Representational Talkback

Collaborators: Kumiyo Nakakoji, Yasuhiro Yamamoto, S. Suzuki, S. Takada

art1

Designing documents, such as writing a technical paper, manual or a web page, starts with a goal but seldom proceeds in a top-down problem solving style. Rather, document design consists of a cycle of interpretation, modication and understanding. It requires both generating parts (words, sentences, and paragraphs) and structuring them, while exploring what to write. To support this collage or trial-and-error style of writing as design, drawing on the concepts of reflection in action and hermeneutics, we propose representational talkback”: feedback from intermediate situations that emerge during writing. By providing writers with appropriate representations to amplify this talkback, we aim to enhance their writing process with a prototype system ART (Amplifying Representational Talkback) to understand what types of talkback are necessary during writing and possible representations for them.

1999 From Critiquing to Representational Talkback: Computer Support for Revealing Features in Design, Nakakoji K, Yamamoto, Y., Suzuki, S., Takada, S., Gross, M., Knowledge Based Systems, 457- 468.

1998 Representational Talkback: An Approach to Support Writing as Design, Yamamoto, Y., Gross, M.D., Takada, S., Nakakoji K, IEEE Asia Pacific Computer Human Interaction (APCHI) Conference. IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, pp.125-131.” [pdf]