2008 Woodie Awards
A lab with big ideas
Chris Yu
Issue date: 4/4/08 Section: News
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No, it's not a new breed of superhero.
Rather, it is an interactive robot designed to excite children about reading and represents just one of many technological innovations developed at the university by the Human-Computer Interaction Lab.
The HCIL, now in its 25th year here, is responsible for many creations that shape the daily lives of students. From developing a feature found on iPods to creating the first embedded hyperlink, the lab has changed the way people see and use technology.
The goal of the lab is to make technologies easier to learn and more accessible to more people, said Ben Shneiderman, founder of the lab and a professor with the Department of Computer Science.
One of the major contributions the HCIL has made to today's world is the innovation of the lift-off touch screen, a technology found on the iPod Touch and the iPhone. This technology allows people to make selections on those devices only after their finger is lifted off the screen, Shneiderman explained. That way, users can adjust their fingers if they initially hit the wrong button.
How significant is this innovation? Time magazine named the iPhone the No.1 gadget of 2007, calling its touchscreen "elegant" and "loaded with eye candy." The HCIL helped make that possible.
The HCIL is also responsible for changing the way people navigate the Internet by being the first to develop embedded hyperlinks, Shneiderman said. Embedded hyperlinks, highlighted words within the text of a webpage that lead the user to another page when he or she clicks on it, are a pervasive technology, as most major websites incorporate embedded hyperlinks; Wikipedia is full of them. Sites young people depend on for survival, such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, all incorporate embedded hyperlinks in their design.
A main focus of the lab is to develop technologies that help children learn. As a result, HCIL researchers created the International Children's Digital Library, the largest online library for children's books in the world, said Allison Druin, the current director of the lab. It gained national attention and was featured in USA Today.
The library has an interface based on what kids said they wanted, Druin explained. In fact, at HCIL, many of the technologies designed for children are also designed by children.
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