Keynotes
Direct Manipulation vs. Interface Agents: The Debate Continues
Wednesday, November 4 · 11:00 AM–12:30 PM · Columbus
In the late 1990s, Pattie Maes and Ben Shneiderman helped articulate two influential visions for the future of human-computer interaction. Maes advanced the case for interface agents: systems that could learn from users, personalize interaction, reduce information overload, and act on a user’s behalf when appropriate. Shneiderman championed direct manipulation: interfaces grounded in visible objects, rapid feedback, reversible actions, predictability, and a strong sense of user control. Their exchange helped define a lasting design question for HCI: how should interactive systems balance agency vs. control. Should good interfaces let people act directly on visible objects, or should they delegate work to systems that infer goals? That question now appears in recommender systems, intelligent assistants, notification filters, mixed-initiative tools, explainable AI, and modern AI agents.
The practical outcome was not that one side “won.” Direct manipulation remained foundational for GUIs, touch interfaces, creative tools, and dashboards. Maes’s agent vision also became real, but often under different names: personalization, collaborative filtering, recommender systems, context-aware assistance, and AI copilots. HCI absorbed the debate as a design constraint: automation is useful, but it needs transparency, controllability, calibration of trust, and graceful recovery from errors.
At UIST 2026 in Detroit, Maes and Shneiderman return to this conversation in a keynote debate moderated by Cliff Lampe. What was once a debate about software agents and graphical interfaces now sits at the center of contemporary interaction design, as generative AI systems, autonomous agents, copilots, recommender systems, and mixed-initiative tools reshape how people work with computers. Together, they will revisit the original arguments, reflect on how these ideas have evolved, and examine what today’s AI-infused interfaces demand from designers, researchers, and system builders. This keynote invites the UIST community to reconsider how we should balance automation with agency, personalization with transparency, and delegation with human control in the next generation of interactive systems.
Speaker
Pattie Maes
Germeshausen Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab
Pattie Maes is the Germeshausen Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab, where she works at the intersection of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence and codirects the Lab's Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) research program. She pioneered the concept of software agents in the 1990s and remains focused on how computer systems might augment people: supporting memory, learning, decision making, health, and wellbeing. She has published over 500 peer-reviewed articles and edited four books. Her honors include the ACM Lifetime Achievement Award in Human-Computer Interaction (2025), the AAAI Classic Paper Award (2012), and honorary doctorates from Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Open Universiteit. She has also co-founded several venture-backed companies, including Firefly Networks (acquired by Microsoft) and Tulip.
Speaker
Ben Shneiderman
Emeritus Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland
Ben Shneiderman is an Emeritus Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, where he founded the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (1983–2000). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the ACM, AAAS, and the National Academy of Inventors, and has received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award, the IEEE Visualization Career Award, and honorary doctorates from six universities. His contributions include direct manipulation, the highlighted textual link that became part of Hyperties, a precursor to the web, touchscreen keyboards, dynamic query sliders, and treemaps. His books include Leonardo's Laptop (2002), Designing the User Interface (6th ed., 2016) and its "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design," and Human-Centered AI (2022).
Moderator
Cliff Lampe
Professor of Information, University of Michigan School of Information
Cliff Lampe is a professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. Previously, he spent six years as an assistant professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University. He researches the social and technical structures of large scale technology mediated communication, working with sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, Slashdot and Everything2. He has also been involved in the creation of multiple social media and online community projects, usually designed to enable collective action. One of Cliff's core values is combining top quality research with community engagement.
A Tentative Mea Culpa: A Look Backwards to Help the Next Generation of CSCW Researchers
Thursday, November 5 · 3:30 PM–4:30 PM · Columbus
In this talk, I will survey two research efforts of mine that began with best intentions, but slipped sideways into having problematic (if not downright negative) effects in the world. I will discuss my activities in the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) as part of a World Wide Web effort and my activities in expertise sharing.
I do this partially as a mea culpa, but also to show the considerable caution that researchers must try to have. I will also briefly consider the role of regulation and governance in the United States as a way to solve some of the issues I raise. It has particular salience, given the recent debates about AI.
Speaker
Mark Ackerman
Professor Emeritus, School of Information and Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan
Mark Ackerman is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Information and in Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan. He likes to call himself an "active emeritus." Before officially retiring last summer, he was the George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and a Professor in the School of Information and in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with additional appointments in Learning Health Sciences and Science, Technology, and Society. His major research area is Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), primarily Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). He has published widely in HCI and CSCW, investigating expertise sharing (including misinformation), collaborative information access, online knowledge communities, medical settings, and pervasive environments. Mark is a member of the CHI Academy (HCI Fellow) and an ACM Fellow.
Previously, Mark was a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, and a research scientist at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (now CSAIL). Before becoming an academic, Mark led the development of the first home banking system, had three Billboard Top-10 games for the Atari 2600, and worked on the X Window System's first user-interface widget set. Mark has degrees from the University of Chicago, Ohio State, and MIT.