Book Reading #3: HCI Remixed: Reflections on Works that have Influenced the HCI Community

Title: Chapter 1

Reference: 
Erickson, Thomas and McDonald, David W. HCI Remixed: Reflections on Works that have Influenced the HCI Community. MIT. 2008

Summary:

William Buxton describes the opportunity he had to go up to Canada to use a new technology in making music on a computer.  He used a simple blend of buttons and wheels to interact with the computer to compose his music which he could listen to at any time.  He claims the purpose of the program was not to test new music software, but rather to study human-computer interaction; taking flexible, non-technical musicians and immersing them in an environment conducive to their learning.


Discussion:
I find it hard to imagine that the system being used was just to study human-computer interaction as it seems like such a large set of tools - six refrigerators.  If it was just that sort of study, it sounds like they did a great job in designing it from the ground up for the user.  The author sounds to have extreme bias towards this system though.

Title: Chapter 4

Reference: 

Erickson, Thomas and McDonald, David W. HCI Remixed: Reflections on Works that have Influenced the HCI Community. MIT. 2008

Summary:

Joseph Konstan looks back at an important paper made in the sixties with the development of SketchPad.  Konstan claims that this work incorporated principles that are still in effect today and were way ahead of its time.  Focusing on human-computer interaction, he saw it as a landmark for ease of view, labeling, and precision for the user concerning sketch software.  Konstan also comments on how the software also touched on the basic principles of Object Orientation which are still paramount today.

Discussion:
Based upon the author's description, it was hard for me to get a picture of what this SketchPad actually was and how the user interacted with it.  I think I understand generally what it did, but had he described the uses of it I think it would have been much clearer for me.

Title: Chapter 5

Reference:

Erickson, Thomas and McDonald, David W. HCI Remixed: Reflections on Works that have Influenced the HCI Community. MIT. 2008

Summary:

Wendy Ju recalls a day in her human-computer interaction class when she saw the demonstration of Englebart's mouse.  She saw it as motivating and inspiring to create devices that would make human-computer interaction better.  She experienced her own frustrations with demonstrations and was asked by her professor to once again watch Englebart's video.  From a new point of view she watched as the video showed the new technologies not fully embraced at the time.  Ju concludes by stating that demos, while not always glorious, inspire people to continue to improve, make and do more.

Discussion:

I have never seen this mouse demonstration but it sounds fairly interesting.  Maybe I would not care in the least if I were to see it, but maybe it would inspire me too to keep up with inventions.

Title: Chapter 18

Reference:

Erickson, Thomas and McDonald, David W. HCI Remixed: Reflections on Works that have Influenced the HCI Community. MIT. 2008

Summary:

Saul Greenberg wrote on how influential John Tang's research has been on group collaboration.  Tang studied the habits of a group when a large writing surface was on a desk as well as hanging up as a white board.  Important to note is that not all interaction was through the drawing and verbal communication alone, but also through actions such as gestures - pointing and examining.

Discussion:

This seems like a really good area to study (had it not already been studied).  The question comes to mind of what other tasks we do on a normal basis could be studied to make more efficient for interaction from different locations.

Title: Chapter 20

Reference:

Erickson, Thomas and McDonald, David W. HCI Remixed: Reflections on Works that have Influenced the HCI Community. MIT. 2008

Summary:

Geraldine Fitzpatrick shows her appreciation of the CSCW paper by Schmidt and Bannon.  Important because of its collaborative work focus, she claims the paper gives important insight into coordination, delegation and shared work space.

Discussion:

This paper was extremely trivial and did not give me any sense of why the paper was so important.  Maybe it just did not capture my attention.  I agree that collaboration is important, and I did find it interesting that it mentioned assignment of tasks.

Title: Chapter 23

Reference:

Erickson, Thomas and McDonald, David W. HCI Remixed: Reflections on Works that have Influenced the HCI Community. MIT. 2008

Summary:

Brian Smith tells of his mother diagnosed with leukemia who used video chat to communicate with a granddaughter she could not see face to face because of her disease.  Brian points to Hollan and Stornetta as having the right idea of developing an experience greater than that of the face to face interaction.  He sees this as an enhancement of the personal.  Video chat allowed a crutch for his daughter and mother's communication, but a toy simple as a doll with a voice really played a heavy roll in his mother's last year.  This facilitated an extremely close bond between the two.

Discussion:
The story was very touching and filled with passion about enhancing communication.  I agreed with the concepts presented and that on some levels it is beneficial to develop functions that go beyond face to face communication.  A question would be "will it ever become too impersonal?"