Networked information systems— spanning from the omnipresent cellphone to the complex web of computer systems that pervade and shape modern life — connect our activities to ever-expanding information resources. Yet despite tremendous advances in computational capacity, connectivity, and recently in AI, computer-mediated information activities remain fragile, fragmented, and frustrating. One cause is a document-and-application-centered design paradigm that has long been the primary approach of both HCI research and commercial development. It has resulted in refined tools and solutions for individual tasks such as document creation, spreadsheet analysis, presentations, and communication that function well individually but do not integrate and support overarching ulti-application real-world information activities.
I contend a fundamental and urgent problem we must address is that there is no place to represent and integrate information in the context of activity across applications, devices, and information resources. One that is organized not in terms of applications, documents, and files but in terms of people’s activities. A place to think that persists over time, is sensitive to context, and is readily accessible when needed. My objectives today are (1) To convince you that the HCI field needs to come together to focus on designing a place to think, moving beyond the legacy document-and-application-centered paradigm of current systems and the walled gardens and information silos it entails. (2) To sketch a new approach to designing a place to think built on active human-centered information workspaces linked to the existing information ecology.
Jim Hollan is Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Professor of Computer Science at UC San Diego. His industrial experience includes: Xerox Parc, where he consulted with John Seeley Brown’s group, Microelectronics and Computer Corporation, where he headed the Human Computer Interaction Laboratory, and Bellcore, where he established the Computer Graphics and Interactive Media research group. The early part of his academic career was spent on the faculty at UC San Diego, working with Don Norman, Ed Hutchins, and leading the Intelligent Systems Group. After a period in industrial research labs (MCC and Bellcore), he was Chair of the Computer Science Department at the University of New Mexico. He returned to UCSD in 1997 to establish the Distributed Cognition and HCI Laboratory with Ed Hutchins. In 2014 be helped start the Design Lab at UCSD and served as co-director along with Scott Klemmer and Don Norman. In 2003 he was elected to the Association of Computing Machinery’s ACM CHI Academy and in 2015 he received the ACM CHI Lifetime Research award.