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HCI in Computing: The Past, Present and

HCI in computing: the past, present and future! computing is an enormously vibrant field, it continues to evolve. This paper discusses the contributions of HCI to computing and the resulting technologies and systems that have evolved and that could evolve.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
195 views10 pages

HCI in Computing: The Past, Present and

HCI in computing: the past, present and future! computing is an enormously vibrant field, it continues to evolve. This paper discusses the contributions of HCI to computing and the resulting technologies and systems that have evolved and that could evolve.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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HCI in computing: The past, present and future!

HCI in computing: the past, present and future!

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram


Masters in Human-Computer Interaction
Department of Information Technology
Rochester Institute of Technology

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram


HCI in computing: The past, present and future! 2

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

systems that have evolved and that could evolve.

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.

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram


HCI in computing: The past, present and future! 3

According to Greenberg (1997), “Human-computer interaction (HCI) is a discipline concerned

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.

Thus, Human Computer interaction was born.

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

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram


HCI in computing: The past, present and future! 4

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;

Figure 1: Apple Macintosh OS vs. Apple GS/OS

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

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram


HCI in computing: The past, present and future! 5

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

Lifecycle in their product development lifecycle.

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

other fields and is making its impact felt!

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

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram


HCI in computing: The past, present and future! 6

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.

Figure 2: Amazon.com in 1999 and 2009 (Archive.org, 2009)

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram


HCI in computing: The past, present and future! 7

Devices and Applications

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

implications of constant engagement with computing. Ubicomp is an evolving topic in

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

interfaces, context sensitive devices and applications, privacy and security.

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.

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram


HCI in computing: The past, present and future! 8

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

could be utilized in a collaborative setting, which motivate such an exploration. As an example, a

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

body parts to diagnose a patient.

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

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram


HCI in computing: The past, present and future! 9

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

of “User Experience”, as it makes the life of a user easier.

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

Porta and Matteo Turina, 2008). In this technique, letters are

drawn through sequences of eye fixations on screen, called

hotspots, as shown in the figure.

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.

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram


HCI in computing: The past, present and future! 10

REFERENCES

Archive.org (2009). Amazon.com on the WayBackMachine, retrieved on 02/20/09 from


http://web.archive.org/web/19990125093156/http://www.amazon.com/
Greenberg (1997). A Taxonomy of Human Computer Interaction, retrieved on 02/19/09 from
http://grouplab.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/saul/hci_topics/taxonomy.html
Geoffrey Tien and Stella Atkins (2008). Improving hands-free menu selection using eyegaze
glances and fixations, Proceedings of the 2008 symposium on Eye tracking research &
applications, Savannah, Georgia, March.
Marco Porta and Matteo Turina (2008). Eye-S: a Full-Screen Input Modality for Pure Eye-based
Communication, Proceedings of the 2008 symposium on Eye tracking research &
applications, Savannah, Georgia, March.
Peltonen et al. (2008). "It's Mine, Don't Touch!": Interactions at a Large Multi-Touch Display in
a City Centre, Proceedings of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human
factors in computing systems, Florence, Italy, April.
Scott B. Huffman, Michael Hochster (2007). How well does Result Relevance Predict Session
Satisfaction? Proceedings of the 30th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on
Research and development in information retrieval, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July.
Siegfried Treu (1976). Implications of being “User-Oriented”, Proceedings of the
ACM/SIGGRAPH workshop on User-oriented design of interactive graphics systems,
Pittsburgh, PA, October.
Tovi Grossman, Ravin Balakrishnan (2008). Collaborative Interaction with Volumetric Displays,
Proceedings of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in
computing systems, Florence, Italy, April.
Wikipedia (2009a). History of the graphical user interface, retrieved on 02/19/09 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_GUI
Wikipedia (2009b). Mashup (web application hybrid), retrieved on 02/21/09 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)

Sree Anirudh J Bhandaram

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