ACM interactions, Volume 1, No. 4, pp. 7-8.
Gary Perlman, Ohio State University
Table of Contents
In the previous issue of interactions
(interactions, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 9-10),
I introduced you to browsing HCI on the World-Wide
Web (WWW). In this, the second of a series of Departments on
Resources for HCI developers, researchers, educators, and
students, I'll introduce you to some usenet newsgroups and FAQs
on HCI. The FAQs are your best resource for finding out more
information about HCI, and represent the efforts of dozens or
even hundreds of experts.
Usenet Newsgroups: Not a Complete Waste of Time
Usenet newsgroups are carried by thousands of UNIX and other
machines around the world and are available via most internet
services. There are many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
newsgroups on subjects ranging from anthropology to
nanotechnology. Although people can spend all their time reading
and posting to news, and although the signal-to-noise ratio can
be low, there are interesting and useful discussions in some
newsgroups. The comp (short for computer) and sci (short for
science) hierarchies contain the newsgroups most relevant to HCI.
For some, there is a FAQ list that provides a digest of most of
the wisdom of a newsgroup. The comp newsgroups will be discussed
along with their FAQs.
The sci.psychology newsgroup covers issues on perceptual,
cognitive, and other areas of psychology. The sci.cognitive
newsgroup covers cognitive science, including issues from AI,
psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and other fields. Both
these newsgroups would be of interest to those interested in the
foundations or theory of HCI.
Just the FAQs, Please
In the daily routine of reading dozens of newsgroups, bulletin
boards, and mailing lists, an experienced consumer of online
information will see the same questions over and over again.
This has irritated some people, but motivated others to develop
FAQ lists, list of Frequently Asked (or Answered) Questions.
(There is no correct pronunciation of FAQ; some people say the
latters F-A-Q, while others pronounce it as a single syllable
that rhymes with back, so that the plural sounds a bit like
facts.)
There are some guidelines for the design of FAQs, but these are
not universally followed. The main idea in a FAQ list is that
recurring questions are gathered, and authoritative answers are
supplied (perhaps after some electronic debate). The maintainer
of the FAQ periodically updates the list and posts updates to
relevant newsgroups, mailing lists, etc. The result is that
people looking for information about a field can benefit from the
efforts of many experts in the field. Both novices and experts
can find useful information; novices are directed to the FAQ when
they ask a frequently-asked question (e.g., I am looking for
papers on X. Any ideas?), while experts (i.e., people who should
know about the FAQ) are reminded of its existence. Frequent
users of FAQs know to refer to the relevant FAQs when asking a
question (e.g., I checked all the sources pointed to by the FAQ,
but I could not find any information on Y.).
The Key HCI Newsgroups and FAQs
The most relevant usenet newsgroup for HCI is
comp.human-factors.
Elizabeth Buie at the Computer Sciences Corporation, describes the
charter of comp.human-factors in the first answer in the FAQ for
the newsgroup: "The newsgroup comp.human-factors focuses on the
discovery and application of human factors information to the
design of systems, software, hardware, and environments related
to the use of computers." A related newsgroup,
comp.cog-eng
on cognitive engineering (which might be thought of as an applied
version of sci.cognitive), has not had many postings since the
creation of comp.human-factors. The
comp.human-factors FAQ
is
maintained by Edgar Matias at the University of Toronto.
It is
browsable on the Web.
The HCI FAQ contains twelve general questions (e.g., What is HCI
about? What are some good books/journals to read?), fourteen
specific questions (e.g., questions about keyboards, human memory
limits, user interface design), and pointers to three related
FAQs, described below.
The comp.groupware newsgroup is concerned with groupware, and according to question 5 in the comp.groupware FAQ guidelines file: "Groupware is software and hardware for shared interactive environments." (The answer goes on to define shared, interactive, and environments.) The comp.groupware FAQ is available by anonymous ftp at rtfm.mit.edu (internet id 18.181.0.24) in the directory /pub/usenet/comp.groupware. It is maintained by David Stodolsky of Copenhagen University. It contains pointers to bibliographic information on groupware, a list of groupware products, and answers to specific questions.
The newsgroup comp.windows.misc is about programming windowing interfaces in general (not just Microsoft Windows). The Platform-Independent GUI (PIGUI) toolkit FAQ is available via anonymous from at rtfm.mit.edu (internet id 18.181.0.24) in the directory /pub/usenet/comp.windows.misc. The PIGUI FAQ is maintained by Wade Guthrie at Rockwell. It contains a list of tools for writing Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) that are portable to a variety of platforms (e.g., Motif, Mac, Windows) and tables comparing the tools. (Recently, Brad Myers at Carnegie Mellon University announced a compilation of user interface development tools, a pointer to which will probably be added to the HCI and possibly the PIGUI FAQs.)
The
Typing Injury FAQ
is posted monthly to the comp.human-factors
newsgroup, and is also available by anonymous ftp at
soda.berkeley.edu (internet is 128.32.149.19) in the directory
/pub/typing-injury/typing-injury-faq. It is maintained by Dan
Wallach at Princeton University (and others) It contains
information about the causes, remedies for, and ways to avoid
typing injuries. The ftp site contains many other files on the
topic.
Your Next Step
Download the current version of the comp.human-factors FAQ and
look through its table of contents. If the FAQ helps you out,
send a complimentary note to the maintainer. If it does not,
send a suggestion and others will benefit from it.
Next resources department:
User Interface Guidelines and Standards
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