From: Michael Good  05-Feb-1991 1750 <good@4gl.enet.dec.com>
Subject: Re: we need a new name
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 91 17:50:38 EST




Since the naming issue has been raised again, I might as well put
my 2 cents in for "Presence", the term that we've been using to
describe our research in this area.

My concept of "presence" is that it is a quality we want to
achieve in computer systems, as opposed to a category of computer
systems such as "virtual reality."  We've found categories used
before in computer-human interaction: for instance, Ben
Shneiderman's famous division of systems into the categories of
command line, menu, and direct manipulation systems.  This type
of categorization is a useful starting point for discussion, but
it quickly exhausts its usefulness for inquiry into what makes
particular systems more useful and usable and other systems less
useful and usable.  For one thing, most commercial computer
systems are hybrids of the different categories anyway.

Analysis along dimensions of usefulness or usability seems more
promising and is something we have pursued in our group over the
past few years.  That analysis also will only carry you so far.
Most of the difficult problems come up in designing systems for
people in a specific work context, and you can only understand a
limited amount when abstracting out the effects of context.  But
dimensions seem to give us more understanding than categories.

Currently I view presence as the quality of computer systems
that:

  - make them feel more transparent to computer users,
  - makes greater of the available senses, and
  - allows previously obscured work elements to become more
    important and pertinent to the worker, by moving work
    elements from the abstract to the concrete.

Another dimension to consider is "inclusion" - something that
William Bricken has emphasized in his writings and theorizing.
I think both the presence and inclusion dimensions are important.

This argument for dimensions over categories is in the context of
developing scientific and engineering understanding.  For
marketing purposes, the considerations are different, and VR
seems to be pretty far ahead there in name recognition.  It may
not be the best name, but it's good enough for now.

My colleague Dennis Wixon and I have written more on categories 
and dimensions (before we'd heard of virtual reality) in:

  Interface Style and Eclecticism: Moving Beyond Categorical
  Approaches.  Proc. Human Factors Society 31st Annual Meeting
  (New York, October 19-23, 1987), Human Factors Society, Santa
  Monica, CA, Vol. 1, 571-575.

--
Michael Good

good@baviki.enet.dec.com