Announcing the Publication of

Volume 2 Issue 4 of AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction

(http://thci.aisnet.org)

 

Late last night, three of us worked hard for a brief time in the midst of New Year’s Eve celebrations in three US states – Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania – to once again successfully publish this issue on time. We would not normally have had to do time-sharing with our families on such a holiday, but there were some problems with our PDF conversions, and three different installations inexplicably provided three different results in spacing and figure rendition.

 

This marks the end of the second year for AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction. We are happily working on reviewing a large number of paper submissions, and the submissions keep coming in. We have also expanded our editorial board to handle the additional work load, as we describe below. We continue our dramatic uptick in submissions to this 24-month old journal. In addition, we have received many papers for our special issue on Design Science and those papers are undergoing revisions in preparation for publication.

 

This edition also contains our special issue on Future Directions for HCI in MIS.

 

THCI is located within the AIS (Association for Information Systems) e-library (http://aisel.aisnet.org/thci). To increase awareness and readership, THCI is freely available to everyone during its first two years of publishing (2009 and 2010). You can find information related to all aspects of THCI at its website, including how to submit. We would like to thank AIS Council for its continued support of the journal through these difficult economic times.

 

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New SEs and AEs

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We welcome new Senior Editor Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA. She had provided excellent service as an Associate Editor since the first issue. We also welcome new Editorial Board members Michael Davern, University of Melbourne, Australia; Weiyin Hong, University of Nevada, USA; Lingyun Qiu, Peking University , China; Khawaja Saeed, Wichita State University, USA; Cheng Zhang, Fudan University , China; and Meiyun Zuo, Renmin University, China. We also welcome Jian Tang as our new Managing Editor and thank Michael Scialdone for his two years of hard work and excellent service.

 

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Reflections on our First Year

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Authors often wish to know that their papers have broad exposure. As part of the AIS Digital Library, we find ample evidence of this exposure. As we describe above, our papers are still open and freely available to all researchers, making it easy for researchers to obtain copies of your published papers. As a result, in spite of our brief lifetime so far, we have enjoyed 12,461 downloads of our abstracts and 6,624 downloads of full text articles. As these downloads turn into citations, we are optimistic that once we become indexed, we will have an impact score that will satisfy deans world-wide. While requiring self-citations is a practice that tempts many a journal editor, we believe that it is unethical. Please read the next section for more details on current developments in this area.

 

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Policy on Requiring Self-Citations

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We have become aware that a set of 26 editors of top journals in a variety of business fields sent a letter last month to the Deans of all AACSB schools with cautions about the exclusive use of citation impact factors to judge journals and articles. Detmar Straub of the MIS Quarterly represented the MIS field in that effort, largely represented by editors of Marketing journals. Part of that letter states that some journals manipulate citation numbers by requesting (or even requiring) authors to cite multiple papers from past issues of the same journal (“self-citations”). Some journals have increased their impact factors dramatically by issuing such demands of their authors.

 

We want to make it clear that we have never, do not currently, and will never make such self-citation requests or requirements of our authors. This practice has fortunately not been a part of most of the legitimate journals in our field. By stating this here, we want to provide assurance that once we become indexed, you can count on a fair and accurate impact score.

 

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In this issue

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The first paper by Nils Reisen and Ulrich Hoffrage presents their “Interactive Choice Aid” in an account of usability testing of their aid that helps decision-makers. The paper based their evaluation on decision theory and emphasizes the utility of that approach to others who wish to undertake such an evaluation.

 

The rest of the papers form our special issue on Future Directions for HCI Research in MIS. All of the articles were subjected to our traditional review process, but one of the Editors-in-Chief served as Senior Editor to obtain and process reviews in an accelerated manner. The papers should stimulate further discussion and maturation of our field. The first, by Steven Alter, challenges us to consider carefully the breadth of this part of the field. Managing Editor Michael Scialdone provides the second commentary, focusing on the elements, or tenets, of HCI: computing technologies, context, task, and the human. The third paper, by Heshan Sun, examines the hitherto-unlikely concept of a relationship between the field of economics and HCI. After reading that paper, you will see that there are many opportunities for coupling the two fields. The fourth, by Nathan Prestopnik, tells us that the majority of papers only concentrate on two of three critical foundations: theory, evaluation, and design, which recalls the project management tenet that you much choose any two: speed, quality, and cost, in developing a system. The fifth and final paper, by Shamel Addas, reminds us of the importance of treating context more seriously in our research. Addas uses the context of work interruptions, and provides questions and guidelines that will help researchers appropriately consider context in their work.

 

The commentaries provide excellent guidance to researchers, and we believe that they are presented at an excellent time in the development of our field. Together with the first original research contribution, we hope these papers are as interesting to you as they were to the editorial panels that worked with them.

 

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Abstracts

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Paper #1: The Interactive Choice Aid: A New Approach to Supporting Online Consumer Decision Making

 

By Nils Reisen and Ulrich Hoffrage

 

Abstract

 

Interactive Choice Aid (ICA) is a decision aid, introduced in this paper, that systematically assists consumers with online purchase decisions. ICA integrates aspects from prescriptive decision theory, insights from descriptive decision research, and practical considerations; thereby combining pre-existing best practices with novel features. Instead of imposing an objectively ideal but unnatural decision procedure on the user, ICA assists the natural process of human decision-making by providing explicit support for the execution of the user’s decision strategies. The application contains an innovative feature for in-depth comparisons of alternatives through which users’ importance ratings are elicited interactively and in a playful way. The usability and general acceptance of the choice aid was studied; results show that ICA is a promising contribution and provides insights that may further improve its usability.

 

Paper #2: Designing and Engineering for Emergence: A Challenge for HCI

Practice and Research

 

By Steven Alter

 

Abstract

 

This research commentary on Future Directions for HCI Research responds to research commentaries on the same topic by Benbasat (2010) and Lyytinen (2010), and to two articles in Volume 1 of the AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction (Galletta and Zhang, 2009; Zhang et al. 2009). It employs a two-dimensional framework for exploring the scope and challenges of HCI that combines a social/ technical dimension and a behavior dimension that emphasizes differences between engineered and emergent behavior in sociotechnical systems. This framework is used to reflect on possible differences between the scope of a definition of HCI in those articles and the scope of the topics identified in the extensive survey of HCI literature reported by Zhang and colleagues (2009). Implications include the possibility that future HCI research and theorizing may find significant opportunities related to "designing for emergence," or even "engineering for emergence."

 

Paper #3: Establishing Best Practices for Scholarly Research Based on the Tenets of Human-Computer Interaction

 

By Michael Scialdone

 

Abstract

 

As computing technologies play more of a role in our daily lives than ever before, the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is more relevant than ever. As such, it is important that scholars give ample and appropriate attention to the main tenets that characterize and bound the field. The core phenomenon of interest is interaction: when a human comes into contact with information technology (IT), usually within a particular context, and driven by some defined task. During an interaction, humans use the design of the technology’s interface (Zhang and Li, 2005). Thus, the pillars that support interaction (and hence, design and use) are HCI’s four main tenets: computing technologies, context, task, and the human.

 

Paper #4: Developing an Interdisciplinary Area of Economics and Human-

Computer Interaction

 

By Heshan Sun

 

Abstract

 

As an important component of IS research, human-computer interaction (HCI) research in IS has heavily relied on reference disciplines. Economics is less referenced despite the fact that human beings have been strongly driven by economic rules. This paper purports that economics can be of high value to HCI research, providing fresh perspectives for understanding HCI phenomena. Drawing upon concepts and theories in neoclassical economics, behavioral economics, and information economics, this paper examines five important HCI topics from various perspectives from the field of economics. Accordingly, eighteen propositions are developed, demonstrating the usefulness of economics for advancing our understanding of HCI phenomena. While claiming the benefits of referring to economics, this paper also warns HCI researchers of the potential threats of doing so. Opinions are offered about how HCI researchers can refer to economics strategically.

 

Paper #5: Theory, Design and Evaluation – (Don’t Just) Pick any Two

 

By Nathan Prestopnik

 

Abstract

 

There is an adage, well known within engineering and other practice-based communities, known as the project triangle (Gardiner and Stewart, 2000). The triangle speaks to the tradeoffs that factor into almost any project; it is usually presented as a balancing act among three equal components: cost, development time, and product quality. The adage goes something like this: “Good, fast and cheap – pick any two.” There is a parallel situation in our field concerning theory, evaluation, and design. Many evaluative papers regularly offer only the briefest of theoretical sections (Dix, 2010). Research that does explore theory often leaves it unevaluated in the context of real-world systems and use settings (Rogers, 2004). Papers that do a good job with both theory and evaluation have a tendency to overlook design, offering theoretical explanations and results based on test instrumentation (i.e. existing websites, software, etc.) which are inadequate to answer the research questions or inapplicable to the world of practice. There are a multitude of reasons for these types of omission, and the following discussion is an attempt to highlight several of them, as well as to present potential solutions. In this response paper, three typical, high-quality HCI papers are examined in detail to explore the nature of the “pick any two” problem. Suggestions for how missing methodologies might be incorporated into these works through the design science approach are provided. Additionally, a brief review of HCI literature from three publication venues is conducted in order to roughly identify the extent of the “pick any two” problem. Several broad-based reasons for methodology omission are discussed, with suggestions for ways that these institutional challenges might be circumvented or overcome. Most of these challenges can be reduced to a fundamental cause: the division of HCI scholarship into “camps” with varying philosophical and scientific emphases. Because the various HCI camps come from different traditions – HCI in MIS, engineering/computer science, and human factors – their approaches to research (and therefore, their methodological emphases) differ widely. The “pick any two” problem is ultimately used to explore this issue and frame potential solutions to the great challenge of more closely bonding the various “camps” of HCI.

 

Paper #6: A Call for Engaging Context in HCI/MIS Research with Examples from the Area of Technology Interruptions

 

By Shamel Addas

 

Abstract

 

This paper contributes to the discussion on future directions of Human-Computer Interaction in Information Systems (HCI/MIS) research by explicating the role of task- and social context. We show that context has not been sufficiently engaged, and argue why it is important to pay more attention to it in theory and design of future HCI/MIS research. Drawing on examples from the core HCI area of technology interruptions, we formulate a set of general research questions and guidelines, which allow us to represent the context of multiple users in continuous collaboration with multiple tools while working on tasks that are intertwined within business processes. These guidelines will generate new insights for HCI/MIS research and allow us to develop research that captures the changing nature of the computing environment.

 

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Call for Papers

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THCI is a high-quality peer-reviewed international scholarly journal on Human-Computer Interaction. As an AIS journal, THCI is oriented to the Information Systems community, emphasizing applications in business, managerial, organizational, and cultural contexts. However, it is open to all related communities that share intellectual interests in HCI phenomena and issues. The editorial objective is to enhance and communicate knowledge about the interplay among humans, information, technologies, and tasks in order to guide the development and use of human-centered Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and services for individuals, groups, organizations, and communities.

 

Topics of interest to THCI include but are not limited to the following:

 

• The behavioral, cognitive, motivational and affective aspects of human and technology interaction
• User task analysis and modeling; fit between representations and task types
• Digital documents/genres; human information seeking and web navigation behaviors; human information interaction; information visualization
• Social media; social computing; virtual communities
• Behavioral information security and information assurance; privacy and trust in human technology interaction
• User interface design and evaluation for various applications in business, managerial, organizational, educational, social, cultural, non-work, and other domains
• Integrated and/or innovative approaches, guidelines, and standards or metrics for human centered analysis, design, construction, evaluation, and use of interactive devices and information systems
• Information systems usability engineering; universal usability
• The impact of interfaces/information technology on people's attitude, behavior, performance, perception, and productivity
• Implications and consequences of technological change on individuals, groups, society, and socio-technical units
• Software learning and training issues such as perceptual, cognitive, and motivational aspects of learning
• Gender and information technology
• The elderly, the young, and special needs populations for new applications, modalities, and multimedia interaction
• Issues in HCI education

 

The language for the journal is English. The audience includes international scholars and practitioners who conduct research on issues related to the objectives of the journal. The publication frequency is quarterly: 4 issues per year to be published in March, June, September, and December. The AIS Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction (SIGHCI, http://sigs.aisnet.org/SIGHCI/) is the official sponsor for THCI.

 

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Call for Special Issue on HCI in the Web 2.0 Era

Deadline: submissions are due February 1, 2011

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Please visit the links above or the links from our AIS THCI page for details on any emerging special issue calls. We anticipate calls for additional special issues in the future, so please keep checking our home page to see what is brewing! If you have an idea for a special issue, please drop us a line or speak with us at ICIS in December.

 

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AIS THCI Editorial Boards

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Editors-in-Chief

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Dennis Galletta, University of Pittsburgh, USA

Ping Zhang, Syracuse University, USA

 

Advisory Board

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Izak Benbasat, University of British Columbia, Canada

John M. Carroll, Penn State University, USA

Phillip Ein-Dor, Tel-Aviv University, Israel

Jenny Preece, University of Maryland, USA

Gavriel Salvendy, Purdue University, USA and Tsinghua University, China

Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland, USA

Jane Webster, Queen's University, Canada,

K.K Wei, City University of Hong Kong, China

 

Senior Editor Board

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Fred Davis, University of Arkansas, USA

Mohamed Khalifa, Abu Dhabi University, United Arab Emirates

Anne Massey, Indiana University, USA

Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA

Lorne Olfman, Claremont Graduate University, USA

Kar Yan Tam, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, China

Dov Te'eni, Tel-Aviv University, Israel

Viswanath Venkatesh, University of Arkansas, USA

Susan Wiedenbeck, Drexel University, USA

 

Associate Editor Board

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Michel Avital, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Jane Carey, Arizona State University, USA
Hock Chuan Chan, National University of Singapore

Michael Davern, University of Melbourne, Australia
Carina de Villiers, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Matt Germonprez, University of Wisconsin Eau Claire USA
Khaled Hassanein, McMaster University, Canada
Milena Head, McMaster University, Canada
Traci Hess, Washington State University, USA
Shuk Ying (Susanna) Ho, Australian National University, Australia

Weiyin Hong, University of Nevada, USA
Netta Iivari, Oulu University, Finland
Zhenhui Jack Jiang, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Weiling Ke, Clarkson University, USA
Sherrie Komiak, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Paul Benjamin Lowry, Brigham Young University, USA
Ji-Ye Mao, Renmin University, China
Scott McCoy, College of William and Mary, USA
Sheizaf Rafaeli, University of Haifa, Israel
Lingyun Qiu, Peking University , China

Khawaja Saeed, Wichita State University, USA

Stefan Smolnik, European Business School (EBS), Germany
Jeff Stanton, Syracuse University, USA
Heshan Sun, University of Arizona USA

Jason Thatcher, Clemson University, USA

Noam Tractinsky, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Horst Treiblmaier, Vienna University of Business Administration and Economics, Austria
Ozgur Turetken, Ryerson University, Canada
Mun Yi, University South Carolina, USA

Cheng Zhang, Fudan University , China

Meiyun Zuo, Renmin University, China

 

Managing Editors

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Michael Scialdone, Syracuse University, USA (outgoing)

Jian Tang, Syracuse University, USA (incoming)

 

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Dennis F. Galletta                      Professor of Business Administration

University of Pittsburgh                    Katz Graduate School of Business

342 Mervis Hall                                        Pittsburgh, PA  15260

Phone +1 412-648-1699                                    Fax +1 412-648-1693

E-mail: galletta @                                         homepage:

        katz.pitt.edu                                 www.pitt.edu/~galletta

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