This book records the very first Working Conference of the newly established IFIP Working Group on Human-Work Interaction Design, which was hosted by the University of Madeira in 2006. The theme of the conference was on synthesizing work analysis and design sketching, with a particular focus on how to read design sketches within different approaches to analysis and design of human-work interaction. Authors were encouraged to submit papers about design sketches - for interfaces, for organizations of work etc. - that they themselves had worked on. During the conference, they presented the lessons they had learnt from the design and evaluation process, citing reasons for why the designs worked or why they did not work. Researchers, designers and analysts in this way confronted concrete design problems in complex work domains and used this unique opportunity to share their own design problems and solutions with the community. To successfully practice and do research within Human - Work Interaction Design requires a high level of personal skill, which the conference aimed at by confronting designers and work analysts and those whose research is both analysis and design. They were asked to collaborate in small groups about analysis and solutions to a common design problem.

The IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC) is one of the most important conferences in the area of computer science and a number of related Human and Social Science disciplines at the worldwide level and it has a federated structure, which takes into account the rapidly growing and expanding interests in this area. Human-Computer Interaction is now a mature and still dynamically evolving part of this area, which is represented in IFIP by the Technical Committee 13 on HCI. We are convinced that in this edition of WCC, which takes place for the first time in Italy, it will be interesting and useful to have a Symposium on Human- Computer Interaction in order to present and discuss a number of contributions in this field. There has been increasing awareness among designers of interactive systems of the importance of designing for usability, but we are still far from having products that are really usable, and usability can mean different things depending on the application domain. We are all aware that too many users of current technology feel often frustrated because computer systems are not compatible with their abilities and needs with existing work practices. As designers of tomorrow technology, we have the responsibility of creating computer artefacts that would permit better user experience with the various computing devices, so that users may enjoy more satisfying experiences with information and communications technologies.

The IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC) is one of the most important conferences in the area of computer science at the worldwide level and it has a federated structure, which takes into account the rapidly growing and expanding interests in this area. Informatics is rapidly changing and becoming more and more connected to a number of human and social science disciplines. Human-computer interaction is now a mature and still dynamically evolving part of this area, which is represented in IFIP by the Technical Committee 13 on HCI. In this WCC edition it was interesting and useful to have again a Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction in order to p- sent and discuss a number of contributions in this field. There has been increasing awareness among designers of interactive systems of the importance of designing for usability, but we are still far from having products that are really usable, and usability can mean different things depending on the app- cation domain. We are all aware that too many users of current technology often feel frustrated because computer systems are not compatible with their abilities and needs in existing work practices. As designers of tomorrow's technology, we have the - sponsibility of creating computer artifacts that would permit better user experience with the various computing devices, so that users may enjoy more satisfying expe- ences with information and communications technologies.

The IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC) is one of the most important conferences in the area of computer science and a number of related Human and Social Science disciplines at the worldwide level and it has a federated structure, which takes into account the rapidly growing and expanding interests in this area. Human-Computer Interaction is now a mature and still dynamically evolving part of this area, which is represented in IFIP by the Technical Committee 13 on HCI. We are convinced that in this edition of WCC, which takes place for the first time in Italy, it will be interesting and useful to have a Symposium on Human- Computer Interaction in order to present and discuss a number of contributions in this field. There has been increasing awareness among designers of interactive systems of the importance of designing for usability, but we are still far from having products that are really usable, and usability can mean different things depending on the application domain. We are all aware that too many users of current technology feel often frustrated because computer systems are not compatible with their abilities and needs with existing work practices. As designers of tomorrow technology, we have the responsibility of creating computer artefacts that would permit better user experience with the various computing devices, so that users may enjoy more satisfying experiences with information and communications technologies.

This book records the very first Working Conference of the newly established IFIP Working Group on Human-Work Interaction Design, which was hosted by the University of Madeira in 2006. The theme of the conference was on synthesizing work analysis and design sketching, with a particular focus on how to read design sketches within different approaches to analysis and design of human-work interaction. Authors were encouraged to submit papers about design sketches - for interfaces, for organizations of work etc. - that they themselves had worked on. During the conference, they presented the lessons they had learnt from the design and evaluation process, citing reasons for why the designs worked or why they did not work. Researchers, designers and analysts in this way confronted concrete design problems in complex work domains and used this unique opportunity to share their own design problems and solutions with the community. To successfully practice and do research within Human - Work Interaction Design requires a high level of personal skill, which the conference aimed at by confronting designers and work analysts and those whose research is both analysis and design. They were asked to collaborate in small groups about analysis and solutions to a common design problem.