Concepts of Interaction and the Nature of Design:

David Benyon

Professor of Human-Computer Systems,
Dept. of Computing,
Napier University,
219, Colinton road,
Edinburgh, EH14 1LD
d.benyon@dcs.napier.ac.uk

Research in Human-Computer Interaction at Napier University is centred on the HCI group based in the Department of Computing. The group currently consists of five full-time lecturers, two research fellows and six PhD students and is active in a number of areas of HCI that may be brought together under the overall research theme of human-computer co-operative systems. We believe that HCI is not merely about a person interacting with a computer; increasingly, it is concerned with how networks of computers (or other information artefacts), people and artificial agents engage in meaningful and effective activities.

The distinctive nature of HCI research at Napierlies in its openness to different approaches to understanding the nature of interaction and on how to design for co- operation between people and information artefacts. The nature of design requires us to consider people engaged in co-operative activity, situated within a socio-cultural environment. Thus we find the concept of interaction, as traditionally understood, to be problematic. There is a needfor designers to be aware of non-cognitive and non- engineering approaches to the development of human-computer systems and to see design itself as a human activity. Our research seeks to contribute to the development of appropriate methods for understanding human-computer co-operative systems and to inform our understanding of design.

One area contributing to this theme is to examine how designers abstract the worksystem and how they represent this abstraction in their designs. Development in areas such as distributed cognition, activity theory and experientialist cognition have raised questions as to how appropriate traditional cognitive psychology can be in this respect. The metaphors employed by designers may be very different from those understood by users and we are usingconcepts from experientialist cognition to better understand this relationship. Another area of research is in the application of activity theory to HCI and an in depth study of information seeking activities at a national newspaper is being undertaken.
The development of personal and mobile computing systems and the use of systems for collaborative work again changes the nature of what we mean by interaction. For example, novel interfacesare required to facilitate collaborative work amongst individuals who may be mobile or co-located. A distinctive approach to requirements analysis and prototype evaluation is demanded in such environments where mechanisms of interaction and collaboration which are relevantto real time, co- operative interfaces are required.

The nature of interaction is further muddied in systems that employ Intelligent Interface Technology (IIT) such as agent-based interaction, explanation systems or intelligent user interfaces. On the one hand IIT can contribute to the usability of systems by adapting and tailoring information to meet the different needs of different users. On the other hand there is the need for IIT systems to explain and present the reasoning of the system, and to allow users to collaborate with, and assist the technology when the limits of its 'intelligence' is reached. One investigation in this area is on developing co-operative, semi-automated theorem provers and evaluating these across a range of problems.

Combining IIT with the increasing ubiquity of mobile computing and communication between people through computers leads to alternative perspectives on interaction. Instead of seeing the user has outsidethe computer, looking in on a world of information, we can view the user inside an information space. This in turn leads us to consider the issue of how users can navigate their way through information spaces. An EC funded project, PERSONA, in collaboration with the Swedish Institute of Computer Science has been established to look at issues of navigation in information space. This work takes a critical look at the alternatives for assisting users to navigate information spaces , utilising concepts from a wide variety of disciplines. Another EC funded project (FLEX) is looking at interfaces to WebTV.

The concept of 'narrative' as both a method of, and metaphor for, interaction represents a move towards a paradigm of social navigation of information space. In narrative comprehension, readers (users) develop situation models not just of spatial layout but of temporal, causal and personal characteristics of the space. Other methods for enabling more social navigation are also being examined and an evaluation method, based on these ideas is being developed.

The concepts and methods that we are looking at within the widerdomain of interaction are being illustrated in a variety of areas. The process of developing Web- based courses is one area which requires careful consideration as current tools are severely lacking in a number of important respects. A SHEFC funded project with universities of Glasgow, Heriot-Watt and Glasgow Caledonian has been investigating these issues in the context of collaborative teaching of HCI. A second project is evaluating the usability of text book versus hypertext in an educational setting. Individual differences andtask types are being studied to better understand the circumstances in which one medium might be more appropriate than the other. A significant strand of work within the HCI Group is concerned with building systems for cognitive assessment and remediation. We have strong clinical contacts in a variety of paramedical fields and have designed systems for visual impairment, visual neglect, dyslexia, phonological development and agrammatic aphasia. Alison Crerar's Microworld for Aphasiabroke new ground in the field of computer-based language This work has attracted a lot of international interest and recently a Portuguese version of the software has been prepared for use in Brazil. Continuing work has resulted in a multimedia system suitable for home-based delivery of aphasia therapy and the design and evaluation of a computer-based narrative generator, to help non-speaking people to relate stories and anecdotes which are modified appropriately according to factors such as listener, conversation history and time available.

REFERENCES
Details of all projects can be found at http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/hci