Table of Contents
VOLUME XI.4 July + August 2004
- Editorial
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Research alert
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DateLens
Benjamin Bederson, Aaron Clamage, Mary Czerwinski, George Robertson
Calendar applications for small handheld devices are growing in popularity. This led us to develop DateLens, a novel calendar interface for PDAs designed to support complex tasks. It uses a fisheye representation coupled with compact overviews and animated transitions to give a big picture in a small space. The…
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What's happening
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What’s happening
Marisa Campbell
Workshop: Coping with Complexity Sharing New Approaches for the Design of Human-Computer Systems in Complex Settings University of Bath September 16-17, 2004 The use of interactive information and communication technologies is now thoroughly ingrained in society, but the complexity of their role is constantly changing and deepening. The complexity…
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Business
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Describing usability problems
Joseph Dumas, Rolf Molich, Robin Jeffries
Do you often feel like your usability reports aren't taken seriously? Perhaps part of the problem is that engineers have trouble acting on your problem descriptions. Writing effective, usable descriptions is a skill that all usability professionals should have mastered. Evidence that we sometimes miss the mark when we…
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Design
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Mixing disciplines in anticipation of convergence
Jon Kolko
Historically, the fields relating to interaction design have dealt primarily with software and interface design. Commonly used evaluation methods, such as Heuristic Evaluation [9] and Cognitive Walkthrough [7], were developed with an eye towards improving usability of computer interfaces. Additionally, research methodologies such as Contextual Inquiry [2] are usually…
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The whiteboard
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Premium usability
Jeff Sauro
So you are thinking about conducting a usability test? You've read some articles, bought some books, or maybe, you've even attended one of those designer seminars from a usability guru. Now you're probably thinking, "I can do this: I've got my heuristic checklists, I've scheduled my five users, and…
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HCI and the Web
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Inclusive design
William Hudson
City University, London1, recently completed its accessibility survey of 1,000 U.K. Web sites on behalf of the UK's Disability Rights Commission. It is probably the largest of its kind ever undertaken, but sadly the results are no surprise—certainly not to anyone who has ever tried to navigate a Web…
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Reflections
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The power of two
Steven Pemberton
Try this experiment: Take a piece of paper and draw a line to divide it into two lengthwise; in the right half write this year's date. Now divide the left half into two, a top part and a bottom part, and write the date 18 months ago in the…
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Conferences
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The 18th British HCI Group annual conference
Marisa Campbell
HCI2004 will explore the theme of Design for Life. Designers, evaluators, and implementers of interactive systems have a great responsibility. The systems they design have an impact upon the lives of the people who use them—for good or ill. Design for Life has many facets. It is design for…
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Fast forward
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Insights on outsourcing
Aaron Marcus
We are living in historic times. Some might say we are living in interesting times, as in the well-known curse, "May you live in interesting times," but I'd like to think that the rapid international changes of the past decades and those currently underway portend global improvements, not degradations.…
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Books
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Books
Marc Rettig
What is Web Design? Nico Macdonald RotoVision, UK, 2003ISBN 2880466865$35.00 Nico MacDonald's recent book, What is Web Design, appears to be an attempt to fill a hole in Web design literature; no single text gathers together the manifold issues related to Web design practice into one volume as this…
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