The entirety of Ben Fry’s acknowledgments page for his master’s thesis. A picture is worth a thousand thanks. Post script—he didn’t get to do this for his PhD thesis (it’s just a normal “thanks mom and dad!” page).

Man, do I ever wish I was going to Pervasive this year. First of all, it’s in Sydney Australia. I so so want to get down there. Second, there are some really good workshops that will take place the weekend before the conference. I’m helping to review submissions for the Pervasive Expression workshop, organized by […]

Next week, I’ll be in the Netherlands for the Sensami symposium. This symposium is organized by the largest technical universities in Holland through their computer science student organizations (on a side note, I’d just like to say how I love democratic socialist countries where student unions have so much power and money!). I’ll also be […]

Man, am I wishing for an iPhone. Some haptic feedback (like in this patent) might really help the interface though… thumb typing without any feedback whatsoever is, um, hard. Still though, the total package is impressive.

Allen Newell. 1976.
Fairy Tales are the inspiration for a new conception of how computation can be used.
HTML of paper

The Challenge of Information Visualization Evaluation
Catherine Plaisant
There are 4 traditional methods for evaluation of Information Visualization:

Controlled Experiments comparing design elements - compare specific widgets, compare mappings of information to graphical display
Usability Evaluation of a tool - used to provide feedback on the problems users encounter with a tool
Controlled Experiments comparing two (or more) tools - […]

Authors: Pederson E., Sokoler, T.
“We have developed a prototype architecture that makes up the technical framework for further use studies. The prototype encompasses capture of auditory and visual data, abstraction of such data into compact streams, synthesizing of auditory, visual and haptic imagery from streams of abstract data, and finally display at the receiving end […]

Authors: Höök, K., Sengers, P., and Andersson G.
The evaluation of the Influence Machine. Methods: anecdotal, co-discovery, video taped for analysis. Stresses that this evaluation is to inform artists as designers of interactive systems. The question is: Is this a good interaction? Artists are most interested in the detail of each unique interaction. Reports findings textually […]

Authors: G. Abowd and B. Mynatt (Rodden is on the conference papaer version)
The major challenges for ubicomp systems are:
1. build a robust system
2. tell a compelling story
3. fulfill real needs
4. deploy in an authentic setting
In order to meet these challenges, Gregory and Beth suggest that a feasibility study is indispensable.
“Since it is already a difficult challenge to build robust […]

Authors: Maribeth Gandy, Blair Macintyre, Peter Presti, Steven Dow, Jay Bolter
The paper is about an emerging idea from Augmented Reality research (AR is like VR, except that it uses head-mounted displays to place the virtual world on top of the real world — instead of a completely virutal world) to build AR Karaoke / Movieoke […]

Author: JCR Licklider
This is a classic paper of human-computer interaction and it lays out the foundation of the currently operating paradigm of “human in the loop” computing. Licklider positions Man-Computer Symbiosis (MCS) between “Mechanically Extended Man,” the paradigm of the industrial revolution, where technology tools extend the arms, ears, and eyes of mankind, and “Artificial […]

Authors: Jason Elliot, Lori Adams, Amy Bruckman
The Authors discuss a short evaluation (8 classroom days total) of their software AquaMoose. AuqaMoose is a video-game like (though not enough like one to appease the requirements of highschool students) microworld, in which students use mathematical formulae to navigate the space and pass “rings” / gates. The software […]

I’m working this semester with Michael Mateas and Mario Romero on a generative art installation for the home, the Tableau Machine. The machine works by analyzing the video frames from 6 cameras mounted in the Aware Home (a “living laboratory” of a home — it’s got all the things a usual house has, a kitchen, […]

Authors: Greeno, Resnick, ?
[insert section on behaviorism]
We begin with the schools under the Cognitivist / Rationalist approaches to learning, teaching, and knowing. Rationalism states simply that humans are best understood as a rational being. Humans seek to fit the world into their own internal models of objects, relations, forces, and constraints. They adjust and build […]

Brooks, F.
Summary:
Software engineering turns out to be quite a bear. Why? Is it essential to the process? There are some accidents:
x, y, z
There are also some essential problems:
q, r, and t.