UCD Project News is a fortnightly e-newsletter devoted to increasing awareness of user-centred design (UCD) principles and contributing towards a culture of UCD within the SITCRC.

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In this issue:

1. Supriya: Reflections on UCD Project
2. User Environment Discussions
3. Professor Gitte Lindgaard’s Fellowship Visit
4. Upcoming Conferences & Calls for Papers
5. Useful Links and References

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1. Supriya: Reflections on UCD Project
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It is a time for consolidation, as we are past the three quarter mark in the User-Centred Design Project. The expert review of the SITCRC is proving to be a time for reflection. Of course the official documents and presentations are about our performance against milestones. We have done well on those measures. Papers have been accepted for peer-reviewed publication; two new projects have started with the NAUI and SN programs; another linkage project is being discussed with SN. New projects with commercial partners and the technology programs will also be presented in the next round.

The conversations though are more reflective. We recognize that in the projects with the technology programs, we are moving from the Discovery Phase of UCD to a more participatory role. The UCD perspective has been recognized as potentially valuable. Now we have to demonstrate value at every stage of the project and the design of the technology. We are crafting this process together with our colleagues from the other programs and reflecting on how we can deliver on the user, technology and business outcomes.

Supriya

Assoc Prof Supriya Singh,
Project Leader
supriya.singh@rmit.edu.au

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2. User Environment Discussions
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As part of the SITCRC’s Expert Review Panel, a presentation / discussion session will be held with Professor Peter Gerrand, a member of the panel which all SITCRC researchers are welcome to attend. The session will be held in I-Cubed, Bld 91, Level 2, Room 15, RMIT University, 110 Victoria Street, Melbourne on Wednesday 16 July from 1-3pm.

The agenda for the session is as follows:

1. Welcome and introduction - Trevor Barr (5 min)
2. Encouraging a culture of UCD in the SITCRC: project goals and achievements - Supriya Singh (20 min) Discussion (10 min)
2. Virtual Cafe project – status report - John Burke (10 min) Discussion (10 min)
3. Student projects in UCD – Micheal Coburn (10 min)
4. Young people and mobile technologies - Christine Satchell (10 min) Discussion (10 min)
5. Messaging, mobiles and young people – Steve Howard (15 min) Discussion (10 min).

Please RSVP Trevor Barr, UE Program leader, on tbarr@swin.edu.au to attend.

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3. Professor Gitte Lindgaard’s Fellowship Visit
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Professor Gitte Lindgaard will be visiting RMIT on an RMIT Foundation International Visiting Fellowship, with support from the User Environment program of the SITCRC, in late July.

Gitte has been the Chair in User-Centred Design and Director of the Human Oriented Technology Lab at Carleton University in Ottawa since January 2000. In this role she is overseeing a unique teaching and research program, in a university with one of the longest traditions of engagement in user-centred design.

With a Ph.D. from Monash University, and professional experience in the Telstra Research Labs, Gitte has a particular awareness of the Australian context, and has made substantial contributions to the study of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in Australia.

As part of her visit, Gitte will give a public lecture on “Designing for the Customer and the Bottom Line: Costs and benefits of User-Centred Design,” which all members of the SITCRC community are invited to attend. The public lecture will be held in Council Chamber, Bld 1, Level B, Room 11
RMIT University, 124 La Trobe Street, Melbourne on Tuesday 22 July from 4-5.30 pm.

Gitte will also conduct a workshop with the SITCRC User Environment program titled “The User Environment: Research Questions for the Future” which all researchers and all those interested are invited to attend. The workshop will be held in I-Cubed, Bld 91, Level 2, Room 15, RMIT University, 110 Victoria Street, Melbourne on Friday 25 July from 10-12 am.

For further information about Gitte’s visit or to reserve your place at either of these events, please contact Ray Denison on Ray.Denison@rmit.edu.au.

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4. Taking the Access Grid and GrangeNet for a spin
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PhD students from RMIT and the University of Sydney recently conducted a videoconference using Access Grid software connected to GrangeNet. The students were interested in seeing how the increased bandwidth changed the experience of video conferencing, and in particular the level of “social presence."

GrangeNet is a high-bandwidth, next-generation, experimental network that runs between Melbourne and Sydney via Canberra. There is also a slightly slower link running to Brisbane, with other capital cities connected via standard AARNET infrastructure. Currently the link that runs from Melbourne to Sydney is 10 Gigabit, which is 1000 times faster than the average office network. For example, it could transfer a full DVD movie every 4 seconds...

In terms of system configuration, there are three cameras at the RMIT end. One is centrally mounted and points straight at participants. The other two are off to the side, but will eventually be ceiling mounted, with one in the front corner of the room and one in the opposite corner in the rear. Although there are three projectors, students only used the center one.

The result was six tiled video images; the top three of RMIT students, and the bottom three of Sydney students. The experience wasn't far short of having 6 NetMeeting windows open at once, where only one of them was really of interest (the front view of the group at the other end). The students found the picture quality to be less than expected and quickly discovered that this is because the RMIT system is currently running on the AARNET backbone and uses a previous version of Access Grid software. The full-bandwidth GrangeNet connection will be in place by mid- to late- July and by then the new software will also be installed.

There is a lot of scope for interesting applications in the context of new high-speed networks, especially when you consider that these networks might eventually find their way into our homes and offices.

The students have organized with VPAC to trial the Access Grid on an ongoing basis and will report their experiences and ideas back to the UE group.

Michael Coburn
PhD Student,
e36475@ems.rmit.edu.au

Useful Links:
http://www.vpac.org/
http://www.accessgrid.org/
http://www.grangenet.net/

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4. Upcoming Conferences & Calls for Papers
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* INTERACT 2003

The 9th IFIP TC 13 international conference on Human-Computer Interaction will be held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, on September 1-5, 2003. INTERACT 2003 is held under the auspices of IFIP Technical Committee 13 on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and follows in a long tradition of international IFIP HCI conferences.

The conference will act as a platform for HCI research and practice which seeks to embrace the new demands of the 21st century, while continuing to include state-of-the-art approaches to traditional HCI issues, as in past INTERACT conferences. People working in all aspects of HCI are encouraged to participate.

For further information, please visit: http://www.interact2003.org/index.htm
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* GOR 04

The 6th German Online Research Conference 2004 will be held at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany on March 30-31, 2004.

Conference topics include theories, methods, and empirical findings concerning the Internet, online communication, or mobile communication. The aim of the conference is to document the progress of Internet research, innovative developments, and practical experience, as well as to further dialogue between researchers, universities and companies, and customers and suppliers.

The call for papers and posters in now open and abstract submissions are due no later than September 30th 2003.

For further information, please visit: http://www.dgof.de/indexe.htm
or email: office.gor@uni-duisburg.de

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5. Useful Links and References
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* Gitte Lindgaard and Cathy Dudek, “What is this evasive beast we call user satisfaction?” Interacting with Computers 15:3, pp 429-452 (June 2003)

The notion of `user satisfaction' plays a prominent role in HCI, yet it remains evasive. This exploratory study reports three experiments from an ongoing research program. In this program the authors aim to uncover (1) what user satisfaction is, (2) whether it is primarily determined by user expectations or by the interactive experience, (3) how user satisfaction may be related to perceived usability, and (4) the extent to which satisfaction rating scales capture the same interface qualities as uncovered in self-reports of interactive experiences. In all three experiments reported here user satisfaction was found to be a complex construct comprising several concepts, the distribution of which varied with the nature of the experience.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0953-5438(02)00063-2
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* Christopher Baber and Konrad Baumannb, “Embedded human computer interaction,” Applied Ergonomics 33:3 pp 273-287 (May 2002)

In this paper, human interaction with embedded or ubiquitous technology is considered. The techniques focus on the use of what might be termed "everyday" objects and actions as a means of controlling (or otherwise interacting with) technology. The paper presents a view of the future of human–computer interaction (HCI) in which users move beyond the desktop to where interacting with technology becomes merged with other activity. At one level this places HCI in the context of other forms of personal and domestic technologies. At another level, this raises questions as to how people will interact with technologies of the future. Until now, HCI had often relied on people learning obscure command sets or learning to recognise words and objects on their computer screen. The most significant advance in HCI (the invention of the WIMP interface) is already some 40 years old. Thus, the future of HCI might be one in which people are encouraged (or at least allowed) to employ the skills that they have developed during their lives in order to interact with technology, rather than being forced to learn and perfect new skills.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0003-6870(02)00013-3
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* Paul Prekop and Mark Burnett, “Activities, context and ubiquitous computing,” Computer Communications 26:11, pp 1168-1176 (1 July 2003)

Context and context-awareness provides computing environments with the ability to usefully adapt the services or information they provide. It is the ability to implicitly sense and automatically derive the user needs that separates context-aware applications from traditionally designed applications, and this makes them more attentive, responsive, and aware of their user's identity, and their user's environment. This paper argues that context-aware applications capable of supporting complex, cognitive activities can be built from a model of context called Activity-Centric context. A conceptual model of Activity-Centric context is presented. The model is illustrated via a detailed example.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-3664(02)00251-7
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* Suzanne Robertson, ”Requirements trawling: techniques for discovering requirements,” International Journal of Human Computer Studies 55:4, pp 405-421(October 2001)

The challenge of trying to discover the user requirements for any kind of product is complex because the source of the requirements is not just one person. Moreover, all users have their own view of what is important, along with their own experience, prejudices and views of the world. Considering the variations between requirements, it makes sense to have a variety of techniques for discovering requirements. We call these as trawling techniques because, like fishing, we run a net through the organization and trap as many user requirements as we can. Then, using the appropriate technique, we identify the relevant requirements and separate them from the irrelevant. We are not just concerned with finding existing requirements, we are also concerned with generating new requirements by using techniques that encourage creativity. This paper summarizes a number of techniques that the author has found useful when trawling for user requirements.

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