From: owner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu on behalf of Jerry Isdale
[isdale@hrl.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 12:37 PM
To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu
Subject: Usability and Virtual Environments

Greetings folks,

I'm a bit late in getting a discussion going, but my May TechReview
column for VRNews will be covering Usability.
Not our average technology - no products, no neat pictures, etc.
However, as a long time student of software engineering and tool builder
for non-CompSci types (animators, etc.) I felt that it was a topic
worthy of reporting, especially after the VR99 best paper award went to
the Virginia Tech team for their paper on User Centered Design.

Iniitally I thought this would be pretty easy, with a few researchers to
cover.  After digging a bit through citations and references from Doug
Bowman, etc  I found there has been a terrific increase in research in
this area over the last few years.  I'd like to hear more from this
group on their ideas and research directions and applications.

A rough listing of some related topics things I've found to date:

General HCI/Usability references (Norman, Nielsen, lots of HCI and
Usability sites or conferences)
Difficulties in applying conventional HCI to VE (Chris Johnson, etc)
device ergonomics - HMD book, etc.
interaction techniques - Doug's thesis, quite a few folks working this
area
navigation, wayfinding, spatial cognition
exposure research (Kay Stanney, others???)
U.Engr applied to VE: Gabbard/Hix et al
Kulwinder Kaur's thesis on designing VE for usability
UK/EPSRC workshops on User Centered Design in VE (sept99)
Design Methodologies for VE/Usability - Clive Fencott, etc
Software Engineering for VE - Gerard Kim

What are your thoughts on the above topics as well as Usability and
Design Methods for VE?

Thanks!

--
Jerry Isdale,  Research Staff
Human-Centered Systems Department
HRL Labs LLC - Information Sciences Laboratory
3011 Malibu Canyon Road Malibu, Ca, 90265-Mail Stop RL96
Tel: 310-317-5883  Fax: 310-317-5695
email: isdale@isl.hrl.hac.com
web: http://www.hrl.com   personal: http://vr.isdale.com