Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771  

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM 

Monday, April 14, 2003 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium 

Ben Shneiderman

ABSTRACT -- The old computing was about what computers could do; the new computing is about what people can do.
  Three goals are shaping the shift from the old computing to the new computing. First, reducing computer user frustration from wasted time is vital. Recent studies show 52% of time is lost. Public pressure for change could promote design improvements and increase reliability, thereby dramatically enhancing user experiences. Second, we can promote universal usability through interfaces that are tailorable to a wide range of hardware, software, and networks, customizable for diverse users, and designed to bridge the gap between what users know and what they need to know. The goals of device, user, and knowledge independence will be hard to achieve, but research breakthroughs could speed the process. Third, we can envision a future in which human needs more directly shape technology evolution. Four circles of human relationships and four human activities map out the human needs for mobility, ubiquity, creativity, and community. Million-person communities will be accessible through desktop, palmtop and fingertip devices to support e-learning, e-business, e-healthcare, and e-government.
  Leonardo da Vinci could help as an inspirational muse for the new computing. His example could push designers to improve quality through scientific study and more elegant visual design. Leonardo's example can guide us to the new computing, which emphasizes empowerment, creativity, and collaboration. See http://mitpress.mit.edu/leonardoslaptop (a non-NASA link).

SPEAKER -- BEN SHNEIDERMAN is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Founding Director (1983-2000) of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/) (a non-NASA link), and Member of the Institutes for Advanced Computer Studies and for Systems Research, all at the University of Maryland at College Park. He was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing (ACM ) in 1997 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2001. Ben is the author of Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems (1980) and Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (3rd ed. 1998). He pioneered the highlighted textual link in 1983, and it became part of Hyperties, a precursor to the web. His move into information visualization helped spawn the successful company Spotfire. With S. Card and J. Mackinlay, he co-authored Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think (1999). Leonardo's Laptop (MIT Press) appeared in October 2002, and his new book with B. Bederson, The Craft of Information Visualization was published in April, 2003.