Austin Henderson

Until recently I have been managing the Discourse Architecture Laboratory in the Apple Research Laboratories. This work will be continuing when we fnd a new home for it. In the meantime, I am consulting on the design and practice of socio-technical systems. I had been at Apple for two years, focussing on what we have now come to call pliant computing. Before coming to Apple in later 1994, I spent years at Xerox doing research, tools and architecture concerning user interfaces. In the middle(1989) I spent a year working for the design consultancy Fitch (aka RichardsonSmith) out of Worthington, Ohio. I've also worked for Bolt Beranek and Newman, and MIT's Lincoln Labs.

I'm married to Lynne, I have three children, Kim, Mark and Brooke, and I like to paddle boats in still and moving water.

Contact information

• [Work] Telephone: +1-415-747-9201 (Fax: +1-415-747-0467)
• [Home] Telephone: +1-415-747-0248 (Fax: +1-415-747-0467)
• Post: PO Box 334, La Honda, CA 94020, USA
• Courier: 8115 La Honda Dr., La Honda, CA 94020, USA
• E-mail: ahenderson@acm.org, henderson@pliant.org, ahenderson@shyness.com
• Web: http://www.shyness.com/ahenderson.html

Brief Biography:

In Academia

• High School: Upper Canada College, Toronto
• B.Sc. (hon), Mathematics and Physics, Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada (1965)
• Travelled around the world (1965-1966)
• M.S., Computer Science, University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana, Illinois, USA (1967)
• Ph.D., Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (1975)

In Industry

• Applications programming
• Canada Lifa Assurance Co, Toronto (1963)
• IBM, Mount Royal Office, Montreal (summer 1964)
• Avon Products, Canada, Pointe Claire, PQ (summer, 1965)
• Systems Programming, Argonne National Laboratory, IL (summer 1967)
• Interactive pen-based graphics application programming and graphical programming languages, TX-2 facility, Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA (summer 1968 through January 1975, part time).
• Air-traffic control simulator, Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc, Cambridge, MA (part time 1970-1975)
• E-mail application (Hermes), Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc, Cambridge, MA (1975-1978)
• Research, Human-Computer Interaction, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA (1978-1986)
• Research, Human-Computer Interaction, Xerox EuroPARC, Cambridge, UK (1987-1988)
• Interaction Design, Fitch/RichardsonSmith, Columbus OH (1989)
• Research management, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA (1990)
• User Interface and Use Architecture, Xerox Corporation, Palo Alto, CA (1991-1994)
• User Experience Architect, ATG, Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA 1994-1995)
• Manager, User Experience Laboratory, ATG, Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA 1995-1996)
• Manager, Discourse Architecture Laboratory, Apple Research Laboratories, Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA 1996-Mar, 1997.)
• Consultant, Rivendel Consulting, La Honda, April, 1997 - present.)

Professional

• General Co-chair, CHI'85, San Francisco
• Member, programming committee, CHI conferences, 1986-present
• Programme co-chair, INTERCHI'93, Amsterdam (1993).
• Co-Chair, Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM/SIGCHI), 1989-1993; Past Chair (1993-1995).
• Programme co-chair, DIS'97, Amsterdam (1997).

Publications

• Your Place or Mine? Learning from Long-Term Use of Audio-Video Communication (with P. Dourish, A. Adler, V. Bellottii) Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 5(1) (1996)
• Interaction Analysis: Foundations and Practice (with Brigitte Jordan), The Journal of Learning Sciences , 4(1): pp. 39-103 (1995). Also: Institute for Research on Learning Report #94-0027, Palo Alto, CA. (1994).
• A Room of Our Own: Experiences from a Direct Office Share (with A. Adler) in Proceedings of CHI'94, Human Facotrs in Computing Systems, Boston, MA, USA, ACM Press, New York ,NY USA. pp. 138-144. (1994)
• Views of Work, the Foundations of Architecture in Proceedings of Software Ergonomie '93, German Chapter fo the ACM, Bremen, Germany (1993)
• Buttons as First Class Objects on an X Desktop (with George G. Robertson, Stuart K. Card), in Proceedings of UIST'91, Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, Hilton Head, SC, USA. (1991)
• There's No Place Like Home: Continuing Design in Use (with Morten Kyng), in Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems, J. Greenbaum, M. Kyng (eds.), Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., Hillsdale, NJ, USA. (1991)
• A Development Perspective on Interface, Design and Theory, in Designing interaction, J. Carroll (ed.), Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA. (1991)
• Catalogues: A Metaphor for Computer Applications Delivery (with S. K. Card), in Proceedings of INTERACT '87, Human Factors in Computing Systems, Stuttgart, West Germany (1987).
• A Multiple, Virtual-Workspace Interface to Support User Task Switching (with S. K. Card), in Proceedings of CHI'87, Human Factors in Computing Systems, Toronto, Canada (1987).
• Trillium: A Knowledge-based Design Environment for Control/Display Interfaces, in Proceedings of CHI'86, Human Factors in Computing Systems, Boston, MA, USA (1986).
• Rabbit: An Intelligent Database Assistant (with F. N. Tou, M. D. Williams, R. E. Fikes, T. W. Malone), in Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, American Association of Artificial Intelligence, Menlo Park, CA, USA (1982).