Jacques Hugo
CHI-SA 2000 was South Africa's first Human-Computer Interaction Conference and for the organisers and attendees alike it was a dramatic step towards creating a forum for the exchange of ideas and information about HCI in Africa. It was held at the conference centre of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, from May 8-10, 2000. The name "CHI-SA 2000" was chosen for several reasons: because "CHI-SA" is the name of the South African prospective HCI SIG, and because it was official presented "in-collaboration" with SIGCHI, and in the process several references were made in the course of the conference to SIGCHI and to CHI 2000 in The Hague. The slogan of the conference "A Rainbow of Opportunity" referred to the exciting new opportunities offered by the field of HCI to all in South Africa's "rainbow nation". We used this idea as a metaphor for the diversity in many things in South Africa with its mix of first and third-world components - culture, language, race, education, economy and technology.
This shows that developers are at least becoming aware of the typical problems that they and users of computing and related systems experience: unwanted complexity, unintuitive interfaces, too much training required, too much documentation, long development cycles, costly user support and many more.
The response and excitement was tremendous and gave the organisers a clear signal that there was a need for this kind of event and that it should be repeated in future. We are confident that it has indeed helped to make the entire community of computer users and developers aware that there is more to computing than meets the eye (or the mouse ...!).
Mitch Kapor of Lotus Corp has said in his "Software Design Manifesto": "Despite the enormous outward success of personal computers, the daily experience of using computers far too often is still fraught with difficulty, pain, and barriers for most people. The lack of usability of software and the poor design of programs are the secret shame of the industry".
This quotation was a way for us to alert developers to the problems they experience when they have to make provision for users and their tasks. They simply do not have the training or inclination to spend time on really understanding users. It is difficult enough understanding the needs of a user from your own culture, let alone from a very different culture whose language, customs, values, prejudices, fears and preferences are totally unknown to you. Developers prefer to do what they do best - apply engineering techniques to technical problems. The obvious result of this approach is often poor application usability, which in turn leads to users' poor performance and increased dependence on support and training. We know that productivity in South Africa is notoriously low - badly designed software can only make this situation worse!
Throwing light on some of these issues was only one of the objectives of the CHI-SA 2000 conference; we wanted to cover a broad spectrum of topics that would appeal to academics (which represented about one quarter of the attendees), students, developers, practitioners and end users.
In introducing the conference, we pointed out that most traditional software designers still say that the idea of supporting a user with "productivity tools" is not new and that they have been doing it all along. They also tell you that the idea of "usability" is not new - they know exactly what users need and have always been developing "user-friendly" software. If this were true, why do so many users in South Africa, like everywhere else in the world, still curse their computers and why do we need so much "computer literacy" and application training? Why do all of us make so many task mistakes when using computers? Why do we get frustrated with software that is difficult to use? Why do we grow increasingly dissatisfied with the amount of things we need to know to use our computers effectively? Haven't we yet realised that computers are one of the major sources of poor productivity?
In order to place the conference overall on a "scientific" footing and to create a frame of reference for the diversity of topics presented, we started by defining the field of HCI for attendees. This was important to avoid a focus only on the most popular and most tangible aspect of the field - the user interface. We especially wanted to highlight the role of multi-cultural issues in HCI. This was the reason for choosing Aaron Marcus as our keynote speaker - he really made people sit up and take notice with his "man-horned hat" and his presentation titled "Cross-cultural Communication in Interface Design: What? So What? Now What?"
The conference started with a day of tutorials presented by Aaron Marcus ("User Interface Design for Work, Home and on the Way") and Nigel Bevan (Introduction to usability and user centred design). Both tutorials were very well attended, but people had problems deciding which one to attend and several ended up switching between the two at midday.
Over the next two days of paper presentations, attendees were exposed to the following main topics:
However, more important that the actual content of the conference, was also the emphasis on understanding the deeper, strategic implications of HCI as one of the most important enablers of information technology. This was the real theme of the conference. South African society finds itself in one of the most critical evolutionary phases in its history. It seems that no aspect of our everyday life and work is left untouched by the changes. One of the more complex issues is understanding how South Africa's diversity of culture, economy, and education is shaping the way information technology is developed and assimilated into our society. Conversely, do we understand how the rapid development of information technology in turn shapes the evolution of our society? In particular, we must be concerned about the effect of technology integration into the workplace where employers often have to cope with poorly educated workers. We must understand that Information Technology can both distort and preserve real-life cultural identities. Without this understanding, the gap between the technological "haves and have-nots" is likely to grow rather than shrink.
The technological society has advanced to the stage where very few people can avoid technology. Furthermore, in South Africa, like elsewhere in the world, large parts of society have become entirely dependent on technology in daily life and work. People's attitudes toward new devices change as they discover new benefits. These devices can often have great personal or social value, for example, cellular phones. At the same time, the population that could potentially use and benefit from information technology, has grown culturally, economically and educationally more diverse. Not only have users different expectations of technology, their expectations are coloured by their frame of reference, educational level, cultural prejudices, career expectations, income, and many other variables that are very poorly understood by software developers, nor adequately allowed for by current design practices. But one thing is certain: information technology can no longer be "one size fits all". We can no longer afford to exclude any individual or any sector of society from access to, and benefiting from information technology.
Without proper understanding of the cultural variables involved, new media and communication devices threaten to expand, rather than resolve, certain cultural conflicts. These modern information technology advances encompass developments beyond the desktop - computing devices are becoming portable, embedded and wearable, moving into nearly every environment. The emerging links between television, radio, communication and computers, combined with improved accessibility, are changing entertainment habits, information seeking strategies and communication behaviour.
Increasingly people's ability to make choices about their lives is being determined by their ability to communicate, access and process information by electronic means. Information and communication poverty is a condition resulting from an inability to communicate, access and process information critical to one's life and livelihood, due to either the absence of personal or technological means, or the unavailability of human agents to perform these tasks. Unless we take the trouble to understand the impact of cultural variables, we are in danger of alienating many people and increasing the gap between the "wired society" and the "technologically disadvantaged."
The science, technology and techniques necessary to help bridge the existing gaps and avoid creating new ones, are already found in Human-Computer Interaction. The tools already exist for us to understand the scope and nature of the problem and to create the solutions needed. Some very useful and pragmatic tools are found in usability principles, techniques and standards. In developed countries more and more organisations, from government to small start-ups, are discovering the added value offered by investing in usability.
In South Africa, a country with 11 official languages, where 80% of blacks and 40% of whites cannot read, let alone compute, at a Grade 7 level, it is clear that we need to understand the complex interaction between culture, communication and technology. The statement in the media that "by the year 2010 anyone who is not computer literate will be out of a job" is probably closer to the truth than we care to admit.
To prepare ourselves for future challenges, we need to understand the role of the many cultural factors at work in the design of interactive software, and how they have a very real impact on the bottom line for organisations. These are primarily the following:
It would be foolish to ignore the demands that these dramatic changes are going to make on South African education, industry and society. We need to understand how human-technology relationships are evolving to help set new directions for the design of products and services. However, all of this requires new, rare skills and resources and something rather dramatic needs to be done to mobilise all available resources to reduce the ignorance in this country. Hopefully this conference was a step in the right direction; hopefully this will help to wake up the South African IT industry!
Like elsewhere in the world, the South African IT industry has to move beyond tradition, convention or imitation as the primary strategies for software interface design. We need to focus more on designing active information spaces that will facilitate access and in so doing, exploit the new cultural and work representations enabled by information technology. For a healthy IT marketplace that can enrich people's economic, social, cultural, and political lives, we must find solutions to a series of crucial issues that revolve around understanding how to build effective human-centred computer systems.
Over the past 20 years, research in HCI has been spectacularly successful, and people like Aaron Marcus, Nigel Bevan and Ben Shneiderman, our guest speakers, have all helped to fundamentally change the face of computing. Virtually all software written today employs user interface toolkits, interaction concepts and evaluation techniques that were influenced by them and their counterparts over the world. Even the spectacular growth of the World-Wide Web is a direct result of HCI research. More than anything else, it is the user interface improvements that have triggered this explosive growth. The research that will lead to the user interfaces for the computers of tomorrow is happening now at universities and corporate research labs all over the world - in fact, almost everywhere else except in South Africa! This was our main plea with this conference: again, a wake-up call for South African IT professionals!
It is also important to stimulate university, corporate, and government-supported research in South Africa so that we can develop the science and technology needed for the user interfaces of the future. The international experience provides an obvious lesson for South Africa: an interdependent relationship between industry and academia is vitally important for continual innovation. As always, universities should play a leading role in the development of new principles, models and techniques that can be applied by industry. But R & D organisations in the private sector must provide feedback to universities from the real world in the form of user experience and requirements, market intelligence, development techniques, and the latest technological advances. But more important, they must support basic research that cannot be funded by Government alone - universities should not have to rely totally on the South African Government's Innovation Fund.
It is also obvious that South African computer science and multimedia students need to know about user interface issues, perhaps even more so than in more developed countries. User interfaces are likely to be one of the main value-added competitive advantages for the IT industry in the future, as both hardware and basic software become commodities. If students do not know about user interfaces, and the undeniable importance of human issues in computing, they will not serve industry needs. It seems that only through the combination of cognitive science and computer science would HCI research find its way into products. Furthermore, without appropriate funding of academic HCI research, there will be no PhD graduates in HCI to perform research in corporate labs, and fewer graduates in this area will be interested in being educators, so the needed user interface courses will not be offered.
If all of this does not happen, we in South Africa will forever remain at the receiving end of computing developments. Software will never reflect and acknowledge our diversity, nor will it accommodate the true needs of our upcoming generations. The reason for this is plain - none of the brilliant research in other countries takes cognisance of the unique situations brought about by our economic, political, and cultural diversity. Without our own investment in HCI research and development for South Africa, there will be no interfaces for the Rainbow Nation!
South Africa is often compared to Brazil in terms of economic and industrial development - problems associated with illiteracy and poverty are similar in both countries. However, where Brazil has a formal HCI community that has been growing rapidly over the past three years, HCI in South Africa is conspicuous in its absence. We (the handful of HCI practitioners in South Africa) have been puzzled by the reasons for this for several years and it is a constant source of embarrassment when one considers the example of Brazil! After all, we have not even succeeded in moving our "prospective local SIG" forward to Chapter status yet! One reason must certainly be the slow rate of introduction of the subject in formal education. A few universities teach HCI as part of their normal third-year level information science or computer science programs, but as yet there are no dedicated HCI graduate programs.
We have considered various approaches, ranging from top-down strategies involving government-supported initiatives (which will require a tremendous amount of lobbying, and is bound to elicit the response of "there are more important things to worry about, like unemployment and homelessness") to bottom-up approaches which mainly involve creating an awareness (the "popular appeal" approach) and encouraging students to choose the field early in their careers.
Another possible approach, which would be linked to the bottom-up approach, might result from a suggestion made in response to my frustrated comments to members of the SIGCHI EC at CHI 2000. Susan Dray (with Marilyn Mantei Tremaine's enthusiastic support!) invited us to submit a proposal for a South African Development Consortium for CHI 2002. This was obviously very flattering and was received with much enthusiasm when we got back home. A number of role players (present and potential HCI contributors from academia and industry) were invited to a launch meeting of a "virtual consortium" and we immediately set to work to produce interim guidelines for the "project". Some of the focus areas that we are currently investigating, are:
It seems to us that tackling this as a SIGCHI project might help to gain much-needed support and recognition right from the start. However, whether as a SIGCHI project or as a totally independent initiative, it is clear that such a project will ensure that we place multi-cultural issues at the heart of HCI thought-leadership and practical application in South Africa. It will also ensure active and collaborative links between academia and industry so that spin-off opportunities can be identified and supported, with partners, in pursuit of a dynamic, unique and globally competitive Information and Communications Technology industry in SA
It seems paradoxical that a country with such tremendous potential to make a significant contribution to the international body of HCI knowledge should be so far behind the rest of the world. But there can be little doubt that the CHI-SA 2000 Conference has made an important contribution to creating awareness among developers and users. With even more substantial support from sponsors, universities, and, of course, SIGCHI, we will be able to build upon this small beginning and soon be able to catch up with the likes of Brazil!