In the last few years, there has been an explosive growth in connectivity, online content, and human interaction technology. These changes, sometimes called knowledge networking, portend advances in devices for accelerating knowledge work. They also create the need and opportunity for a new generation of HCI methods and technologies. Efforts are underway to build vast digital libraries and online information resources that defy easy description, but there is a need for more understanding of the ecology of the information space being built, how people might interact with it, and how to design human-machine systems that exploit it.

In this talk, I will discuss our efforts to characterize the ecology and user behavior where large amounts of information are involved (specifically the World-Wide Web) and to build new user interfaces for this domain. One type of activity that appears prominant is what we have come to call knowledge crystallization: Information is gathered, organized, restructured, and used to produce something new. Think of it as the thing you would build a digital library for. I will discuss what we think we know about this activity and show a few user interface components for handling large amounts of information. Systems for aiding user knowledge crystallization appear to be the next frontier.

SPEAKER BIO
Stuart Card is a Xerox Research Fellow and the manager of the User Interface Research group at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. With Allen Newell and Tom Moran from CMU, he founded an effort to develop models of human performance usable in information system design. His thesis at CMU was the first thesis specifically in the new speciality of human-computer interaction. His study of input devices led to the Fitt's Law characterization of the mouse and was a main factor leading to the mouse's commercial introduction.

He and his group have developed a number of theories of human-machine interaction, including tne Model Human Processor, the GOMS theory of user interaction, and information foraging theory. They have developed new paradigms of human-machine interaction, including the Rooms workspace manager and the Information Visualizer. The work has resulted in nine Xerox products and the founding of Inxight Software, Inc.

Card is a co-author of the book, "The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction", a co-editor of the book, "Human Performance Models for Computer-Aided Engineering", and has served on many editorial boards. He received his A.B. in Physics from Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon, where he pursued an interdisciplinary program in psychology, artificial intelligence, and computer science. His most recent book, "Readings in Infomration Visualization", co-written and edited with Jock Mackinlay and Ben Schneiderman, was published in January.

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