New directions in human-computer interaction: education, research, and practice

Acknowledgments This report is the product of many people besides the sponsors and the organizing committee. Many of the workshop participants put in time beyond the workshop itself to contribute in one way or another. There were also a large number of reviewers who contributed greatly to the final draft, and who must be thanked for catching the obvious or for helping us to avoid the ridiculous. Different drafts received comments from open public forums, such as the CHI'94 Conference in Boston and the Snowbird'94 Conference in Utah. Although each of the many contributors cannot be listed one-by-one, thanks is due to them all. We are especially grateful to John Thomas Dayton, Jr. for his timely and voluminous editorial assistance on the final draft. Even so, errors may still be present in this report, and they remain the sole fault of the principal investigator. Without Oscar's insight and perseverance this critically important report may never have been written. The Problem Our modern computer and telecommunications information infrastructure (NII) has revolutionized science and commerce and has increased innovation and the speed of adoption of technology. Even so, the real limits of scientific and economic growth may be humankind's limited ability to absorb and to apply new information. The human-computer interface can contribute to the successful impact of information on society by making it accessible and usable by ordinary citizens. In so far as the human-computer interface affects information accessibility, it serves as a gating function to the goals of the NII. Recent reports estimate that over half the total cost of new computer systems can be attributed to the user interface. The importance of the interface has also been emphasized by a research group of industrial representatives who concluded that "if the interface is ineffective, the system's functionality and usefulness are limited; users become confused, frustrated, and annoyed; developers lose credibility; and the organization is saddled with high support costs and low productivity" (Nolan, Norton and Co. 1992). Although computer science curriculum studies have established human-computer interaction (HCI) as one of the subareas of the field of computer science, computer science departments have been slow to embrace HCI as a core topic to be taught in all CS departments. To address this problem, a "Workshop on New Directions on Human-Computer Interaction Education and Research" was conducted on February 5-7, 1994, in Washington DC, to broaden the scope of previous recommendations and …