The User and the Web

Steven Pemberton, CWI, Amsterdam and W3C
Chair, W3C HTML and Forms Working Groups
Editor in chief, ACM/interactions

An Auspicious Time and Place

March 15-17, 1982, Gaithersburg: The first CHI Conference

Bill Curtis, Chair

"The Washington DC Chapter of the ACM asked me if we had any conference ideas they could support with some of their surplus funds. I [...] described our ideas for a conference that we estimated would attract about 250 people, probably most from the DC area. They provided us $2000 with the proviso that while they did not want any money back, they did not want us to get them in debt. Armed with this seed money we went to the National Bureau of Standards in Gaithersburg, MD. and got their support for facilities and mailing.

...

(Gaithersburg 1982)

907 people came from all over North America and many from Europe. Never in our wildest estimates did we anticipate so many people attending. The lunch line at the National Bureau of Standards was 200 yards long. [...] Ultimately the conference committee double-crossed the Washington DC Chapter of the ACM. The chapter had wanted to reduce their $10,000 cash surplus. The conference returned somewhere between $70,000 and $100,000 and now they really had a surplus problem."

See: http://www.acm.org/sigchi/bulletin/1996.1/conf-chairs.html#HDR0

What are the important properties of a website?

Forrester did research among 8000+ users on why they chose one website above another equivalent one. Reasons were:

What are the important properties of a website?

Forrester did research among 8000+ users on why they chose one website above another equivalent one. Reasons were:

What are the important properties of a website?

Forrester did research among 8000+ users on why they chose one website above another equivalent one. Reasons were:

What are the important properties of a website?

Forrester did research among 8000+ users on why they chose one website above another equivalent one. Reasons were:

What are the important properties of a website?

Forrester did research among 8000+ users on why they chose one website above another equivalent one. Reasons were:

What are the important properties of a website?

Forrester did research among 8000+ users on why they chose one website above another equivalent one. Reasons were:

All other reasons were 14% or lower.

Why we are here: W3C Working Groups

W3C, The World Wide Web Organisation, is "Leading the Web to its Full Potential..."

It has a (large) number of working groups, responsible for doing this:

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Why we are here: W3C Working Groups

W3C, The World Wide Web Organisation, is "Leading the Web to its Full Potential..."

It has a (large) number of working groups, responsible for doing this.

Above these, it has a number of 'horizontal' working groups, covering all areas:

Accessibility
Internationalisation
Device Independence
Quality assurance
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Why we are here: W3C Working Groups

Clearly, usability is missing from this picture:

Accessibility
Internationalisation
Device Independence
Quality assurance
Usability
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What might a Usability Group do?

Specifications: content

Specifications: style

General awareness

Guidelines

[More: that's what this workshop is about]

One essential ingredient

Non-usable specifications can be fixed with tutorials

Guidelines are being produced by others

But if the technology described by a specification is not usable, then we are stuck!

Usability of Technologies: Example: image maps

Original server-side:

<a href="sample.map">
   <img src="sample.gif" ismap>
</a>

Client-side:

<img src="image.gif" usemap="#sample">
<map name="sample">
  <area shape="rect" coords="20,27,82,111"
        href="hot1.html">
  <area shape="circle" coords="129,113,29"
        href="hot2.html">
  <area shape="rect" coords="21,158,170,211"
        href="mailto:webmaster@ihip.com">
  <area shape="default" nohref>
</map>

The client-side version offers better usability because the user agent can show what is clickable, and give feedback on where it will take you (it also offers more accessibility, and is better scalable, since more work is done on the client).

Example: Frames

As an example of poor usability, current frames are a disaster!

Frames continued

Currently the HTML WG is devising XFrames, a replacement for Frames.

Usabilities of Notations: Example: XLink

In HTML:

<img alt="..." src="img.gif"
     longdesc="desc.html" usemap="#map"/>

with XLink:

<img xlink:type="extended" alt="..." >
<xlink:locator role="src" href="img.gif"/>
<xlink:locator role="longdesc"
               href="desc.html"/>
<xlink:locator role="usemap" href="#map"/>
<xlink:locator role="self" 
               href="#xptr(here())"/>
<xlink:arc from="self" to="src" 
           show="embed" actuate="auto"/>
<xlink:arc from="self" to="longdesc" 
           show="new" actuate="html:user2"/>
<xlink:arc from="self" to="usemap"
           show="html:imagemap" actuate="onRequest"/>
</img>

For the author this second version is clearly less usable, with no concomitant advantage.

Example HTML (then)

<html>
<head>
<title>My web page</title>
<body>
...
</body>
</html>

Example HTML (coming soon)

Because of the way XML technologies are designed in isolation, without an eye for how they all fit together, there is no top-level desing, and so you risk getting results like the following:

<?xml version="1.1" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="xhtml2.css"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 2.0//EN" "xhtml2.dtd"[
<!ATTLIST html
xmlns:xsi CDATA #FIXED "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation CDATA #IMPLIED >
<!-- loong list of redundant ATTLIST declarations for ID ... -->
]>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/06/xhtml2" xml:lang="en"
xmlns:ev="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events"
xmlns:xfm="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/xforms"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2002/06/xhtml2 xhtml2.xsd ...">
<head>
<title>My web page</title>
</head>
<body>
...
</body>
</html>

(Several things have been left out here for briefness)

Example: Schemas

They were supposed to replace DTDs, but:

They don't support the definition of entities:

which makes it harder to author documents.

Not easy to read (or write)

Schema fragment

<elementType name='table'>
   <refines>
      <archetypeRef name='common'/>
      <archetypeRef name='simpleBlockDisplay'/>
   </refines>

   <sequence>
      <elementTypeRef name='caption'
          minOccur='0' maxOccur='1'/>
      <choice>
          <elementTypeRef name='col'
               minOccur='0' maxOccur='*'/>
          <elementTypeRef name='colgroup' 
               minOccur='0' maxOccur='*'/>
      </choice>

more >>>

(schema fragment)

      <choice>
         <sequence>
            <elementTypeRef name='thead'
               minOccur='0' maxOccur='1'/>
            <elementTypeRef name='tfoot'
               minOccur='0' maxOccur='1'/>
            <elementTypeRef name='tbody'
               minOccur='1' maxOccur='*'/>
         </sequence>
         <elementTypeRef name='tr'
            minOccur='1' maxOccur='*'/>
      </choice>
   </sequence>
</elementType>

(equivalent DTD)

The schema fragment above is the equivalent to the following DTD fragment:

<!ELEMENT table
     (caption?, (col*|colgroup*), thead?,   
      tfoot?, (tbody+|tr+))>

Working groups and Interest groups

Working Groups typically produce deliverables (Recommendation track technical reports, software, test suites, reviews of the deliverables of other groups, etc.) There are participation requirements for a Working Group

The primary goal of an Interest Group is to bring together people who wish to evaluate potential Web technologies and policies. An Interest Group is a forum for the exchange of ideas. There are not generally participation requirements for an Interest Group.

Creating a group

The Director creates, modifies, or extends a Working Group or Interest Group by sending a call for participation to the Advisory Committee. The call for participation must include a reference to the charter, the name(s) of the group's Chair(s), the name of the Team contact, and instructions for joining the group. A group does not exist prior to the initial call for participation.

Charter (must)

A Working Group or Interest Group charter must include the following information.

Charter (may)

A Working Group or Interest Group charter may also include the following information:

A charter may include provisions other than those required by this document. The charter should highlight whether additional provisions impose constraints beyond those of the W3C Process Document (e.g., limits on the number of individuals employed by the same Member organization or group of related Members who may join a Working Group).

What we have to do

Decide if it's a good idea

Decide what should be covered

Write a charter

Get people involved!

These slides

http://www.w3.org/2002/Talks/1104-usability-workshop/