Founded by Shneiderman in 1983, the University of Maryland's Human Computer Interaction Laboratory has conducted leading edge interdisciplinary research on theory and design of interactive computer systems for almost 25 years. The lab brings together computer science researchers with those from many other disciplines (such as psychology, education and engineering) to develop technologies that reflect people's needs and dreams. Over the years, Shneiderman and the lab's other researchers (faculty, staff and students) have developed theories, built systems, and conducted experiments in hypertext/hypermedia, touchscreens, menu selection, layout appropriateness and consistency, and the visualization, storage and easy management of all kinds of digital information.

Part of the university's Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, HCIL members have created or worked on applications such as the world's largest international digital library for children; public access systems for the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Library of Congress, and Smithsonian Institution; case work management systems for the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice; home automation systems; educational technologies and medical information systems.

The lab, currently directed by associate professor Allison Druin, has led development of many widely-used commercial products, including the early hypertext authoring/browsing system, Hyperties (from Cognetics Corporation, Princeton Jct., NJ) which was a precursor of the World Wide Web. It presented the notion of selectable highlighted terms embedded in text - the hot link - as well as selectable areas in figures - the image map. HCIL researchers were early developers of home automation systems, high precision touch screens now used in many personal electronic devices, and several database query facilities.

One of Shneiderman's current HCIL research projects is called Community Response Grids (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/911gov/), a new approach to emergency and disaster response/notification that has received significant government and media attention. The project evolved from a 911.gov article (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/315/5814/944) in the journal Science that he co-authored with Jennifer Preece, dean of the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies.

Read more about Shneiderman and his work on his HCIL Web page: http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/ben/

Articles on Ben Shneiderman:

User Experience Pioneers (Interview by T. Adlin, July 2007)
http://www.adlininc.com/uxpioneers/original_pioneers/ben_shneiderman.html

Interview by Ivo Weevers & Wouter Sluis (June 2004)
http://www.ivoweevers.nl/HCI/Docs/Weevers-Interview%20Ben%20Shneiderman.pdf

The New Computing (Ubiquity, ACM Interview, 2003)
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/b_shneiderman_3.html

Scientific American: Humans Unite! Ben Shneiderman wants to make computers into more effective tools -- by banishing talk about machine intelligence (1999)