Human-Computer Interaction Books

Written by 3 leading experts from Denmark's Riso National Laboratory, this book contains a deep and wide-ranging discussion of human-computer-interaction, especially with regard to the design of information systems. Included are chapters on work domain/task situation/ user profile combinations, methodolgies, ecological information systems, activity analysis, and field studies in libraries

I have read through the book, and noticed contributions by well known researchers in the field, including Rob Koper and Kinshuk.
The main feature perhaps is that its organization is according to the cognitive focus areas which is novel and that these ideas are applied to various different domains including web searches, e-learning, etc.
It's weak point perhaps is the lack of strong connection between the chapters, but overall I felt it was a good buy.

During the 1980s, there were two main approaches to the computational study of human intelligence. The first, and largest, was the symbolic approach, derived from the work of Church and Turing, and later championed by two giants in the field, Simon and Newell. These researchers formulated the Physical Symbol System Hypothesis, according to which all of human intelligence can be expressed as a process of search in a symbolic state space transformed through the use of equally discrete operators.

The other camp, mostly hiding in the shadows for much of this time, derived from control theory and the servomechanisms of WWII. They held that the human brain was not a discrete symbol-processing entity but rather something constantly in direct contact with a continuous world. Although this group found its closest computational champions in Rosenblatt and Rumelhart, it paled in comparison to the promises and research invested early on in the symbolic approach.

Agre's book, Computation and Human Experience, was written as a call to arms for researchers in the symbolic tradition, a challenge to critically re-evaluate their own ideas and methods. In contrast to the "mentalist" juggernaut, Agre proposes an interactionist view of cognition, and shows how such an approach can be reconciled with the technical practice of constructing computational models. The book achieves a rare balance of philosophical argument with computational theory, though in both sides experts will be able to find holes in Agre's arguments.

However, the biggest problem with this book is its relevance to the current state of affairs. Much of this work is based on the research that went into Agre's doctoral dissertation (completed in 1988), and in the 2 decades that have passed the situation in cognitive science has improved dramatically. Embodied cognition is not a dark art but an accepted and thriving practice, deictic representation is more commonplace, and even "rule-based" production system architectures like Anderson's ACT-R have found the representations and techniques necessary to interact with a dynamic and continuous world.

Whether or not Agre's book has contributed to the current and improving state of affairs is a matter for speculation (my feeling is that it has), but it is most important that no reader today mistake this book's perspective ("situated" in the mid-1980s) as representative of the current status of cognitive science.

The book is a serious attempt at analysing how the Internet has affected social dynamics between people. The authors look at issues like virtual identities. This relative anonymity of the net and global reach of the net, often with quick feedback, is unique in history. How and why do people assume a new virtual identity? Various reasons are studied, including the rise of scams.

We also see communities on the net. How are these different from real world instances, where people must meet each other in the flesh? The virtuality gives the dynamics of the net interactions a fascinating scope.

Pornography is another aspect which has driven net usage. Especially if a user is in a locality where physical porn is banned.

In the 7 years since the publication of this book, display hardware has continued to improve. You may wonder, is the book still relevant?

Yes, for two reasons. Firstly, the rate of improvement of display hardware has not been as rapid as Moore's Law, which tends to apply to memory/cpu/disk. CRTs and thin displays tend to drop in price far less rapidly.

Secondly, many of the issues described in the book are largely independent of any specific hardware in which they are implemented. Like the suggestions for optimal ergonomic design. Or, in a given display, how to layout the information.

But having said the above, there is one thing that has arisen in the intervening years that is little covered in the book. Nowadays, cellphones have become far more common and far more powerful. The latest have colour displays. As time goes on, we can expect these displays to have ever greater resolution. So now, in some platforms like J2ME, the design of software optimised for such constrained hardware is an important issue.

How close are we to practical systems for effective 3d visualisation? Blundell provides both a good historical survey of earlier attempts, and a synopsis of current work. The earlier methods do seem primitive.

Naturally, the bulk of the text focuses on what is currently attempted. A wide range of hardware ideas. Like a swept volume. Akin perhaps to rasterising on a traditional TV screen. But now the intent is to generate voxels instead of pixels. There are drawbacks, like a visual dead zone.

Another method uses a static volume. Where light emitters are embedded in this volume. And excited to generate a "true" 3d image. One problem is the sheer mass of computational support, if one wants a 3d time varying display. This bandwidth bedevils most implementations. And static volumes also come with dead zones.

Yet another approach uses a planar screen with fixed beams. But this gives rise to various distortions.

Overall, a good description of how things stand. The technology still needs improvement.

The ideas in this book have been a long time coming. And they are still not fully realised. Essentially, the book asks if, at some future time, our interaction with computers will fundamentally change.

Our current interaction modes may one day be regarded as hopelessly primitive and awkward. Technology constrains us to, most commonly, a keyboard and mouse. Speech recognition is steadily improving, but is not quite as robust as it should be.

The book speculates that maybe we might interact with a computer that assumes a "persona" or character. A radical departure from what we do at present. But much has to happen. At the very least, heavy improvements in artificial intelligence are needed to buttress that character, so that it can interact meaningfully with us.

I found this book to be very well written, not focusing too much on equations and theory. The charts and illustrations go a long way in helping the reader understand the concepts. I already have found uses for some of approaches, and expect this book to serve as reference for future development.

This book is nicely written and provides a good roundup of Web 2.0 technologies for those who have done some programming (e.g. using Java) or some basic web development (hand-coding HTML) and who now want to know how HTML, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, vendor APIs etc. fit together. Four stars for that.

For complete beginners, some of the descriptions are reassuringly clear and simple but the PHP and JavaScript code examples might be a step too far. Personally I think that there are easier ways for beginners to create mashups using the newer drag-and-drop mashup environments like Microsoft Popfly, Yahoo! Pipes, and -- ok, this one's not drag-and-drop -- the Google Mashup Editor (GME).

Tony Loton, author
Introduction to Microsoft Popfly, No Programming Required
Working with Yahoo! Pipes, No Programming Required
Creating Google Mashups with the Google Mashup Editor
Mashup Case Studies with Yahoo! Pipes

This is a good book if you are beginner and want to have an over view of issues in human computer interaction arena. Assuming you have knowledge on the details of implementation (MVC, etc), this book can help you broaden your GUI design. It is very helpful for me to design a knowledge managment system. Several interesting examples. I rank it as four star. ...elm, if you are interested in HCI and just begin, you may like it.