This page gives you access to lists of my publications under
the headings: books, parts of books and journal articles.
The following is given by way of introduction.
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI):
My work is concerned with providing practical techniques
to help designers build more usable computer systems. This
has two strands.
With Peter Wright and others I have explored evaluation
methods by which a designer can get rapid feedback from
users very early in the design process. This work
culminated in the Cooperative Evaluation method described
in the book "Improving your human-computer interface".
With Martin Curry and others I have explored methods for
characterising aspects of the users' work which may
impinge on a design and then using this characterisation to
build a top level dialogue model. This work has resulted in
the tool "Action Simulator"
available
by FTP.
All the methods coming from this work are "discount
methods" that is they require a minimum effort to learn and
to use.
Social and leisure uses of information and communication technology
Developments in computing and communication technology present enormous opportunities to change the way that ordinary people find entertainment and recreation in the home.
HCI is particularly well placed to invent new forms of electronic entertainment that are truly recreational. We understand how people use computers and communication media and we have methods for finding out what people want to do with these technologies. Nevertheless, because of our previous fixation with work, there is a lot to learn. Usability is the word we use to describe the qualities that induce good experiences with software designed to support work. What qualities induce a good experiences with software for leisure? How do we measure those qualities? How do we predict what will produce them?
This is really is a new frontier and one I (nor many others) have not yet had a chance to make a significant contribution to. We have a lot of ideas and we are forging the new alliances needed to tackle this topic.
If you would be interested in collaborating on research in this general area, particularly any of the following topics, please contact
me.
- Technology for older people
- Electronic socialising
- Interaction techniques with very low cognitive effort
For a description of the work we are doing in the area of electronic socialising and the recreational experience under the ESRC/EPSRC PACCIT Programme click here
here
Video links and computer supported cooperative work
(CSCW):
With Leon Watts
and Owen Daly-Jones I have been
extending this work to
video links as an adjunct to shared
tools. We have built a tool, Action Recorder that allows us
to analyse video tapes for gaze direction etc. in near to real
time. We have also been exploring measures to be applied
to transcripts of what is said and to subjective ratings of
presence.
This project, supported by the ESRC Cognitive Engineering Programme,
is entitled "Multimedia
communication in remote assitance tasks". In this we are comparing
video configurations providing several views, one of which is a view of the work someone
is doing. Field studies of tele-medical consultation have identified interesting issues
that we are now pursuing in experiments, in particular overhearing, and the effect of
a video configuration
on the status of overhearers. The field studies also lead us to develop a new
tabular notation
for reasoning about the effect of communication technology on cooperative work,
the Comms Usage Daigram (CUD).
Computer-mediated communication (CMC):
With John McCarthy and others I have developed ways
about thinking about communication in the context of text-
based synchronous conferencing. Our experiments
demonstrated the viability of some dependent variable that
can capture characteristics of the process of communication
(as opposed to its outcome) such as conversational
coherence.
With Mioko Ambe of the Sony Corporation I have summarised the responses to
a panel run with Jean Scholtz at CHI'96. Audience members suggested 61
criteria
for effective groupware.
These have been gathered into categories that were outlined in
a poster at CHI'97.
Reading and memory:
My thesis (1973!) was on the organisation of human long
term memory. I have also worked on word recognition in
reading and, more recently, statistical studies of reading
disability.
Department of Psychology, University of York, York. UK. YO1 5DD.
Tel: 0904 433148, Fax (+44) 0904 433181, Email: AM1@unix.york.ac.uk