Purpose
SUNY Oswego’s Center for Communication and Information Technology (CCIT) is indicative of a trend across higher education institutions that find diverse academic disciplines forming new partnerships as innovations in digital technologies impact resources, both monetarily and in terms of in-house expertise. Like similar centers at other institutions, CCIT is made up of several academic disciplines including broadcasting, cinema studies, graphic design, human computer interaction, information science, and journalism. Common interests across the CCIT constituency are data visualization, theoretical and applied forms of communication, evolving relationships between technology and communication, and the impact of new media on society.
Advances and breakthroughs in computer graphics have made visual electronic media the basis of the modern information delivery system, and it is clear that communication design will continue to play a dominant role in the way people disseminate and interact with information well into the 21st century. Indeed, as the “Information Age” progresses, and notions of “information on demand” systems become more and more pervasive, new and challenging problems arise in the effective use of interactivity and the visualization of complex information.
Recent advances in digital imaging have allowed HCI researchers to integrate more sophisticated visuals in their systems, and on the other hand, many HCI techniques have become user friendly to the point of being easily appropriated by the artist as a contemporary tool for creating works of art. These very techniques are likely to be the vehicle by which both principles from communication design, and the results of HCI research techniques on visual representations will be integrated in next generation graphical interfaces, regardless of the intention of their application.
There has been a history of demonstrating the importance of HCI input into the design process. The traditional view of software engineering assuming to understand the needs and abilities of the user has been an impediment to ensuring usable computer products. Workshops, conference lectures and books addressing how to promote the importance of HCI among corporate management attest to that mind set. As our technology has become more complex, the appreciation of the benefits of including HCI professional in the design process has grown.
Recently, with the growth of visual representations of information, there has been a similar skepticism towards the benefits of graphic designers as well as a lack of interest among the graphic designers of usability issues addressed by the HCI professionals. A recent discussion on the ACM SIGCHI WWW Human Factors Open Discussion (CHI-WEB@LISTSERV.ACM.ORG) focused on corporate perspectives on graphic designers. Some comments that reflect that lack of mutual appreciation are:
“When I first started out in Usability in a Web Agency I was told in no uncertain terms by the creative director that I was not to set foot in his studio because he was in the business of creativity and my only interest was to stifle it.” “From my experience -- working with the Web since 1993 – most graphic designers are utterly uninterested in anything but ‘pretty pictures’. Caring about usability, understanding the technology being used -- nope.”
A primary purpose of “A Conversation Between Art and Science on Information Visualization” is to open the dialog among the disciplines pointing out the synergy that actually exists.