iSchool Professor Receives Microsoft Grant

AUSTIN, TX. University of Texas at Austin School of Information Associate Professor, Randolph Bias has been awarded $100,000 to study the effects of Microsoft ClearType on user performance in programming tasks. ClearType is a font-rendering technology designed to make on-screen text easier to read. Researchers at the School of Information have been examining the usability of this technology, and preliminary results suggest ClearType can significantly improve reading speeds for electronic text. The new grant will extend this research into more complex task domains and explore ClearType's effects on the performance of software programmers.

Dr. Bias joined the School of Information faculty in January of this year, after spending over 20 years in industry as a usability specialist with AT&T Bell Labs, IBM, BMC Software, and finally a consulting firm that he co-founded. While in industry, Bias published prolifically on topics such as usability engineering methods, and co-edited Cost-Justifying Usability (Bias & Mayhew, 1994), a book characterized by one reviewer as "the bible for usability practitioners." Dean Dillon stated: "I am delighted that Microsoft Research has continued to support our work in this manner. This award is further testimony to the research capability of faculty at the iSchool and the importance of user experience research to digital document design."