or software applets. Note that in the current version, YOU MUST SAVE after you enter each element. The current version is an early prototype. In the future, we would like to offer authors additional ways to enter information and would like your feedback as to which you prefer and why. 1. Web: Edit an existing example, replacing the pre-existing text and material with your own 2. Web: Follow the instructions and insert your text and material where indicated 3. Web: Follow the instructions, using bubble help 4. File: Edit the ASCII text file provided, then copy-paste text and browse files onto the website 5. File: Edit the annotated HTML file and press the 'save' button

6. Other suggestions ?

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abstract entry name: _______________________________________ description: _______________________________________ key image: _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ _______________________________________ keywords: ____________ ____________ __________ contributing authors: _______________________________________

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entry formats

category format options what is it?

abstract text short description of entry key image (.jpg, .gif, .png ...) image of technique in use

keywords (predefined or new) relationship to other entries description storyboard (images + text) step-by-step explanation multimedia description additional explanation applet (downloadable software) interactive illustration video (primary and additional) dynamic illustration usage same as description formats description of how it is used references .bibtex or text formatted, linked see also links (internal, external URLs) relate to other entries history same as description formats how the technique came to be intellectual property text and links licenses, patents, etc. contributing authors text and links Technique and/or entry authors comments text added by visitors

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storyboard a

b c

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final discussion topics

Defining an entry • frontiers of an entry • sections and section names Submission process • identifying authors • alternative entry methods Creative commons license Review process Editorial board Next steps

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sample scenarios: The interaction museum will have different types of users, with different characteristics and different goals. We have begun exploring scenarios, drawn from real people whenever possible, usually a composite of several individuals. These scenarios help ensure that navigation through the site makes sense from different perspectives. Some key distinctions include:

first-time user occasional user regular user research teaching product development product evaluation browse create annotate edit entry exhibit visit glossary design forum novice middle HCI expert

User Profession Education Type When Preferred access Expertise Goal Arthur Ph.D. Student MS CS Research 1st time Browse entries novice Look for a thesis topic.

Boris Professor (HCI) PhD HCI Teaching often Adv search, navigate expert Create advanced course

Charles Assistant Professor PhD CS Teaching yearly Exhibit, paths middle Adapt a course

David Human Factors PhD HF Industry monthly Entries, Search middle In-house product evaluation

Eva Independent web Designer BA graph.design Industry weekly FAQ, Design case middle Specific design problem

Fred Danfoss product designer BA engineering Industry weekly Exhibit novice Specific design problem

George Ideo design manager BS industrial Design Industry monthly Design forum expert Consult: customers

Helen Student HCI course BS Teaching project Design forum novice Seek ideas: course project

Ingrid Assistant Professor MS Architecture Teaching project Exhibit middle Writing research proposal

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Arthur Ph.D. Student Goal: Looking for a thesis topic Characteristics: Research context, 1st-time user, browses exhibits first, then entries, novice Speaks English as a second language Exploration via: Word Search: Limited, since he is not really familiar yet with the terminology Exhibits: Easiest for him - but there isn't one on this subject Navigate entries: Possible, like scanning entries in an index to get ideas By example: Would be nice if he can express his example and ask for similar things context:Arthur is searching for a thesis topic in computer science in the area of interaction techniques. He has not yet talked to his thesis advisor, who publishes often at UIST and works on interaction techniques of various kinds. He needs to learn about the state-of-the-art and history of techniques his advisor has worked on and try to find areas that still need new research. He has already had an introductory course in HCI and knows a little bit about basic widgets, but not much more. He used 'phidgets' (physical widgets) in his first HCI course project. He created a system that allowed him to communicate with his cat in Brazil: he moves a small, furry mouse located at his parents house in Brazil and he can monitor the cat via a webcam. He wants to see if anyone else has done anything like this and what the related research questions might be. scenario:Arthur enters the interaction museum via his favorite browser, Safari on a Mac. He first sees the Welcome page for researchers, which explains a bit about the Interaction museum and gives him access to the four types of exploration, above. He decides to browse quickly through the entries, scrolling through a long list of entry names, each with a single image. He picks out the "phidgets" entry and looks at it. He learns that they were created by Saul Greenberg and Chester Fitchet and prints out two related research papers about them. He looks at a video, then several specific examples of phidgets, including a slider (which leads him to on-line and off-line scroll bars) and an RFID tag reader (which leads him to an exhibit on RFID-based systems). He also finds an exhibit on "communication appliances" and another on taxonomies of 'mixed reality systems'. He goes through the latter exhibit and realizes that her project does not neatly fit into the taxonomy presented in the exhibit, and he decides that this might be a promising direction for his thesis.

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Boris Professor in HCI, who does research in interaction techniques Goal: Creating a new, advanced course for students in a graduate seminar in his field Characteristics: Expert in HCI techniques, develops and studies them, knows the literature Exploration via: Word Search: Yes Exhibits: Sure Navigate entries: Yes By example: Maybe context: Boris is an expert in user interface techniques, conducting research in the area of Fitts' pointing paradigm. He and his students have already published several innovative techniques and are investigating a new technique. He runs a seminar with another professor and four graduate students who are investigating this topic in depth. This year, Boris wants to publish a paper at UIST, the premier conference for new interaction techniques. He and his students in his graduate seminar want to create a new technique that 'beats Fitts' law). scenario: Boris has already developed a very extensive course that surveys techniques that use Fitts paradigm to evaluate their effectiveness. As in previous years, he returns to his basic course, but also checks to see if any new techniques have been added that he is not aware of. He uses an advanced word search to identify possible new entries and looks at a new course that was posted by a friend of his at another university. He also notes that several new techniques, which have not been analyzed in terms of Fitts' paradigm, have been added from industry. He decides to integrate them into his course, and adds 'questions' for his students to get them to think about how to evaluate these new techniques experimentally, in the context of the existing literature.

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Charles Assistant Professor in Computer Science (not HCI), Ph.D. in Computer Science Goal: Teach an annual HCI project course for intro CS students, who must design and develop an interactive system with a novel user interface Characteristics: Not his field - he feels uncomfortable with the literature, but has some familiarity He has programmed lots of websites, but few interactive systems. He took an HCI course a few years back, but all he can remember was something about analyzing tasks. Exploration via: Word Search: Yes, but only to follow up on something specific Exhibits: Especially course exhibits by other professors Navigate entries: Yes, but only to follow up on something specific By example: No context: Every year, Charles checks other courses to see what he can reuse for his non-specialist HCI course. scenario: Charles enters the Interaction Museum via the "research" main page. He turns on the "remember my path" function, which keeps track of every entry he sees (no matter how he got there) and returns and editable "path" that he can reuse for his slides in class. Charles goes first to the teaching exhibits, since wants to see if someone else has already created the kind of course he needs. Each course is clearly identified with the original professor who wrote created it, the school and the type of course. Some are full courses, with much explanation and associated with slides, others are just paths through a set of entries that expose the students to a particular set of interaction techniques, often with a quick one-page introduction (about a project course assignment, for example). He finds Boris's course, which is very detailed, but decides it is too advanced for his students. On the other hand, he likes the structure. He then extracts the resulting path, which is a series of entry names, with associated images. He deletes over half of the entries and reorders the rest. He then returns to his exploration of the non-teaching exhibits, to see if he can find other interesting sequences. He saves three more entries, adds them to his 'path'. He then follows a few other links and adds another five entries to his list. Charles decides to gather the resulting path of

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introductory text, images and several videos and then sends the result to his teaching assistant, Xavier, for comment. Xavier creates a slide presentation with the material and sends it back to Charles, just in time for the course.

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David Human Factors engineer, Ph.D. Psychology and Ergonomics Goal:Evaluate the design choices made for an in-house software product Characteristics: Very familiar with experimental methods and task analysis, not as clear on possible interaction techniques Exploration via: Word Search: Yes Exhibits: No Navigate entries: Yes By example: Yes, if something is right in the same domain context: David has been assigned to evaluate a billing software package that his company has modified for dentists. He was not involved in the design process, but has been asked to decide if the system will be easy for users to use. scenario: David listened to a presentation about the DDS system and was disappointed to see that the developers used template forms and standard pull-down menus to access all the functionality of the system - a slow and cumbersome approach, especially for experienced users. David had heard from a friend about the interaction museum and that there were other 'better ways' to handle menus, even though he wasn't quite sure what they were. He logs into the interaction museum (industry) page and looks around. He decides to search for "menu" and receives both a list of exhibits that treat menus as a subject and a list of individual entries (hierarchically organized, not one linear list) on different categories of menus. He decides to look at the historical exhibit and is interested to see that 'marking menus' are significantly faster than pull-down menus, even though they are rarely used in commercial software. He moves to the entry on pull-down menus and explores some of the related links. Then, he captures a small presentation, with a selection of five menu types, including pull-down menus and marking menus, which he shows to the engineers. He explains that he would like to test their same interface with these different types of menus, to see if they can improve end-user efficiency, a major selling point in that competitive market. The programmers go to the interaction museum, download the relevant code, and build a quick prototype of several of the standard pages that use the new type of menu. With this test system, David can compare the existing with the new menu type on real users, in a quick usability study. (He discovers that marking menus are indeed faster.)

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Eva Independent web Designer, with a BFA (Bachelor's of Fine Arts) in graphic design Goal: To find a novel method of navigating through the CD-ROM she's designing (a history of the violin, it's premiere artists, creators and composers). Characteristics: Has a good visual sense, but is not at all a programmer. Does not know about or want to know about things like usability testing, but she is very interesting in creating a unique and aesthetically pleasing user experience for her users Exploration via: Word Search: No Exhibits: Yes Navigate entries: Perhaps By example: Yes context: Eva has a visual design theme, a violin's scroll and wants to see if she can make it interactive. scenario: Eva logs into the industry section of the interaction museum and begins exploring ideas from CD-ROM exhibits. She goes to the 'example' template and tries to explain her design problem: She has an image of the scroll on a violin, which she would like to use as a visual theme for exploring a history of famous violin creators, composers and pieces of music. She sees several examples of circular and oval menus that allow the user to slide forward or backward in time. She also sees an example of a 2d oval menu that can tilt side-ways, giving a 3d effect that she decides to borrow for handling the three categories. She also sees an example of an interface in which the elements on a timeline may be slide forward or backward, like the files in a filing cabinet, with the sections inside representing shorter segments of time. After her exploration of different ideas, she returns to work, and develops her own visual theme, borrowing elements from several different interaction museum entries.

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Fred Product designer, BA engineering at Danfoss, Danish monitoring device manufacturer Goal:Design an interface to a remote-controlled temperature gauge for supermarket refrigerators Characteristics: Hardware guy, likes to build stuff, will read if he has to but is not interested at all in theory, research or whatever - he just wants ideas for something that will work Exploration via: Word Search: Limited to the obvious types of menus and scrollbars Exhibits: Yes Navigate entries: Yes By example: Yes context: Fred has a traditional software engineering background, likes computer games. He has been at Danfoss for 2 years and previously worked 5 years for a small firm that creates devices for managing temperature levels in supermarket refrigerators and freezers. He moved to Danfoss when they acquired his company two years ago. Fred's boss has just called a meeting on their "common user interface" for their temperature control devices. This is tricky, since Danfoss has acquired a number of different companies over the past few years, all with different interfaces. Danfoss currently no standard "look and feel". (Note: these devices range in size from a Phidget-size screen to a PDA, most can be controlled remotely, and many have screens or leds to indicate current status.) Fred is asked to look at current information-presentation strategies for existing devices and to craft a solution for a common display interface (or more likely, a collection of accepted interface modules) that will meet all the needs met in the existing devices, but look like it came from Danfoss. Fred uses Windows and programs mostly in C and Java. His idea of a user interface is a pull-down menu and a scrollbar. However, he also enjoys playing computer games and vaguely realizes that there may be other options out there. He has no training in HCI and doesn't even really know what it is. (His only experience with HCI is through the ergonomists who occasionally arrive with a list of criticisms of his work, but no clear design suggestions for what to do better, and always at the end of a project when it's too late.) He likes the idea of a common interface standard, since he figures that will allow him and his colleagues to spend their time on "real" programming and not waste time

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deciding which button goes where. He assumes that the best solution to the "common look and feel" will be to simply select a collection of display elements and make them available. scenario: Fred enters the Interaction Museum via the "industry" main page. He goes to the exhibits to see if there is anything that might be relevant to his design problem. He finds several courses, but figures those are for college students and he's already designed 5 interfaces, so he assumes he's an expert. He doesn't want to know who invented a technique or why it's good, he just wants to know "which is best" so he can get on with his real work of building systems. He discovers an exhibit that compares small-device input and output, based on examples from different companies. He sees a number of ideas that he hadn't thought of and learns that it is possible to compare these techniques to see which is better in which situation. He follows several pointers to specific display techniques, including menus and sound options. The exhibit stresses the multi-disciplinary nature of the design problem and he begins to think he doesn't know quite as much as he thought he did. He shows the exhibit to his boss, who shows it to the rest of the group. Another colleague asks if there's any way to find out about the pros and cons of a particular type of menu. Someone from the communications department, who is monitoring the project since the look and feel of these devices relates to Danfoss's brand image, asks if there is anything on comparing fonts on the screen and readability. They notice a feature of the interaction museum, in addition to frequently-asked questions, which is a request to solve a design problem. (Sort of like home-improvement shows that have write-in questions for common problems.) They see that a number of design problems have already been entered, and some have been answered by HCI researchers and other people in industry. Several others have been earmarked as potential thesis topics.