SIGCHI Social Impact Award for 2010

Ben Bederson and Allison Druin
from the University of Maryland are awarded

The SIGCHI Social Impact Award for 2010

ACM SIGCHI identifies and honors leaders and shapers of the field of human-computer interaction with annual SIGCHI Awards. The Social Impact Award honors individuals who promote the application of human-computer interaction research for pressing social needs. This year the award was given to Ben Bederson and Allison Druin of the University of Maryland for their joint work in developing the International Children’s Digital Library and their individual work in developing new methods that give children a voice in the development of new technologies, and for their work on electronic voting systems.

Ben Bederson is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland and past Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory. With his collaborator, Prof. Allison Druin, he led the development of many of the key technologies designed for and by kids, including KidPad and StoryKit for iPhone. He is the Technical Project Director for the International Children's Digital Library, a multilingual free digital library of children's books, currently consisting of over 4,000 books in over 50 languages, with more than three million users from over 160 countries worldwide. He led the library's collaboration with the Government of Mongolia -- bringing access to the library in rural Mongolia. Prof. Bederson also did influential studies of the usability of electronic voting systems, which resulted in scholarly publications, reports aimed at policy makers, and books directed to the general public. This work has served to highlight the challenges in developing usable electronic voting systems and has informed decisions on voting technology adoption.

Allison Druin is Associate Professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland and Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. Prof. Druin is a pioneer in the development of technology for children and the inclusion of children as partners in the design process. Her technology co-design methods have been reported on through scholarly publications, presentations, and books, and have become widely used throughout the CHI community. She founded the CHIKids program for the CHI Conference. This program enabled many CHI community members who were parents to participate in the conference while their children learned about CHI and contributed to the experience of the conference, e.g., by producing daily newsletters, websites, and plenary session videos. With her collaborator, Prof. Ben Bederson, she created the International Children's Digital Library, a multilingual free digital library of children's books, currently consisting of over 4,000 books in over 50 languages, with more than three million users from over 160 countries worldwide.

Another problem with Flash - keyboard focus

I consider Adobe Flash to be a virus and have been thrilled that Apple continues to fight against it. The reason I dislike Flash so much is because it breaks fundamental user experience standards, such as:

• Consistency: The same action should do the same thing in different places. Example: if pressing the down arrow scrolls the web page, then it should always scroll the web page.
  
• Modes: Modes are almost always bad - but when you have to have them, make them clearly visible. I.e., the user should know what mode they are in by looking at the screen. Example: if typing enters text in a specific text box, then that text box should be clearly highlighted so the user knows which textbox will get their text.

My problem with Flash is that it breaks these basic design standards. In order to use a Flash plugin in your web browser (like when you watch most videos), you have to click on the video - and Flash then takes complete control over the keyboard (i.e., it takes your "keyboard focus"). This is bad because you can then no longer use your keyboard to do other browser things - such as scroll with the PageUp and PageDown keys, press Ctrl-T to open a new tab, or Alt-LeftArrow to go back to the previous page.

The fact that Flash breaks standard web behaviors is bad enough - but it is even worse because it does so completely invisibly. I get used to using my keyboard to control my web browser because - um, I am a human and I am using my computer. So, sometimes it stops working for no apparent reason. There is no way to see this problem, and the only solution is to use your mouse to click on some non-Flash component in your browser. I bet most people just think that web browers are sucky and inconsistent. The real problem is that Web plugins for common activities that take over they keyboard just shouldn't exist.

Bravo Apple. Let HTML5 and built-in web standards for common activities take over.

2/4/2010