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The verbal interfaces of current databases are not well suited for searches based on taste, intuition, or complexity (such as selecting a wine, a c&w, or a product with many attributes). MDS-Interactive is a visual interaction method, based on multidimensional scaling (MD'S), where people manipulate a set of sample objects to navigate through a large collection. In the development of MDSInteractive, attention was given to the balance of constraint and freedom, of inspiration and information, of verbal and visual interaction styles. We discuss the basic ideas of our technique, its relation to ecological display theory, and experiences with a prototype interface for a ccmsumer recommendation service. QUERYING DATABASESIn the information society, making choices on the basis of complex information is a frequent task. TV guides list prograrmnes on dozens of stations, supermarkets and restaurants offer a wide variety of wines, e-commerce sites offer millions of books, music CD's, toys, furniture, etc. Especially on the internet, catalogues are made available for almost every c&gay of product.Currently, users can search such databases by using text-based search engines that allow them to specify combinati&s of desired attributes. These verbal interaction methods work well when the user's queries can be explicitly formulated in terms of attribute values. Users of scientific libraries can usually phrase their questions in terms of the year of publication, the name of the author, and explicit jargon words which should or should not appear in the title or abstract.However, text-based search engines are less helpful when the search criteria are vague, or complex, or the criteria involve taste and subjective appreciation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been highlighted as a design material in the HCI community. This acknowledgement is a call for interaction designers to consider intelligence as a resource for design. While this view is valid and well-grounded, it brings with it a need to better understand how intelligence as a design material can be used in formgiving practices. This chapter seeks to address this need by suggesting a new approach that integrates AI in the designer's toolkit. This approach considers intelligence as being part of, and expressed through, an object's character, hereby integrating artificial intelligence into a product's form. We describe and discuss this approach by presenting and reflecting on our experiences in a design course where students were asked to give form to intelligent everyday objects in three iterative design cycles. We discuss the implications of our approach and findings within the frame of third wave HCI.

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Abstract— To successfully design and engineer solutions for today’s and tomorrow’s rapidly changing and expanding global contexts, in which people are confronted with new opportunities and challenges each day, engineering programs should be training their students to become broad based professionals, who are aware of the actual needs, values and behaviors of the people that use their solutions in their everyday life, work or play. This article argues that in order to built such an awareness, engineering students should acquire direct, first-hand experiences of real people in real contexts. It presents a number of techniques that can be used to gain such experiences. Each technique is briefly described and illustrated with examples from our Industrial Design Engineering program. Knowledge, skills and attitude that are acquired through the use of the techniques are listed and reflected upon. Finally, our experiences with implementing the techniques into our program are discussed in view of their relevance for other engineering programs

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