Reference Information: Edited by Thomas Erickson and David W. McDonald, Reflections on Works that have Influenced the HCI Community.
Chapter 24:
Summary: In Chris Schmandt's paper A Simulated Listening Typewriter: John Gould Plays Wizard of Oz, Schmandt describes the early days of speech recognition. The researchers at the time were presented with a difficult problem: They needed to perform user test to determine where to focus their speech recognition research, but since computers capable of the type of research they needed to perform did not exist, they had to come up with a unique solution. Using human typists hidden in the next room, they were able to emulate the sort of text to speech tests that they needed in order to continue on with their research.
Discussion: This article was a lot of fun to read. The various tests they came up with were fairly innovative, and interesting to read about. The level of detail they went to in order to make the simulations realistic was amazing.
Chapter 25:
Summary: In the paper Seeing the Hole in Space, Steve Harrison discusses early attempts at office telepresence. The project, interestingly enough, was inspired by an art project in which two different locations three times zones away were linked together with a live video feed, creating a metaphorical "Hole In Space". The office telepresence project was initially hard to get off the ground, because the computer scientists are Xerox PARC traditionally did very little A/V research.
Discussion: The "Hole In Space" exhibit sounds like it would have been a fun one to come across by accident. The article seemed to have trouble focusing on one thing for long. It would have been nice to hear more results about the office telepresence project.
Chapter 26:
Summary: Scott Jenson discusses Edward Tufte's 1 + 1 = 3 concept in a paper of the same name. 1+1=3 describes a visual effect in which two parallel lines actually create a third visual artifact in the blank space between them. He discusses how this principal can also apply to design, and gives the example of elevator buttons.
Discussion: I've always be baffled at how elevator designers can never seem to agree on a single set of pictograms. This article helped shed light on how complex the issue can be.
Chapter 27:
Summary: In her article Typographic Space: A Fusion of Design and Technology, Jodi Forlizzi gives a brief overview of the technology behind typography. She then moves onto describing advances in the display of text, using motion to convey things traditionally limited to audio, such as pitch, tempo, and loudness.
Discussion: Given the length of her article, I'm surprised how long Forlizzi spent describing the history of typography on computers. However, the motion text she described was incredibly interesting, and I'd love to read more about it.
Chapter 28:
Summary: In Steve Whittaker's paper Making Sense of Sense Making, he takes a look at A. Kidd's article, "The Marks Are on the Knowledge Worker". Kidd makes two claims in his paper: Computers are used for, and good at storing information, and that computers are poor at making sense of information we encounter.
Discussion: Whittaker draws some interesting conclusions from Kidd's ideas. I'm not sure if I agree with his "AI Won't Save Us" outlook. Given a sufficiently advance artificial intelligence, there's no reason it couldn't at least make a best guess at what information is useful to us, similar to Google Mail's new "Priority Inbox" feature.
Chapter 34:
Summary: In Revisiting an Ethnocritical Approach to HCI: Verbal Privilege and Translation, Michael J. Muller draws a parallel between Ethnohistorians and HCI workers. Both groups need to facilitate communication between powerless groups (Native Americans and computer users), and the groups which control all the power (politicians and designers).
Discussion: Muller makes a very interesting comparison on his paper. I'm not sure it's the best idea to immediately assume that users are less informed than the designers in the field of HCI however. Users know when something "feels" wrong, and it's up to the designer to make interfaces feel intuitive.
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