Ise Henin

The World Wide Web is generating an inordinate amount of interest in the media today. While the Internet is by no means a new medium, its possibilities have not only caught the imagination of most diverse and creative individuals but, more recently, also of those who wish to mine the web for potential profits--possibly triggering another "gold rush" which might make some individuals incredibly rich and leave many others to "lose their shirt".

As a repository for information the "net" can hold libraries, slide collections, museum archives, replicas of primary sources, movies, sound, simulations, mail order catalogues--the capacity for archiving are limited only by the ideas, computer resources, and patience of those wishing to preserve information for "posterity" however short-lived or long-term a time frame this may cover. We may have reached a point of "critical mass" where more people seem to be adding to the "web" than are willing to retrieve information or services. Is it lack of organisation? Line speed & cost? Are unreliable search tools producing unpredictable results? Are the query languages not intuitive enough? Is regional relevance missing? Has the commercialisation aspect become a source of frustration? Or have we reached the trivia threshold?

One person's idea of what constitutes useful or correct information may be just an opinion. Yet it may lead many others around in circles when the information proves not to be accurate. Even if the information is not wrong, as such, quality may vary. How often and how well has the Taj Mahal been photographed? And in how many home slide collections would you find a picture of Big Ben? Even relatives yawn while viewing your precious holiday memories even though you serve them coffee--others politely decline the invitation. The "web" is no different, on person's excitement evokes another person's yawn. We are being inundated by information of varying quality and accessibility unless we analyse the purpose of the collections, and consider the reasons the intended recipients have for retrieving the information. This analysis must be grounded in research, not left to the whim of commercial interests.

Human computer interaction research focusses on the computer interface from a user's perspective which makes the HCI community uniquely qualified to represent the user. My own interest stems from years of end-user computer support: first as consultant, then as help desk coordinator, now I organise and help provide computing education programmes to faculty, staff and students at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. I have B.F.A. in Visual Art and History in Art of the University of Victoria, Canada (1990) and an M.Sc. in Educational and Training Systems Design of the University of Twente, the Netherlands (1995). My area of specialisation is instrumentation of educational technology and, for my masters' thesis, I have developed an instrument for the evaluation of on-line help. In the area of educational media and technology, I use and promote the "web" as an extension of on-line help, where expertise can be gathered, but misinformation may also be promulgated.

I am interested in attending the CHI 96 workshop "HCI and the Web" since paying more attention to the analysis of good practice and the representation of the user's viewpoint might contribute towards providing consistently "good" rather than merely "cool" content.