“Everything is moving to the cloud. As we enter the third decade of the Web we are seeing an increasing shift from native desktop applications towards Web-hosted clones that run in browsers.” (Nova Spivack – ReadWriteWeb)

“Good user interfaces are crucial for good user experience. It doesn’t matter how good a technology is — if we, designers, don’t manage to make user interface as intuitive and attractive as possible, the technology will hardly reach a breakthrough. To gain the interest in a new product or technology, users need to understand its advantages or find themselves impressed or involved.” (Smashing Magazine)

“(…) I presented a session at MIX. I talked a bit about the general design process we used to come up with the Office 2007 user interface, to iterate on it, and to evaluate it. As part of the discussion, I showed for the first time some of the early prototypes we worked on (and abandoned or refined) along the way. It’s always fun to present substantially new content, and this was my first time giving large portions of this talk. The audience was great and, although you can’t hear them on the video, they seemed to be into it and enjoying the presentation. It was a lot of fun!” (Jensen Harris)

“This paper describes an experiment that sought to identify patterns in user perception of progress bar behavior. The results are then analyzed to classify behaviors that perceptually speed up or slow down process execution. We conclude with several design suggestions, which can be applied to applications that employ progress bars and contribute to an overall more responsive, pleasant and human-centric computing experience.” (Chris Harrison) – courtesy of annekevandelangkruis

“Many winners employ dashboards to give users a single overview of complex information and use lightboxes to ensure that users notice dialogs. Also, the Office 2007 ribbon showed surprisingly strong early adoption.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

Video registration of Donald Normans presentation – “In his latest book, The Design of Future Things, Norman offers a consumer-oriented theory of natural human-machine interaction that can be put into practice by the engineers and industrial designers of tomorrow’s thinking machines.” (From Business to Buttons 2008 recorded sessions)

“We explore the roles and the importance of having a management community inside the Human-Computer Interaction field and inside the large CHI community. We believe that the management community keeps the broad HCI field in touch with the strategic and managerial values of HCI research and practice. It can be an effective advocate and bridge for bringing the importance of HCI research and practice to the strategic and managerial levels of organizations, thus HCI work can have bigger and broader impact on people, organizations, and societies. We call for additional energy, effort, and participation to the management community.” (Ping Zhang and Roberto Polillo – CHI 2008 DVD Proceedings)

“CHI 2008 is over – once again, time to look back and write a report for the SAP Design Guild. First, I would like to warn you: This collection of CHI 2008 snippets is neither balanced, nor fair. You may even find that this report turns into a rant, but there are also a number of positive observations. Large conferences are always like a shopping bag – you have to pick what suits you best.” (Gerd Waloszek – SAP Design Guild)

“This course is intended to give newcomers enough background in the field of HCI to make their conference experience much more meaningful. It provides a framework to understand how thevarious topics are related to research and practice. It is a tried-andtrue introduction and has become a CHI conference tradition.” (David Kieras – CHI ’08 video lectures)

“In 1997 you yelled out that you would never come to CHI again because they just didn’t get it. What changed your mind to come back? Ultimately I can’t figure out a better community to work on these problems. It surprised people that I went to IBM, and that I came back here I guess. I had some time to think. I’m glad I came back. I was younger and wilder then and not so calm and cool and collected. I also stopped blaming you and CHI for not getting what I need. Instead, it’s my fault. I can say what can I do to get fulfilled.” (Bolt|Peters User Experience)

“In March 2007, Microsoft Research organised the ‘HCI 2020’ meeting at the El Bulli Hacienda Hotel near Seville, Spain. The event’s title expressed its key question: what will Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) be like in the year 2020? That question is important because HCI, significant as it was in the late 20th century, has a pivotal part to play in the 21st, when computers will become so pervasive that how humans interact with them will be a crucial issue for society. HCI 2020 produced many ideas, both thrilling and troubling. This report is not a conventional publication of an academic conference but seeks to convey the passion of those ideas, both for the general reader and the HCI practitioner. For the general reader, this is important because knowledge of what the future might be may empower, while ignorance harm. For the HCI practitioner, its purpose is to map out the terrain and suggest new approaches while keeping an eye on the main prize: the embodiment of human values at the heart of computing.” (Microsoft Research) – courtesy of markvanderbeeken

How our natural responses to stimuli can inform the design process – “I’d like to frame a discussion of cues by touching on a mixture of topics including memory, a few theories from cognitive psychology, and multimedia research. It may get a little dry, but stick with me. The integration of these three areas not only affects how information is encoded and retrieved, it influences how and when cues might best be used.” (Jamie Owen – Boxes and Arrows)

“Even though the technology has been around for decades, only now are we starting to see mass production and adoption of touchscreen and gestural devices for the public. Jeff Han’s influential 2006 TED demonstration of his multitouch system, followed by the launches of Nintendo’s Wii, Apple’s iPhone, and Microsoft Surface, have announced a new era of interaction design, one where gestures in space and touches on a screen will be as prominent as pointing and clicking.” (Dan Saffer – O’Reilly ETech 2008)

“This week, a new book appeared in my mailbox: HCI Remixed: Reflections on Works That Have Influenced the HCI Community (eds. Thomas Erickson and David McDonald). This book helped remind me that human-human interaction was part of HCI, even if the field seems not to emphasize that these days.” (danah boyd – apophenia)

Or, ‘Making a Career Out of Getting Back to Where I Started‘ – “This was a golden time. My experience with this system surpassed even the motorcycle ride up to Ottawa – including those glorious hilly curves through the countryside. And given my relationship with Mabel, that is no faint praise. But truth be told, even this is an understatement. I am still striving to be worthy of the folks who gave me this, my first introduction to what has become my career. And, as the title of this essay suggests, since then, a huge part of my professional life has been an attempt to get back to where I started. My only hope is that I succeed. I at least owe them that. And the recognition. And thanks.” (Bill Buxton – HCI Remixed)

“I’ve been thinking more and more lately about the state of user interface and it’s evolution path — it’s something that I can’t get out of my mind. Over the past few years (we’re talking less than 5), we’ve seen user interfaces across the digital world morph from a static experience into highly dynamic interactive experiences. Web sites like Facebook and MySpace have proven that interactivity and the ability to relate real world ideas to the digital realm wins over features and functionality. Applications like iTunes have shown that how data is presented and you interact with that data is more important than how your computer processes the same data. As such, I’d like to pose a simple question to those front end developers out there: What do you think the future of UI technology will look like?” (Kyle Neath – Warpspire)

“For the last few years, innovation has been a big topic in conversation about business management. But despite all the conversation, there is little consensus on what innovation is and how to get it. Hugh Dubberly, well known for producing highly visual, exploratory models of complex topics, has produced a new model that explores the rich subject matter of innovation.” (Hugh Dubberly – interactions magazine) – congrats with the fresh site

“The ubiquity of frustrating, unhelpful software interfaces has motivated decades of research into ‘Human-Computer Interaction’. In this paper, I suggest that the long-standing focus on ‘interaction’ may be misguided. For a majority subset of software, called ‘information software’, I argue that interactivity is actually a curse for users and a crutch for designers, and users’ goals can be better satisfied through other means.” (Bret Victor)

“Science Fiction movies have been a source for speculation about the future of technology and human computer interaction. This paper presents a survey of different kinds of interaction designs in movies during the past decades and relates the techniques of the films to existing technologies and prototypes where possible. The interactions will be categorized with respect to their domain of real-life applications and also evaluated in regard to results of current research in human computer interaction.” (A. Butz, C. Endres, and W. Wahlster) – courtesy of michelvuijlsteke

“Since the announcement of the iPhone, an especially large number of people have asked me about multi-touch. The reason is largely because they know that I have been involved in the topic for a number of years. The problem is, I can’t take the time to give a detailed reply to each question. So I have done the next best thing (I hope). That is, start compiling my would-be answer in this document. The assumption is that ultimately it is less work to give one reasonable answer than many unsatisfactory ones.” (Bill Buxton)