Stan Ruecker PhD is the Anthony J. Petullo Professor in Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is also a member of the Design Research Initiative. For the past twenty years, Stan's research has focused on the future of reading, where his research teams have developed more than two dozen prototypes for use in "algorithmic criticism." He is currently exploring physical interfaces for complex conceptual work, such as text analysis, modeling time, and designing experience. He is also part of an international group developing new theories of key concepts for use by designers. Their current topic is “what is an opinion?”
Blandford, A and Brown, S and Dobson, T and Faisal, S and Fiorentino, C and Frizzera, L and Giaco... more Blandford, A and Brown, S and Dobson, T and Faisal, S and Fiorentino, C and Frizzera, L and Giacometti, A and Heller, B and Ilovan, M and Michura, P and Nelson, B and Radzikowska, M and Rockwell, G and Ruecker, S and Sinclair, S and Sondheim, D and Warwick, C and Windsor, J (2012) Designing Interactive Reading Environments for the Online Scholarly Edition. In: (Proceedings) Digital Humanities 2012. ... Full text not available from this repository.
Third Annual Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science (DHCS 2008), Chicago, IL, 2008
The past few years have seen a proliferation of collaborative writing and editing projects using ... more The past few years have seen a proliferation of collaborative writing and editing projects using wikis, which are a class of online tools designed for fast production and publication of digital text. The word “wiki” is in fact from the Hawaiian word for “fast.” The most well‐known wiki is arguably Wikipedia, but wikis are also widely used in educational and corporate settings (Majchrzak et al. 2006; Giordano 2007; Arazy et al. forthcoming). In these environments, the generally anonymous nature of wikis can be at odds with the ...
If we think of the smart city as a reading environment, we can use it to change what it means to ... more If we think of the smart city as a reading environment, we can use it to change what it means to be a citizen, to improve how public topics are addressed, and to democratize how decisions are made. The starting point is text, supplemented with the various other kinds of data that can be gathered through digital means. In this chapter, we discuss two experimental platforms that take different approaches. First is the Data Stories project, where we have been sequencing text from various dynamic sources through a thematic clustering algorithm (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), feeding those thematic clusters into a narrative generator, then putting those results into a storyboarding system. Using the output, we can examine patterns emerging from a variety of text streams, such as Twitter, Facebook, news feeds, and so on. More importantly, however, we can allow people to manipulate the parameters, so that using the same text stream can produce multiple simultaneous valid outputs, depending on the perspective that the reader wishes to take on the feed. Providing a method for encouraging this kind of interpretive or hermeneutic inquiry is a promising strategy for supporting civil discourse. Our second project, Conversational Modeling, is building on previous research to investigate the various ways in which discussions, which occur sequentially through time, can be profitably modeled as 3-D objects of various kinds. These models can subsequently be used for recollection, communication, and analysis, but they may also have a generative potential. As a means of dealing with the structure and substance of discussions in civil society, we propose that conversational modeling has the potential to radically alter our understanding and practice of citizenship.
KULA: knowledge creation, dissemination, and preservation studies, 2019
The digital humanities (DH) has a long and successful history of creating, using, and maintaining... more The digital humanities (DH) has a long and successful history of creating, using, and maintaining DH centres, as evidenced by the vast centerNet network. Furthermore, some of the most successful centres are constantly evolving in form and function. In this paper, we propose that the next phase in the evolution of the DH centre may involve a related phenomenon from the design research community, called the ‘Living Lab.’ The European Network of Living Labs describes them as dedicated to open forms of design for social good: ‘Living Labs (LLs) are defined as user-centred, open innovation ecosystems based on a systematic user co-creation approach, integrating research and innovation processes in real-life communities and settings.’ Current member labs deal with topics ranging from health and well-being (52%) to mobility (14%), but there are few that focus on issues central to DH, such as open social scholarship. We argue that incorporating more DH into the Living Labs network, and more ...
Based on the study of recent research regarding the development of smart cities, this paper devel... more Based on the study of recent research regarding the development of smart cities, this paper develops a critical reflection about the reasons why not every citizen in a smart city can be considered a smart citizen. We point out some of the primary causes and the role of design to help to develop possible solutions. The paper uses the concept of the network society and actor network theory in order to understand the infrastructure of smart cities and develop an analysis of the changing role of citizens into smart citizens. We propose that there is a need for new methods to generate sustainable and inclusive social engagement to solve collective urban problems. Moreover, it is speculated that smart citizenship will be an important part of the future of smart cities. In this context, design plays an important part, framing the way actors understand and interact with each other in the city ecosystem, and enabling citizens to shape the future of their cities.
This essay considers the opportunities afforded by the Simulated Environment for Theatre (SET) fo... more This essay considers the opportunities afforded by the Simulated Environment for Theatre (SET) for exploring the functions of and relationships between historical theatrical texts and other records of performance. Over the course of SET's development, the system's digital environment for visualizing theatrical text and performance has increasingly emphasized affordances that are not available in other digital or material environments. Our most recent focus has been on SET's potential applications for theatre historians, in particular because of the system's user-controlled, hybrid two- and three-dimensional interface, which permits the simultaneous visualization of a variety of research materials and performance simulations. Through a research project exploring the theatre-historical significance of Soulpepper Theatre's 2011 production of Judith Thompson's White Biting Dog in relation to the Tarragon Theatre's 1984 premiere of the play, we have identified some current strengths of SET as a tool for theatre-historical research, as well as some technical improvements that would enhance its efficacy, and some design challenges warranting further consideration. With some refinements, SET has the potential to add to the affordances offered by existing digital tools through its ability to visualize theatre-historical methodologies and its positioning of the user as the agent of research, making it an environment for historiographical as well as historical scholarship. Cet essai examine les possibilites offertes par le Simulated Environment for Theatre (SET) pour l’exploration des fonctions des textes historiques de theâtre ou d’autres archives de representations, ainsi que des relations qu’ils entretiennent. Durant le developpement de SET, l’environnement numerique de visualisation de representations et de textes theâtraux a progressivement souligne les possibilites absentes d’autres medias numeriques ou environnements materiels. Notre reflexion la plus recente est centree sur les applications potentielles de SET pour les historiens du theâtre, en particulier par son interface hybride en deux et trois dimensions controlee par l’utilisateur, qui permet la visualisation simultanee de materiaux de recherche varies et la simulation de representations theâtrales. A travers un projet de recherche explorant l’importance dans l’histoire du theâtre de la production de la piece White Biting Dog de Judith Thompson par le Soulpepper Theatre en 2011 en comparaison avec la premiere production de la piece en 1984 par le Tarragon Theatre, nous avons identifie quelques atouts de SET comme outil de recherche en histoire du theâtre ainsi que quelques ameliorations techniques qui pourraient parfaire son efficacite et quelques aspects de design appelant des reflexions complementaires. En le raffinant, SET a le potentiel d’enrichir les possibilites offertes par les outils numeriques existants, a la fois par sa capacite a visualiser les methodologies d’histoire du theâtre et en positionnant l’utilisateur comme acteur de la recherche, pour en faire un environnement pour la recherche tant en histoire qu’en historiographie.
For scholars working on large scale projects there are always numerous tasks in various stages of... more For scholars working on large scale projects there are always numerous tasks in various stages of completion. The process, understood as workflow, requires decisions to be made along the way regarding the assignment, categorization and completion of activities. Tools for workflow management help scholars administer complex projects effectively. As previous INKE publications have demonstrated, the Workflow interface uses a structured surface, described by Radzikowska et al. as “a cognitive interface artifact that provides a layer of meaning that supports the data imposed upon it” (2011), to visually represent the planned progression of work and the status of each task as an object within it. However, usability tests showed issues in the current version, for example the overlapping of objects in one stage of the workflow make it difficult to access information. A simple solution is to reduce the density of tokens by using a zooming user interface: the container zooms while tokens keep...
During the first 3 years of the INKE project, the Interface Design team gathered several hundred ... more During the first 3 years of the INKE project, the Interface Design team gathered several hundred images of print and digital reading environments in our environmental study of citations, corpora and scholarly editions. These images run from screen shots of digital editions to details scanned from print editions. We assembled them to be able to study and compare interfaces to knowledge environments. The number and variety has now surpassed our ability to use this collection for study, which has led us to organize these image files into a manageable database that affords easy search, retrieval and visual comparison. The interface to the database is a member of a family of rich-prospect browsers developed over time for a wide range of purposes (Ruecker et al., 2011). This interface has the advantage that it encourages visual comparison across different examples based on meta-data. A user can, for example, see all the images that show running headers or some other feature.
Authors: Siemens, Ray, with Teresa Dobson, Stan Ruecker, Richard Cunningham, Alan Galey, Claire W... more Authors: Siemens, Ray, with Teresa Dobson, Stan Ruecker, Richard Cunningham, Alan Galey, Claire Warwick, and Lynne Siemens, with Michael Best, Melanie Chernyk, Wendy Duff, Julia Flanders, David Gants, Bertrand Gervais, Karon MacLean, Steve Ramsay, Geoffrey Rockwell, Susan Schreibman, Colin Swindells, Christian Vandendorpe, Lynn Copeland, John Willinsky, Vika Zafrin, the HCI-Book Consultative Group and the INKE Research Group
This paper proposes a strategy for implementing an experimental interface prototype by analyzing ... more This paper proposes a strategy for implementing an experimental interface prototype by analyzing the development of Searchling, an experimental visual interface produced at the University of Alberta. Using Searchling as a lens, the paper categorizes the role of each contributor in the implementation process, defines the ideal conditions for implementation, and outlines the steps taken by the Searchling team to make implementation progress when conditions were less than ideal.
O objetivo deste estudo foi testar o novo modelo de livro Leitura Distribuída comidosos. O experi... more O objetivo deste estudo foi testar o novo modelo de livro Leitura Distribuída comidosos. O experimento avaliou como a leitura em dupla pode aumentar a sensação de place attachment, promovendo a interação e a proximidade entre eles. Este trabalho caracteriza-se como um estudo exploratório qualitativo. Foram observados quatro tipos de duplas de idosos: duas duplas de moradoras de ILPI, um casal, uma dupla de amigos e uma dupla de desconhecidos. Os resultados mostraram que a sensação de place attachment relacionada com os laços de amizade pôde ser experimentada a cada sessão dessa leitura. Após o primeiro encontro, os participantes tendem a ficar mais à vontade e veem nesta atividade uma nova forma de passar o tempo com o outro. Todavia, é uma prática que para funcionar de forma prazerosa demanda afinidade entre as pessoas que compõe a dupla e o interesse em comum pela narrativa escolhida.Palavras-chave: design, leitura em voz alta, lazer, idosos.
Blandford, A and Brown, S and Dobson, T and Faisal, S and Fiorentino, C and Frizzera, L and Giaco... more Blandford, A and Brown, S and Dobson, T and Faisal, S and Fiorentino, C and Frizzera, L and Giacometti, A and Heller, B and Ilovan, M and Michura, P and Nelson, B and Radzikowska, M and Rockwell, G and Ruecker, S and Sinclair, S and Sondheim, D and Warwick, C and Windsor, J (2012) Designing Interactive Reading Environments for the Online Scholarly Edition. In: (Proceedings) Digital Humanities 2012. ... Full text not available from this repository.
Third Annual Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science (DHCS 2008), Chicago, IL, 2008
The past few years have seen a proliferation of collaborative writing and editing projects using ... more The past few years have seen a proliferation of collaborative writing and editing projects using wikis, which are a class of online tools designed for fast production and publication of digital text. The word “wiki” is in fact from the Hawaiian word for “fast.” The most well‐known wiki is arguably Wikipedia, but wikis are also widely used in educational and corporate settings (Majchrzak et al. 2006; Giordano 2007; Arazy et al. forthcoming). In these environments, the generally anonymous nature of wikis can be at odds with the ...
If we think of the smart city as a reading environment, we can use it to change what it means to ... more If we think of the smart city as a reading environment, we can use it to change what it means to be a citizen, to improve how public topics are addressed, and to democratize how decisions are made. The starting point is text, supplemented with the various other kinds of data that can be gathered through digital means. In this chapter, we discuss two experimental platforms that take different approaches. First is the Data Stories project, where we have been sequencing text from various dynamic sources through a thematic clustering algorithm (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), feeding those thematic clusters into a narrative generator, then putting those results into a storyboarding system. Using the output, we can examine patterns emerging from a variety of text streams, such as Twitter, Facebook, news feeds, and so on. More importantly, however, we can allow people to manipulate the parameters, so that using the same text stream can produce multiple simultaneous valid outputs, depending on the perspective that the reader wishes to take on the feed. Providing a method for encouraging this kind of interpretive or hermeneutic inquiry is a promising strategy for supporting civil discourse. Our second project, Conversational Modeling, is building on previous research to investigate the various ways in which discussions, which occur sequentially through time, can be profitably modeled as 3-D objects of various kinds. These models can subsequently be used for recollection, communication, and analysis, but they may also have a generative potential. As a means of dealing with the structure and substance of discussions in civil society, we propose that conversational modeling has the potential to radically alter our understanding and practice of citizenship.
KULA: knowledge creation, dissemination, and preservation studies, 2019
The digital humanities (DH) has a long and successful history of creating, using, and maintaining... more The digital humanities (DH) has a long and successful history of creating, using, and maintaining DH centres, as evidenced by the vast centerNet network. Furthermore, some of the most successful centres are constantly evolving in form and function. In this paper, we propose that the next phase in the evolution of the DH centre may involve a related phenomenon from the design research community, called the ‘Living Lab.’ The European Network of Living Labs describes them as dedicated to open forms of design for social good: ‘Living Labs (LLs) are defined as user-centred, open innovation ecosystems based on a systematic user co-creation approach, integrating research and innovation processes in real-life communities and settings.’ Current member labs deal with topics ranging from health and well-being (52%) to mobility (14%), but there are few that focus on issues central to DH, such as open social scholarship. We argue that incorporating more DH into the Living Labs network, and more ...
Based on the study of recent research regarding the development of smart cities, this paper devel... more Based on the study of recent research regarding the development of smart cities, this paper develops a critical reflection about the reasons why not every citizen in a smart city can be considered a smart citizen. We point out some of the primary causes and the role of design to help to develop possible solutions. The paper uses the concept of the network society and actor network theory in order to understand the infrastructure of smart cities and develop an analysis of the changing role of citizens into smart citizens. We propose that there is a need for new methods to generate sustainable and inclusive social engagement to solve collective urban problems. Moreover, it is speculated that smart citizenship will be an important part of the future of smart cities. In this context, design plays an important part, framing the way actors understand and interact with each other in the city ecosystem, and enabling citizens to shape the future of their cities.
This essay considers the opportunities afforded by the Simulated Environment for Theatre (SET) fo... more This essay considers the opportunities afforded by the Simulated Environment for Theatre (SET) for exploring the functions of and relationships between historical theatrical texts and other records of performance. Over the course of SET's development, the system's digital environment for visualizing theatrical text and performance has increasingly emphasized affordances that are not available in other digital or material environments. Our most recent focus has been on SET's potential applications for theatre historians, in particular because of the system's user-controlled, hybrid two- and three-dimensional interface, which permits the simultaneous visualization of a variety of research materials and performance simulations. Through a research project exploring the theatre-historical significance of Soulpepper Theatre's 2011 production of Judith Thompson's White Biting Dog in relation to the Tarragon Theatre's 1984 premiere of the play, we have identified some current strengths of SET as a tool for theatre-historical research, as well as some technical improvements that would enhance its efficacy, and some design challenges warranting further consideration. With some refinements, SET has the potential to add to the affordances offered by existing digital tools through its ability to visualize theatre-historical methodologies and its positioning of the user as the agent of research, making it an environment for historiographical as well as historical scholarship. Cet essai examine les possibilites offertes par le Simulated Environment for Theatre (SET) pour l’exploration des fonctions des textes historiques de theâtre ou d’autres archives de representations, ainsi que des relations qu’ils entretiennent. Durant le developpement de SET, l’environnement numerique de visualisation de representations et de textes theâtraux a progressivement souligne les possibilites absentes d’autres medias numeriques ou environnements materiels. Notre reflexion la plus recente est centree sur les applications potentielles de SET pour les historiens du theâtre, en particulier par son interface hybride en deux et trois dimensions controlee par l’utilisateur, qui permet la visualisation simultanee de materiaux de recherche varies et la simulation de representations theâtrales. A travers un projet de recherche explorant l’importance dans l’histoire du theâtre de la production de la piece White Biting Dog de Judith Thompson par le Soulpepper Theatre en 2011 en comparaison avec la premiere production de la piece en 1984 par le Tarragon Theatre, nous avons identifie quelques atouts de SET comme outil de recherche en histoire du theâtre ainsi que quelques ameliorations techniques qui pourraient parfaire son efficacite et quelques aspects de design appelant des reflexions complementaires. En le raffinant, SET a le potentiel d’enrichir les possibilites offertes par les outils numeriques existants, a la fois par sa capacite a visualiser les methodologies d’histoire du theâtre et en positionnant l’utilisateur comme acteur de la recherche, pour en faire un environnement pour la recherche tant en histoire qu’en historiographie.
For scholars working on large scale projects there are always numerous tasks in various stages of... more For scholars working on large scale projects there are always numerous tasks in various stages of completion. The process, understood as workflow, requires decisions to be made along the way regarding the assignment, categorization and completion of activities. Tools for workflow management help scholars administer complex projects effectively. As previous INKE publications have demonstrated, the Workflow interface uses a structured surface, described by Radzikowska et al. as “a cognitive interface artifact that provides a layer of meaning that supports the data imposed upon it” (2011), to visually represent the planned progression of work and the status of each task as an object within it. However, usability tests showed issues in the current version, for example the overlapping of objects in one stage of the workflow make it difficult to access information. A simple solution is to reduce the density of tokens by using a zooming user interface: the container zooms while tokens keep...
During the first 3 years of the INKE project, the Interface Design team gathered several hundred ... more During the first 3 years of the INKE project, the Interface Design team gathered several hundred images of print and digital reading environments in our environmental study of citations, corpora and scholarly editions. These images run from screen shots of digital editions to details scanned from print editions. We assembled them to be able to study and compare interfaces to knowledge environments. The number and variety has now surpassed our ability to use this collection for study, which has led us to organize these image files into a manageable database that affords easy search, retrieval and visual comparison. The interface to the database is a member of a family of rich-prospect browsers developed over time for a wide range of purposes (Ruecker et al., 2011). This interface has the advantage that it encourages visual comparison across different examples based on meta-data. A user can, for example, see all the images that show running headers or some other feature.
Authors: Siemens, Ray, with Teresa Dobson, Stan Ruecker, Richard Cunningham, Alan Galey, Claire W... more Authors: Siemens, Ray, with Teresa Dobson, Stan Ruecker, Richard Cunningham, Alan Galey, Claire Warwick, and Lynne Siemens, with Michael Best, Melanie Chernyk, Wendy Duff, Julia Flanders, David Gants, Bertrand Gervais, Karon MacLean, Steve Ramsay, Geoffrey Rockwell, Susan Schreibman, Colin Swindells, Christian Vandendorpe, Lynn Copeland, John Willinsky, Vika Zafrin, the HCI-Book Consultative Group and the INKE Research Group
This paper proposes a strategy for implementing an experimental interface prototype by analyzing ... more This paper proposes a strategy for implementing an experimental interface prototype by analyzing the development of Searchling, an experimental visual interface produced at the University of Alberta. Using Searchling as a lens, the paper categorizes the role of each contributor in the implementation process, defines the ideal conditions for implementation, and outlines the steps taken by the Searchling team to make implementation progress when conditions were less than ideal.
O objetivo deste estudo foi testar o novo modelo de livro Leitura Distribuída comidosos. O experi... more O objetivo deste estudo foi testar o novo modelo de livro Leitura Distribuída comidosos. O experimento avaliou como a leitura em dupla pode aumentar a sensação de place attachment, promovendo a interação e a proximidade entre eles. Este trabalho caracteriza-se como um estudo exploratório qualitativo. Foram observados quatro tipos de duplas de idosos: duas duplas de moradoras de ILPI, um casal, uma dupla de amigos e uma dupla de desconhecidos. Os resultados mostraram que a sensação de place attachment relacionada com os laços de amizade pôde ser experimentada a cada sessão dessa leitura. Após o primeiro encontro, os participantes tendem a ficar mais à vontade e veem nesta atividade uma nova forma de passar o tempo com o outro. Todavia, é uma prática que para funcionar de forma prazerosa demanda afinidade entre as pessoas que compõe a dupla e o interesse em comum pela narrativa escolhida.Palavras-chave: design, leitura em voz alta, lazer, idosos.
In this article, we discuss the various ways in which the experiments we have been doing within t... more In this article, we discuss the various ways in which the experiments we have been doing within the INKE Interface Design team and elsewhere are predicated on the availability of “digital apparatus” – various forms of metadata that can be made consistently available. These include structural, procedural, and semantic markup, digital indexes, textual variants, annotations, regularized citations, and taxonomies of references, to name a few. While some affordances are agnostic to the very existence of metadata, in some crucial instances the metadata is essential. The question we hope to address in these cases is the extent to which the new affordances are actually of sufficient potential benefit to the community to warrant being produced and maintained.
Academic prototyping, like ethnography or bench studies, is a way of producing new knowledge abou... more Academic prototyping, like ethnography or bench studies, is a way of producing new knowledge about an idea. It can result in a kind of evidence that can be used to strengthen or weaken an argument. A prototype is an artifact, but it is not just an artifact; it may be a phase in product development, but it is not necessarily so. It is also, and perhaps more importantly, a phase in a critical process. In fact, it is perhaps better to speak of academic prototyping, rather than of academic prototypes. In this article, as an example, we discuss the Dynamic Table of Contexts, an academic prototyping project that has served for more than 10 years as a focus of ideas about what it means to remediate and improve on a venerable print tradition.
The Digital Humanities has a long and successful history of creating, using, and maintaining DH c... more The Digital Humanities has a long and successful history of creating, using, and maintaining DH centers, as evidenced by the vast network of CentreNet ( https://dhcenternet.org/). Further, some of the most successful centers are constantly evolving in form and function. In this presentation, we propose that the next phase in the evolution of the DH center may involve a related phenomenon from the design research community, call the Living Lab. The European Network of Living Labs describes them as dedicated to open forms of design for social good: " Living Labs (LLs) are defined as user-centred, open innovation ecosystems based on systematic user co-creation approach, integrating research and innovation processes in real life communities and settings. " Current member labs deal with topics from health and well-being (52%) to mobility (14%), but there are few that focus on issues central to DH, such as open social scholarship. We argue that incorporating more DH into the Living Labs network, and more Living Lab into DH centres, would benefit everyone involved. Specifically, DH labs could benefit from Living Labs' experience with complex problems, and Living Labs could benefit from DH centres' experience producing research.
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Papers by Stan Ruecker