The participants will be acquainted with HCI themes for the future. These themes will be instantiated with new conceptual frameworks and illustrated with innovative systems. The presentation will be linked as much as possible to the concerns and experiences of the participants. The objective of the tutorial is to provide the participants with opportunities to think differently about the future challenges facing HCI research and practice and to illustrate with concrete examples how these challenges can be addressed. The tutorial will focus on three major themes: (1) design, specifically collaborative design and an assessment of different design methodologies (including: user-centered design, learner-centered design, and participatory design); (2) social creativity, which is required because complex design transcend the unaided, individual human mind; and (3) meta-design which creates environments for users to be involved as active contributors rather than as passive consumers. The themes of the tutorial will be illustrated with specific theoretical frameworks and innovative systems developed by the presenter and his colleagues and other research groups working on these topics. The relevance of these themes has been demonstrated by their impact on research, education, and design practices in companies, educational institutions, and research organizations with which we have collaborated.

Observational studies of users in their work and home environments are a key element of user-centered design, but doing this kind of research requires new skills. This hands-on tutorial teaches practitioners how to plan and carry out observational studies of users. It focuses on practical solutions, skills, and well-proven tools for participants to use in their own work. You will learn four types of observational techniques including Naturalistic Observation, Contextual Inquiry, Artifact Walkthroughs and Naturalistic Usability Evaluation. This class is taught by user-centered design consultants who have a lot of experience doing fieldwork, especially international and cross-cultural fieldwork, and will therefore include many case examples and “tips and tricks” they have learned by doing this work. It is very interactive, with discussions, exercises and lots of participation from attendees.

This tutorial aims to assist professionals who are about to introduce, who have recently introduced, or who are struggling with increasing the visibility for HCI in their own organization, make a strong, well-argued case in support of HCI and based on their organization’s own objective data. Whether participants work in the private or the public sector does not matter. The tutorial discusses several tried and tested HCI-funding models outlining how HCI/usability has been introduced and integrated with more or less success into organizations varying widely in size, scope, type of business, and usability readiness or usability maturity. The relative merits, risks, shortcomings, and disadvantages of each model are discussed, based on these actual examples. It is hoped that each participant will be able to relate their organization to one of these. Inexpensive and practical tools and techniques for collecting and analyzing data to support the case for performing usability activities in these different organizations are then introduced, and exercises in the form of problem scenarios are presented for the audience to work through. Particular attention is paid to collecting data opportunistically that are central to the business and therefore of relevance to senior management as well, of course, as to the project teams with which the usability professionals are working. A range of simple cost-benefit analyses of the kinds of data and usability activities discussed in connection with the organizational scenarios is then introduced. Participants will be invited to review the scenarios in order to recommend strategies that the personnel in these could employ to further their case. Participants will be given an opportunity to identify their own issues on the basis of the material provided and to develop a suitable strategy for them to apply in their own workplace aiming to help them further their HCI work.

When the requirements and the interaction design of a system are separated, they will most likely not fit together, and the resulting system will be less than optimal. Even if all the real needs are covered in the requirements and also implemented, errors may be induced by human-computer interaction through a bad interaction design and its resulting user interface. Such a system may even not be used at all. Alternatively, a great user interface of a system with features that are not required will not be very useful as well. Therefore, we argue for combined requirements engineering and interaction design, primarily based on usage scenarios. However, scenario-based approaches vary especially with regard to their use, e.g., employing abstract use cases or integrating scenarios with functions and goals in a systematic design process. So, the key issue to be addressed is how to combine different approaches, e.g., in scenario-based development, so that the interaction design as well as the development of the user interface and of the software internally result in an overall useful and useable system. In particular, scenarios are very helpful for purposes of usability as well.

Nowadays, everyday life is becoming a multi-platform environment where people are surrounded by different types of devices through which they can connect to networks in different ways. Most of them are mobile personal devices carried by users moving freely about different environments populated by various other devices. Such environments raise many issues for designers and developers, such as the possibility of obtaining user interfaces able to adapt to the interaction resources of the available devices. The main learning objective is to gain knowledge and skills in methods and tools for the design of multi-device interfaces that can support designers and developers to address a number of issues raised by ubiquitous computing.

Collaboration technologies are emerging rapidly to support groups, organizations, and society. This half-day course includes lectures, video illustrations, and case studies that cover experiences, current possibilities, and future trends, focusing on areas of rapid change. How might organizations use weblogs? Why has digital video taken so long to take hold, and what is happening now? What is the promise and practice with workflow management?

Many usability professionals become confused when customers ask them to measure the usability of a software application, software program, web site, or other software product. This course defines usability metrics, gives examples of usability metrics, and gives attendees a chance to explore usability metrics to suit their own situations. We will explore key qualities of usability, such as learnability, memorability, efficiency, and satisfaction, among others; and we will explore how to measure key qualities. For example, one of the key qualities mentioned above is “memorability.” However, how do usability professionals measure the memorability of, for example, a website? Should we administer a test to see if end users remember key points that our clients want website end users to remember? Alternatively, should we administer a test to determine everything users remember? Should we measure a user’s memory of the website immediately after exposure to the site? Weeks or months after? Should we track the user’s eye movements to see if they remember how to navigate the website? Should we use computing tools to track user performance? Determining the answers to the questions of who, what, when, where, and how to measure can be a complex process. However, we can decrease this complexity with a thoughtful analysis of the goals of the end users, software buyers, the software evaluators, the software design team and the software development team. We will discuss the considerations necessary for designing, developing and implementing a test/experiment/evaluation, which incorporates usability metrics, and we will discuss the importance of evaluating our own metrics. Attendees will learn how to use metrics to determine if a new software design is better than an old one, how to demonstrate this to management and the importance of good usability evaluation report.