Human Computer Interaction Ch-1 Introduction 2011 E.C.

Chapter One: Introduction

1.1. Definition
HCI in the large is an interdisciplinary area. It is emerging as a specialty concern within several
disciplines, each with different emphases: computer science (application design and engineering
of human interfaces), psychology (the application of theories of cognitive processes and the
empirical analysis of user behavior), sociology and anthropology (interactions between
technology, work, and organization), and industrial design (interactive products).
There are a number of definitions and meanings for HCI because it is highly related (concerned
with) the relation between Human (the user of the computer) and the Computer (the machine).
However there is a general definition for HCI. Human-computer interaction (HCI) is the study of
how people design, implement, and use interactive computer systems and how computers affect
individuals, organizations, and society.
Other Definitions of HCI: -
HCI (human-computer interaction) is the study of how people interact with computers
and to what extent computers are or are not developed for successful interaction with
human beings.
Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is about designing a computer system that supports
people so that they can carry out their activities productively and safely.
HCI is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation, and implementation of
interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena
surrounding them.
HCI is concerned with the design of computer systems that are safe, efficient, easy, and
enjoyable to use as well as functional.
HCI is concerned not only with how present input and output technologies affect
interaction, but also with the consequences of new techniques such as speech recognition
and generation (input and output).
HCI is a discipline focusing on design, evaluation, and implementation of interactive
computer systems.
The term Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) was adopted in the mid-1980s as a means of
describing this new field of study. This term acknowledged that the focus of interest was broader

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 Human Computer Interaction Ch-1 Introduction 2011 E.C.

than just the design of the interface and was concerned with all those aspects that relate to the
interaction between users and computers.
A significant number of major corporations and academic institutions now study HCI.
Historically and with some exceptions, computer system developers have not paid much
attention to computer ease-of-use. Many computer users today would argue that computer
makers are still not paying enough attention to making their products "user-friendly". However,
computer system developers might argue that computers are extremely complex products to
design and make and that the demand for the services that computers can provide has always
outdriven the demand for ease-of-use.
One important HCI factor is that different users form different conceptions or mental models
about their interactions and have different ways of learning and keeping knowledge and skills
(different "cognitive styles" as in, for example, "left-brained" and "right-brained" people). In
addition, cultural and national differences play a part. Another consideration in studying or
designing HCI is that user interface technology changes rapidly, offering new interaction
possibilities to which previous research findings may not apply. Finally, user preferences change
as they gradually master new interfaces.
The term HCI relates to several stages in the development process, including the design,
implementation, and evaluation of interactive systems, in the context of the user‟s task and work.
The implementation of HCI can be perceived as an art as well as a science because it requires a
comprehensive range of skills, including an understanding of the user, an appreciation of
software engineering capabilities and application of appropriate graphical interfaces. If we are to
be recognized as developers with professional capabilities, as competent practitioners, then it is
critical to understand what makes an application interactive, instructional and effective. By
adopting HCI principles and practices in the development process, the system should be easy to
use by people within their work settings.
Basically, HCI is concerned with two issues: studying the relationship and the communication
between the human and the computer, and discovering the methods for mapping computing
functions to human capabilities and effectively using input and output techniques so that
computers and users have more seamless interactions. HCI places a special emphasis on creating
and applying user centered design techniques as well as using iterative usability testing methods.

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 Human Computer Interaction Ch-1 Introduction 2011 E.C.

Consequently, the machine [Computer] side involves several relevant issues including computer
graphics, operating systems, programming languages and development environments. While on
the human side, communication theory, graphic and industrial design disciplines, linguistics,
social science, cognitive psychology, and human performance are relevant.
1.1.1. Importance of HCI
 It encompasses not only ease of use but also new interaction techniques for supporting
user tasks, providing better access to information, and creating more powerful forms of
communication.
 HCI plays an important role in the development of computer systems and websites as it
helps to develop interactional techniques and to suggest where and in what situations
these technologies and techniques might be put to best use.
 Thus, a commercial websites with effective HCI are likely to be more useful and
profitable.
 HCI is a very important concept in the system development process as it is about
understanding and creating software and other technology that people will want to use,
will be able to use, and will find effective when used.
 The reasons for studying HCI in the development process are to create interactive
computer systems that are usable and practical as well.
 The purpose of integrating HCI techniques in the overall development process is that it
incorporates good design both in practice and in understanding, and to achieve this goal,
HCI addresses what occurs on the human side of interaction as well as what happens on
the machine side.
1.1.2. Goals of HCI
The goals of HCI are to produce usable and safe systems, as well as functional systems. These
goals can be summarized as safety, utility, effectiveness, efficiency, and appeal. These goals
focus on the services that the system provides, how quickly the tasks can be achieved, and
ensuring that users like the system. In general, usability is an essential concept in HCI and is
concerned with making systems easy to learn, easy to use, and with limiting error frequency and
severity. To establish a simple system with good usability, the HCI specialists need to be aware
of the following issues:

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 Understand the factors such as organizational, social, and psychological factors that
determine how people operate and make use of computer technology effectively.
 Develop tools and techniques to help designers ensure that computer systems are suitable
for the activities for which people will use them.
 Achieve efficient, effective, and safe interaction in terms of both individual Human
Computer Interaction and group interaction.
These needs should be considered very carefully at the design stage, as most of the users should
not have to change radically to „fi t in‟ with the system; rather, the system should be designed to
match their requirements.
1.1.3. Purpose of HCI
The purpose of HCI is to design a computer system to match the needs and requirements of the
users. The HCI specialists need to think about the above factors in order to produce an
outstanding system. To achieve the goals of HCI, a number of approaches can be utilized. These
approaches need to be studied very carefully in order to develop a system, which provides the
user with productivity and efficiency.
These approaches are:
 Involving the user: (involve the user as much as possible so that s/he can influence the
system design).
 Integrating different kinds of knowledge and expertise: (integrate knowledge and
expertise from the different disciplines that contribute to HCI design).
 Making the design process iterative: (testing can be done to check that the design does
indeed meet users‟ requirements).
From the above, it was learned that HCI design should be user-centered, integrate knowledge
from different disciplines, and be highly iterative. In addition, it is important to undertake
effective usability evaluation. This will provide feedback regarding negative and positive aspects
of prototypes.
It is important that the way in which people interact with computers is intuitive and clear.
However, designing appropriate HCI is not always straightforward, as the many poorly designed
computer systems testify. One of the challenges of HCI design is to keep abreast of technological
developments and to ensure that these are harnessed for maximum human benefit.

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 Human Computer Interaction Ch-1 Introduction 2011 E.C.

The goal of this research is to develop a framework for rapid, integrated, incremental systems
development that enables a group of designers and users working together to produce a friendly,
effective and efficient website. Two terms – Interaction and Interactivity – need to be defined in
order to understand how the user can communicate with the system to accomplish his/her goals.
1.1.4. Factors in HCI Design
To achieve a safe and user-friendly system, the HCI specialists need to consider the main issues
and factors involved in interaction and interactivity, and hence in HCI design. These factors can
be divided into:
 Organizational factors (training, job design, politics, roles, work organization);
 Environmental factors (noise, heating, lighting, ventilation);
 Health and Safety factors (stress, headaches, musculo-skeletal disorders);
 The User (motivation, enjoyment, satisfaction, personality, experience level);
 Comfort Factors (input devices, output displays, dialogue structures, use of color, icons,
commands, graphics, natural language, 3-D, user support materials, multi-media);
 User Interface (input device, output displays, dialogue structures, icons, 3-D, multi-
media);
 Task Factors (easy, complex, novel, task allocation, repetitive, monitoring, skills,
components);
 Constraints (costs, timescales, budgets, staff, equipment, building structure);
 System Functionality (hardware, software, application);
 Productivity factors (increase output, increase quality, decrease cost, decrease errors,
decrease labor requirements, and decrease production time, increase creative and
innovative ideas leading to new products).
Many factors are involved, therefore, during the development process; disagreement can arise
between ways to address each of these factors depending on various aspects of the system
development context, such as product, team members, users, and company. Making careful
trade-offs between these numerous factors, while supporting design principles and approaches,
remains a challenge of the HCI field. Consequently, most designers support involvement of the
user in the design process from the beginning to reduce conflicts during the development stage.
Finally, HCI is essential in the system development system. HCI will allocate users, analysts, and
designers (internal and external) to identify that the website design is practical. Many specific

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issues need to be taken into consideration when designing website pages, such as text style,
fonts; layout, graphics, and color.
1.2. Historical background
Vannevar Bush “As We May Think”
• The Atlantic Monthly, 1945.
• Memex: analog hypertext

1890 – 1974

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), 1946

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eniac.jpg
Grace Hopper – the inventor of compiler

• Compiler improved usability

• A-0: Arithmetic Language version 0;
1951-1952
• COBOL, 1959

First interactive screens

1960-ties: data stored in paper tape or cards with holes punched in
them. Cards were sent to computer center, data was processed, results
printed.
• Joseph C.R. Licklider the first screens and cathode ray tubes

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Direct interaction with computer

 Ivan Sutherland (MIT),
 Sketchpad, 1962
 It could draw both horizontal and vertical lines and
combine them into figures and shapes. Figures could be
copied, moved, rotated, or resized, retaining their basic
properties.
 Input: light pen
 Output: cathode ray tube

Computer mouse
• Douglas Engelbart, 1968
• Demonstrated the interaction using the
mouse at The Mother of All Demos
http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html#complete,clip12
1970-ties: people at the center
• Technology at the focus of design
– batch interaction, command line interface
• Alan Kay
– Dynabook: concept of laptop
– Object-oriented programming, Smalltalk
– People at the center of design
Alan Kay holds the mockup of Dynabook
Graphical user interface
• XEROX STAR, 1981
• Office metaphor
– windows, icons, folders
– Ethernet network,
– file server,
– print server,
– email
• Microcomputers

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1990 ties: multimedia

• 1993: hypertext
• World Wide Web revolutionized the process of transmitting and sharing files.
– Pictures, movies, music, text and even live video links were available to everyone
• 1993: Mark Weizer, ubiquitous computing
– Mobile devices and available Internet
2000-ties – mobiles
2010-th– Smart phones
2020-ties - ?
Until the late 1970s, the only humans who interacted with computers were information
technology professionals and dedicated hobbyists. This changed disruptively with the emergence
of personal computing in the later 1970s. Personal computing, including both personal software
(productivity applications, such as text editors and spreadsheets, and interactive computer
games) and personal computer platforms (operating systems, programming languages, and
hardware), made everyone in the world a potential computer user, and vividly highlighted the
deficiencies of computers with respect to usability for those who wanted to use computers as
tools.
The challenge of personal computing became manifest at an opportune time. The broad project
of cognitive science, which incorporated cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics,
cognitive anthropology, and the philosophy of mind, had formed at the end of the 1970s. Part of
the programed of cognitive science was to articulate systematic and scientifically informed
applications to be known as "cognitive engineering". Thus, at just the point when personal
computing presented the practical need for HCI, cognitive science presented people, concepts,
skills, and a vision for addressing such needs through an ambitious synthesis of science and
engineering. HCI was one of the first examples of cognitive engineering.
Other historically fortuitous developments contributed to the establishment of HCI. Software
engineering, mired in unmanageable software complexity in the 1970s (the “software crisis”),
was starting to focus on nonfunctional requirements, including usability and maintainability, and
on empirical software development processes that relied heavily on iterative prototyping and
empirical testing. Computer graphics and information retrieval had emerged in the 1970s, and
rapidly came to recognize that interactive systems were the key to progressing beyond early

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achievements. All these threads of development in computer science pointed to the same
conclusion: The way forward for computing entailed understanding and better empowering
users. These diverse forces of need and opportunity converged around 1980, focusing a huge
burst of human energy, and creating a highly visible interdisciplinary project.
There is no unified concept of an HCI professional. In the 1980s, the cognitive science side of
HCI was sometimes contrasted with the software tools and user interface side of HCI. The
landscape of core HCI concepts and skills is far more differentiated and complex now. HCI
academic programs train many different types of professionals: user experience designers,
interaction designers, user interface designers, application designers, usability engineers, user
interface developers, and application developers, technical communicators/online information
designers, and more. And indeed, many of the sub-communities of HCI are themselves quite
diverse. For example, ubiquitous computing (aka ubicomp) is subarea of HCI, but it is also a
superordinate area integrating several distinguishable subareas, for example mobile computing,
geo-spatial information systems, in-vehicle systems, community informatics, distributed systems,
handhelds, wearable devices, ambient intelligence, sensor networks, and specialized views of
usability evaluation, programming tools and techniques, and application infrastructures. The
relationship between ubiquitous computing and HCI is paradigmatic: HCI is the name for a
community of communities.
Human-computer interaction is important because it is fundamental to making products more
successful, safe, useful, and functional and, in the long run, more pleasurable for the user.
Another consideration in studying or designing HCI is that user interface technology changes
rapidly, offering new possibilities for interaction to which previous research findings may not
apply. User preferences change as users gradually master new interfaces. Visions of what
researchers in the field seek to achieve vary. When pursuing a cognitivist perspective,
researchers of HCI may seek to align computer interfaces with the mental model that humans
have of their activities. When pursuing a post-cognitivist perspective, researchers of HCI may
seek to align computer interfaces with existing social practices or existing sociocultural values.
Researchers in HCI are interested in developing new design methodologies, experimenting with
new devices, prototyping new software and hardware systems, exploring new interaction
paradigms, and developing models and theories of interaction.

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 Quality of life. Important applications of computers in medicine are possible only if they
are both useful and easy to use by doctors, nurses, and aides; similarly, use of computers
in education requires that they be both useful and easy to use by students and teachers.
Computers can assist disabled individuals; at the same time, special techniques are
needed to allow computers to be used by some who are disabled.
 National competitiveness. Information technology is one of the drivers for increased
productivity. As more and more workers use computers in their jobs, training time and
ease-of-use issues become economically more and more important.
 Growth of the computer and communications industries. Powerful, interesting, and usable
applications are the fuel for continuing growth of these industries. The current growth
cycle is the direct consequence of the graphical user interface developed by Xerox and
commercialized by Apple and Microsoft, and of the lower computer costs made possible
by the microprocessor. The resulting mass market supports commodity pricing for both
hardware and software. Future growth cycles will in part be driven by current HCI
research, which will lead to new applications that are increasingly easy to use.
Reference
1. Jemila Jibril “Human Computer Interaction/Study Case”, See discussions, stats, and
author profiles for this publication at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313383590
2. Dr. Kristina Lapin “Human Computer Interaction (HCI)_Lecture 1”,
web.vu.lt/mif/k.lapin/
3. Issa T. & Isaias P., “Chapter 2 Usability and Human Computer Interaction (HCI)”,
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4471-6752-5

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