Virginia Tech's Center for Human-Computer Interaction

This early project studied the human-computer interface as a dialog, asking both whether dialog is a good metaphor for the interface, and how to most appropriately configure that interface. The project spawned many activities over a number of years: in dialog management systems, adaptive interfaces, help systems, interface specification notations, multimedia information access, and experimental methods. In the early 1990s, as academic departments around the country were narrowing and focusing their interests in research and graduate education, the Computer Science Department at Virginia Tech decided to focus on HCI. In cooperation with Industrial and Systems Engineering, the department decided to establish specialized laboratories for HCI research and to recruit additional senior faculty. In 1993, the department received a $1.4 million research infrastructure award and a $449,000 educational infrastructure award from the National Science Foundation. The research infrastructure grant has allowed us to establish laboratories in usability methods, information access, and interactive technologies, as well as an interaction consulting service. The educational infrastructure grant has allowed us to develop and explore digital library and network resources for Computer Science courses. In 1994, Interaction was established in 1995 with the objective of broadening and integrating HCI research and application across the campus and throughout the larger community. We received a $562,500 award from the NSF to establish a Graduate Research Traineeship program in HCI. This program will run 1996-2001, providing support for 30 graduate-student-years during that period. We received a $1.1 million award under the NSF's Networking Infrastructure for Education program @ Copyright on this material held by the author to support research on collaborative education within the Blacksburg Electronic Village community network. This program will run 1996-1999; it will support .4-5 graduate students per year.