[Sigia-l] Ben Shneiderman at HFES Potomac Chapter Meeting on October 18

[Andrew Schall]

Ben Shneiderman at HFES Potomac Chapter Meeting on October 18
Can't go to San Francisco for the HFES Conference? Then join us on
10/18 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of HFES!

Date: 	Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Speaker: 	Dr. Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland
Topic: 	Creativity Support Tools: A Grand Challenge
Where: 	Positano
4940 Fairmont Ave.  (three blocks from the Bethesda Metro Station on
the Red Line)
Bethesda MD  20814  (parking garages are across the street and also
around the corner)
301-654-1717

Schedule:	6:00 pm—networking with Ben and others (in the Wine Room)
6:30—dinner in the Wine Room: order off the menu (see
http://www.epositano.com/dinnermenu.html); each person pays their own.
7:15—coffee/tea and dessert, courtesy of the Potomac Chapter.
(If you prefer, feel free to skip dinner and come at 7:15 pm for
complimentary coffee/tea and dessert!)
7:30—Ben's talk on Creativity Support Tools
8:15—Questions/Discussion and Wrap-Up

RSVP: 	Please notify Derek Schultz (mediadesign at att.net; 301-656-1897)
by end of day Monday 10/16/06...
=> if you plan to attend, and
=> whether you'll be there for dinner or coffee/dessert only.

Abstract: 	Creativity Support Tools is a research topic with high risk
but potentially very high payoff. The goal is to develop improved
software and user interfaces that empower diverse users in the
sciences and arts to be more productive, and more innovative.
Potential users include a combination of software and other engineers,
diverse scientists, product and graphic designers, and architects, as
well as writers, poets, musicians, new media artists, and many others.

Enhanced interfaces could enable more effective searching of
intellectual resources, improved collaboration among teams, and more
rapid discovery processes.  These advanced interfaces should also
provide potent support in goal setting, speedier exploration of
alternatives, improved understanding through visualization, and better
dissemination of results (demos will be shown).

For creative endeavors that require composition of novel artifacts
(computer programs, engineering diagrams, symphonies, animations,
artwork), enhanced interfaces could facilitate rapid exploration of
alternatives, prevent unproductive choices, and enable easy
backtracking. Two key human factors issues are (1) Formulation of
guidelines for design of creativity support tools (2) Novel research
methods to assess creativity support tools.  These issues will be the
core of the June 2007 Conference on Creativity and Cognition in
Washington, DC (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/CC2007).

Speaker Bio: 	
Ben Shneiderman (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben) is a Professor in the
Department of Computer Science, Founding Director (1983-2000) of the
Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/),
and Member of the Institutes for Advanced Computer Studies & for
Systems Research, all at the University of Maryland at College Park.
He was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing (ACM ) in
1997 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS) in 2001.  He received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime
Achievement Award in 2001.

Ben is the author of Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer
and Information Systems (1980) and Designing the User Interface:
Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (4th ed. 2004)
http://www.awl.com/DTUI/ . He pioneered the highlighted textual link
in 1983, and it became part of Hyperties, a precursor to the web.  His
move into information visualization helped spawn the successful
company Spotfire http://www.spotfire.com/ . He is a technical advisor
for the HiveGroup and ILOG.  With S Card and J. Mackinlay, he
co-authored Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to
Think (1999).  His books include Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and
the New Computing Technologies (MIT Press), which won the IEEE
Distinguished Literary Contribution award in 2004.