SOFTWARE—PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE, VOL. 28(12), 1357–1358 (OCTOBER 1998)

Book Review

‘Human-Computer Interaction’ by AlanDix, Janet Finlay, Gregory Abowd, RussellBeale, Prentice Hall, 1998. UK £24.95, 638pages, 2nd Ed. ISBN: 0 132 398648.

The first edition of Dix et al. was published in1984 and was, at the time, one of the very fewUK text books for HCI, and it was excellent. Sincethen, the discipline of HCI has changed remarkablyand also a number of other text books have enteredthe market; Preeceet al.1 (1994) has beenpublished and so too has the third edition ofShneiderman2 (1997). Consequently, the secondedition of Dix et al. has a much stronger field tocompete with. In light of these developments, Iwill review the book against two questions. Howdoes it compare with its competitors and how welldoes it reflect the developments in HCI since itsfirst edition?

A central feature of this book which distingu-ishes it from competitors is its focus on designpractice and the role of models in design. Theauthors consider not only the practice of interfacedesign but also situate this in the larger practiceof software engineering. They raise importantissues, such as the fact that interactive systemsdesign involves techniques that span the entiresoftware life-cycle. It is not just an activity thatslots in after functional design. The authors alsoraise the issue of the so-called formality gap.Traditional software engineering techniques rely onmodels of the system which do not incorporatethe users’ perspective, making user-centred designparticularly problematic. At the heart of the authorsmodel-based approach is an attempt to bridgethis gap.

The book has chapters describing approachesto system modelling, task modelling and user mod-elling and there is a detailed discussion of notationsfor doing these modelling activities, including for-mal notations such as CSP. The chapter on systemmodelling introduces the reader to the mathematicsrequired to understand the notations used including,for example, temporal logic. This is then followedby an introduction to specific interaction modelssuch as the PIE model and Status/Event analysis.

1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Given the authors’ emphasis on design prac-tice and modelling, a key question that has to beasked is whether there is enough guidance in thebook on how to use these modelling techniques.Each of the techniques is well illustrated by atleast one small scale example (email interfaces,visual feedback from dialogue box buttons, etc.).However, a discussion of how these might scaleup to larger interactive design enterprise or howdesigners might decide when and what to modelformally would have been useful for practitioners.

This focus on design practice and modellingis perhaps unsurprising given the formal back-grounds of the authors. For this same reason it isperhaps unsurprising that those chapters dealingwith psychological theory are, while clear, conciseand relevant, less broad-ranging than for those ofPreeceet al. The chapters on psychological theorydeal with visual and auditory perception in somedetail; Card, Moran and Newell’s model infor-mation processor is used as the foundation modelof cognition and classic work on problem solvingis covered but not related well to HCI issues.There is less page space dedicated to more modernviews of cognition and perception or the role ofcontext and learning.

The coverage of evaluation in Dixet al. isalso less detailed than, for example, Preeceet al.They dedicate 35 pages to this topic, comparingdifferent evaluation techniques in a useful tableand providing guidelines for choosing among them.They devote a surprisingly large amount of spaceto experimental methods and less to more practicaltechniques. Preeceet al. in contrast, dedicate wholechapters to specific methods, giving practitionersa much clearer idea of what is involved in indus-trially relevant evaluation.

So, how well does the book reflect changesin the world of HCI that have occurred since thefirst edition was published? As both Shneidermanand Dix et al. point out, computer supported col-laborative work, scientific visualisation, virtualreality and the World Wide Web are what’s differ-ent and challenging about HCI in the late ’90’s.Dix et al. devotes two excellent chapters to CSCWwhich take a much more disciplined approach than

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Shneiderman, looking not only at the technologyof CSCW but also at the theoretical issues andresearch problems raised by the ever-expandingcontext of HCI. Shneiderman in contrast takes avery technology-centred approach giving the readera feel for the innumerable different groupwareproducts that are available. However, Schneiderm-an’s colour plates depicting CSCW systems andalso scientific visualisation and VR systems arefar superior. The World Wide Web is consideredin both books but both are very descriptive. Inboth books, these new and challenging fields ofapplication are still presented as add-ons to thecentral part of the book. Dixet al. have parcelledthese chapters together in a section entitledappli-cation areas. It is disappointing that some of therecent developments in HCI theory-buildinginspired by cooperative work studies such as Hut-chins, Grudin and Rogers have not found reflectionhere. It’s disappointing too, to find no discussionof the relationship between model-basedapproaches to design and the more ethnographi-cally inspired approaches such as participatorydesign and contextual enquiry. Perhaps these issuesare beyond the scope of an undergraduate text.

From a teaching perspective, Dixet al., likeShneiderman, provide teaching resources to supportthe book including lecture notes on the Web. Thebook includes worked examples and exercises withmodel answers on the Web. There are also designfocus sections which explicitly take the theoreticalissues raised and relate to a design problem. Theseprovide useful case study material although attimes some of the anecdotes stretch credulity. Didthe World War II Spitfire pilots really eject bypressing an ejector control? In comparison with

other text books, Dixet al. does occupy a uniqueniche, being the only one of the three equallyexcellent books that takes a model-based approachand relates strongly to a software engineering lifecycle. This is not to say however that the book isin any way system-centred or overly applied in itsorientation. There is a good blend of theoreticaland applied/design issues and there is also muchthought provoking discussion.

So to sum up, Dixet al. provides an excellenttext book bringing HCI up to date although Iwould have appreciated some better integration ofthe new application areas. A key contribution ofthe book is its emphasis on design practice andmodelling and its orientation towards a softwareengineering life cycle. The treatment of psycho-logical issues while thorough and sympatheticcould have been done with more depth and bre-adth. If I were teaching HCI to psychologists Imight choosePreece et al. over Dix et al. IfI were teaching computer scientists or systemsengineers, I would choose Dixet al.

REFERENCES

1. Preece, J. Rogers, Y., Benyon, D., Holland, S.and Carey, T., ‘Human-Computer Interaction’,Addison-Wesley, 1994.

2. Shneiderman, B., ‘Designing the user interface:Strategies for effective human-computer interac-tion’ Addison-Wesley, 3rd ed., 1998

Peter WrightDepartment of Computer Science

University of York, Heslington,York Y010 5DD, UK