From: carm@cs.umd.edu (Richard Chimera)
Subject: U of Maryland HCIL Symposium
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 00:02:24 GMT
Expires: Fri, 5 Jun 1992 07:00:00 GMT


	  	Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
        	   Center for Automation Research
	       University of Maryland, College Park, MD

			proudly announces its

		  9th Annual Symposium & Open House
	on Friday, June 5, 1992 in The LeFrak Building, Room 2205
                           9:00am - 5:00pm

	   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   This message contains an overview, the schedule, lecture
   abstracts, and registration instructions.
   A printed brochure will be mailed to all ACM SIGCHI members around
   April 1, but you can request additional copies through Teresa Casey,
   whose address and email address are in the registration portion.

The Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, a unit of the Center
for Automation Research, will hold a Symposium and Open House on
Friday June 5, 1992 in celebration of its ninth anniversary.  As
usual we will serve Birthday cake!  We cordially invite you to
register and participate.  We believe that the ideas and research
results will be useful to you and hope that you can help us chart
our course for the future.

---------------------------

Psychology Department

The Department of Psychology hosts the Laboratory for Automation
Psychology, a part of the HCIL.  Our facilities are designed for
empirical studies of the human-computer interface and for
usability research.  Research designs are used to focus on the
effects of specific variables (e.g., menu structure) while
controlling for nuisance variables (e.g., materials).  User's
reactions are assessed using the Questionnaire for User
Interaction Satisfaction, the QUIS.  The QUIS was developed and
validated in our lab and is currently being used in dozens of
research and usability labs internationally.


College of Library and Information Services

The College of Library and Information Services pursues research
to understand and improve information seeking in electronic
environments.  As science, business, and government increase their
dependence on computing to manage their information resources, our
abilities to access, filter, and manipulate this information
becomes increasingly important.


Computer Science Department

During the past year our work in the Department of Computer
Science was invigorated by the unifying theme of information
visualization and the development of provocative applications in
business, information search, medicine, and education.  Our
earlier successes in hypertext evaluation and high precision
touchscreens were extended, while work continued on Programming in
the User Interface under the theme of Just-in-Time Programming.  A
simple task frequency analysis has emerged as the basis for
evaluating sequences of screens, layout appropriateness of
individual screens, and the design of user interface widgets.


Lectures
Le Frak Building Room 2205 (new location)

9:00am  Welcome:  Ben Shneiderman, Azriel Rosenfeld
9:15am  Psychology Department Overview:  Kent Norman


  Menus, menus, and more menus:  cognitive considerations in
	menu selection systems
    	Kent L. Norman
Menus have become the interaction mode of the 90's.  From pull-
down to pop-up, they dominate the field in new and rehosted
systems.  But menus are no longer the simple solution to the
interface that they used to be.  As menus become more and more
pervasive and are expected to handle the more complex systems, new
issues are surfacing in terms of menu consistency, layout, style,
and selection methods.  New principles and guidelines will be
presented for menu control in complex systems.


  The effects of spatial attributes of information on human
	decision-making with a hypertext database
	Leslie E. Carter
Research into cognitive representations has shown that judgment
and reasoning can be affected by the spatial properties of
information.  Research in human-computer interface design has
shown that spatial representations of information can aid users'
navigation through data and enhance user performance.  This study
investigated how the location of information, one spatial
property, can influence human decision-making.  The experimental
task required subjects to decide a moot court case using a
hypertext database of legal information.  The location of
information was manipulated on individual screen displays as well
as being placed at different levels in the database hierarchy.
These results provide guidance to screen designers and refine our
theory of human information processing.


10:00am  College of Library and Information Services Overview
	Gary Marchionini

  Expertise and full-text searching
	Gary Marchionini
A set of four studies of domain experts and search experts
conducting assigned searches in full text databases were
conducted.  In all cases, domain knowledge affected query
formulation and relevance judgments during search.  Domain
specialists tended to spend more time and effort in the text,
scanning and reading, while search specialists tend to spend more
time and effort working with vocabulary, formulating, and revising
queries.  It appears that domain specialists form an image of the
answer and focus their efforts on matching results to that image.
Search specialists form an image of the context for the answer,
but focus their efforts on analyzing the question and matching
results to the question.

  Evaluation of the Perseus hypermedia corpus project
	Delia Neuman
Little is known about students' and teachers' interactions with
multimedia products except that they are complex and as yet only
crudely understood. Identifying and characterizing such
interactions is a major focus of our ongoing effort to evaluate
the Perseus Project--the ambitious venture of a team of
classicists headquartered at Harvard University to develop a
hypermedia database of ancient Greek language, literature, and
culture.  Through a collection of qualitative and quantitative
approaches, evaluators are gathering and analyzing data about the
problems and potential for teaching, learning, and research that
such a rich environment entails.  This presentation will provide
an overview of Perseus itself, of its four-year development and
evaluation cycle, and of results to date of our evaluation effort.

--------------------

10:35am  Coffee Break

--------------------

11:00am  Computer Science Department Overview
	Ben Shneiderman

  Remote direct manipulation interfaces:
	the case of a telepathology workstation
	Catherine Plaisant, Dave Carr
Telepathology allows pathologists to render a diagnosis by
examining specimens under a remotely controlled microscope. To
allow rapid navigation the interface must account for the inherent
time delays of the system and incomplete feedback. We built a
simulator and compared a trackball interface (specifying distance
directly) and a keypad interface (specifying direction)  for time
delays of .5, 2.5 and 4.5 seconds, with novice and experienced
users.  We are now studying the many navigation techniques in large high-
resolution 2D spaces and their appropriate use.

   Tree-maps for visualizing hierarchical information:
	concepts and applications
	Rick Chimera, Brian Johnson, David Turo
Tree-maps are a novel method for displaying hierarchical
information using a 2-D space-filling algorithm that partitions a
rectangular region.  Tree-maps' space efficiency allows
hierarchies of several thousand items to be displayed at once on a
normal monitor.  This talk will review the method and some useful
interface extensions, describe our three different implementations
and four experiments that were performed to compare tree-maps to
Unix tools, and discuss future research possibilities and
application areas.

  Dynamic queries: direct manipulation database searching
	Ben Shneiderman, Chris Williamson
The capacity to incrementally adjust a database query (with
sliders) or easily select from a set of discrete attribute values
coupled with a visual display of results that are rapidly updated
dramatically changes the information seeking process.  Dynamic
queries on the chemical table of elements, computer directories,
and a real estate database were built and tested.  The results
show highly significant performance improvements and user
enthusiasm more commonly seen with video games.  We see many
practical applications and numerous research challenges (fast
execution with large databases parallel search algorithm and data
structures effective highlighting techniques, etc.)

  Layout appropriateness: applying simple task frequency descriptions
	to interface design and evaluation
	Andrew Sears
The highly varying frequencies of menu item use can assist
designers in reorganizing menus to decrease selection times.  This
concept also influences the optimal layout of widgets on a single
screen interface as well as the placement of multiple windows and
dialog boxes.  Examples of sub-optimal menu and screen layouts
will be presented as well as proposed alternatives.

--------------------

12:30pm  Lunch buffet and Birthday cake!

--------------------

1:30pm   AT&T Teaching Theater:  A collaborative classroom


  An overview of the AT&T Teaching Theater
	Walter Gilbert, Ellen Yu
The University of Maryland at College Park, with the help of AT&T,
has developed and constructed a classroom where technology is used
to promote teaching and learning.  The focus is on methods to
encourage collaboration and communication through the use of
networking and audio/visual equipment connected to large screen
projectors.  The objectives of the classroom and its 20 AT&T
personnal computers and the network architecture will be
presented.

   Integrated HyperCourseware for the electronic classroom
	Kent L. Norman
Starting from the premise that the electronic classroom should
implement the metaphor of the traditional classroom, an integrated
system of "HyperCourseware" was developed in Spinakker Plus to run
in a Windows environment.  The HyperCourseware developed included
a syllabus stack linked to lectures and assignments, a set of
lecture stacks linked to examples and illustrations, and a class
roll stack with pictures and personal statements of the students,
and stacks for student questions and feedback, student notebooks,
quizzes, and exams. Networking allowed for the exchange of
information, querying student files, and collaboration to refine
ideas.

  Lessons learned from the first year
	of the AT&T Teaching Theater:  an evaluation
	Leslie E. Carter
During the first year of operation a number of courses were taught
in the AT&T Teaching Theater.  During this time the observations
and reactions of a variety of instructors and students were
collected.  Both formal and informal evaluations have helped to
delineate the issues involved in combining technology and
teaching.  Both positive and negative experiences in collaborative
teaching occurred generating a collection of do's and don'ts in
the classroom.  In addition, it was found that ease of
connectivity to outside resources was important; seamless
transitions from one media to another were essential; and
techniques for overcoming the technology barrier had to be
implemented.

----------------------------------------

2:30pm-5:00pm  Open House demonstrations and informal discussions

Psychology Building

* HyperQUIS:  The Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction
	in stackware form
 	Kent L. Norman
* Mole:  A foot operated control for the computer cursor when the
	hands are tied up
 	Nancy S. Anderson, Glenn Pearson
* HCI prototyping and testing: a SuperCard approach to laboratory
	studies tracking performance using the mouse vs. tablet
 	Ben Harper, Kent L. Norman
* Trying to do two things at once: dual task performance in discrete
	tracking and classification of pictures
 	Nancy S. Anderson, Blake Sobiloff

Engineering Building

* AT&T Teaching Theater:  groupware for collaborative learning
 	Walt Gilbert, Ellen Yu

Hornbake Library

* Perseus:  A hypermedia corpus about the ancient Greek world
 	Peter Evans
* Informal discussion of full-text databases
 	Gary Marchiononi

AV Williams Building

* Value bars: information visualization and navigation for
	multi-attribute listings and tables
 	Richard Chimera
* Tree-maps: a 2-D approach to visualizing hierarchies
	Brian Johnson, David Turo
* Teleoperation and remote direct manipulation for medical
	applications
 	Dave Carr
* Just in time programming
 	Richard Potter
* Dynamic Queries:  applying direct manipulation and graphical
	query results to information retrieval
 	Chris Williamson
* Home automation systems
 	Catherine Plaisant and Custom Command Systems staff

---------------------------------------------------

Materials:  Registrants will receive the following:


* A 1 hour VHS videotape containing reports on the following
	HCIL projects:

	- Dynamic queries for database search
 	- Treemaps for visualizing hierarchies
 	- Three strategies for directory browsing
	- Filter-Flow for boolean queries
 	- ACCESS at the Library of Congress
 	- The electronic classroom
 	- Remote Direct Manipulation for telepathology
	- Just ib time programming

* A collection of  HCIL technical reports

* A  full set of visual materials used in the morning lectures.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Registration:  Advance registration deadline May 11, 1992

Full fee includes videotape, technical reports,  handouts,
	and lunch buffet,
 	* Advance registration $90
 	* Late registration  $130

University faculty & staff fee includes videotape, technical
	reports, handouts, and lunch buffet
 	* Advance registration $60
 	* Late registration $100

A limited number of free registrations without materials or
	lunch will be granted to full-time undergraduate and graduate
	students.

To make special arrangements for groups from a single organization
	please apply in writing or e-mail prior to May 11.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Since we cannot accept charge cards, purchase orders, or cash,
	please enclose with your registration your check made
	payable to:  The University of Maryland.
	Registration is valid only upon arrival of your check.

Please include Name________________________

         and Address________________________

                    ________________________

                    ________________________

Parking Permit:   Please enclose a self addressed stamped envelope
	with your registration by May 11, 1992 to receive  ___a map
	and/or _____a parking permit. Permits are unavailable
	after May 11,1992.

Mail to:
HCIL, c/o Teresa Casey
AV Williams Building
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-3255
e-mail tcasey@cs.umd.edu

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

--
  Richard "carm" Chimera                  |  Zorched by Zarches,
  Human Computer Interaction Lab, U Md.   |  spaceman Spiff's
  A.V. Williams Bldg, room 4166           |  crippled craft crashes
  College Park, MD  20742-3255            |  on planet Plootarg!