The Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL)

The Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at the University of Maryland (directed by Associate Professor Allison Druin) designs, implements, and evaluates new interface technologies that are universally usable, useful, efficient and appealing to a broad cross-section of people. We believe it is critical to understand how the needs and dreams of people can be reflected in our future technologies. To this end, the HCIL develops advanced user interfaces and design methodology. Our primary activities include collaborative research, publication and the sponsorship of open houses, workshops and symposiums.
The HCIL is an interdisciplinary lab comprised of faculty and students from Computer Science, Information Studies, and Psychology. Our current work includes new approaches to information visualization, interfaces for digital libraries, mobile devices and electronic paper. We also explore zoomable user interfaces (ZUIs), technology design methods with and for children, and instruments for evaluating user interface technologies.
Founded in 1983 by Ben Shneiderman, the lab is one of the world's oldest centers for the study of human centered computing, with a long history of creating innovative interaction designs, understanding human performance, and applying these two to the development of applications that serves the community. From the concepts of direct manipulation and dynamic queries, to treemaps and other major advances in visualization, Ben Shneiderman has been a pioneer in the field, and continues to be an active participant in the lab today.
Projects are described extensively at www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/ - including:
International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) - www.childrenslibrary.org (led by Allison Druin, Ben Bederson & Ann Weeks): Imagine a world where a comprehensive library of international children's literature is available to all children across the globe. Imagine a technology that can cost effectively digitize massive amounts of information dedicated to the needs of children. The ICDL selects, collects, digitizes, and organizes children's materials in their original languages and to create appropriate technologies for access and use by children 3-13 years old. With over 1,500 books from over 40 countries with the website in 13 languages and a million users so far, the ICDL is working hard to fulfill this mission.
Treemap Visualization - www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap/ (led by Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant): Treemap is a space-constrained visualization of hierarchical structures. It is very effective in showing attributes of leaf nodes using size and color coding. Treemaps enable users to compare nodes and sub-trees even at varying depth in the tree, and help them spot patterns and exceptions. They have been applied to a huge range of application domains and have been distributed by many organizations including Microsoft, The Hive Group and even the Marine Corps. Treemaps are one of many visualizations that the HCIL builds to help make sense of the ever-growing masses of multidimensional and multi-typed information.
People, Paper and Computers - www.cs.umd.edu/~francois/ (led by Francois Guimbretiere): While pen and paper are easy to use, reliable and extremely versatile, they stand on the margins of the digital world. The Paper Augmented Digital Documents (PADD) system uses digital pens to bridge the gap between digital documents and their printouts. PADD is used by PapierCraft, a command selection system designed specifically for paper-based interactions. With PapierCraft, users can copy information from a printout to their notes (either on paper or on a tablet PC), "stitch" paper documents together, or create links between two documents. By promoting cohabitation between digital documents and paper, this system lets users enjoy the benefits of both media - and provides an infrastructure for better understanding the differences between paper and digital media. PapierCraft was built in collaboration with Ken Hinckley at Microsoft and Jim Hollan at UCSD, and has been integrated as part of the classroom presenter system in collaboration with Richard Anderson at University of Washington.
Recent successes include: The completion of a three-year $1 million partnership with Microsoft Research; Recent graduates going to work at Google, Microsoft Research and the Universities of Iowa, Buffalo and South Carolina; Awards to Ben Bederson from IBM, to Françs Guimbretiè from NSF, and graduate students Amy Karlson from Microsoft and Haixia Zhao from the American Association for University Women; and funding from a wide range of industry and government sponsors.
Finally, the HCIL sponsors an annual Symposium with about 300 attendees that come to learn about HCIL innovations and technologies. It is typically held the first week of June, and all students are welcome for free. See the HCIL website for details.