TC13 Working groups

TC.13 has six active Working Groups, each focusing a special interest within the more general topic of Human-Computer Interaction.

Aims

The aims of WG13.1 are:

• to enhance international collaboration in disseminating knowledge about this rapidly developing and impoertant subject;
• to improve HCI education at all levels of higher education;
• to coordinate and unite efforts to enhance the development of HCI curricula;
• to recommend fundamental structures for curricula and course materials and for their adaptation to the various national educational systems;
• to advance international recognition of qualifications in this field, and
• to promote the teaching of HCI.

Scope

The scope of the Working Group will build upon existing work in IFIP member countries to include:

• the evaluation of the needs of industry;
• the collation of existing curricula, course literature and other relevant materials;
• the international exchange of information about curricular aspects of HCI and their further development;
• the design of recommendations and guidelines for HCI curricula at different levels of higher education, and the adaptation of the guidelines to the cultural situation within which the respective education system is based.

In developing its work WG13.1 will expect to co-operate appropriately with IFIP TC.3 on Education and the relevant TC.3 Working Groups.

Home Page

http://www.hcieducation.com/pmwiki.php?n=WorkingGroup.Home

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Aims

The principal aim of WG13.2 is to foster research, dissemination of information and good practice in the methodical application of HCI to software engineering (SE). This involves (a) research into and development of HCI principles, methods and techniques applied to system design and integrated with principles, methods and tools in software engineering, and (b) research into human action within the system development process and promotion of knowledge transfer from such studies into the construction of integrated HCI-SE design methods.

Scope

The scope of the work includes evaluation and synthesis of HCI specification and design methods, implications of cognitive psychology for the design of human-computer interfaces, evaluation and study of different approaches to design delivery, improvement of methods and techniques of human factors in software engineering as practised in industrial environments, and development of cooperative work techniques applied to software development.

Home Page

http://hci.cs.concordia.ca/www/ifip/

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Aims

The principal aims of WG13.3 are:

• to make HCI designers aware of the special needs of disabled and elderly people, to recommend guide-lines for the design of HCI to facilitate the use of computers by disabled persons, and
• to encourage the development of systems equipped with hardware and software tools which permit the adaptation of the human interface to each specific user.

Scope

The scope of work includes the compilation of materials elaborated by other groups working on HCI and Disability and their dissemination to interested people, collaboration with institutions interested in this field, and the design of recommendations and guide-lines for HCI designers which keep in mind disabled people in the production of new HC interfaces.

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In 1992 IFIP decided a new arrangement allowing working groups to be associated with more than one Technical Committee. In 1993 TC.13 received a formal request from WG2.7 for this direct link. WG 2.7(13.4) was established as the first WG under this new arrangement to be affiliated also to another TC. Recent WG2.7(13.4) activities have included especially the book Design Principles for Interactive Systems developed collectively by the WG and published in 1996.

Aims

The principal aim of WG2.7(13.4) is to investigate the nature, concepts and construction of user interfaces for software systems.

Scope

The scope of the work includes increasing the understanding of the development of user interfaces, providing a framework for reasoning about interactive systems, and providing an engineering model for the development of user interfaces.

Home Page:

http://www.se-hci.org/

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Aims

This working group aims to support practitioners, regulators and researchers to develop leading edge techniques in hazard analysis and the safety engineering of computer-based systems. Particular emphasis will be on the role of human error both in the development and in the operation of complex processes and on techniques that can be easily integrated into existing system engineering practices. Specifically, the aims are

to provide a framework for studying human factors that relate to systems failure;
to provide a forum for practitioners, regulators and researchers interested in the ‘human contribution’ to major accidents and incidents;
to identify leading edge techniques for the development of safety-critical interactive systems and integrate them with existing systems engineering techniques;
to support and guide international accreditation activities in the area of safety-critical systems.
Scope
To build on existing work in IFIP member countries in the following areas:

techniques for analysing human, managerial and organisational factors that relate to the occurrence of accidents;
the integration of human factors concerns into risk analysis and assessment;
the integration of human factors concerns into systems engineering techniques for safety-critical systems development;
the ergonomics of human-computer interaction with safety-critical applications;
the role of human error both in the development and in the operation of complex processes.
HOME PAGE
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/IFIP_WG13.5.html

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AIMS

The aims of the HWID working group are:

To encourage empirical studies and conceptualisations of the interaction among humans, their variegated social contexts and the technology they use both within and across these contexts.

Promote the use of knowledge, concepts, methods and techniques that enables user studies to procure a better apprehension of the complex interplay between individual, social and organisational contexts and thereby a better understanding of how and why people work in the ways that they do.

Promote a better understanding of the relationship between work-domain based empirical studies and the iterative design of prototypes and new technologies.

Establish a network of researchers, practitioners and domain/subject matter experts working within this field.

Thus on an overall level the working group aims at establishing relationships between extensive empirical work-domain studies and HCI design.

SCOPE

A Human-Work Interaction Design group (HWID) will provide the basis for an improved cross-disciplinary co-operation and mutual inspiration among researchers, but it will also lead to a number of new research initiatives and developments, as well as to an increased awareness of HWID in existing HCI educations. Complexity will be a key notion in the working group, it is not a priori defined or limited to any particular domains. A main target of the work group is the analysis of and the design for the variety of complex work and life contexts found in different business. Technology is changing human life and work contexts in numerous, multi-faceted ways:

Interfaces between collaborating individuals; advanced communication networks

Small and large-scale distributed systems

Multimedia and embedded technologies

Mobile technologies and advanced “intelligent” robots

With this evolution, toward new ways of working, has followed an intensive demand for techniques and technologies that address contemporary issues connected to:

Communication, collaboration, and problem solving

Large information spaces, variability, discretion, learning, and information seekin

This evolution toward new ways of working and living must be embraced as a challenge to current knowledge and practice and one, moreover, which presents exciting new opportunities in:

Epistemology, with knowledge acquisition, knowledge creation, management and knowledge sharing

The symbiosis of users and contexts of use, between work and life-quality and with both professional and individual development.

It is a challenge to design applications that support users of technology in complex and emergent organisational and work contexts, and thus opportunities exist to focus on methods, theories, tools, techniques and prototype design on an experimental basis.