It took place at Cosener's House in Abingdon, situated at a picturesque Thames-side position, in the grounds of the medieval Abbey of Abingdon. The format of the workshop aimed to mix formal presentations of papers with discussion sessions. Starting from the technological gadgets that fit in his pockets Dan Olsen described the diversity of technological artefacts and information forms that surround us and the wide range of uses for these devices. This chaos dwarfs attempts to model information. However, he argued, there is a common ground for all this information which is the human-consumable surface representations.
People can and do discover regularities in the information they use.
The design of interactive systems, he argued, can be supported by analysis of the accountability of work focusing on the information artefacts used, making explicit the interdependency of technology, activity and accountability. The invited talks set the tone for the discussions. The Role of Representations in Designing Interactive Systems Contributions addressed a diverse range of representations from a simple mark on a paper which only prompts discussions to formal proofs of usability, and the integration of the full range of representations between these two extremes in a single design project. Formal Support for the Design of Interactive Systems Papers discussed the pragmatic problems for the progression from specification of interactive systems to their implementation. Advances in Model Based Design Papers described developments such as a novel approach to model based design with its routes in linguistics, the automated generation of interfaces to data bases, the interactive development of models in a model based design environement, etc.