In the first chapter, Dourish traces the history of computers from a perspective of human interaction. I’m not very familiar with the people, the machines and the programs that he casually refers to in this history, but it’s clear that this is more than a history of technological change. Dourish also shows how humans changed the ways they worked with computers over time.

For educators, Dourish’s perspective seems to be quite useful! What could be more natural to a teacher than to think about computer interfaces “in terms of the different sets of human skills they are designed to exploit” (p. 5)? In fact, having read this section, I’m convinced that this is a critical question for educators involved with computers. Instead of asking, “How hard is it to learn this software,” or “How steep is the learning curve,” we might ask, “What everyday “skills and abilities” (p. 14) from our daily lives are used when we interact with this software or in that Internet environment?”

This history didn’t grab me much, but I do applaud Dourish’s purpose of drawing our “attention to the fact that” different computer systems and programs “exploit quite different sets of skills” (p. 9). I wonder if this is comparable to noting how different Internet environments exploit quite different sets of skills and uses of language.

My interest perked up in the middle of Dourish’s history lesson when “the move from textual to graphical interaction… opened up whole new dimensions for interaction… two-dimensional space rather than one-dimensional stream of characters” (p. 11). This sense of organizing information in space is important in my own growing understanding of Web design. I feel this change personally in my own writing process: “The task of managing information becomes one of managing space” (p. 11).

Inside the history of graphical interfaces, Dourish identifies four “areas of human ability” that are exploited by “two-dimensional interaction.” Although his examples come from software such as Windows, my experiences in using space to manage information have to do with designing Web pages. So I was thinking that Dourish’s four areas might be useful categories for planning or assessing Web page designs. I’ll re-present each area here as questions Web designers might ask themselves. (I need to work on making the questions simpler for young students.)

1. Peripheral Attention:
Is the information arranged in such a way that it can be selectively attended to? Is there a large, primary area and smaller areas off to the sides or edges?

2. Pattern Recognition and Spatial Reasoning:
Is the data organized into patterns to convey collections of information as a whole—the way graphs and charts do?

3. Information Density:
Are graphics used to convey information more succinctly than words might have been? And is text used effectively with images?

4. Visual Metaphors:
Are visual metaphors used to help the user to manage the information? Is there a metaphorical model (e.g. office or desktop) that uses graphics to indicate the activities one may do with the data that is presented?

I plan to use these guidelines next time I design a Web site, and I want to think about ways of introducing these concepts to adolescents who are designing as well.