Managing the Human-Computer Interface: Give your organization the competitive edge A Live Satellite TV Broadcast Presented by Ben Shneiderman With featured interview guests: James Martin: author of 80 books, lecturer, consultant, Pulitzer Prize nominee David Nagel: Senior Vice President, Advanced Technology Group, Apple Computers June 24, 1992 1-3pm Eastern Time University of Maryland Instructional Television Intended Audience This course is directed to high-level executives, middle-level managers and technical leaders who are responsible for human- computer interfaces. This includes policy makers who select commercially available interfaces for their organization, and those who develop new interfaces for internal use or for sale. Evaluators, trainers, marketers, office managers, and executives in technology intensive organizations will also benefit from this program. Prerequisites Knowledge of and management experience with user interfaces on personal computers, workstations, or mainframes. Benefits This Executive Overview will give you a state-of-the-art report on managing user interface development and deployment. You will learn about contemporary management methods that make dramatic differences in project outcomes. Description Successful managers recognize a grand opportunity to dramatically alter computer-oriented workplaces with contemporary Graphic User Interfaces, e.g. Macintosh, MS Windows 3.0, OSF/Motif, NeXT, etc. The business case is clear: improved interfaces can substantially increase productivity and quality, reduce stress, fatigue, and errors, and enable users to generate creative solutions to their problems. This program combines scientific management approaches to project planning and evaluation. We explore how management policies and design improvements can have powerful effects on user learning times, speed of performance on tasks, rate of errors, subjective satisfaction, and human retention over time. Usability laboratory testing, guidelines documents, and user interface management software tools are now seen as the three pillars of successful user interface projects. New designs offer intriguing breakthroughs in information visualization, image processing, search strategies, direct manipulation interactions, and user-controlled adaptation, but concerns about intellectual property (copyright & patents) and privacy protection raise new challenges for management. Software interfaces enable mangers to restructure workplaces through computer supported cooperation, electronic mail, bulletin boards, group decision support, electronic meeting systems, and shared databases. Hardware advances contribute through high- resolution displays, notebooks with styli, high-precision touchscreens, high-bandwidth networks, and parallel computation. Course Outline Topics - motivation for interest in human-computer interface - defining graphical user interfaces - scientific evaluation methods - three pillars: usability labs, guidelines documents, software tools - case studies of successes - setting strategic management goals - what to do today Discussion with phoned and faxed questions Enrollment This live satellite course will be broadcast from the University of Maryland Instructional Television System via Ku and C Bands. In order to view the broadcast, access to a satellite dish is necessary. Contact your organization's training or conference director to ask if he or she can organize a satellite downlink and obtain a site license. A site license will be $900, and it includes permission to videotape. For information on the broadcast, call (301) 405-4905 or FAX (301) 314-9639. The broadcast will be in cooperation with the National Technological University (NTU). If you cannot arrange for the live downlink, ITV will make a videotape and mail it to you for $1100. Presenter Ben Shneiderman is Head of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, Professor of Computer Science, and Member of the Systems Research Center all at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is an international lecturer/consultant for many corporations (AT&T, IBM, Apple, GE, NCR, etc.) and government agencies (NASA, Library of Congress, etc.). Dr. Shneiderman the author of the recently published second edition of Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction and the 1980 book Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems. He was co-author of the world's first commercial hyperbook Hypertext Hands-On! Dr. Shneiderman is editor of the Ablex Publishers series on Human-Computer Interaction, author of more than 150 technical papers, creator of the Hyperties hypermedia authoring system, and organizer of the annual satellite TV program on User Interface Strategies.