Table of Contents
VOLUME XIV.6 November + December 2007
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In this issue
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In this issue
Jonathan Arnowitz, Elizabeth Dykstra-Erickson
Free at last! We finally reach the end of our term as EICs. It has been three rewarding years. We are confident that <interactions> will ascend to new heights under the guidance of Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko. We cannot imagine two better successors; we pass the baton to…
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Passing the baton
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<interactions> 2005—-2007
Jonathan Arnowitz
We have found over the past three years that articles in <interactions> are frequently cited in academic courses or used to make a point in a practitioner setting. During our tenure as editors-in-chief we've put together a special section in almost every issue. This is a look back at…
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Signing on/signing off
Elizabeth Dykstra-Erickson, Jonathan Arnowitz, Jon Kolko, Richard Anderson
Signing OFF As we look back on the past three years, we have to say we've learned a lot: the trials and tribulations of depending on volunteer efforts like our own to write, submit, and engage with the magazine; structuring, versioning and tracking, and managing contributions; and communicating with…
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Fresh: rant
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Consultants as heroes and hucksters
Jonathan Arnowitz
Consultants are, in our esteem, mostly well-intentioned. But often they aren't around long enough to see the effects of their work, and aren't keen on investigating whether any harm was done before offering the same (apparently successful) method to the next client. As practitioners who have been on both…
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Fresh: ask Doctor Usability
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In Memoriam
Jonathan Arnowitz
It is with deep sadness that we acknowledge the untimely passing of Dr. Usability. We feared something was wrong when the Doctor missed his last deadline. This was very unusual behavior, as he never passed up an opportunity to be read. Doctor Usability went on a trip to Japan…
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Fresh: pushing the envelope
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Sealing the envelope
Fred Sampson
When a man comes to you and tells you your own story, you know that your sins are forgiven. And when you are forgiven, you are healed. —Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection Let me tell you a story. Long ago, as a college student studying…
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Fresh: Nuts and bolts
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A “Survivor”-like designer reality show?
Luke Kowalski
With every CHI, and with every issue of <interactions>, our profession is maturing and reaching a better understanding of what it means to be a successful practitioner. The days of the rebel artiste are mostly gone. Yes I still have to put up with one when it comes to…
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Fresh: mailbag
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Coming clean with AJAX
Jonathan Arnowitz, Elizabeth Dykstra-Erickson
I enjoyed reading Daniel F. Zucker's article "What Does Ajax mean for You?" ("Nuts and Bolts," September-October 2007). I thought it gave a nice introduction to the AJAX topic from a designer's perspective. As a person with an interest in design as well as in technologies, I want to…
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Forum: under development
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What is the mobile internet?
Gary Marsden
I have been asking myself this a lot lately. Like most of the online world, I am slowly becoming sucked into Facebook. But what is Facebook? On one level, it is no more than an aggregation of technologies that have been around before: email, IRC, interactive whiteboards—pah! For the…
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Forum: timelines
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Five perspectives on computer game history
Daniel Pargman, Peter Jakobsson
Several histories of computer games have been written, including a coffee-table book with glossy pictures, interviews with more than 500 (!) industry luminaries, and, perhaps best from an academic perspective, using a theoretical model to map developments over time as an interplay of technology, marketing, and culture. Supplementing these…
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Open source
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An open source primer
Elizabeth Dykstra-Erickson, Yann Cheri
Why Open Source? Why is open source the choice? For some, there is a financial incentive; for others, the philosophy of open contribution is attractive. Using open source software leverages the thinking of many others and takes advantage of a well-organized distribution channel. Fixes, enhancements, discussion, and proposals come…
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Managing a project with open source components
Mitch Bayersdorfer
Managing large software projects is daunting. The demands of changing technology, customer requirements, schedules, and business competition can drive you to the breaking point. Depending on your needs, there is immeasurable value in open source code. Although it takes oversight, legal work, training, and additional management to accomplish, use…
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Working with open source
David Schlesinger
Open source software has become more popular and more widely used every year. It runs most back-office server applications (Google runs its search and index system entirely on open source), is used in projects like the "One Laptop Per Child" initiative, and is making major inroads with cell phones…
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Usability in open source
Görkem Çetin, Mehmet Göktürk
"When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other." :Chinese proverb Desktop-based open source operating systems, particularly Linux, have come a long way since the introduction of Linux 0.10 in 1991 and the first Linux…
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Open standard and open sourced SMIL for interactivity
Daniel Zucker, Dick Bulterman
SMIL, Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, was the first member in the family of open, XML-based standards developed and supported by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is an important resource in the interaction designer's toolbox. It can be used not only to develop time-based multimedia presentations, but also…
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Community experience at OpenOffice.org
Matthias Müller-Prove
DEVELOPERS ARE USERS TOO. Developers, scratching just their personal itch, are a well-known challenge for open source projects [5]. If the project's target audience is not the typical software engineer and the application's interface becomes too technical, intended users will turn away from the product. As a consequence, more-mature…
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People: the way I see it
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There’s an automobile in HCI’s future
Donald Norman
I am writing this from Driving Assessment 2007, a conference on automobile safety, held this year on the beautiful shores of the Columbia River in the state of Washington. Members of the HCI community would feel comfortable at this conference: Issues of design, workload, and distraction dominate. Two years…
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People: fast forward
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The sun rises in the east
Aaron Marcus
When I first visited China and Japan in 1975, I was there to lecture about the coming age of computer graphics to designers in Hong Kong and Tokyo. I gazed at China from a guarded border lookout at the northern edge of Hong Kong, which then still belonged to…
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People: the well-tempered practitioner
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Inverse, reverse, and unfocused methods
Chauncey Wilson
Most practitioners of user-centered design (UCD) have a repertoire of methods that they apply to the design and evaluation of products, for example, brainstorming, card sorting, storyboards, formative usability testing, and field interviews. While these general methods serve us well, there are lesser-known variations that complement the "standard" methods.…
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FLASHBACK
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Onshore-offshore
Liam Friedland
Offshore outsourcing (offshoring) of software development is a trend that has been on the rise. When the tech bubble burst in 2001, software companies saw their revenue drop while having to compete aggressively to win new business. In this economic climate, companies sought ways to cut costs while still…
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Books
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Review of “Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge,” MIT Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-262-13474-3, $39.95
Jeroen Bruin
If you are an interaction designer and want to make an impression on friends or colleagues, reading Bill Moggridge's new book should be at the top of your to-do list. On seeing it, my colleagues made remarks like, "Wow, that book must be good; it weighs a ton, is…
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New & upcoming titles
interactions Staff
The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace The MIT Press, October 2007 ISBN: 0262122944, $29.95 Technology as Experience John McCarthy and Peter Wright The MIT Press, October 2007 ISBN: 0262633558, $18.00 Cognition, Communication and Interaction:…
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Event planner
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Event planner
interactions Staff
November 4-7 Group 2007 International Conference on Supporting Group Work Sanibel Island, FL www.acm.org/conferences/group/conferences/group07/index.html November 4-8 ICCAD '07 The International Conference on Computer-Aided Design 2007 San Jose, CA www.iccad.com November 5-7 DUX '07 Designing the User Experience Chicago, IL www.cse.msu.edu/ase2007 November 5-7 VRST 2007 ACM Symposium…
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Rave
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Observation and interaction design
Jonathan Arnowitz, Elizabeth Dykstra-Erickson
Despite the ever-growing collection of books on interaction design, we have to note an element we want to see further emphasized: the role of observation in designing interactions. Designing interactions, particularly between people and machines, has been around a long time. History reveals designers of interactions prior to the…
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Postcards from the future
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Third Life is a charm
Atticus Wolrab
©2007 ACM1072-5220/07/1100$5.00 Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation…
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Browse This Issue
- In this issue
- Passing the baton
- Fresh: rant
- Fresh: ask Doctor Usability
- Fresh: pushing the envelope
- Fresh: Nuts and bolts
- Fresh: mailbag
- Forum: under development
- Forum: timelines
- Open source
- People: the way I see it
- People: fast forward
- People: the well-tempered practitioner
- FLASHBACK
- Books
- Event planner
- Rave
- Postcards from the future