CS295J/Literature

Perception

• Colin Ware: Information Visualization: Perception for Design

Insight into some of the theory of perception as it pertains to building visual interfaces (David)

• Some unindentified paper(s)/book(s) about Gestalt theories of perception and cognition

These theories, from the 40's inform visual design and may provide an analogy for integration of theory and practice (David)

• Feeling Bumps and Holes without a Haptic Interface: the Perception of Pseudo-Haptic Textures Lecuyer-2004-FBH

Looks like it could have cool information on "hacking" human perception. (ej)

• Research issues in perception and user interfaces Encarnacao-1994-RIP

"The authors focus at on three things: presentation of information to best match human cognitive and perceptual capabilities, interactive tools and systems to facilitate creation and navigation of visualizations, and software system features to improve visualization tools." First and third points sound relevant. (ej)

• The Uniqueness of Individual Perception Whitehouse-1999-ID

Differences and similarities between between the perceptions of individuals. (ej)

Cognition

• Colin Ware: Visual Thinking: For Design

Insight into some of the theory of cognition as it pertains to building visual interfaces (David)

• Wikipedia's Seven Plus or Minus Two page

A clear description of one part of human thinking; will probably provide pointers to other things to read (David)

• A cognitive model for the perception and understanding of graphs Lohse-1991-CMP

Abstract: "…we have only a partial understanding of how people perceive and process graphic information." Obvious potential relevance. (ej)

HCI

• John M. Carroll: HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science

A gargantuan book with chapters by many folks describing some of the models and theories from HCI that may relate back to cognition; may need to create individual (David)

• Project ernestine: validating a GOMS analysis for predicting and explaining real-world task performance

A study in which the GOMS method is used to correctly predict the performance of call center operators using a new workstation. Might be interesting because of the methodology used to decompose the task into basic cognitive and perceptual actions, and then measuring these actions to evaluate the new interface. (Eric)

• The Growth of Cognitive Modeling in Human-Computer Interaction Since GOMS

• The limits of expert performance using hierarchic marking menus

Marking menus naturally facillitate the transition from novice to expert performance for command invocation, and have been quite influential over the years to research into menu techniques. (Andrew Bragdon)

• Chunking and Phrasing and the Design of Human-Computer Dialogues

High-level theory of human-computer dialogues. (Andrew Bragdon)

• Polson, P. and Lewis, C. Theory-Based Design for Easily Learned Interfaces. Human-Computer Interaction, 5, 2 (June 1990), 191-220.

This is a cognitive model of how users find and learn commands in an unfamiliar user interface. This could potentially be adapted to be a piece of a theory of visualization. (Andrew Bragdon)

• Manual and gaze input cascaded (MAGIC) pointing

This is a system which combines gaze input (coarse-grained) and mouse input (fine-grained) to quickly target items. This is important because it "kind of" gets around Fitt's law by using gaze input to "warp" the cursor to the general vicinity of what the user wants to work on. (Andrew Bragdon)

• If not now, when?: the effects of interruption at different moments within task execution

Presents task models of user attention. (Andrew Bragdon)

• "Constant, constant, multi-tasking craziness": managing multiple working spheres.

Empirical study of how information workers spend their time. Puts forward a theory of how users organize small individual tasks into "working spheres." (Andrew Bragdon)

• The state of the art in automating usability evaluation of user interfaces Ivory-2000-SAA

This looks money: somewhat-recent example of automating the evaluation process, very much one of our specific goals. (ej)

• User Interface Evaluation in the Real World: A Comparison of Four Techniques Jeffries-1991-UIE

Survey of several evaluation methods, almost 20 yrs old. (ej)

• Cognitive Walkthroughs: A Method for Theory-Based Evaluation of User Interfaces Polson-xxxx-CWM

One more method.. (ej)

• Finding usability problems through heuristic evaluation Nielsen-1992-FUP

Another old one, not sure of relevance yet. "Major usability problems have a higher probability than minor problems of being found in a heuristic evaluation, but more minor problems are found in absolute numbers." (ej)

Design

• Wikipedia articles on "A Pattern Language" and "Design Pattern"

see summary for Alexander below (David)

• UI Design principles (feedback, etc -- find ref)

• Alexander: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

The original design pattern source; what makes a human space work, ineffable best practices, ~250 rules is enough to do communities and house-sized artifacts; could be a good metaphor for making; could be a good metaphor for making human virtual space work? (David)

• Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits, and Atoms Ishii-1997-TBT

A fairly-specific UI proposal, but could potentially have some nice relevant discussion on how we perceive "foreground" items and "background" items and their relationship. (ej)

• Slanty Design Beale-2007-SD

Design method, five major design steps. (ej)

Thinking, analysis, decision making

• Morgan D. Jones: The Thinker's Toolkit: Fourteen Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving

Set of methods for solving problems that might be incorporated into tools for thinking (David)

• Keim, Shazeer, Littman: Proverb: The Probabilistic Cruciverbalist

An automatic crossword-puzzle solver; the software framework for building this program may be a metaphor for some thinking groupware with plug-in modules. (David)

• Thomas, Cook: Illuminating the Path

a research agenda for tools for intelligence analysts; not sure of relevance (David)