Announcement Special Interest Group

HCI Design for Network and System Management:
Bringing Users Researchers and Designers Together

Thomas M. Graefe, Digital Equipment Corporation
Dennis Wixon, Digital Equipment Corporation

Scheduled for Wednesday, March 26, 1997
Manila/Singapore Room

1. SIG Topic

The changes that have altered the complexion of end user
computing have also dramatically changed the requirements for
planning, installing, configuring, and maintaining the network
and systems supporting these end users. Managers are faced with
more and more rapid technology changes, with little time or money
to train their staff. Few tools exist for helping to know
proactively a problem might occur or what the consequences of a
change are likely to be. The vast majority of expertise about
these problems lives only in the minds of people with years
experience, and rarely finds its way into any application, with a
few exceptions. Yet there are numerous research threads within HCI
design that separately and together might help raise the level
of application usability in this domain. This SIG will provide
a forum for discussion about the HCI design problems and
solutions in this domain.

2. SIG Organization

In the interest in "Looking to the future" this SIG seeks to
bring together people from industry and academia to explore new
HCI techniques to support network and system management. Also,
the SIG will provide a forum out of which a future workshop
might be spawned. The SIG is envisioned as a structured
brainstorming exercise that will provide a chance for the
participants to talk about a problem and HCI technology or
method they are interested in, as well as for the group as a
whole to generate an informal survey of problems and techniques.

For more information, contact
Tom Graefe at [log in to unmask] or 1-508-486-7335