Slashdot Mirror
Top Research Labs in Human-Computer Interaction?
legLess writes: "Jakob Nielsen's latest Useit column lists his opinion of the best HCI research labs, from 'The Dawn of Time' (1945) 'til now. Xerox PARC made the list each decade, naturally. He says that future HCI research is in jeopardy, partly due to Universities backing away from 'real-world' research, and partly because 'HCI has rarely been the first priority of new research organizations, so by the time research managers recognize the need for it and build up a world-class HCI team, it's often too late.' Is he right about the best labs? Is he right about his other conclusions?"
This might be dumb/silly but isn't it more that Universities usually give out research funds via department? and the deparements rarely ever share? and because this sort of research requires both CS/CE knowledge *and* psychology?
CMU's Human Computer Interaction Institute (http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/ )is worth a look - B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees are offered.
Ken Perlin was one a guest lecturer at my HCI class at Stanford. This guy has so many good ideas, check out his web page:
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/
Alot of his work is Java/Web based and so its really easy to look at and get a feel for how it would work
Or, in different words, if musical instruments were designed like software, instead of violins and pianos, we'd probably only be getting those electronic children's books that play a melody when you touch different parts on the page. Kind of intuitive and easy, but not exactly very powerful or interesting.
HCI has rarely been the first priority of new research organizations
Thats true but the real failing has been its use in industry, HCI is rarely the first priority there either, being often seen as expensive, time consuming and something separate to the traditional design process.
How many projects actually fail because the developers designed the system that the client wanted, not what the users would realistically use on a day to day basis.
The most practical aspects of HCI focus on understanding the user, and most modern software design methodologies take account of this...actual use of HCI in RL is really lacking.
Its one one the main reasons projects fail in the long term, ok poor project management and vague requirements do the most damage but its still pretty important
While the interface to Windows is generally pretty good, I think it's a bit unfair to give credit to MS for the research behind it, as so many of the good ideas have been borrowed from elsewhere. Microsoft are good at taking an idea and enhancing it, but I don't think it's reasonable to put them up with Xerox PARC and the like.
OTOH, Microsoft do run a number of research laboratories now. The one just down the road from me in Cambridge, UK is looking at things way beyond current Windows UI. I suspect this sort of facility is the reason for Jakob's prophecy that MS research will be a big contender in the coming years.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
First thing I thought was, "hmmm... haven't we understood hydrochloric acid for a long time now?"
That's the problem. Today's computer user is not a highly technically literate professional the way they were a decade or two ago. The average Joe now has a PC, Mac or whatever sitting on his desk. By your own admission, interfaces have not developed to support this new class of user in performing his tasks.
Added to which, I think the state of interfaces at present is pretty sucky even for the expert user. For a long time, the productivity in most offices was known to drop significantly when "old fashioned" tools went out in favour of modern computers. Has anyone ever seen anything to suggest that this is not still the case?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
How rigorous. Usability pundit picks pet criteria and decides that these are the top HCI labs. Those interested in the real state of the field instead of opinion might take a look at the more rigorous listings available:
Top Research Labs by Topic, 1978 and 1997
Where Researchers Want to Work
BusinessWeek's Top 20 US Research Labs
Google Cache of 1999 US News ranking of User Interaction Grad Schools
MIT Technology Review Corporate R&D Scorecard (Requires subscription)
HCI Academic Article Imapct Rankings
I think that few of the people on avant garde of HCI research take Jacob Neilsen very seriously. He is a usability specialist, not a interface researcher.
well, other people have already noted that he's too focused on human-workstation/server interaction (rather than broader human-computer interaction which includes the range of computers people don't think about as computers, like microwaves and air traffic control systems). but lets look at it within that frame.
easy stuff first: today. i think it's laughable that he'd include Microsoft rather than Apple, particularly given the criteria he states. Microsoft is very much doing evolutionary progressions on there Win95 UI on the desktop, and very unimpressive stuff in the WebTV realm. Apple, on the other hand, took a much more dramatic jump in the Aqua development. further, Apple does a much more thurough and complete job of UI definitions, work that MS has largely just ignored, leaving up to the app designer.
it's also quite interesting that Bell Labs didn't make it in the '80s. it was 1981 when rob pike wrote the first bitmap window system for Unix, and that decade when Bell Labs created the jerq, blit, and DMD (or MDM?) series of multi-tasking graphical terminals. pioneering work that led directly to much of what came after, particularly much of the Xerox PARC and Bellcore work following it.
his "fall of the good" observation is distressing, and i agree with it, but not his reasoning. Xerox and Bell Labs certainly hadn't "peaked" in any real sense by their respective apearances in the list (okay, Xerox maybe by its third).
the article is less useful without notes on why a give place made the list. i certainly hope X wasn't a positive contributing factor for MIT, for example! to my knowledge, MIT did more interesting things in the '90s. and i confess total ignorance as to what PARC's done since 2000. i'd really like to, but he doesn't say.
i think the author's assertions about HCI research in universities are bogus. while research universities may have avoided "real-world" research in the past, today that's nearly reversed. many universities are indistinguishable from corporate R&D arms. in particular, given CS departments' increasing trend towards vo-tech training over broad educational foundations, this becomes more and more true. but this just changes the cause, not the problem. now universities arn't likely to be involved in pineering HCI research because they're doing much smaller, more incremental improvement sort of stuff.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Then again, you don't necessarily need a degree in HCI, CS, or psych at all. For example, if you're coming from the programming side (as I suspect many here on /. are :) ), you could get a job building user interfaces, which is mostly programming with some HCI component. Then you could migrate pretty smoothly to doing higher-level, design type work, which would be more HCIish and less CSish.
As far as books, here are a few I like:
- The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman.
- Programming As If People Mattered, by Nathaniel Borenstein.
Dan Olsen and Ben Shneiderman have written good HCI/UI (user interface) books, too.If you want to see what the cutting edge of HCI is, check out proceedings and journals, such as the ACM conference on HCI (Human Factors in Computing Systems, a.k.a. SIGCHI) or the ACM Symposium on User Interfaces Software and Technology (UIST).