FINAL REPORT OF THE JADE HUMAN-COMPUTER SYSTEMS GROUP
Date
1985-11-01
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Abstract
This report summarises the participation of the Human-Computer Systems
(HCS) group members in the Jade project which ran from
November 1982 to October 1985. On the downside: (a) the Jade
HCS group comprised mostly people with no HCS experience; (b) conflicting
goals within Jade dictated a split within the project that
re-inforced a natural division of interests; (c) restricted resources and
necessary priorities meant the allocation of effort to the HCS work was
low; (d) speedy implementation dictated avoidance of just those
problems that would stimulate research; (e) it proved impossible to
produce an objective definition of the user and the user's needs; (f) the
group did not press hard for tools development within Jade. On
the upside: (a) the group promoted communication by open meetings and a
willingness to consider all viewpoints; (b) a pragmatic approach was
adopted to problems of conflict; (c) significant new research was carried
out into a variety of diverse and important problems under the umbrella
of the Multimedia Adaptive Workstation for the Disabled (MAWD)
project; (d) an excellent Jade User Manual was produced; (e) a
succinct statement of practical dialogue design principles was laid
down; (f) significant extra funding was generated (76,000) and (g) a
number of refereed research publications were published together with
a variety of internal reports. The HCS group experience was very similar
to that reported by similar groups involved in similar projects. The
problem of the programmer as a user remains an unsolved problem.
Jade itself has been a big experiment, and we are still collecting
data.
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Computer Science