Toward Every-Citizen Interfaces to the
Nation's Information Infrastructure
Toward an Every-Citizen Interface to the Nation's Information
Infrastructure Steering Committee
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications
National Research Council
This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
Support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IRI-9529473. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
More than screen deep : toward every-citizen interfaces to the
nation's information infrastructure / Toward an Every-Citizen
Interface to the Nation's Information Infrastructure Steering
Committee, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Commission
on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications, National
Research Council.
p. cm.
Summary report from a workshop held in August 1996.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-309-06357-4 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
1. User interfaces (Computer systems)—Congresses. 2. Human-
computer interaction—Congresses. 3. Information superhighway—
United States—Congresses. I. National Research Council (U.S.).
Toward an Every-Citizen Interface to the Nation's Information
Infrastructure Steering Committee.
QA76.9.U83M67 1997
303.48'3—dc21 97-21211
Additional copies of this report are available from National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Lockbox 285, Washington, D.C. 20055; (800)624-6242 or (202)334-3313 (in the Washington metropolitan area); Internet, http://www.nap.edu
Copyright 1997 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
TOWARD AN EVERY-CITIZEN INTERFACE TO THE NATION'S INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE STEERING COMMITTEE
ALAN W. BIERMANN, Duke University, Chair
TORA BIKSON, RAND Corporation
THOMAS DEFANTI, University of Illinois at Chicago
GERHARD FISCHER, University of Colorado
BARBARA J. GROSZ, Harvard University
THOMAS LANDAUER, University of Colorado
JOHN MAKHOUL, BBN Corporation
BRUCE TOGNAZZINI, Healtheon Corporation
GREGG VANDERHEIDEN, University of Wisconsin
STEPHEN WEINSTEIN, NEC America Inc.
Staff
MARJORY S. BLUMENTHAL, Director
JOHN M. GODFREY, Research Associate (until January 31, 1997)
GAIL E. PRITCHARD, Project Assistant (until December 13, 1996)
SYNOD BOYD, Project Assistant (from May 21, 1997)
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD
DAVID D. CLARK, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chair
FRANCES E. ALLEN, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
JEFF DOZIER, University of California at Santa Barbara
SUSAN L. GRAHAM, University of California at Berkeley
JAMES GRAY, Microsoft Corporation
BARBARA J. GROSZ, Harvard University
PATRICK HANRAHAN, Stanford University
JUDITH HEMPEL, University of California at San Francisco
DEBORAH A. JOSEPH, University of Wisconsin
BUTLER W. LAMPSON, Microsoft Corporation
EDWARD D. LAZOWSKA, University of Washington
BARBARA H. LISKOV, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
JOHN MAJOR, Qualcomm Inc.
ROBERT L. MARTIN, AT&T Network Systems
DAVID G. MESSERSCHMITT, University of California at Berkeley
CHARLES L. SEITZ, Myricom Inc.
DONALD SIMBORG, KnowMed Systems Inc.
LESLIE L. VADASZ, Intel Corporation
MARJORY S. BLUMENTHAL, Director
HERBERT S. LIN, Senior Staff Officer
JERRY R. SHEEHAN, Staff Officer
JULIE LEE, Administrative Assistant
SYNOD BOYD, Project Assistant
LISA L. SHUM, Project Assistant
COMMISSION ON PHYSICAL SCIENCES, MATHEMATICS,
AND APPLICATIONS
ROBERT J. HERMANN, United Technologies Corporation, Co-chair
W. CARL LINEBERGER, University of Colorado, Co-chair
PETER M. BANKS, Environmental Research Institute of Michigan
LAWRENCE D. BROWN, University of Pennsylvania
RONALD G. DOUGLAS, Texas A&M University
JOHN E. ESTES, University of California at Santa Barbara
L. LOUIS HEGEDUS, Elf Atochem North America Inc.
JOHN E. HOPCROFT, Cornell University
RHONDA J. HUGHES, Bryn Mawr College
SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
KENNETH H. KELLER, University of Minnesota
KENNETH I. KELLERMANN, National Radio Astronomy Observatory
MARGARET G. KIVELSON, University of California at Los Angeles
DANIEL KLEPPNER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
JOHN KREICK, Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Company
MARSHA I. LESTER, University of Pennsylvania
THOMAS A. PRINCE, California Institute of Technology
NICHOLAS P. SAMIOS, Brookhaven National Laboratory
L.E. SCRIVEN, University of Minnesota
SHMUEL WINOGRAD, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
CHARLES A. ZRAKET, MITRE Corporation (retired)
NORMAN METZGER, Executive Director
Preface
The spread of information systems and, in particular,
information infrastructure throughout the economy and social fabric raises
questions about the technology's ease of use by different people, from those
with limited technical know-how to those with various disabilities to the
so-called power users who push for higher performance on many
dimensions. In response to a request from the National Science Foundation,
the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the
National Research Council convened a steering committee to evaluate and
suggest fruitful directions for progress in user interfaces to computing and
communications systems. The charge to the steering committee is best
presented by quoting from the project prospectus, which called for a
workshop to "determine the state-of-the-art of research in CS
[computer science] and other disciplines, identify the questions most important
to investigate next . . . , identify what is known from research on the
longer-term problems that will aid in near-term human-computer
communications design, and identify important long-term research issues." The
steering committee met in March 1996 to plan a two-day workshop that
was held in August 1996 (the agenda and participants are listed in
Appendix A) and then met again in September 1996 to plan the structure and
format of this summary report. It relied primarily on electronic mail for
its subsequent interactions, including electronic mail with the larger set
of workshop participants.
The workshop participants, like the steering committee, included experts from multiple disciplines—computing and communications software and hardware, psychology, sociology, human factors, design, and economics—and experts experienced with applications in specific domains (e.g., health and education) and with the needs and experiences of a wide range of subpopulations (e.g., people with physical disabilities; those with low-income and/or limited education). Whether from a computer science, social science, or application-domain perspective, all had experience working with a variety of computing and communications system users, and all were asked to draw on their practical experience. It was anticipated that viewing earlier, more technically focused treatments of user interfaces through the lens of a familiar life domain would reveal neglected issues, unidentified challenges, unexpected convergences, or new directions for research or action. The participants pooled their skills to make suggestions concerning how to build interfaces that will enable the broadest-possible spectrum of citizenry to interact easily and effectively with the nation's information infrastructure to obtain as many services as is reasonable.
The workshop demonstrated the value of assembling a very diverse group of experts embodying many complementary perspectives; it also demonstrated how differently people in different disciplines—or people with different subspecialties within a given discipline—perceive, analyze, and discuss the experiences and needs of users of computing and communications systems. That recognition implies that the workshop should be seen as part of a process of interdisciplinary convening and exchange that should continue. That process may require special effort and encouragement through activities like the one responsible for this report.
The role of the steering committee was not only to organize the workshop but also to sift through the many inputs to distill key themes, ideas, and recommendations. The results compose Part I of the present report, which is a synthesis and distillation primarily of workshop-related inputs and which focuses on research opportunities. Its contribution lies in its integration of a very diverse set of perspectives to illuminate directions for research, with emphasis on directions that blend multiple disciplines. Part I does not purport to be a comprehensive treatise on either user interfaces or the entire set of problems inherent in the challenge of broadening public access to the national information infrastructure (NII), nor does it focus on the important subset of problems associated with NII applications in support of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. For those seeking more detail and a mapping of ideas to sources, position papers contributed by workshop participants (several containing bibliographies) are included in Part II. Additional position papers can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www2.nas.edu/CSTBWEB.
The steering committee is grateful to the many people who contributed to its deliberations and to this report. The workshop participants generated a lively set of discussions and commented on early drafts derived from panel discussions. The steering committee is particularly grateful to those who also contributed position statements (see Part II), brief outlines of the state of the art in specific areas (distributed with the workshop program to participants), and comments on a draft of this report. H. Rex Hartson (Virginia Polytechnic Institute), who was unable to attend the workshop, generously supplied a special overview of the user interface landscape, which is the lead segment of Part II. Terry Winograd (Stanford University), Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland), and Nathan Shedroff (vivid studios), who were also unable to attend, provided position papers.
Several workshop participants and a few individuals with no formal participation in the project provided extraordinary inputs to this report. Austin Henderson (Apple Computer) made significant contributions to the committee's thinking about collaboration and information dimensions. Johanna Moore (University of Pittsburgh) assisted in the revision of the discussion on agent technology by collecting input from other participants and integrating it with her own suggestions. Candace Sidner (Lotus Development Corporation) and C. Raymond Perrault (SRI International) contributed additional insights, references, and text describing natural language understanding and processing. Blake Hannaford (University of Washington) contributed text describing commercial and research trends relating to haptic and tactile interfaces, and David Warner (Syracuse University) provided input on medical applications for such technology. Julia Hirschberg (AT&T Research Laboratories) and Pierre Isabelle (Center for Information Technology Innovation) provided state-of-the-art reviews for text-to-speech synthesis and machine translation, respectively. Jason Leigh (University of Illinois at Chicago) supplied a substantial part of the graphics and virtual reality reference list. CommerceNet (http://www.commerce.net) and Nielsen Media Research (http://www. nielsenmedia.com/commercenet) generously provided results of their Internet Demographics Survey. Michael North (North Communications) and Marc Regberg (Venture Development Corporation) supplied reference materials on kiosks and their uses. David Crocker (Brandenburg Consulting) created an electronic mail discussion list that supported post-workshop exchanges by the workshop participants and the steering committee.
The anonymous reviewers of this report provided an invaluable, if sometimes confounding, sanity check on the steering committee's early efforts to synthesize its impressions and conclusions. The range of comments, criticisms, and suggestions was as broad as the other inputs to the project, but collectively they guided the steering committee in tightening and reinforcing its presentation.
John Godfrey, a CSTB research associate until February 1997, put considerable effort into organizing the workshop and working with the steering committee as it developed this report. Rob Cheng, a graduate student at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, prepared background research and other materials for the workshop as a summer intern with CSTB. Finally, the committee thanks Gary Strong, of the National Science Foundation, for both making this project possible and providing ongoing encouragement.
Alan W. Biermann, Chair
Toward an Every-Citizen Interface to the
Nation's Information Infrastructure
Steering Committee
Contents
2 Requirements for Effective Every-Citizen Interfaces
3 Input/Output Technologies: Current Status and Research Needs
5 Communication and Collaboration
6 Agents and Systems Intelligence
7 Conclusions and Recommendations
BACKGROUND PAPER
Trends in Human-Computer Interaction Research and Development
H. Rex Hartson, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
An Embedded, Invisible Every-Citizen Interface
Mark Weiser, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Intelligent Multimedia Interfaces for "Each" Citizen
Mark T. Maybury, Mitre Corporation
Interfaces for Understanding
Nathan Shedroff, vivid studios
Interspace and an Every-Citizen Interface to the National
Information Infrastructure
Terry Winograd, Stanford University
Mobile Access to the Nation's Information Infrastructure
Daniel P. Siewiorek, Carnegie Mellon University
Ordinary Citizens and the National Information
Infrastructure
Bruce Tognazzini, Healtheon Corporation
Spoken-Language Technology
Ronald A. Cole, Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and
Technology
Toward an Every-Citizen Interface
Steven K. Feiner, Columbia University
Nomadicity, Disability Access, and the Every-Citizen
Interface
Gregg C. Vanderheiden, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Computer-Mediated Collaboration
Loren Terveen, AT&T Research
Creating Interfaces Founded on Principles of Discourse
Communication and Collaboration
Candace Sidner, Lotus Development Corporation
Digital Maps
Lance McKee and Louis Hecht, Open GIS Consortium Inc.
Gathering and Integrating Information in the National
Information Infrastructure
Craig A. Knoblock, University of Southern California
Integrating Audiences and Users
John Richards, Turner Le@rning Inc.
Intelligent Agents for Information
Katia P. Sycara, Carnegie Mellon University
Intelligent Information Agents
Johanna D. Moore, University of Pittsburgh
Resource Discovery and Resource Delivery
Kent Wittenburg, Bellcore
Search and Publishing
Robert A. Virzi, GTE Laboratories Incorporated
Security
Stephen Kent, BBN Corporation
Research to Support Widespread Access to Digital Libraries and Government Information and Services
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland
Community Computing Projects
Aki Helen Namioka, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Lifelong Learning
Gerhard Fischer, University of Colorado, Boulder
Supporting Learning in Communities of Practice
Charles Cleary, Northwestern University
Extending Knowledge Access to Underserved Citizens
Wallace Feurzeig, BBN Systems and Technologies
Electronic Access to Services for Low-Income Populations
Adam Porter, University of Maryland
Access for People with Disabilities
Larry Goldberg, WGBH Educational Foundation
Cross-Disciplinary, Social-Context Research
John Leslie King, University of California, Irvine
Audio Access to the National Information Infrastructure
John C. Thomas, NYNEX Science and Technology
APPENDIXES
A Workshop Agenda and Participants
B Steering Committee Members' Biographies