2002 HCIL Video Reports
Introduction (15 MB) [1:10]
Ben Bederson
Designing the Classroom of the Future - 2001:2002 (52 MB) [3:53]
Druin, A., Liao, S., Chipman, G., Farber, A., Julian, D. and the staff and students of the University of Maryland's Center for Young Children
We describe the activities of the second year of our 5-year research project to create the Kindergarten Classroom of the Future. This work is a partnership between researchers at the HCIL and children and teachers at the Center for Young Children on the campus of the University of Maryland. The culmination of this partnership was the development of a "Magic Wall" which enables young children to simultaneously draw on a touch surface. With this technology, two children holding their "magic keys" in one hand can finger paint together simultaneously. We describe our design methods and the lessons learned.
International Digital Library for Children (25 MB) [1:53]
Druin, A., Bederson, B., Hourcade, J-P, Rose, A., Farber, A., Liao, S., Revelle, G., Campbell, D., Kahle, B., Kruskal, A., Lal, A., Mattews, J., Rhodes, E., White, C., Ochs, S., Berke E., Cossans, C.
Our team at the University of Maryland continues to partner with children, educators, and diverse researchers to develop interface technologies for children's digital libraries. This video presents the team's design activities and technology directions for the future. By leveraging Maryland's previous NSF-supported research, we expect to move beyond a small-scale demonstration project to a large-scale deployment of new user interface technologies for children's searching, browsing, reading and sharing.
FishCal: A Calendar Interface for PDAs (75 MB) [5:50]
Bederson, B.
FishCal is a novel calendar interface for PDAs. It supports users in performing planning and analysis tasks by using a fisheye representation of dates coupled with compact overviews, user control over the visible time period, and integrated search. Users can see overviews, easily navigate the calendar structure, and discover patterns and outliers. FishCal was compared to Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002T calendar. Eleven users performed complex tasks significantly faster and completed them more often with FishCal. Task by task user satisfaction data showed a significant advantage for FishCal as well.
SpaceTree: a Novel Node-Link Tree Browser (52 MB)
Grosjean, J., Plaisant, C., Bederson, B. [4 :00]
SpaceTree is a novel tree browser that builds on conventional node link tree diagrams. It adds dynamic rescaling of branches to best fit the available screen space, optimizes camera movement, and uses preview icons to summarize the topology of the branches that cannot be expanded. It includes integrated search and filter functions. SpaceTree is demonstrated using an organization chart. A controlled experiment compared it to the hyperbolic tree browser and Microsoft Explorer.
Interactive Information Visualization of a Million Items (82 MB) [6:32]
Fekete, J.-D.
What are the limits of information visualization? How many items can we see and understand before we need to aggregate? To answer these questions, we have designed a set of techniques to push current visualization techniques to their limits. By using on the shelves accelerated graphics cards, special graphics and programming techniques, we can display about one million items on a regular 1600 by 1200 pixels screen with interactive feedback.
An Interactive Message Board as a Technology Probe for Family Communication and Coordination (25 MB) [5:54]
Hutchinson, H.
Our family message board connects households from distributed families with a familiar interface of electronic Post-It notes on a writable LCD screen. As part of the InterLiving project, we are working with 7 multi-generational families in Sweden, France and the US as design partners. We are using traditional ethnographic and participatory design methods such as low-tech prototyping in addition to "technology probes," such as the message board, to explore the communication and coordination needs of distributed families. Technology probes are simple but interesting technologies that act as catalysts for design ideas. Our family design partners have used them for a period of time in their homes and are now working with researchers to study how and why they were used and designing new technologies based on their findings.
Searching Foreign-Language Collections (46 MB) [3:36]
Oard, D., Nossal, M.
Finding information in a language that the searcher cannot read is a challenging task that is increasing in importance with the growing diversity of languages on the World Wide Web. Our first goal is to support the formulation of effective queries in languages that users may not know. We provide minimally intrusive translation assistance, allowing searcher and system to interact in a way that produces a more effective query than either could alone. Our second goal is to help users recognize the most useful documents found by the system, even if no infrastructure exists for sophisticated machine translation, in which case we use a simple translation based on word and phrase replacement, augmented with an interface that guide the searcher's attention to terms that are likely to be helpful for deciding on the utility of documents.
Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies
(88 MB) [6:31]
Shneiderman, B.
The old computing was about what computers could do; the new computing is about what users canhn do. Attention is shifting from making computers intelligent to making users creative. Leonardo da Vinci could help as an inspirational muse for the new computing to push for improved quality through scientific study and more elegant design through visual thinking. The first goal is to reduce the high level of user frustration. Then the new computing principle is that human needs should shape technology. Four circles of human relationships and four human activities map out the human needs for mobility, ubiquity, creativity, and community. Million-person communities will be universally usable through desktop, palmtop and fingertip devices that support e-learning, e-business, e-healthcare, and e-government (www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/newcomputing).
Washington Post Interview (3 MB) [2:52]
Video from John Poole, Washingtonpost.com
Interview of Ben Shneiderman, Allison Druin and Ben Bederson from www.washingtonpost.com, as part of a story on Human-Computer Interaction, Thursday, May 9, 2002
