Stuart Card
Senior Research Fellow & Manager, User Interface Research

2007 Franklin Institute Laureate for fundamental contributions to the fields of human-computer interaction and information visualization

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Throughout his career, PARC researcher Stuart Card has focused on the intersection of computer science and psychology. His many pioneering contributions to the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) have laid the groundwork for how people interact with computers, the Internet, and a vast array of user interfaces and digital media technologies. Now included among such scientific luminaries as Alexander Graham Bell, Pierre and Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Jane Goodall, Max Planck, Orville Wright, and others honored since 1824 by the Franklin Institute Awards program — Stu received a prestigious Franklin Institute award "for his contributions to the fields of human-centered computing, measuring how people use machines, our relationship with information, and integrating machines effortlessly into our lives". According to the Franklin Institute committee, Stu's contributions "have been as key to the electronic revolution as parallel advances in electrical engineering."

In addition to the Franklin Institute's Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science (2007), Stu:
-	received the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)'s SIGCHI’s first CHI Lifetime Achievement Award (2000) and was named the first Fellow of the CHI Academy (2001);
-	was named an ACM Fellow (2000) in recognition of his fundamental pioneering contributions toward creating a theory and practice of human-computer interaction that integrates computer science and psychological science;
-	was named a Fellow of the World Technology Network (2005), which focuses on the business and science of bringing important emerging technologies into reality; and
-	was recently elected (2007) a member of the National Academy of Engineering, which is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.

Scientific Contributions and Applications

Stu has pioneered many methods, theoretical characterizations, and technologies including:

• Model Human Processor — a simplified model of the human brain (including visual input, memory storage, and cognitive processes) that can be used to give formal descriptions of how humans behave.
   
• GOMS (Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection) theory of user interaction (with Allen Newell and Tom Moran) — possibly the most widely used model in HCI today, GOMS rules describe how humans interact with computers and have also been used to analyze telephone operator stations, model helicopter maneuvers, and design cars.
   
• Information visualization and 3-D workspaces (with George Robertson, Jock Mackinlay, and Ramana Rao) — applying theories of cognition, perception, and visual attention, Stu and his team championed and developed "focus + context" techniques for maximizing display resources and for helping people dynamically interact with information of interest. Many of the resulting technologies are now used by intelligence analysts to make sense of massive, diverse information collections.
   
• Information Foraging Theory (with Peter Pirolli) — comparing the way humans search for information to the way animals forage for food, this theory provides a predictive model of how humans allocate their attention when processing information, and has been applied to studying individual and collective behavior on the web.

Recently, Stu and his PARC colleagues have been developing a supporting science of "human-information interaction" that shifts the focus of HCI to investigate how people interact not just with computers and devices, but with information.

Commercial Impact

When Stu joined PARC in 1974 during the design of the Alto personal computer, he investigated human performance on different kinds of input devices such as joy sticks, a head-motion detector, and Doug Engelbart's new "mouse."

By using the then little-known "Fitts' law" — which analyzes how easily a person can hit any given target such as a specific point on a screen — Stu concluded that the mouse was the best device for moving a cursor: almost as easy as using your own hand. This work led Xerox to introduce the first commercial mouse, and, after other manufacturers followed, fueled the emergence of personal computing and advent of the "Information Age."

At least 16 commercial products or licenses have been based on the work of Stu and the User Interface Research group he manages at PARC. Stu played a role in renowned products and systems such as:
-	Rooms (a multi-screen window workspace manager);
-	the information visualizer (including Cone Tree and Perspective Wall);
-	the table lens (for visualizing large amounts of tabular data at once); and
-	the breaking of pull-down menus into sections (which appeared in Apple's Lisa computer).

Some of this work also contributed to founding a number of companies, including:

• Inxight Software, Inc. (spun out in 1997) which provides information visualization and natural language-based knowledge extraction to help transform text into actionable information. The company currently provides scalable, multilingual, information-discovery solutions to customers such as Boeing, Charles Schwab, Factiva, GlaxoSmithKline, Korean Telecom, LexisNexis, Microsoft, Oracle, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Reuters, SAP, Yahoo, various U.S. government agencies, and others.
   
• ContentGuard (spun out in 2000, now collectively owned by Microsoft, Thompson, and Time Warner) — which develops and licenses digital rights management (DRM) intellectual property. Some of its clients include IMC, Sony Corp., and more recently LG Electronics Inc. (for LG's mobile handset devices capable of receiving DRM-enabled content).
     
• GroupFire/ Outride (spun out in 2000, intellectual assets acquired by Google) — enables personalized and simplified Internet searches by managing bookmarks and allowing access to them from any computer connected to the Internet.

Background and Other Contributions

In addition to holding over 36 patents, Stu has written or co-written more than 81 publications (63 in refereed sources).

Cited over 1000 times, Stu's book with Tom Moran and Allen Newell, The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction (1983), was the first to use "human-computer interaction" in its title. His book with Josh Mackinlay and Ben Shneiderman, Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think (1999) first used "information visualization" in its title and helped define a new field. In 2006, the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology awarded a paper he co-wrote, "The Information Grid: A Framework for Information Retrieval and Retrieval-Centered Applications" (Ramana Rao, Stuart Card, Herb Jellinek, Jock Mackinlay, George Robertson) — with a Lasting Impact Award for the most influential paper over 10 years old.

Stu has served on numerous professional, university, and governmental advisory committees such as the World Wide Web 8 Program Committee; DARPA Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction; Department of Homeland Security's National Visualization and Analytics Center Panel; National Research Council Panel on Pilot Performance Models for Computer-Aided Engineering; and Carnegie Mellon University Human Computer Interaction Institute. He has also been an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, and member of editorial boards including: ACM CHI Letters; Cambridge University Press' Series in Human-Computer Interaction; Behavior and Information Technology; Wiley & Sons' Handbook on Human-Computer Interaction; and Human-Computer Interaction.

After obtaining an A.B. in Physics at Oberlin College, Stu received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University — where he pursued an interdisciplinary program in psychology, artificial intelligence, and computer science. He has also been an Adjunct Associate Professor at Stanford.

Selected Publications

Selected Patents