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This article was downloaded by: [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)], [DianaAscher]On: 14 December 2012, At: 19:42Publisher: Taylor & FrancisInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

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Beyond the Desktop Metaphor: Design

Integrated Digital Work Environments by

Victor KaptelininJi Soo Yi aa

School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University,

Version of record first published: 05 Feb 2009.

To cite this article: Ji Soo Yi (2009): Beyond the Desktop Metaphor: Design Integrated Digital Work

Environments by Victor Kaptelinin, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 25:2,

167-168

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INTL. JOURNAL OF HUMANCOMPUTER INTERACTION, 25(2), 167168, 2009

Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1044-7318 print / 1532-7590 online

DOI: 10.1080/10447310802664998

HIHC1044-73181532-7590Intl.Journal of HumanComputerInteraction,Vol. 25, No.2,December2008:pp. 12Intl. Journal of HumanComputerInteraction

Book Review

Victor Kaptelinin and Mary Czerwinski (Eds.). Beyond theDesktop Metaphor: Design Integrated Digital Work Environ-ments. The MIT Press, 2007. 360 pages. ISBN: 0-262-11604-X

BookReviewBookReview

Reviewed by Ji Soo Yi, Assistant Professor, School of IndustrialEngineering, Purdue University

Beyond the Desktop Metaphor: Design Integrated Digital Work Environments has astraightforward titleit is about what will come after the desktop metaphor forour digital workplaces. The editors and contributing authors collectively backlashthe currently dominant desktop metaphor and attempt to provide visions of digitalworkplaces beyond the desktop metaphor. The main argument is that the desktopmetaphor is severely flawed in the context of modern computing, which is repre-sented by the diversification and evolution of digital workplaces, including largerdisplays, innovative interaction techniques, constant and instant communicationthrough the Internet, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, and collaborative tech-

niques. The authors argue that we need a different and better design paradigm.The book consists of four parts, which have related but distinctive themes.

Part 1 introduces alternative design paradigms to organize information. Insteadof organizing files in hierarchical folders and interacting mainly through a sin-gle application at a time, users may organize information based on time andfind things using search features (e.g., Lifestreams); users may organize bothinformation and user interfaces based on relationships and attributes (e.g.,Haystacks); and users may find that tasks (e.g., GroupBar and Task Gallery) andfocus-plus-context (e.g., Scalable Fabric) important aspects to organize informa-tion. Part 2 discusses the change from single-user computing to collaborative

computing. A user often has multiple roles (e.g., personal role management) ormay need to interact with multiple individuals in a social context (e.g., ContactMapand Soylent), so these examples showed how this collaborative nature in digitalworkplaces could be supported by proper interface designs. Part 3 focuses onthe role of activities in redesigning digital workplaces. Both of the chapters inpart 3 employ activity theory, which sheds light on contextual factors that influ-ence the design of digital workplaces. Part 4 discusses fundamental problems:how people actually understand the desktop metaphor and how to accomplishthe integration (by extending the boundary of a single application or by havinga unified workspace to integrate multiple applications). Lastly, I personally foundthat the conclusion is particularly useful because it summarizes insightful pointsin a succinct way.

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168 Book Review

However, readers should note that this book is not a mere collection of recentlydeveloped user interfaces or ideas that you can quickly skim through. Instead,examples in this book were used as a means to highlight the problems of the desk-top metaphors and also as prototypes to test the feasibility of the new ideas and

conceptual designs. Together with the themes in the four different parts, you havefairly comprehensive prediction of how future digital work places are evolvingand will evolve.

For this reason, this book will be useful for HCI researchers and practitionerswho would like to predict the future directions of digital workspaces and accom-plish visionary missions. Graduate students who are working in relevant domainsmight want to read this book more comprehensively. This book might be less use-ful for learning about cutting-edge technologies, whereas proceedings of relevantconferences might be more useful and updated. However, as mentioned previously,this book will help you understand the directions. In other words, by reading this

book, you may not find where the bullets are right now, but you can see wherethe gun barrels are aimed.The overall organization of the book is logical and straightforward. However,

I personally found that reading the first chapter of part 6 first would have beenuseful because it helped me understand the perspectives of users. People whostudy computer-supported cooperative work will find part 2 useful. If you areinterested in activity theory, part 3 will be particularly entertaining. If you do nothave time to read the entire book, I recommend that you read this book in the fol-lowing order: the foremost introduction, the introductions of the four parts, andthe conclusion, all of which are well written and help make sense of the overallcontent.