Vision: Let us together, today, make information technology of
tomorrow more usable, enjoyable and accessible for all
Mission: Realize easier, simpler and faster
usable Interactive Multimedia Information Systems with strong
commitment to Human-Centered Development
We are living in a world of
pervasive, ubiquitous, sophisticated technology: smaller, faster, cheaper,
increasingly powerful - technological performance is rapidly increasing -
however, our human performance is also increasing, but NOT at the same speed.
Consequently, there is a gap: WE WANT TO BRIDGE this gap between technological
performance and cognitive performance!
We want to bring together
people from Psychology/Education and Computer Science - to bring together
natural and human science with engineering science. Our aim is to combine the
thinking from Natural Sciences with the thinking from Engineering. Together
these approaches really can change.
Human–Computer Interaction (HCI),
as a discipline in Computer Science (Informatics) traditionally bridges Psychology and
Computer Science. Moreover, HCI has born and raised within the last years a little child: Usability Engineering (UE).
UE is a discipline
within Software Engineering (SE) and is dedicated to ensure that results and lessons
learned from HCI
research are integrated
into development at a systemic level, consequently both aspects human and computer
are of EQUAL importance.
The classic definition of HCI is "Human-computer interaction is a discipline
concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive
computer systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena
surrounding them." Today it is much more, since computers change
their appearance and information has
become a key element of our society - actually we are living in THE Information
Society.
HCI&UE is a highly
interdisciplinary field, inherently having specific problems; especially
for younger researchers, who, being new to their field and not yet firmly
anchored in one single discipline, are in danger of “falling between two seats.”
Naturally, it is much easier to gain depth and acknowledgement within a narrow scientific
community in one single field - often only a few people on this world do
understand each other.
However, innovation and new developments often
take place at the junction of two or more disciplines. Working in an
interdisciplinary
discipline requires a broader basis of knowledge and naturally much more effort
and energy. Most of all, working in an interdisciplinary area, one needs the
ability to communicate with professionals in other disciplines and a willingness
to accept and incorporate their points of view. Most of all, our primary concern
must be on our end users - the people using technology - the people using
information - the people we want to support.
This pages are
dedicated to HCI&UE issues. Some resources include:
Personal Homepage of Andreas
Holzinger at
http://user.meduni-graz.at/andreas.holzinger
HCI&UE Blog at
http://tugll.tugraz.at/51850/weblog
HCI4ALL Group at LinkedIn,
you are welcome to join.
Workgroup HCI&UE of the
Austrian Computer Society you
are welcome to join the
HCI&UE Mailinglist
The Workgroup HCI&UE of the
Austrian Computer Society has established the USAB Symposium series in 2005:
*
1st USABility Symposium
USAB 2005 at Vienna University of Technology
*
2nd USABility Symposium USAB
2006 at TechGate Vienna
*
3rd USABility Symposium
USAB 2007 at Graz University Hospital
*
4th USABility Symposium USAB 2008
at Graz University of Technology
*
5th USABility Symposium USAB 2009 at Linz
University
***NEW:
6th USABility Symposium USAB 2010
at Klagenfurt University SEPTEMBER 2010 ***
Let us together, today, make
technology of tomorrow more usable, enjoyable and accessible for all !
www.hci4all.at
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