GroupLens Research

Recording human-computer interaction for the purposes of reusing commands, undoing actions, recovering from crashes, constructing keyboard macros, and observing users has been with us since the earliest command shells and text editors. For much of that time it remained a sleepy "back water" technology area except for a continuing increase in work-monitoring and associated incidents breeching user privacy. However, with the drastic fall of costs for digital storage, processing and telecommunications, all that is now rapidly changing. Digital records of activity are common at work, market-place and home. While new interaction history techniques such as design capture, automatic change bars, readwear, interface agents, digital audio recording, hot lists, version management, viewer histories, automatic biography, usability studies, active badges, wireless personal communicators, position-sensing and caller-id are enriching the experience of interfaces, the same techniques are enabling new and more invasive abuses. This one-day interdisciplinary workshop will gather 20 practitioners and researchers from the fields of human-computer interaction design, research, ethics and law to produce their "Top Ten" list of research questions concerning uses and abuses of interaction history for the CHI community to address in the coming years. There will be no presentations, but homework will be collected and redistributed via email prior to the workshop. The day will blend open discussions with directed small-group works.