A fast, funny 'It's behind you!' tale with a rollicking rhyming text and bold, bright illustrations. Mouse was feeling fabulous. The sky was blue and bright. The day was warm and wonderful, with not a cat in sight... Mouse sets off on his perfect day blissfully unaware (in the tradition of all the best cat-and-mouse capers) that he is being followed every step of the way. He imagines he's at the circus, skydiving, discovering priceless treasure... And the best bit? There's not a cat in sight. Or is there...? Children will delight at being one step ahead of all the characters in this riotous tale, featuring an irresistible refrain, delightfully skilful rhyming text by Frances Stickley, and the debut picture book illustrations from exciting new artist Eamonn O'Neill.

A fast, funny 'It's behind you!' tale with a rollicking rhyming text and bold, bright illustrations. Mouse was feeling fabulous. The sky was blue and bright. The day was warm and wonderful, with not a cat in sight... Mouse sets off on his perfect day blissfully unaware (in the tradition of all the best cat-and-mouse capers) that he is being followed every step of the way. He imagines he's at the circus, skydiving, discovering priceless treasure... And the best bit? There's not a cat in sight. Or is there...? Children will delight at being one step ahead of all the characters in this riotous tale, featuring an irresistible refrain, delightfully skilful rhyming text by Frances Stickley, and the debut picture book illustrations from exciting new artist Eamonn O'Neill.

The topic of the research reported here is direct user participation in the task-based development of interactive software systems. Building usable software demands understanding and supporting users and their tasks. Users are a primary source of usability requirements and knowledge, since users can be expected to have intimate and extensive knowledge of themselves, their tasks and their working environment. Task analysis approaches to software development encourage a focus on supporting users and their tasks while participatory design approaches encourage users' direct, active contributions to software development work. However, participatory design approaches often concentrate their efforts on design activities rather than on wider system development activities, while task analysis approaches generally lack active user participation beyond initial data gathering. This research attempts an integration of the strengths of task analysis and user participation within an overall software development process. This work also presents detailed empirical and theoretical analyses of what it is for users and developers to cooperate, of the nature of user-developer interaction in participatory settings. Furthermore, it makes operational and assesses the effectiveness of user participation in development and the impact of user-developer cooperation on the resulting software product. The research addressed these issues through the development and application of an approach to task based participatory development in two real world development projects. In this integrated approach, the respective strengths of task analysis and participatory design methods complemented each other's weaker aspects.

Mobile context-awareness is a popular research trend in the field of ubiquitous computing. Advances in mobile device sensory hardware and the rise of 'virtual' sensors such as web application programming interfaces (APIs) mean that the mobile user is exposed to a vast range of data that can be used for new advanced applications. Mobile Context Awareness presents work from industrial and academic researchers, focusing on novel methods of context acquisition in the mobile environment - particularly through the use of physical and virtual sensors - along with research into new applications utilising this context. In addition, the book provides insights into the technical and usability challenges involved in mobile context-awareness, as well as observations on current and future trends in the field.

This volume contains the full papers presented at HCI 2003, the 17th Annual Conference of the British HCI Group, a specialist group of the British Computer Society. The conference has become the premier annual conference on Human-Computer Interaction in Europe. Attracting researchers, practitioners, educators and users from all over the world, with interests in many facets of human-computer interaction, usability and interactive systems, these published proceedings form an important part of the archive of HCI research. As advances in computing and communications technologies extend the human-computer interface beyond the desktop and into our clothes, streets and buildings, mobile and pervasive applications provide exciting challenges and opportunities. People and Computers XVII - Designing for Society, addresses the main areas of HCI research while focusing on its position and usage within today’s society. The papers raise and discuss numerous questions, such as: · How do we design for usability when human-computer interaction is dispersed and interwoven throughout our environment? · How can we understand and account for the web of influences amongst society, environment and technology? · How do we interact successfully with and through devices and networks with many form factors? · And, how do we design these devices?

User-Developer Cooperation in Software Development brings together the strengths of task analysis and user participation within an overall software development process, and presents a detailed observation and theoretical analysis of what it is for users and developers to cooperate, and the nature of user-developer interaction. Eamonn O'Neill deals with these issues through the development and application of an approach to task-based participatory development in two real world development projects, and discusses the strengths of task analysis and participatory design methods, and how they complement each other's weaker aspects.