Touch Research 1: Inspiration and History [Handouts]

Touch Research

A project for Communication Design M1

HTWG Constance

Summer Term 2008

Part 1: Inspiration and History

A collection of faces/ context on a timeline …

1934 – 1968

1934 Paul Otlet

1945 Vannevar Bush

1960 J.C.R. Licklider

1965 Ted Nelson

1968 Doug Engelbart

Paul Otlet

Information science, 1934

Wrote numerous essays on how to collect and organize the world’s knowledge.

Founding father of documentation, the field of study now more commonly referred to as information science.

His vision of a great network of knowledge was centered on documents and included the notions of hyperlinks, search engines, remote access, and social networks.

Vannevar Bush

Links and web, 1945

Bush proposed the notion of blocks of text joined by links and he also introduced the terms links, linkages, trails and web to describe his conception of textuality.

A single author connects documents that are associated by some common theme, annotated with commentary and available for others to read long after the original associations are made.

Bush goes on to describe the sharing of trails between people and the creation of a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of common record.

Vannevar Bush

[Differential Analyzer, 1931

The differential analyser was a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, using wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. It was one of the first advanced computing devices to be used operationally.

The analyser was invented in 1876 by James Thomson, brother of Lord Kelvin. Lord Kelvin advised Arthur Pollen to use an analyser for Pollen's fire-control system developed to control naval gunnery. This electrically driven analogue computer was ready by about 1912. Mechanical integrators for differential equations were also designed by the Italian mathematician Ernesto Pascal in 1913.

A practical version of Thomson's differential analyzer was first constructed by H. W. Nieman and Vannevar Bush starting in 1927 at MIT. They published a report on the device during 1931.]

Vannevar Bush

Memex Machine, 1930s

Bush introduced the concept of what he called the memex (possibly derived from "memory extension") during the 1930s, which is a microfilm-based "device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory."

He wanted the memex to behave like the "intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain"; essentially, causing the proposed device to be similar to the functions of a human brain. It was also important that it could be easily accessible '"a future device for individual use... a sort of mechanized private file and library" in the shape of a desk'.

The important feature of the memex is that it ties two pieces together. Any item can lead to another immediately.

Vannevar Bush

As We May Think, 1945

In the article, Bush predicted that "Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified."

Bush explains how the human mind works differently that traditional storage paradigms. For example oftentimes data is stored alphabetically, and to retrieve it one must trace it down, from subclass to subclass.

The brain rather, Bush explains, works by association, rather than index, and with the brain being one of the "awe-inspiring" phenomenon in nature one should learn from it.

J.C.R. Licklider

Networked computers with easy user interfaces, GUIs, 1960

Computers should be developed with the goal „to enable men and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs.“

He foresaw the need for networked computers with easy user interfaces.

His ideas foretold of graphical computing, point-and -click interfaces, digital libraries, e-commerce, online banking, and software that would exist on a network and migrate to wherever it was needed.

Ted Nelson

Project Xanadu, 1965

He coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published it in 1965.

However, Nelson says he dislikes the World Wide Web, XML and all embedded markup, and regards Berners-Lee's work as a gross over-simplification of his own work:

“HTML is precisely what we were trying to prevent — ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management.”

Douglas C. Engelbart

First hypertext system, 1960s

NLS = oN-Line System

A revolutionary computer collaboration system designed by Douglas Engelbart and the researchers at the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

The first system to employ the practical use of hypertext links, the mouse (co-invented by Engelbart and colleague Bill English), raster-scan video monitors, information organized by relevance, screen windowing, presentation programs, and other modern computing concepts.

Features: The mouse, 2-dimensional display editing, in-file object addressing, linking, hypermedia, outline processing, flexible view control, multiple windows, cross-file editing, integrated hypermedia email, hypermedia publishing, document version control, shared-screen teleconferencing, computer-aided meetings, formatting directives, context-sensitive help, distributed client-server architecture, uniform command syntax, universal "user interface" front-end module, multi-tool integration, grammar-driven command language interpreter, protocols for virtual terminals, remote procedure call protocols, compilable "Command Meta Language"

Douglas C. Engelbart

The mother of all demos at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, December 9, 1968

The demo featured the first computer mouse the public had ever seen, as well as introducing interactive text, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email, hypertext and a collaborative real-time editor.

Engelbart, with the help of his geographically distributed team, demonstrated the workings of the NLS (which stood for oNLine System) to the 1,000 computer professionals in attendance.

Douglas C. Engelbart

Magnification of the first computer mouse, 1963, co-invented with Bill English

Engelbart never received any royalties for it, as his patent ran out before it became widely used in personal computers.

State of the Internet

The ARPANET, 1969 – 1971

Initially, on October 29, 1969, the ARPANET consisted of four nodes (IMPs, interface message processors)

1. SDS Sigma 7 at UCLA 2. SDS 940 running NLS at Stanford 3. IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT at UCSB 4. DEC PDP-10 running TENEX at Utah

The first message transmitted over the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 p.m, on October 29, 1969. The message text was the word "login"; the "l" and the "o" letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was "lo". About an hour later, having recovered from the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full "login".

The contents of the first e-mail transmission in 1971 have been forgotten; in the Frequently Asked Questions section of his Web site, the sender, Ray Tomlinson, who sent the message between two computers sitting side-by-side, claims that the contents were "entirely forgettable, and I have, therefore, forgotten them", and speculates that the message likely was "QWERTYUIOP" or some such.

1976 – 1991

1976 Richard Saul Wurman

1981 Don Norman

1987 Bill Atkinson

1991 Tim Berners-Lee

Richard Saul Wurman

Information architecture, 1976

“I thought the explosion of data needed an architecture, needed a series of systems, needed systemic design, a series of performance criteria to measure it.”

[TED Talks, 1984

“I did the TED conferences out of my own boredom, and the only ones that seemed interested were those in the technology business, entertainment industry and design profession. What astonished me is that they didn't realize they were all in one business.”]

State of the Internet

The ARPANET, 1977

Don Norman

The trouble with UNIX, 1981

He is an expert of cognitive science and is widely considered to be the first to apply advanced human factors to design via cognitive design.

Don Norman

User centered design, 1986

The Psychology (Design) of Everyday Things.

User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use an interface, but also to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behavior in real world tests with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of an interface to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like.

The chief difference from other interface design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the user interface around how people can, want, or need to work, rather than forcing the users to change how they work to accommodate the software developers' approach.

Bill Atkinson

HyperCard, 1987

One the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web.

HyperCard is one of the first products that made use of and popularized the hypertext concept to a large popular base of users.

Atkinson later lamented that if he had only realized the power of network-oriented stacks, instead of focusing on local stacks on a single machine, HyperCard could have become the first Web browser.

HyperCard saw a loss in popularity with the growth of the World Wide Web, since the Web could handle and deliver data in much the same way as HyperCard without being limited to files on one's own hard disk. HyperCard had a significant impact on the web as it inspired the creation of both HTTP itself (through its influence on Tim Berners-Lee's colleague Robert Cailliau, and JavaScript (whose creator, Brendan Eich, was inspired by HyperTalk).

The pointing-finger cursor used for navigating stacks later found its way into the first web browsers, as the hyperlink cursor.

Tim Berners-Lee

World Wide Web/ HTTP/ Web browser

While an independent contractor at CERN from June to December 1980, Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. While there, he built a prototype system named ENQUIRE.

In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet node in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet: "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web.” He wrote his initial proposal in March 1989, and in 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau, produced a revision which was accepted by his manager, Mike Sendall.

He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire system to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first Web browser, which also functioned as an editor (WorldWideWeb, running on the NeXTSTEP operating system), and the first Web server, CERN HTTPd (short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon).

The first Web site built was at CERN, and was first put on line on 6 August 1991: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.

Tim Berners-Lee

The first Web pages and Web browser WorldWideWeb

Tim Berners-Lee

The first Web server, running on Steve Jobs’ NeXTSTEP operating system.

1994 – 2005

1994 Jakob Nielsen

1994 Marc Andreessen, Eric J. Bina, Jim Clark

Jakob Nielsen

Web usability, 1994

From 1994 to 1998 he was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer. He was hired to make heavy-duty enterprise software easier to use, since large-scale applications had been the focus of most of his projects at the phone company and IBM.

But luckily the job definition of a Distinguished Engineer is "you're supposed to be the world's leading expert in your field, so you figure out what would be most important for the company for you to work on." Therefore, Dr. Nielsen ended up spending most of his time at Sun defining the emerging field of Web usability. He was the usability lead for several design rounds of Sun's website and intranet (SunWeb), including the original SunWeb design in 1994.

Principles:

Clear orientation

Comprehensible navigation

Need oriented entry points

Consistent user guidance

Marc Andreessen

The first user-friendly Web browser Mosaic with Eric J. Bina at the NCSA, 1994

After his graduation from the university in 1993, Andreessen moved to California to work at Enterprise Integration Technologies. Andreessen then met with Jim Clark, the recently-departed founder of Silicon Graphics. Clark believed that the Mosaic browser had great commercial possibilities and suggested starting an Internet software company.

Eric J. Bina

The first user-friendly Web browser Mosaic at the NCSA with Marc Andreessen, 1994

Jim Clark

The first commercial Web browser with Marc Andreessen (as Netscape Communications), the Netscape Navigator, based on Mosaic, 1994

Soon Mosaic Communications Corporation was in business in Mountain View, California, with Andreessen as cofounder and vice president of technology. The University of Illinois was unhappy with the company's use of the Mosaic name, so Mosaic Communications changed its name to Netscape Communications, and its flagship web browser was the Netscape Navigator.

2008

The mobile Web is coming.

2007

The 1st generation iPhone.

Multi-touch …

Phase 2: Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Overview

Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction: http://sigchi.org/cdg/cdg2.html

by the ACM SIGCHI, 1992

Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them

HCI Area H1: Psychology?

Psychology is the analytic and scientific study of mental processes and behavior.

Psychology -> cognitive psychology -> information processing

Context/ Environment Versus User

Situation: Software interface or hypertext information system

Action: Behavior or interaction

Cognitive psychology is a discipline within psychology that investigates the internal mental processes of thought such as visual processing, memory, thinking, learning, feeling, problem solving, and language.

Within the field of cognitive psychology, information processing is an approach to the goal of understanding human thinking. It arose in the 1940s and 1950s. The essence of the approach is to see cognition as being essentially computational in nature, with mind being the software and the brain being the hardware.

Human Software and Hardware

H1 Human information processing (human thinking as a software running in the human brain)

H2 Language, communication and interaction (encoding and decoding)

Computer Hardware and Software

C1 Input and output devices

C2 - C5 Software running on underlying computer hardware

The Human User

Interaction is a response to a situation:

Situation -> action

Three Levels of Interaction

According to Don Norman:

Visceral/ affective level: Situation -> action

Behavioral level: Situation -> black box -> action

Cognitive level: Situation -> cognitive system -> action

In a cognitive system, we distinguish …

Perception

Spoken language

Text

Images

Cerebration

Terms

Reasoning

Decision making

Problem solving

Learning

Acquisition

Memory

Behavior

Motor activity

Speech

Situation Action Circle

The action/ behavior feeds back on the perception of the situation …

… and is dependant on a background of

Motivation

“Man, I’m not willing to understand that cryptic ticket form.”

Emotion

“I love those colors!”

Social context

“I an new to this whole Internet stuff.”

Physiology

“I should have had a breakfast.”

HCI Areas C2-C5: Computer Software!

Computer Software

C2 Dialogue Techniques

C3 Dialogue Genre

C4 Computer Graphics

C5 Dialogue Architecture

Details will be provided in the next session.

Software interface vs hypertext system

by Jesse James Garret, 2000

Task-oriented vs information-oriented

1. User needs 2. Site objectives 3. Functional specification vs content requirements 4. Interaction design vs information architecture 5. Information design 6. Interface design vs navigation design 7. Visual design

Hypertext system – information oriented – from conception to completion

1. User needs: Externally derived goals for the site; identified through user research, ethno/ techno/ psychographics, etc.

2. Site objectives: Business, creative, or other internally derived goals for the site

3. Content requirements: Definition of content elements required in the site in order to meet user needs

4. Information architecture: Structural design of the information space to facilitate intuitive access to content

5. Information design: In the Tuftean sense – designing the presentation of information to facilitate understanding

6. Navigation design: Design of interface elements to facilitate the user’s movement through the information architecture

7. Visual design: Visual treatment of text, graphic page elements and navigational components

Software interface – task oriented – from abstract to concrete

1. User needs: Externally derived goals for the site; identified through user research, ethno/ techno/ psychographics, etc.

2. Site objectives: Business, creative, or other internally derived goals for the site

3. Functional specifications: Feature set – detailed descriptions of functionality the site must include in order to meet user needs

4. Interaction design: Development of application flows to facilitate user tasks; defining how the user interacts with site functionality

5. Information design: In the Tuftean sense – designing the presentation of information to facilitate understanding

6. Interface design: As in traditional HCI – design of interface elements to facilitate user interaction with functionality

7. Visual design: Graphic treatment of interface elements; the “look” in “look-and-feel”

Goal for the Next Session

Touch History -> Touch Research

Credits

Via Creative Commons on flickr:

Libraryman www.flickr.com/libraryman/718450202/

Mathieu Thouvenin www.flickr.com/mathoov/2429735842/

Maurizio D'Arrigo www.flickr.com/keylosa/184606430/

Jim Crossley www.flickr.com/raindog/532177285/

Matt Locke www.flickr.com/matlocktest/37349112/

Javier Martínez www.flickr.com/hyoga/1165367241/

mac steve/ Michael N www.flickr.com/mac/18590268/

Jim Grisanzio www.flickr.com/jimgris/65769319/

Robert Scoble www.flickr.com/scobleizer/2256358640/

Kit Cowan www.flickr.com/kitcowan/712113879/

Thomas Lieser www.flickr.com/onkel_wart/2377883376/

Cheon Fong Liew www.flickr.com/liewcf/894035077/

CSSA @UCSD www.flickr.com/cssa_ucsd/150160784/

Jordan Fischer www.flickr.com/jordanfischer/61429449/

sparktography/ Sparky www.flickr.com/sparktography/374064022/

ACM SIGCHI Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction:

http://sigchi.org/cdg/cdg2.html

Original Print Media: Copyright © 1992 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.

Web Version: Copyright © 1996 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.

All the rest:

http://wikpedia.org

University of Applied Sciences Constance, Faculty for Communication Design, Project “Touch Research”:

http://www.htwg-konstanz.de

http://www.kd.fh-konstanz.de/dina8/daten_e.php?wodenn=will

http://www.felgner.ch/2008/04/touch_research.html