Re: [Usability] Research paper on virtual desktops

[Michael Toomim <toomim OCF Berkeley EDU>]

Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Michael Toomim wrote:
>
> > I just saw this CHI paper on virtual desktops:
>
> Interesting, our lecturer called it HCI (Human Computer Interaction) which
> is less pronouncable but the word order implies that Human interacts with
> computer rather than the other way around.  (not actually interesting if
> you dont find linguistics and different uses of language interesting ;)

Right.  I was referring to CHI the conference, rather than HCI the 
research area. :)  http://www.chi2004.org/

> The users surveyed are all people who use Virtual Desktops.  I would be
> interested to know about people who dont use Virtual Desktops and what it
> takes before a user makes the leap and uses multiple virtual desktops.
> How do new users discover and start using virtual desktops?  Do they
> wonder where all their windows just disappeared to?
> After many years of using Apple Macintosh or Microsoft Windows I am not
> inclined to learn to use virtual desktops.

Yeah, I was left wanting to know more about the subjects that they 
found.  (What were the demographics?)