This article was downloaded by: [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)], [Diana Ascher] On: 14 December 2012,

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International Journal of HumanComputer Interaction

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Beyond the Desktop Metaphor: Design Integrated Digital Work Environments by Victor Kaptelinin
Ji Soo Yi
a a

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 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10447310802664998

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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

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1532-7590 1044-7318 HIHC Intl. Journal of HumanComputer Interaction, Interaction Vol. 25, No. 2, December 2008: pp. 12

Book Review

Victor Kaptelinin and Mary Czerwinski (Eds.). Beyond the Desktop Metaphor: Design Integrated Digital Work Environments. The MIT Press, 2007. 360 pages. ISBN: 0-262-11604-X
Book Review

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

Beyond the Desktop Metaphor: Design Integrated Digital Work Environments has a straightforward titleit is about what will come after the desktop metaphor for our digital workplaces. The editors and contributing authors collectively backlash the currently dominant desktop metaphor and attempt to provide visions of digital workplaces beyond the desktop metaphor. The main argument is that the desktop metaphor is severely flawed in the context of modern computing, which is represented by the diversification and evolution of digital workplaces, including larger displays, innovative interaction techniques, constant and instant communication through the Internet, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, and collaborative techniques. 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. Instead of organizing files in hierarchical folders and interacting mainly through a single application at a time, users may organize information based on time and find things using search features (e.g., Lifestreams); users may organize both information and user interfaces based on relationships and attributes (e.g., Haystacks); and users may find that tasks (e.g., GroupBar and Task Gallery) and focus-plus-context (e.g., Scalable Fabric) important aspects to organize information. Part 2 discusses the change from single-user computing to collaborative computing. A user often has multiple roles (e.g., personal role management) or may need to interact with multiple individuals in a social context (e.g., ContactMap and Soylent), so these examples showed how this collaborative nature in digital workplaces could be supported by proper interface designs. Part 3 focuses on the role of activities in redesigning digital workplaces. Both of the chapters in part 3 employ activity theory, which sheds light on contextual factors that influence the design of digital workplaces. Part 4 discusses fundamental problems: how people actually understand the desktop metaphor and how to accomplish the integration (by extending the boundary of a single application or by having a unified workspace to integrate multiple applications). Lastly, I personally found that the conclusion is particularly useful because it summarizes insightful points in a succinct way.

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Book Review

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However, readers should note that this book is not a mere collection of recently developed 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 desktop 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 have fairly comprehensive prediction of how future digital work places are evolving and will evolve. For this reason, this book will be useful for HCI researchers and practitioners who would like to predict the future directions of digital workspaces and accomplish visionary missions. Graduate students who are working in relevant domains might want to read this book more comprehensively. This book might be less useful for learning about cutting-edge technologies, whereas proceedings of relevant conferences 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 where the 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 been useful because it helped me understand the perspectives of users. People who study computer-supported cooperative work will find part 2 useful. If you are interested in activity theory, part 3 will be particularly entertaining. If you do not have time to read the entire book, I recommend that you read this book in the following order: the foremost introduction, the introductions of the four parts, and the conclusion, all of which are well written and help make sense of the overall content.