Human

Verbeeks research focuses on the social and cultural roles of technology and the ethical and anthropological aspects of human-technology relations. He recently published the book What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design (Penn State University Press, 2005), in which he elaborates an analysis of how technologies mediate human actions and experiences, with applications to industrial design.

The DUX conference is a collaboration between ACM SIGCHI, ACM SIGGRAPH, and AIGA since the inaugural 2003 conference. The conferences gather together researchers and practitioners of all design disciplines and related fields to share their stories and experiences on how the needs and goals of both users and businesses are met through design.

This web site gives you access to the complete set of UIST papers (full text access requires a subscription to the ACM Digital Library), to the UIST adjunct proceedings since 2002, and to all the videos published at UIST since 1995.

UIST (ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology) is the premier forum for innovations in the software and technology of human-computer interfaces. Sponsored by ACM's special interest groups on computer-human interaction (SIGCHI) and computer graphics (SIGGRAPH), UIST brings together researchers and practitioners from diverse areas that include traditional graphical & web user interfaces, tangible & ubiquitous computing, virtual & augmented reality, multimedia, new input & output devices, and CSCW.

TEI, the conference on tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction, is about HCI, design, interactive art, user experience, tools and technologies, with a strong focus on how computing can bridge atoms and bits into cohesive interactive systems.

In Raskin's head, an information appliance would be a computing device with one single purpose—like a toaster makes toast, and a microwave oven heats up food. This gadget would be so easy to use that anyone would be able to grab it, and start playing with it right away, without any training whatsoever. It would have the right number of buttons, in the right position, with the right software. In fact, an information appliance—which was always networked—would be so easy to use that it would become invisible to the user, just part of his or her daily life.

A European Union project that provides usability and user centred design resources to practitioners, managers and EU projects.

Enactive knowledge is not simply multisensory mediated knowledge, but knowledge stored in the form of motor responses and acquired by the act of "doing". A typical example of enactive knowledge is constituted by the competence required by tasks such as typing, driving a car, dancing, playing a musical instrument, modelling objects from clay, which would be difficult to describe in an iconic or symbolic form. This type of knowledge transmission can be considered the most direct, in the sense that it is natural and intuitive, since it is based on the experience and on the perceptual responses to motor acts.

There is so much available about Doug Engelbart's work -- by him, his team, his colleagues, and the press. Here are a few key pieces to get you started.

This page lists all accepted oral presentations and posters presented by conference participants.

The institute offers two master programs: The Master of Informatics Engineering, a Bolonha-style MSc degree awarded by the University of Madeira; The Professional Master of Human-Computer Interaction, a dual degree awarded by both Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Madeira.

Is human-centered design harmful? In a provocative essay, usability guru Donald Norman stirred controversy in 2005 by questioning human-centered design approaches and calling for designers to focus more on the context of human activity within which use takes place. Activity Modeling is a breakthrough that helps interaction designers and other design professionals to practice what Norman and others have been preaching. A new paper on activity modeling presents a practical framework for applying activity theory in usage-centered and task-centered design.

Scientific does not mean numeric. We need rigor in planning and carrying out a qualitative study to infuse qualitative data with an element of reliability—which directly impacts a study’s validity. Doing qualitative research reliably means paying attention to what contributes to scientific credibility.

How can physical work, play, and living spaces be enhanced through digital information systems? How can the long biological experience of humans in manipulating physical objects be exploited as an interface to information systems? Researchers propose that contemporary models that focus on the computer as a separate appliance will seem like an anachronism in the digitally enhanced future. Sensing, computing, and communication functions will become invisible and integrated into the manufacture of many objects and the architectural arrangements of spaces. UC can also be defined as an art of technology transparency or tangible computing. In the words of Bill Buxton (1998): "Rather than turning inward to an artificial world, ubiquitous media encourages us to look outward. It expands our perception and interaction in the physical world."