The SIGCAS Making a Difference Award is given annually to an individual nationally recognized for work related to the interaction of computers and society. The recipient is a leader in promoting awareness of ethical and social issues in computing. The recipients of this award and the award itself encourage responsible action by computer professionals.

The inscription on Professor Shneiderman's award reads: "For his courageous commitment to the ideal that computer systems should always be designed to empower the individual and improve the quality of life"

For over 25 years Ben Shneiderman has promoted a human-centered approach to computer science by his prolific writing, and lecturing. He was the Founding Director (1983-2000) of the Univ. of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, where he is Professor of Computer Science, and a Member of the Institutes of Advanced Computer Studies and of Systems Research.

Ben is a prolific author of more than 200 papers, a frequent keynote speaker (including SIGCAS conferences), and an internationally known consultant. His concern for diverse user communities, information policy, and human values are integrated into many of his papers, lectures, and books. His landmark book, Software Psychology (1980) made the world aware of the human aspects of computing and promoted a scientific approach to their study. He built on this with his internationally acclaimed, award-winning book Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (1986, 3rd ed. 1998) that shaped the field for undergraduates, graduates, researchers, and practitioners across the globe.

Ben described the nuances of direct manipulation in a seminal paper (1983), and applied it to mouseable text links, called 'embedded menus', now known as 'hot links' on the Web. This concept, which dramatically expands the accessibility of information technologies, was first explored in The Interactive Encyclopedia System (1983). These techniques were commercialized in Hyperties (Cognetics Corp.), which was used to produce the Communications of the ACM (July 1988), museum exhibits, electronic books, home systems, and public kiosks. Later achievements expanded the direct manipulation theme with touchscreen applications and dynamic queries in ingenious information visualizations: space-filling treemaps (smartmoney.com), temporal data (LifeLines), multidimensional data (spotfire.com), and PhotoFinder.

His community service includes nine journal editorial boards and co-founding the first Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (1982). He has been a key player in bridging technology and social concerns by initiating and chairing conferences such as the Society and the Future of Computing (1995), the ACM Policy 1998, and the ACM Conference on Universal Usability(2000). Ben has been elected as an ACM (1997) and AAAS (2001) Fellow and has received an honorary doctorate from the Univ. of Guelph, Ontario, Canada(1996).