Dr. Stuart Card named Senior Research Fellow

PARC is pleased to announce the promotion of Dr. Stuart Card to Senior Research Fellow, the highest scientific postion conveyed by PARC. Stu joined PARC in 1974 and is currently the area manager of User Interface Research at PARC. This honor recognizes a career that is nothing short of astonishing.

Technical Achievement

Stu Card's scientific focus lies at the intersection of computer science and psychology, giving him perspective on what really matters in human interactions with computers.

At recent conferences Stu's broad and profound impact on the field was unmistakable. In one case, three of seven tracks were essentially initiated because of Stu's research, including studies of human factors for input devices (e.g. mice), information visualization, and information scent. Papers in all of the tracks cite not only the research papers by Stu and his UIR group, but also his cornerstone book of the field--The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction--written by Stu together with Tom Moran and Allen Newell.

Scientific Achievement

When Stu first came to PARC, during the design of the Alto, he investigated human performance on different kinds of pointing devices. This work capitalized on and fueled the emergence of personal computers, establishing the mouse as the best of breed in devices at the time.

In a 1979 paper, Stu established the basic parameters and methods of the field for human factors in user interface design and human performance with the mouse in text editing and other tasks.

In the early 1990's, Stu led his group in the creation of the area of information visualization, establishing a major thrust in the design of 3D and other visualizations of information. Again, this foundational research established a line of research in the CHI community. In 1999, Stu, together with Jock Mackinlay and Ben Shneiderman, wrote the primary reference work in this area-Readings in Information Visualization.

By the late 1990's, Stu was moving the field again creating another foundational area-information foraging theory. Information foraging is a predictive model of how humans allocate their attention when processing information. It is a formal basis for understanding how people make sense of information. Information foraging theories have been applied by Stu's team to studying individual and collective behavior on the web. Information foraging emerged with its own track at the CHI conference in 2001 and is becoming a hot topic in psychology with the appearance of an article in Psychological Review.

Professional Activities and Honors

Stu Card's influence has not gone unrecognized. In 2000, he was awarded the first Lifetime Achievement Award for CHI and became a Fellow in the Association for Computing Machinery. In 2001, he became the first fellow of the CHI Academy.

Stu has written three books and edited two special issues of journals. He has written more than 70 papers and holds 22 issued patents.

Stu Card has been a member of the editorial board of eight journals and series of books. He is on advisory panels at four universities. He is on numerous professional society advisory boards and has given invited lectures and lecture series at many universities. In 1985 and 1988 he was a lead member in ACM's SIGCHI Curriculum Committee, which prescribed the course of study for computer and human interfaces for university education.

Stu is also active professionally on several influential government panels. For example, he was the chairman and report author for the National Research Council on Pilot Performance Models for CAE from 1987-1989. He was a charter member of the Board on Army Science and Technology. For the Army, he was on a blue ribbon committee for aviation aircrew integration. He has also been on committees for the National Research Council, the Air Force, the Office of Naval Research, NATO, and DARPA.

Business Impact

Stu has had a remarkable record of building commercial value from his leading-edge scientific pursuits.

Starting in 1982, Stu's work with the Xerox System Development Division led to the development and refinement of the mouse for the Star product. In the early 1980's, Stu was involved in the design of keyboards for various Xerox computers, including the 1108 and the 1186. He was part of the Xerox Star User Interface Board from 1984-1987.

Stu's work on the study of window systems led to several versions of the "Rooms" product, which provided a multi-screen collection of window workspaces. The first version of this was written and developed by Stu Card and Austin Henderson and sold with Interlisp-D systems developed at PARC. Stu then worked with the team that developed a version for Xsoft - GlobalView Rooms in 1992 and two versions of Rooms for PC products also created by Xsoft - "Rooms for Windows" and "X/Rooms". In 1994, Stu worked again with Xsoft to create TabWorks and the Visual Recall tool, based on the perspective wall and cone tree visualizations of information.

In 1995 he worked with Fitch RichardsonSmith and IDEO on envisionment studies for new generations of Xerox products. He was part of the user Interface concept project in 1995, advising on the design of the user interface for Xerox's multi-function systems.

In 1996, three members of Stu's group became founding members of the Xerox New Enterprise Company, Inxight - leading to the Hyperbolic Tree (1997), the Cone Tree (1997), the Perspective Wall (1997), and Table Lens (2000).

UIR was crucial in the creation of several companies and organizations inside Xerox, including Advanced Office Document Systems (paper user interface technology) in 1992, XSoft Advanced Development Group and TabWorks product group (information visualization) in 1992, Inxight Software (information visualization and linguistics technology) in 1995, ContentGuard (digital rights) in 2000, and Outride Software (personalized search) in 2000.

Summary

Stu has had a remarkable and sustained career, achieving the highest level of scientific leadership and accomplishment. He has provided broad leadership to the industry, cultivated rich professional engagements that have affected key government and educational institutions across the country, mentored colleagues at PARC, and established a remarkable series of successes in commercializing research and creating value. He exemplifies the highest standards of a Senior Research Fellow.