Immediate Usability: Kiosk design principles from the CHI 2001 Photo Library Bill Kules *+ , Hyunmo Kang *, Catherine Plaisant *, Anne Rose *, Ben Shneiderman * {wmk, kang, plaisant, rose, ben}@cs.umd.edu * Department of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies & Institute for Systems Research University of Maryland at College Park College Park, MD 20742 + Takoma Software, Inc. 7006 Carroll Avenue Takoma Park, MD 20912 ABSTRACT This paper describes a novel set of design principles and guidelines for ensuring the immediate usability of public access systems. These principles and guidelines were formulated while developing PhotoFinder Kiosk, a community photo library. Attendees of CHI 2001 successfully used the tool to browse and annotate collections of photographs spanning 20 years of CHI and related conferences, producing a richly annotated photo history of the field of human-computer interaction. We used observations and log data to evaluate the tool and refine the guidelines. They provide specific guidance for practitioners, as well as a useful framework for additional research in public access interfaces. Keywords Photo collection, community photo library, group annotation, public access system, direct annotation, direct manipulation, drag-and-drop, immediate usability, zero-trial learning, walk-up-and-use, casual use INTRODUCTION Public access systems are pervasive in modern society, providing services, information and entertainment ranging from automated teller machines (ATMs) for banking to museums, government offices and unattended gas stations. They are used in retail environments to sell a variety of products such as perfume, shoes and food. Government offices use them to improve service while reducing costs. Museums are installing increasingly sophisticated interactive exhibits to educate and entertain visitors. Early interfaces were limited to text-only displays and a small set of keys for input, but today’s applications take advantage of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), touchscreens and alternative modes of input such as proximity sensors and machine vision. Recent research has also explored the use of animated “talking heads” and avatars to interact with end-users in an effort to better attract users and improve their experiences [2,4,5]. Some applications are well designed and widely used. Automated teller machines are a success story because of extensive usability testing and a concrete motivation for users. But high profile failures such as the U.S. Postal Service’s Postal Buddy still occur. Many kiosks sit unused and idle because they fail to initially attract users or are simply too difficult for casual use. Designers failed to design these systems for immediate usability. This paper describes a set of principles and guidelines that designers can use to develop and evaluate user interfaces for public access systems or kiosks (we use these two terms interchangeably). These guidelines are organized using a user interaction model described in [10]. We formulated the guidelines during a project to transform a personal-use photo library into a public access system. Extensive informal evaluations and observations were used to clarify and extended them. Practitioners can incorporate these guidelines into development processes, and researchers can use them to identify appropriate applications of new technologies. BACKGROUND These guidelines were the result of a need to transform a personal photo library tool into a public access system as part of a project to create a visual history of CHI events. One of the authors (Shneiderman) has a personal library of photos spanning 20 years of CHI-related events. These pictures have been digitized and annotated with basic metadata such as event name, date and location using PhotoFinder, a personal photo library tool. Due to the large number of photos (3300 were eventually selected from more than 7000), it was not practical for us to label or caption each picture. Even if it were, many of the people in the pictures were unknown to us (even to the photographer). Since the CHI community was our target, we developed PhotoFinder Kiosk to enable members of this community to easily contribute their knowledge and recollections while browsing the pictures. PhotoFinder Kiosk allows users (typically members of a common organization or community) to annotate a set of photographs with captions and name labels. Although not a true kiosk, the interface is designed to support casual use, such as would be found in a kiosk at a conference, wedding or other event that brings together a community of people