Time and the Web 19 June 1997 The Octagon Staffordshire University https://alandix.com/academic/conf/web97/ http://www.hiraeth.com/web97/

workshop report to appear in January 1998 SIGCHI Bulletin

Modern user interface paradigms depend on direct manipulation, rapid response and immediate semantic feedback. Up until the early 80s response time was a recognised problem, but with the advent of personal computing and graphical interfaces, user interface designers have often assumed that machines will be fast enough. Response delays were no longer an interesting problem - ever faster computers would make the problem go away.

The web has given the lie to this assumption - exponential growth in traffic has lead to ever increasing network delays and bottlenecks at over-used servers. Even if we imagine that network capacity could overtake growth in usage, we are ultimately faced with the fundamental limitations of the speed of light. Delays are here to stay.

All this has highlighted the role of temporal issues in human-computer interaction:

• How do people cope with delays?
• Is direct manipulation the correct paradigm for computer or network intensive tasks?
• How do people interact over extended timescales?
• What architectural infrastructure do we need to suport effective interfaces over slow or unreliable networks?

This meeting will build on the growing interest in this area, in particular on the popular workshop on Temporal Aspects of Usability held at Glasgow in 1995, The Missing Link: Hypermedia Usability held at the Open University in 1996, and the mass of recent work on user interfaces and CSCW for the web.

You may also be interested in:

• The special issue of Interacting with Computers on Temporal Aspects of Usability is currently being edited by < a href="SHoward@swin.edu.au">Steve Howard and John Fabre of Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.
• The special issues of IJHCS on Web Usability, to be published in June/July 1997
• Alan Dix's page about time

For further information contact the organisers:

School of Computing		British HCI Group