HCI2002/EUPA: Memorable Session on Memorable Systems

The "Memorable Systems" session at HCI 2002 (Wednesday 3rd September) certainly lived up to its name. First we had Mary Czerwinsky describing eloquently her work at Microsoft Research on supporting recovery of context by computer users when interrupted or forced to suspend a task and switch to another. Suspensions, resumptions and interleavings are the common experience of just about everyone now. The aim of the exploratory experiments described here was to find out what users think is important in the context, to help them in returning later without loss of flow. The key finding was that up to 50% of what was significant was stuff that no computer system monitoring the user's behaviour could ever hope to guess at. So it will always be necessary to rely, at least to some extent, on the user's initiative to decide what features of the context to "bank", and when to bank it.

The parallels between IBM in the eighties and Microsoft in the noughties get closer all the time. Jack Carroll and his colleagues at IBM Yorktown Heights did wonderful, groundbreaking work in the eighties which benefited a whole generation of interface designers and HCI researchers, but hardly any of it ever percolated into IBM's own systems and products. It's true that, in Microsoft's case, a lot more of the front-line research they sponsor does make it into their tools and products, but somehow it gets diluted, perhaps by the marketing people, so that it never quite lives up to the high promise engendered by the quality of the research. Maybe that doesn't matter, because at least at the level of the kind of long-term investigation of user behaviour and the characteristics of memory which Mary was talking about here, the results are freely published in the literature for all to benefit from.

The middle layer of this memorable three-decker sandwich was Saul Greenberg from Calgary talking about "How people recognise previously-seen web pages from titles, URLs and thumbnails". This reported on a solid, extensive user study, using a fully enhanced browser (not a prototype), of how well users were able to recognise previously-visited pages or sites from thumbnails of various sizes. The results suggest that users can identify Web sites by small thumbnails (96 x 96 pixels or less) — what they recognise seems to be the colour patterns and overall 'look' of the site. However for recognising a specific page, being able to read some of the page's text is important.

Recognition rates were also tested with both truncated titles (several different truncation algorithms were investigated), and with the URL on its own. Recognition rates were found to be comparable to those with thumbnails in each of these cases, but a higher percentage of both titles and URLs were rated as being poor or very poor representations of the page. This looks like another of those cases where the subjective preferences of users are not necessarily reflected in better performance in experimental tests — but since the preferred system is not significantly worse, there is a good case for giving users what they like, or at least a combination of what they like and what is good for them.

The final talk of the afternoon was Harold Thimbleby's presentation, ostensibly about how 'proper design', based on 'well-known systems engineering practices' can make life easier for the user by hiding the underlying complexity of the application domain. Who could disagree? But the devil is in the detail. Unfortunately neither the talk nor the written paper dealt in any depth with how in practice this approach might have led to a better design of the particular ticket vending machine, a critique of which makes up the bulk of the paper.

Meanwhile, Harold chose to spend a fair part of his talk presenting, for our edification and enlightenment, carefully selected extracts from the feedback on his paper from some of the (anonymous) reviewers. While this made for an electric atmosphere, the wisdom of such a breach of protocol has to be questioned.

But, of course, it's depressing that such a widely-used and important kiosk system as the target ticket vending machine has such a poor interface, causing avoidable delay and frustration to thousands of passengers every day. And, of course, we should be both angry (about the complex and far-reaching causes behind its being foisted on the innocent public), and ashamed (that we have so failed to make an impact on public perception of what is possible and what is acceptable, that there has been little more than a murmur of protest from the long-suffering public). And by all means try the meticulously-constructed simulation here — only don't use Internet Explorer, as it apparently doesn't accept some of the standard JavaScript which the simulation uses — and experience the horror for yourself, if you don't live within spitting distance of the real thing.

Though, rather than be submerged by doom and gloom, let's use this as a spur to redouble our efforts to get the message across to our clients, colleagues, students, the government, and anyone who will listen, that the mission of our discipline is to bring light where there was darkness, simplicity where there was complexity, and enjoyment where there was stress and uncertainty. There was certainly no lack of evidence elsewhere in the conference that we are making small but significant steps in this direction, in spite of the many "hall of shame" candidates which we can all easily find around us. It's all too easy to turn curmudgeonly with advancing age — but it's one of the few temptations that really does need to be resisted.

All change at the top for System Concepts
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Leslie Fountain has been promoted to joint Managing Director of leading usability consultancy System Concepts.

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Interfaces Magazine - Issue 79: The Education Issue
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The latest issue of Interfaces is now available as a free download from the Interaction Website.

Two new Behavioural research Tools from Noldus
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Cell Phones that Listen and Learn
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Top Six Don’ts for Usability Testing
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Six tips for creating quality usability tests to ensure useful feedback from testers.

Usability: ‘Lovely software. But I can’t work it’
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Most Doctors cite Usability as critical to Electronic Health Record Adoption
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It's all about 'meaningful use'.

Glossy monitors look good but can hurt
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A new advisory cites research which suggests high gloss monitors make users sit awkwardly.