HCI in Computing: The Past, Present and
HCI in Computing: The Past, Present and
ABSTRACT
Computing is an enormously vibrant field, it continues to evolve at an amazing pace and we have
come a long way from elementary and rugged systems. We now have systems, devices and
interfaces that are so advanced and user friendly that they blend themselves into our lifestyles
and become an essential part of what we are! Computers are integral to our culture and are a vital
engine to world’s economic growth. We cannot imagine life without these wondrous computing
devices which enable us in most of our daily tasks. From bulky room-sized computers with
punch cards to miniature touch screen handhelds, the field of computing has evolved and
improved drastically with human factors being a critical element of this course of change! The
contributions of HCI to computing are invaluable, including a host of things like man-machine
interactions, human factors, ergonomics, cybernetics, usability and aesthetics too! The
applications of HCI have changed systems for the better and as a result, we see completely
revamped systems, web sites, device interfaces and novel interaction devices. This paper
discusses the contributions of HCI to the field of computing and the resulting technologies and
INTRODUCTION
Computers and computing devices contribute to critical parts of society, to educate children, in
the medical field, in government, in the forces, to control space missions, to control complex
machines, in entertainment and in many more ways than one can think about. Humans have their
limitations and the interactions between computers and humans are complex. An error on the
part of a human or a computer costs a lot in terms of time and money, so the study and
application of HCI is impending because it addresses human interests and economic interests.
with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use,
and with the study of the major phenomena surrounding them”. In the past, the attitude of a
developer towards creating systems and application was that the goal of creating the system was
limited to serve the purpose of the specified requirements, that is, the scope of an application was
merely to satisfy the functional needs of the user. There was no concern for the usability of the
system or the human factors involved in the interactions with the system.
THE PAST
The desire to build more effective weapons during World War II inspired a heightened interest in
the study of interaction between humans and machines. In 1949, the Ergonomics research society
was established, the main concern of which was the physical characteristics of machines and
systems, and their effect on user performance. As the use of computers started increasing, more
and more researchers began to concentrate on the interactions between people and computers.
Developers started taking interest in the interaction between man and machine, A mention of the
user and usability can be found in Siegfried Treu (1976): “In spite of that (oversimplified)
distinction between pragmatists and idealists, apparent unanimity was implied by the
participants on the following: user orientation in interactive graphics systems has become a
significant objective deserving high-priority attention, and graphic system designers need
various kinds of assistance”. The initial years were dedicated to defining various aspects of the
Human Computer interactions and to address the most basic needs of a system. The first website
was built way back in August, 1991, which had an explanation of the WWW. Most of the early
applications were text based or command line applications with a basic text input. The very first
Graphical User Interface was produced by Doug Englebart, an employee of the Stanford
Research Institute in 1965; it was called “oNLine System (NLS)”. “The NLS had a mouse-driven
cursor and multiple windows used to work on hypertext” (Wikipedia, 2009a). Over a period of
time, research was done based on initial findings of Englebart and Apple came up with the first
commercially successful product, the Macintosh, adapted from the work done at Xerox PARC.
In a period of 2 years, Apple came up with the GS/OS desktop, with advanced graphic
capabilities;
The Macintosh offered 3 breakthroughs, integrated features, integrated GUI and it created a User
Interface standard that developers had to follow, this lead to consistency between applications
which reduced the learning curve for new applications and was less burdening for the user
making it user friendly and also part of a reason why the Mac was such a success. Although
Mac’s were expensive, people didn’t mind paying more for less for one single reason, Macs were
easier to use! Companies hesitated to spend anything on usability earlier, but over the years,
investing on usability has been proven to be cheaper than additional costs incurred due to
maintenance. Further research led to several web standards being developed, which included the
user as one of the focal points. Usability experts like Dr. Jakob Nielsen, Ben Shneiderman
among other advocated several design guidelines and advice on how to involve the user in the
development lifecycle, and with further research and input, concepts like the Usability Engineer
Lifecycle evolved! In the recent past, companies have started adopting the Usability Engineering
THE PRESENT
Today, we have a lot of research done on usability and other HCI concepts and we have several
key concepts such as universal usability, usability approach to design, the usability engineering
lifecycle and human factors & ergonomics. Research is conducted on various areas like Eye
tracking, touch interactions, gesture based interactions, multitouch interfaces and many more
areas of specialization. HCI has now evolved into a huge wide field, branching out into several
Interfaces
An example of an amazing interface that can be built (and has been) is CityWall, a large multi-
touch display installed in a mall in Helsinki, Finland. Peltonen et al. (2008) report their
observations of social interaction and provide first insights into how users approach, participate
and interact on a multitouch display in a public space. This paper shows how Human-Computer
interaction can facilitate human-human interaction with ease. It also proves how modern
technological advances have made it possible for interfaces such as this facilitate collaboration
and demonstrates a perfect example of a tangible user interface that can be actualized.
Websites
From WWW to Web2.0, the industry has proved that usability is serious business. More and
more companies now realize the value that usability adds to their websites and helps them stay in
the picture. The internet and e-business has evolved profusely and websites today are more
usable thanks to various technologies like eye tracking that are used to strategically place
elements on a web page so that its easier for the customer to navigate and use. Laura Ruel and
Nora Paul (2007) take an example of Jakob Nielsen’s eye tracking research study to show how
beneficial eye tracking tests can be. The article details an eye tracking test conducted on a news
article website and comes out with a revised version of the website based on a test conducted
with 255 people. The test confirmed improvement in several major factors like increased
comprehension and the “F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content”, after editing the website,
another test proved that the attention had indeed drastically increased in the new version.
Companies like Apple, Xerox, Kodak, Yahoo and Google have usability groups which strive to
provide the user the best experience while using their products and applications. These
companies currently follow the user centered design approach and employ usability specialists to
achieve this. Kodak has a long history of design and usability. In 1960, Kodak established one of
the oldest Human Factors labs in the United States. Xerox’s PARC (Palo Alto Research Center,
Inc.) has been responsible for the earliest developments of the graphical user interface (GUI) and
currently conducts research on ubiquitous computing and user interface design among other
technologies. Scott B. Huffman and Michael Hochster (2007) of Google, Inc. explore how well
result relevance predicts user satisfaction. They’ve taken one step ahead and have actually
conducted a research to assess how well users are satisfied by relevant search results!
Ubicomp
Ubiquitous Computing refers to computing being integrated into everyday objects and activities,
a user may not necessarily even be aware that they’re doing so. Currently, we just realize the
computing and HCI. Many devices we use daily are already equipped with computers and
processors that we don’t consciously know about. Current key themes in ubicomp are user
THE FUTURE
It is hard to predict what we might have in the future, but it sure is going to be immersed in
technology! This section provides details on what devices and technologies we might expect in
the future.
Interfaces
Tovi Grossman, Ravin Balakrishnan (2008) present a prototype collaborative 3D model viewing
application, a volumetric display system. They “envision scenarios where a volumetric display
group of students could examine a virtual model of an anatomy specimen which they were
studying in a laboratory. The students could work together to identify critical areas of the
structure, label areas which may be anomalous, and perform various browsing operations to
reveal hidden features”. Volumetric displays improve depth perception and shape recognition
because they provide imagery in true 3D space. What we saw as Science Fiction can today be
built, albeit at a high price. This completely changes the way of visualizing 3d objects and can
provide to be a boon to the medical field, with applications such as visualization of important
Websites
Currently, a very interesting concept that’s evolving on the WWW is a “mashup”. According to
Wikipedia (2009b), “In web development, a mashup is a Web application that combines data
from one or more sources into a single integrated tool. The term Mashup implies easy, fast
integration, frequently done by access to open APIs and data sources to produce results that
were not the original goal of the data owners”. An example of a mashup would be a website that
pulls in updates from various social networking sites a user subscribes to and present it in a
single page without the user having to visit each of those sites. This makes it very easy for a user
as he can eliminate the need to visit multiple websites to see his updates. An example mashup is
Acamin (http://www.acamin.com), which is a simple file sharing tool for Facebook, Twitter and
LinkedIn that offers users a convenient and ethical way of sharing files. (Wikipedia, 2009b). In
the future, we might see several such mashups emerging which would aggregate data from
several websites together for the convenience of the user; this would definitely serve the purpose
Interactions
Of late, there has been a lot of groundbreaking research conducted on eye tracking. In the future,
we can implement novel interactions like Eye input (Marco Porta and Matteo Turina, 2008),
hands-free menu selection (Geoffrey Tien and Stella Atkins, 2008) and assessing usability of
websites and applications using eye tracking. Eye based input in the form of Eye typing can be a
godsend to people who are partially or completely paralyzed and cannot even speak but are
usually able to freely move their eyes, which becomes their only communication channel (Marco
CONCLUSION
The topics discussed in this paper are a very small part of the contributions of HCI to the field of
computing. There have been so many breakthroughs in technology that the life of a user can be
made much simpler. Through HCI and its related fields, interaction between humans is now
facilitated, making communicating better and overcoming hurdles. With concepts such as
rooomware, physical obstructions can be overcome too! Research from several of the Special
Interest Groups can be put to a good use by building systems and applications that not only
enable normal users, but also the disabled. Eye tracking has shown promising results and can be
implemented for noble causes like enabling the physically impaired to use computers.
REFERENCES