Alan Dix - research topics

Undo and History

I've studied aspects of undo off and on since I fist started working in HCI. Work over the years has included generic proofs using the PIE model, formal and conceptual work on multi-user undo (with Gregory Abowd) and use of dynamic pointers as a conceptual and implementation framework.

Recently collaborative work with Roberta Mancini and Stefano Levialdi has revisited single-user undo producing a formal framework that is both more rigorous than previous work and also applicable to other types of system extension, including hypertext history.

Undo is particularly well suited to formal analysis, although the analysis also reveals issues that must be dealt with outside the formal domain. In particular, there are psychological issues about the perceived granularity of undo. Also, the formal analysis of multi-user undo confirmed that some nasty cases will always remain. This lead to a radical rethink of the meaning of the "undo" button and the suggestion that design ought to focus on supporting the user's own undo actions.

There are also links between this work and an on-going study of versioning issues and dynamic pointers

Some of my papers

• A. J. Dix (1991).
  Formal methods for interactive systems - Chapters 2 and 4.
  London: Academic Press.
• A. J. Dix (1995).
  Dynamic pointers and threads.
  Collaborative Computing, 1(3):191-216.
  abstract | full paper (PDF, 200K)
• G. D. Abowd and A. J. Dix (1992).
  Giving undo attention.
  Interacting with Computers, 4(3): 317-342.
  abstract || full paper (compressed postscript, 112K) || full paper (PDF, 284K)
• A. J. Dix (1995).
  Moving between contexts.
  Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems '95, Eds. P. Palanque and R. Bastide. Toulouse, France, Springer Wien. pp. 149-173.
  abstract || full paper (compressed postscript, 672K) || full paper (PDF, 124K)
• A. Dix, R. Mancini and S. Levialdi (1996).
  Alas I am undone - Reducing the risk of interaction?
  HCI'96 Adjunct Proceedings, . Imperial College, London, pp. 51-56.
  full paper || talk || more about Magisoft Wand
  
• A. Dix, T. Rodden and I. Sommerville (1996).
  A Modal Model of Versions.
  FAHCI - Formal Aspects of the Human Computer Interface. Sheffield, Springer Verlag.
  abstract
• R. Mancini, A. Dix and S. Levialdi (1996).
  Formal and Informal Definitions of Undo.
  RR9611, University of Huddersfield.
  abstract || full paper (compressed postscript, 884K) || full paper (PDF, 171K)
• A. Dix, R. Mancini and S. Levialdi (1997).
  Communication, action and history.
  Proceedings of CHI'97. Atlanta, USA, ACM Press.
  full paper
• A. Dix, R. Mancini and S. Levialdi (1997).
  The cube - extending systems for undo.
  Proceedings of DSVIS'97, Granada, Spain, Eurographics. pp 473-495.
  abstract || full paper (compressed postscript, 776K) || full paper (PDF, 111K)
• R. Mancini, A. J. Dix and S. Levialdi (1997).
  Dealing with Undo.
  Proceedings of Interact'97, Sydney, Australia, Chapman and Hall.
  full paper
• A. Dix and R. Mancini (1997).
  Specifying history and backtracking mechanisms.
  In Formal Methods in Human-Computer Interaction, Eds. P. Palanque and F. Paterno. London, Springer-Verlag. pp. 1-23.
  abstract || full paper (pdf) || draft chapter (compressed postscript)

Roberta's thesis

• R. Mancini (1997).
  Modelling Interactive Computing by exploiting the Undo.
  Dottorato di Ricerca in Informatica, IX-97-5, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".

Other undo papers

• J. E. Archer, R. Conway and F. B. Schneider (1984). User recovery and reversal in interactive systems. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 6:1-19. in ACM Digital Library
• T. Berlage and M. Spenke (1992). The GINA Interaction Recorder. Engineering for Human-Computer Interaction, J. Larson and C. Unger (eds), pp. 69-80. North-Holland
• T. Berlage (1994). A selective undo mechanism for graphical user interfaces based on command objects. ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, 1:269-294. in ACM Digital Library
• R. Choudhary and P. Dewan (1995). A general multi-user undo/redo model. Proceedings of ECSCW'95, Stockholm, Sweden, H. Marmolin, Y. Sundblad and K. Schmidt (eds), pp. 231-246. Kluwer Acadamic.
• Frohlich D M, Drew P & Monk A (1994) The management of repair in human computer interaction. Human Computer Interaction 9:385-425. abstract  
• G.B. Leeman (1986). A Formal Approach to Undo Operations in Programming Languages. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 8(1):50-87 in ACM Digital Library
• B. A. Myers and D. S. Kosbie (1996). Reusable hierarchical command objects. Proceedings of CHI96, Vancouver, BC, Canada, pp. 260-267. ACM Press. in ACM Digital Library
• A. Prakash and M. J. Knister (1992). Undoing actions in collaborative work. Proceedings of CSCW'92. Toronto Canada. pp. 273-280, ACM Press. in ACM Digital Library
• A. Prakash and M. J. Knister (1994). A framework for undoing actions in collaborative systems. ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, 1(4):295-330. in ACM Digital Library
• M. Ressel, D. Nitsche-Ruhland and R. Gunzenhşuser (1996). An integrating, transformation-oriented approach to concurrency control and undo in group editors. Proceedings of CSCW'96. Boston USA. ACM Press pp. 288-297
  in ACM Digital Library
• M. Ressel and R. Gunzenhöuser (1999). Reducing the problems of group undo. Proceedings of Group'99. Phoenix,USA. ACM Press, pp. 131-139
  in ACM Digital Library
• B. Shneiderman (1982). The future of interactive systems and the emergence of direct manipulation. Behaviour and Information Technology, 1(3):237-256.
• C. Sun, X. Jia, Y. Zhang, Y. Yang and D. Chen (1998). Achieving convergence, causality preservation, and intention preservation in real-time cooperative editing systems.ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, 5(1):63-108. in ACM Digital Library
• C. Sun (2000). Undo any operation at any time in group editors. Proceedings of CSCW'2000, Philadelphia, PA USA, pp. 191-200, ACM Press. in ACM Digital Library
• H. W. Thimbleby (1990). User Interface Design - Chapter 12: Undo. Addison Wesley.
• J. S. Vitter (1984). US&R: A new framework for redoing. IEEE Software, 1(4):39-52.
• P. Wright, A. Monk and M. Harrison (1992). State, display and undo: a study of consistency in display based interaction. Technical Report, University of York.
• Y. Yang (1988). A new conceptual model for interactive user recovery and command reuse facilities. In Proceedings of CHI'88, Addison Wesley, pp. 165-170. in ACM Digital Library
• Y. Yang (1988). Undo support models. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 28:457-481.