What is Human Computer Interaction Anyway?

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is an area of study concerned with you and how you interect with your computer, or any other computer for that matter, or anything technology related... An important idea at the heart of HCI is affordance. Afordance is simple what you bring to the table, or screen, when you site down to a computer. What is your skill set? Your experience? Your knowledge?

The study of HCI came of age in the early 1990's as the World Wide Web, emailing, and Windows 95 emerged as a new direction for technology interfacing.

"HCI was a major factor at the Xerox Park Research Project in the late 1970s, even if the people involved weren’t quite sure initially what HCI was (or the monumental impact it would ultimately have). Those researchers made pioneering efforts studying how people interacted with technology. They then redesigned software (and computers) to improve the “computing experience,” boosting productivity. Mouse technology and “desktops” with icons (primitive as they were compared to today’s standards) made it easier for people to work with technology that was soon to change the computing landscape of our daily lives in the 1980s." (IconoLogic, 2006, pg 2)

There are a few issues with HCI and I will get into those in future blogs. I want to leave with a short and by no means complete, list of HCI names to know.

Douglas Engelbart – computer mouse
Alan Kay – window interfaces and graphic interfaces
Steven Mann
Ted Nelson – hypertex
Jakob Nielsen – user interface
Jef Raskin – Macintosh
Ivan Sutherland – graphical user interface
Donald Norman – psychologist – HCI interface design
Shneiderman – Principles of HCI – Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design

Brad out...