Austin Henderson's Personal Home Page

Austin Henderson

has been in the field of Human-Computer Interaction since 1964. He has a B.Sc. in Mathematics from Queen's University, Canada, an MS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D in Computer Science for MIT. He has built applications in areas including manufacturing, air traffic control, electronic mail (Hermes), user interface design tools (Trillium), workspace management (Rooms, Buttons). He has done research and user interface architecture for Xerox at both PARC and EuroPARC, and for Apple Computer, and industrial design with Fitch. Until March, 1997, he managed the Discourse Architecture Laboratory in the Apple Research Labororatories. In addition to being a principal in Rivendel Consulting, Austin is a co-founder of Pliant Research, a research consortium exploring the theory and practice of computing systems that move beyond the formal. Professionally, Austin has been active in ACM/SIGCHI since 1983, including as conference chair (1985), and organization chair (1989-1993).

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

Austin Henderson, Rivendel Consulting

[Work] Telephone: +1-650-747-9201 (Fax: +1-650-747-0467)
[Home] Telephone: +1-650-747-0248 (Fax: +1-650-747-0467)
Post: PO Box 334, La Honda, CA 94020, USA
Courier: 8115 La Honda Dr., La Honda, CA 94020, USA
E-mail: henderson@rivcons.com
Web: http://www.rivcons.com

Brief Biography:

Born, London, Ontario, Canada; raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Married, with three children.

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

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

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

A few key publications selected from the complete list are:

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).