Skip to main content
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] [List Home]
Re: [platform-ui-dev] Activities and Contexts - Important Update 
On 2003.12.04 12:26:10 -0500, Ed Burnette wrote:
> Hi folks, as a user of the software and as someone who tries to
> explain how to use it to other people from time to time, I'm having
> a really hard time following all this.

I'm glad Ed wrote that, because I find it pretty confusing too.
Adaptive interfaces were a topic that came up in one of the HCI
classes here at UBC, and I'm a bit leery of adaptive interfaces as
a result.

People might be interested in this summary of debates held between
Patty Maes and Ben Shneiderman in 1997.  Patty was originally very
pro-adaptive, but seems to have moderated her stance; Shneiderman
was and remains very anti-adaptive.

    Shneiderman B, Maes P. (1997). Direct manipulation vs. interface
    agents.  interactions 4(6):42--61.
    http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/267505.267514

I can email copies for those interested.

Another relevant reference is this article from Saul Greenberg.
It's not just academic:  Saul's group at U Calgrary produce real-life
and heavily used toolkits for groupware, physical widgets (phidgets)
and table-top displays.

    Greenberg, S. (2001). Context as a Dynamic Construct.
    Human-Computer Interaction 16(2-4):257-268, Lawrence
    Erlbaum Associates Inc.
    http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/Research/grouplab/papers/2001/01-Context.HCI/01-context.HCI.html

    Context is a dynamic construct. While some contextual situations
    are fairly stable, discernable and predictable, there are many
    others that are not. Similar-looking contextual situations may
    actually differ dramatically, due perhaps to people's previous
    episodes of use, the state of their social interactions, their
    changing internal goals, and the nuances of local influences.
    The consequence is that, for all but simple cases, the designer
    of a context-aware application may find it difficult or even
    impossible to: enumerate the set of contextual states that may
    exist; to know what information could accurately determine a
    contextual state within that set; and to state what appropriate
    action should be taken from a particular state.

The psychology of programming is very complicated and ill-understood.

Brian.

-- 
     Brian de Alwis | Graduate student | Software Practices Lab | UBC
"Passivity & cynicism have always come easily to the educated." - Ed Broadbent

Back to the top