Alan Dix - Human-Computer Interaction: post-millennial models

system definition strand

Mon 26th pm and Tues 27th am and pm

This strand will look at more formal ways of describing the way interactive computer systems behave. Again this will include both ‘traditional’ specification techniques and also a consideration of issues such as continuous devices prompted by novel interfaces. Also the issue of interaction through physical devices will be important and we’ll talk about the way in which physical controls map on to the logical behaviour of devices. As one example of the use of formal methods I will refer to a previous La Sapienza PhD thesis!

understanding state

  introductory slides as PPT (27K)
  slides on dialogue modelling PPT (194K)
  slides on state modelling PPT (27K)
  the material is largely covered in chapters 8 and 9 of the HCI Book (2nd ed)
  also see my chapter "upside down As and algorithms" in Carroll's theory book
  calculator exercise in PDF (138K)
  also see (not discussed in seminar) the Excel mode error and analysis highlighting hidden modes and closure

formal interaction modelling

  slides on PIE model and formalisation of undo as PPT (400K) or PDF (58K)
  more on interaction modelling in chapter 9 of (old) HCI book and in more detail in my first book "Formal Methods for Interactive Systems
  aspects of the early undo work is described in the above
  the cube and proofs about multi-step undo can be found in Roberta Mancini's thesis and a DSVIS'97 paper:

  R. Mancini (1997). Modelling Interactive Computing by exploiting the Undo. Dottorato di Ricerca in Informatica, IX-97-5, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"

  A. Dix, R. Mancini and S. Levialdi (1997). The cube - extending systems for undo. Proceedings of DSVIS'97, Granada, Spain, Eurographics. pp 473-495.

  the cube was also used to analyse back and histoiry mechansims in web and hypertext browsers:

  A. Dix and R. Mancini (1997). Specifying history and backtracking mechanisms. In Formal Methods in Human-Computer Interaction, Eds. P. Palanque and F. Paterno. London, Springer-Verlag. pp. 1-24.

continuous interaction and time

  slides on status-event analysis as PPT (42K)
  introduction to status–event anaysis in chapter 9 of (old) HCI book
  also see my status-event analysis pages
  more about modelling continous interaction in:

A. Dix (2002). Towards a Ubiquitous Semantics of Interaction: phenomenology, scenarios and traces. Interactive Systems. Design, Specification, and Verification 9th International Workshop, DSV-IS 2002. P. Forbrig, Q. Limbourg, B. Urban, J. Vanderdonckt (eds.). Rostock, Germany, June 2002. Springer, LNCS 2545, pp. 238-252.

physical­logical mappings

  slides on physicality as PPT (1.4M) or PDF (117K)
  brief discussion in chapter 3 in new HCI 3e Book
  download draft of new chapter 3 (PDF, 597K)