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DISCUSSION: DESIGNING FOR THE FACE OF THE FUTURE:
RESEARCH ISSUES IN HWM~N—CQMPUTER INTERACTION
Judith Reitman Olson
The hardest part of generating a research agenda now for issues in
human-comput~r interaction for the Space Station is not En finding
important issues and unanswered questions that are in need of careful
research. It is selecting those research issues and the approach-= to
them that will answer the questions we have in the year 2000. In the
year 2000, we will have devices that we can only dream of today; the
Space Station environment will have a mission, size, and complexity
that today we can only begin to sketch out. Our job, therefore, is not
to rcoammenl a research program that will answer specific questions
that we know will arise in the design of the future Space Station.
Rather, it is to prepare for that future with a rich plan that lays
the foundation, a sound theoretical base, that will make specific
results both easy to predict and simple to confirm empirically.
Additionally, the research has to produce a development environment, a
flexible hardware platform and programming environment, that allows
rapid prototyping for empirical testing and easy final implementation.
These bases will serve us well when we have to make specific designs
for the year 2000.
INTERFA~F~ OF THE SYSTEMS OF THE FUTURE
It is important to begin by noting those things that are likely to be
different in the Space Station environment than they are in the
environments we focus our research on now. The most obvious
differences, well discussed by both Poison and Hays=, are that the
Space Station environment is weightless (with concomitant difficulties
in forceful action and countermotion), perhaps noisy (with difficulties
for the implementation of speech recognition and sound productions, and
complex (with ~ small number of people doing many, varied tasks with
the help of cc mputers, some of which they will be expert in, some of
which they will not).
In addition, the tasks performed In the Snace Station differ in
. . . . . . .
other, more run~amenta' ways prom the tasks we use today in our
laboratory research on human-com~uter interaction.
By far the largest
amount of current research focuses on the behavior of people doing
Operational basks: wordprocessing, spreadsheet formulation and
201
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202
analysis, database search ~ support of constellating a report. Our
current ~s~s~h focuses on office Lasts.
The Space Station, ~ contrast, is likely to have very little need
for Emotional t=.=ks; Seward everyday tasks are more likely to be
ac ~ Cliched Or go ~ personnel. Space Station personnel are more
likely to be involved in:
the monitoring and control of onboard systems te.g., life
support, experiment/manufacturing control),
the occasional use of planning and decision systems (e.g.,
expert systems for medical diagnosis or for planning for changes
in the missions, and
m e nearly constant use of communication systems (i.e., for both
mission related information and for personal contact with
friends and family), for both synchronous conversation and
asynchronous messages.
ISSUES
There are important research issues that we common among these systems
and the operational systems that we focus on today, but there are
other, additional issues that are unique, requiring particular
emphasis. The common issues, important to all future human-computer
interaction, include:
1.
How to design a system that is easy to learn and easy to ~ e.
One core feature of such a system is "consistency". Poleson's
paper mates the case for consistencY--a detailed argument for
, ~ e , _ e _ e _ _ _ _ e . ~
One Importance or specl~lcally morel Meg the user Is goals and the
methods necessary to accomplish the goals with a particular
system. This is a very important research approach that
promises to give the right level of answers to questions about
consistency that will arise in future designs.
2. A second core feature in making a system easy to learn and use
involves a straightforward mapping between the way the user
thinks about the task objects and actions and the way the system
~ , ~ For example, the mapping
between the objects of wordprocess m g, such as letters, words,
and sentences, correspond much more closely to the objects in a
visual editor than they do to the strings and line objects of a
line editor. Moran (1983) has made a beginning in delineating
this type of analysis; more theoretical work and em~rri~a~
e ~ e e e
Verl; :lCa lOn IS necessary.
rcouircs the user to specify them.
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203
3. How to make decisions about what modes of 1nput/output (and
their combinations) are appropriate for a given environment and
task. Hayes' paper discusses a number of considerations that
must be taken into account when deciding among
speech/visual/keyboard input and output modalities, as well as
the use of appropriate combinations of these modalities.
4. What characteristic= of the human information processor are
primary determinants of the range of accept~hie interface
designs. One way of evaluating a design of an interface is to
analyze it on the basis of the major processing that a user
engages An On order to understand the output and generate the
next input. For example, we can analyze an interface for its
perceptual clarity (e.g. adherence to Gestalt pr mciples of
grouping for mea m ng), its load on working memory (e.g., how
many sub-goals or variables must be retained for short periods
in order for users to accomplish their goals), and its
requirements for recall from long-term memory (e.g., how many
specific rules must be Spurned and how similar they are to each
other). This approach, the cognitive science of human-computer
interaction, by its generality across all application
interfaces, promises to provide a theoretical thread through a
number of e~piri~1 investigations. With a body of emp Id
tests of its predictions, this approach can both provide a
robust base for future design situations and grow in
sophistication and precision as a base for understanding complex
cognition, even outside the domain of human-computer
interaction.
Progress on these topics will make substantial contributions to our
understanding of how to design human-computer ~nterfa ~ for the Space
Station in the year 2000, just as they will for those interfaces in
offices and on the factory floor.
As discussed above, however, the systems on the Space Station are
less likely to include operational systems, like those used in research
on the above "common" topics, and more likely to include planning and
decision, monitoring and control, and communication systems.
Additional, important research issues arise in considering these latter
three types of systems:
1.
What characteristics of an interface app~vpriat-1y alert users
to abnormal situations in systems that must be monitored. What
advice, information, or immediate training can be given users of
a monitoring system that will guide them to behave in a creative
but appropriate manner.
2. How are voice, video, keyboard, pointing devil==, etc. to be
used singly and in combination in each of these three types of
systems? Certainly voice and video have begun to be explored in
synchronous communication systems (e.g., picturephone and
siow-scan video teleconferencing). How can these modalities be
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204
used to best advantage to support the need for Jong-term contact
with friends and family when individuals are separated for a
long -~me? How are privacy issues accommodated in such systems,
both for personal communication and operational ccmmunication?
3. If users have to consult an expert system or if some
intel~iger~ce is incorporated into a system, how is information
conveyed to the user about whether the system is to be
believed? Since current intelligent systems are "fragile," that
is, easily put In situations for which their advice is not
appropriate, we need to convey to the ~ er information about the
system's boundaries of capabilities. Or, better yet, we need to
build intelligent facilities that allow the user to query or
access the stored knowledge in ways that can make the advice fit
new situations more flexibly.
4. Since the systems that Space Station users must d=~1 with will
be varied and the users will have varying expertise On either
the task at hand or the particular system to be used, it is
important to have the system provide requisite context or
train m g. Traim ng need not be a formal docile that one
accesses explicitly, as software training mcUNIes are designed
today. m e systems could be initially designed to be
transparent (i.e. with cbiects and actions that fit the way the
~ , _
user thinks about the task), not requiring training. Or, they
could be built to include a "do what I mean" facility or
embedded "help" or "training" facilities, accessible either when
the user requests it or when the system detects that the user is
confused or doing things inefficiently.
Most of the current theoretical bases for the design of
human-computer interfaces consider tasks that are well-known to
the user. The Gods analysis of Card et al. (1983), for example,
is for skilled cognition. Kieras and Polson's (1985) production
system formalism similarly considers only skilled performance of
cognitive banks. However, in the Space Station environment,
users will be doing few routine tacks. They will be doing tanks
that involve navel situations, situations that invoke creative
problem solving, not routine cognitive skill. Space Station
personnel, for example, may try to alter a system that their
monitor has shown is malfunctioning; they may use the advice of
a medical expert system to attend to a colleague who has an
undiagnosed iciness; they may ~ e communication channels to
a ~ e additional expertise form the ground crews to solve
onbcard problems or plan new missions. In order to understand
how these interfaces should be designed, more emphasis should be
made in research in the area of human problem solving. The
focus should be, for example, on how to build systems that,
minimally, do not interfere with the information the person
needs to keep track of during complex problem solving. Ideally,
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205
we want to be able to build systems that augment a person's
abilities to explore and evaluate new actions in novel
situations.
6. Furthermore, as Hayes' paper pa Mets cut, most of our current
research on human-computer interaction focuses on the use of a
system ~~ a ['tool" not ~s an Agent Our understanding of
cooperative human behavior is woefully thin. Theoretical bases
near to be established so that we can build systems that
cc operate well with the human problem solver, so that systems
can augment the intelligent human to produce an even greater
level of understanding and action.
APPROACHES FOR THE UNDEFINED FUTURE
1
As stated at the beginning of this discussion, the most difficult
aspect of the task of listing research issues that the Space Station of
your 2000 will benefit from concerns predicting the Space Station
environment and the technology that will be available at the time. We
just don't know what the alternative design elements will look like.
The best we can do at this time, therefore, is to recommend a research
agenda whose results promise to be useful no matter what the
environment and technology will be. At the cone of these
reoo=mendations is research that ~ nters on the capabilities of the
human information processor, both as an individual and ~ a cooperative
environment. m e human will not have changed substantially by the year
2000.
Consequently, cur understanding of human-computer interaction will
benefit from research that accumulate= results frog a common
th~nretira~ core that:
1. del~n-=tes in detail the functioning of the human information
processor, with particular emphasis on the interaction among
cognitive resources and those resources involved in attention
(for monitoring systems), problem solving (for expert systems
and decision support systems), and communication,
2. within the domain of expert systems, explores the information a
user Negro and determines how it should be presented so that the
user can assess the believability of the advice given, and
deters mes ways to help casual users of a variety of systems to
use them without a great d-~1 of "start up" effort, either'
through transparent design; effective, easy training; or
embedded intelligent aids.
A -Client aspect of this type of research is that it IS bared on
cognitive models, not on design pr mciples. Cognitive models allow the
examination of the interaction of features of the task or interface,
which principles cannot do. mese cognitive models characterize
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206
details of what the task rehires and details of the human information
processor. By running these models, the designer or researcher can
de~nine in detail areas of difficulty In the interaction berg., Ante
the working Tory is overloaded with subgoals ark pare ~ t ~ s to be
retained). Certain changes to the interface design could be tested by
running these models without having to invest An the expense of a
full-fledged usability study. The number of researchers approaching
issues in human-computer interaction with cognitive models is currently
very small; their numbers should be encouraged to grow.
Furthermore, research should have as one of its goals the transfer
of the knowledge developed in the laboratory to the design and
development process. This calls for development of:
1. analytic tools for assessing consistency in a particular design.
analytic tools for assessing the amount of effort required in
mapping the users' natural way of thinking about the task (i.e.,
an object/action language) into that required by the system, and
3. guidelines that will assist the designer in decisions about
which modality or combinations of modalities are appropriate for
a particular ta.=k and situation.
And, if systems are to be built for an evolving future, they must be
built with scars and hooks, as Hayes notes. Software should be
designed so that it he places that will allow easy growth in
capabilities or input/output devices. Furthermore, research is needed
to develop:
1. a method and language that allows the system designer to
incorporate good human factors into the target system (e.g.,
toolkit with components that have been designed with
consideration for research on their human factors), and
a method that allows system developers to rapidly implement
trial 1nterfa~=, so that they can ~ bested with real
end-users, and then turned quickly into production code.
It is clear frump the papers in this session that funds devoted only
to simple emp Apical studies of users' behavior with new, Increasingly
complex technology will not be sufficient for answering the questions
of the year 2000 and beyond. In contrast, research that focuses on:
1. the abilities of the human information processor with
concommitant widespread, specific, robust cognitive modeling,
and
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207
2. additions to the developrner~t life Cycle to make Jche production
of good software rapid
can produce research that can make the h~nan~nputPr interfaces on
the Space Station of the highest possible quality for their time.
REM-
Card, S. K., Moran, T. P., ar~ Newell, A.
1983 The Psychology of Han - Carnputer Interaction, Hillsdale,
N. J.: Er~amn.
Kieras, D. E., arm Polson, P. G.
1985 An approach to the formal analysis of user complexity.
International Journal of An - Sac hire Studies 22: 365-394
.
~ran, T.
1983 Getting into a system: external-~nternal task crappie
analysis. Pp. 45-49 in Exceedings of the 1983 CHI
Conference on Man Factors In Cc~outincr. New York: ACM.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
information processor
