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User Interface Research Information Sciences and Technologies Laboratory (ISTL) PARC 3333 Coyote Hill Road Palo Alto, CA 94304 USA Telephone: +1 650 812 4335 Email: mackinlay@parc.com My home page from my Denmark sabbatical can be found here. 1975 BA Mathematics and
Computer Science, UC
Berkeley |
SHORT BIO
Jock Mackinlay received his PhD in computer science from Stanford University, where he pioneered the automatic design of graphical presentations of relational information. He joined Xerox PARC in 1986, where he collaborated with the User Interface Research Group to develop many novel applications of computer graphics for information access, coining the term "Information Visualization". Much of the fruits of this research can be seen in his recently published book, Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think (Morgan Kauffman, written and edited with Stuart K. Card and Ben Shneiderman).
RESEARCH STATEMENT
Human limitations, such as working memory and information assimilation, cause cognition to scale poorly as the amount and complexity of information increases in our lives. We cope with large-scale cognitive tasks through “external cognition,” using desks, maps, documents, and computers to hold and provide information as needed. Vision typically plays a key role in external cognition.
My research focuses on developing computer systems that exploit the power of human vision for maximizing cognitive performance. My PhD dissertation [1] described the automatic generation of graphical presentations of relational information including bar charts, scatter plots and node/link diagrams using a composition algebra to generate a wide variety of graphical presentations and evaluation criteria to identify effective presentations. Expressiveness criteria were based on a formal analysis of graphical languages and determined whether a graphical presentation showed exactly the desired information. Effectiveness criteria were based on results from perceptual psychology and identified designs that exploited capabilities of the output medium and human perception. After focusing on familiar 2D static presentations for my dissertation, I joined Xerox PARC where we focused on novel 3D computer graphics and interactive animation. We named the research area “Information Visualization.” My algebraic approach supported the systematic development of a wide variety of focus+context visualizations, including the Perspective Wall [2], and also inspired a taxonomy of input devices [3]. At the end of the decade, I helped develop a reference model that organized and extended the research on Information Visualization [4].
Current computer systems do not come close to exploiting the full power of human vision. In particular, visual interfaces have been optimized for a single computer monitor even though people can rapidly shift attention across a wide field of view. Although vendors have made multiple-monitor systems, they have been stuck in the 30-year-old Windows paradigm. Current systems put different windows in different monitors (to avoid visual seams) and do not coordinate applications or adapt user interfaces to wideband displays.
My current research is exploiting advances in flat panel displays and graphics cards that enable personal computers with 6-8 monitors and may also eliminate seams. Progress in information visualization and in our understanding of human-information interactions provides an opportunity to design cognitive workspaces for wideband displays. These could radically improve productivity in many knowledge management tasks – analogous to the improved productivity of a craftsman who has the right tools and a big enough workbench. Seamless wideband displays will be available in the next decade with costs driven down by computer gaming, entertainment, and teleconferencing.
Realizing the potential of human computer interaction requires the engineering of computer-based systems that target the needs and abilities of people. My personal research leverages computer graphics technology and knowledge about human perception. I am also interested in using input devices to exploit our ability to manipulate the world and using mobile computers to create a computational information surround, supporting external cognition in all aspects of our lives.
[1] Mackinlay, J. D. (1986). Automating the Design of Graphical Presentations of Relational Information. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 5(2, April), 110-141.
[2] Mackinlay, J. D., Robertson, G. G., & Card, S. K. (1991). The Perspective Wall: Detail and Context Smoothly Integrated. Proceedings of CHI'91, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. pp. 173-179.
[3] Mackinlay, J. D., Card, S. K., & Robertson, G. G. (1990). A Semantic Analysis of the Design Space of Input Devices. Human-Computer Interaction, 5(2-3), 145-190.
[4] Card, S. K., Mackinlay, J. D., & Shneiderman, B. (1999). Chapter I: Information Visualization in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. San Francisco, California: Morgan-Kaufmann, 1-34.