Austin Henderson's 45-year career in Human-Computer Interaction includes user interface research and architecture at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, Bolt Beranek and Newman, Xerox Research (both PARC and EuroPARC), Apple Computer, and Pitney Bowes, as well as strategic industrial design with Fitch and his own Rivendel Consulting & Design.
Currently, Austin is a director in the Advanced Concepts & Technology group at Pitney Bowes, where he is developing the practices of collaboration between research, the business units and users in advanced product development focusing on technology-in-use.
Austin has also been active in ACM/SIGCHI since 1983, including as conference chair (1985), and organization chair (1989-1993), where his concerns have been to engage a broad spectrum of perspectives in HCI across disciplines, work practices and cultures.
Austin has built both commercial and research applications in many domains including manufacturing, programming languages, air traffic control, electronic mail (Hermes), user interface design tools (Trillium), workspace management (Rooms, Buttons), distributed collaboration (MediaSpace), and user-evolvable systems (Tailorable – “design continued in use”, Pliant – “designing for the unanticipated”). These applications, and their development with users, have grounded his analytical work, which has included the nature of computation-based socio-technical systems, the interaction of people with the technology in those systems, and the practices and tools of their development. The primary goals of his work has been to better meet user needs, both by improving system development to better anticipate those needs, and by improving system capability to enable users themselves to better respond to unanticipated needs when they arise in a rich and changing world.
Recent Publications
These documents are listed in reverse chronological order: the most recent is at the top.
- Austin Henderson (Rivendel), Lynne Henderson (Rivendel), Mattias Bergman (Sun microsystems). Presentation December 6, 2001 Center for Work, Technology and Organization, Stanford University.
- Rearranging the Rooms: a case study in video-based meeting support. Research Paper Austin Henderson (Rivendel), Lynne Henderson (Rivendel), Mattias Bergman (Sun microsystems). Presentation December 6, 2001 Center for Work, Technology and Organization, Stanford University.
Intellectual CV
- For IBM and Avon Products (1965): Contract accounting application which let contract managers model the world as they, rather than systems developers, saw it. Users as experts and essential to system development.
- Programming language structures, at MIT (1968): created representations of program execution centered on conceptual models of computation
- Ambit-G at MIT Lincoln Laboratory (1968): TX-2 interactive graphic applications based on interaction through drawn symbols
- ROSS, for BBN (1973): air traffic control simulation exploratory application which separated and integrated normative and observed vehicle motion
- Hermes, for BBN (1975): e-mail application which let users extend message semantics by defining new message fields
- Operability, with Lucy Suchman, for Xerox (1981): observational studies of operating a copier, which including work on user’s conceptual models of machines, following instructions, the evolution of understanding, and the management of trouble.
- Trillium, for Xerox (1981): user-interface design application which let designers extend their language of design by creating parameterized interaction objects
- Rooms, with Stuart Card for Xerox (1986): workstation infrastructure which recognized and supported multi-tasking, by let users define-through-use and manage concurrent windows configurations
- Buttons, for Xerox (1986-1988): user-constructed interaction objects that let users design, capture, share and invoke their common or repeated operations, thus extending the semantically-open construction of coding into user space
- For Xerox, at PARC and EuroPARC (1980-1988): Social science as essential for system development
- For Fitch (1989): design as essential for system development
- Computation in design, with John Rheinfrank and Shelley Evenson, for Fitch (1989): design consultancy including the integration of interactional elements in the structure and language of systems design
- Architecture of user interface, for Xerox (1991-1994): Incorporation of a technology-in-use perspective into a corporate-wide technical architecture
- Discourse architecture, for Apple (1995): structural components of computer operating systems to support the user’s concurrent interaction with many applications running in a coherent workstation environment.
- Pliant computing, with Jed Harris (1999): analysis of the need and possibilities for addressing evolving and socially-produced ontologies in system development
- For Rivendel Consulting & Design (1997-2002): analysis and system development for workplace design for fluid and distributed work
- For Pitney Bowes (2002-2010): in-practice analysis of corporate advanced product creation from a technology-in-use system development perspective, leading to development practices that integrate user value, technical possibility, financial attractiveness and corporate capability.
- Designing for the Unanticipated (2008): Analysis of the place and practice of regularity and exception in socio-technical systems.
Research Themes
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The Computation in people’s activities
Purpose:
Modelling activity
Supporting activity
Controlling activity
Evolving
Changing world
Changing users wishes
Changing technical possibilities
Changing financial frame
Changing corporate capabilities
Socially produced
Multi-perspective
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Collaboration
Competition
Differentially produced
Creators / suppliers
Administrators
Colleagues
User
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The nature of interaction
Conceptual models as key
Tools as part of work
The physical as integral
Multi-tasking as central
Trouble as integral
Learning as integral
Social interaction as constitutive
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Systems development:
Integration of science, design and engineering in system development
The social as essential in systems
The emic view
Observational methods
Systems in use
developer’s context is user’s center
embedding of system in user’s activity/work
codevelopment of systems and activity/work
Development continued in use:
Users as designers
Backchannel from users to designers (Hermes)
Users as developers (tailorability)
Melding of concerns in product development:
user value
technological feasibility
financial attractiveness
corporate capability and fit
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Evolvable systems
Emergent (cf. defined) ontology
Ontological drift
Social ontology
Pliant computing
Designing for the Unanticipated
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In corporations
Melding of concerns
Relationship of research and busines
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Tools
For rapid prototyping of software
For Distributed Collaboration
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