December 10, 2004
Scenarios of human activity are widely employed in many facets of the design of software systems. This methodological development can be understood in terms of design cognition: Scenarios support and enhance the solution-first strategy, which is typical of, and perhaps fundamental to expert problem-solving for "ill-defined" problem types like design and planning.
Dr. John M. Carroll is the Edward Frymoyer Chair Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include methods and theory in human-computer interaction, particularly as applied to networking tools for collaborative learning and problem solving, and the design of interactive information systems. He has written or edited 14 books, including Making Use (MIT Press, 2000), HCI in the New Millennium (Addison-Wesley, 2001), Usability Engineering (Morgan-Kaufmann, 2002, with M. B. Rosson) and HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks (Morgan-Kaufmann, 2003). He serves on 9 editorial boards for journals, handbooks, and series; he is a member of the US National Research Council's Committee on Human Factors and Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions. He received the Rigo Award and the CHI Lifetime Achievement Award from ACM, the Silver Core Award from IFIP, the Alfred N. Goldsmith Award from IEEE, and is an ACM Fellow. He earned B.A. degrees in Mathematics and Information Sciences from Lehigh University and M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in Psychology from Columbia University.