IT115 | INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

Unit I - Human-Computer
Interaction Overview
Why HCI?

R I C O V. C O M B I N I D O
P a r t - t i m e F a c u l t y, I T a n d C E U n i t
I T 1 3 0 / I T 1 3 0 L | C O M P U T E R H A R D WA R E R E P A I R A N D M A I N T E N A N C E

Topic Outline
Key points to be discussed:

• Course orientation
• Brief history of human-computer interaction,
• Short overview of HCI
Warm-up Activity
Go to www.menti.com and enter the code:

31 68 81 4
IT115 | INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

Course Orientation
Course Description
IT115 - Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction

The course introduces students to the discipline concerned with the design, implementation
and evaluation of various computing systems intended for human use.

Emphasis will be placed on understanding human behavior with interactive objects,

knowing how to develop and evaluate interactive software using human-centered
approach, and general knowledge of HCI design issues with multiple types of
interactive applications. Students will also participate in group projects to design
and evaluate user interfaces
Learning Outcomes
CHED CMO No. 25 Series of 2015

• Develop appropriate user interfaces for domain specific applications.

• Evaluate the effectiveness of a design of an application or product in solving

domain-specific problems.

• Analyze different user populations with regard to their abilities and

characteristics for using both software and hardware products.

• Evaluate the design of existing user interfaces based on the cognitive models
of target user.
Learning Outcomes
CHED CMO No. 25 Series of 2015

• Develop prototypes interfaces for users with specific accessibility issues.

• Perform usability evaluation of an existing software based on general

principles used in heuristic evaluation, usability performance and preference
metrics (learning, task time, task completion, and user satisfaction) and
common usability guidelines and standards.
Reference Material
 Required Software/s

Adobe XD Figma
IT115 | INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

Brief History of HCI

Human Computer Interaction

is the academic discipline that most of us

think of as UI design.

it focuses on the way that interactions between

human beings and computers interact to ever
increasing levels of both complexity and simplicity.
Brief History of HCI
It's a very new discipline.
• Mid to late 1970s, this discipline wasn’t particularly important.

• It wasn’t necessary to focus on how those users interacted with

computers

• The masses wanted computing and they didn’t want to go through

complicated rigmarole to do what they wanted with a computer.
Brief History of HCI
It's a form of engineering.
• This is known as “cognitive engineering” (e.g. building things that
work with our thoughts.)

• It had already started to simplify the user interface of complex

airplanes.

• It was natural for some of this work to move into the UI field for
computing devices.
IT115 | INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

Short Overview of HCI

What is Human-computer
interaction?
Human-computer interaction (HCI)
is an area of research and practice

It emerged in the early 1980s, initially as a specialty

area in computer science embracing cognitive science
and human factors engineering.
What is Human-computer
interaction?
• HCI has expanded rapidly and steadily for
three decades, attracting professionals from
many other disciplines and incorporating
diverse concepts and approaches.

• HCI now aggregates a collection of semi-

autonomous fields of research and practice in
human-centered informatics.
Where did HCI came from?

• Personal computing and personal

computer platforms vividly
highlighted the deficiencies of
computers with respect to usability
for those who wanted to use
computers as tools.

A sample command line interface

Where did HCI came from?
• Until the late 1970s, the only humans who
interacted with computers were information
technology professionals and dedicated hobbyists.

• Personal computing, including both personal

softwareand personal computer platforms
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 People using computers in 1989
computers as tools.
Where did HCI came from?

The original and abiding technical focus

of HCI was and is the concept of...

usability.
usability
• is an emergent quality that reflects the grasp and the reach of HCI. Contemporary users
want more from a system than merely “ease of use”.

• this concept was originally articulated somewhat naively in the slogan "easy to learn,
easy to use".

• the original academic home for HCI was computer science, and its original focus was on
personal productivity applications, mainly text editing and spreadsheets, the field has
constantly diversified and outgrown all boundaries.
 usability
pertains to qualities like fun, well being,
collective efficacy, aesthetic tension, enhanced
creativity, flow, support for human
development, and others.
Expanded • Psychology
• communication studies,

Reach of HCI. • information science,

• geographical sciences,
• industrial, manufacturing and systems
engineering,
• design,
HCI is taught now in many departments/faculties
• cognitive science,
that address information technology, including:
• science and technology studies,
• management information systems
 • social and organizational
Expanded computing

Reach of • accessibility for the elderly

• cognitively and physically
HCI. impaired

HCI expanded from its initial focus on

• widest possible spectrum of
individual and generic user behavior to human experiences and
include:
activities.
HCI Fields of Focus
HCI Fields of Focus
 HCI Fields of Focus

Today, HCI is a vast and multifaceted community,

bound by the evolving concept of usability,
and the integrating commitment
to value human activity and experience as the
primary driver in technology.
Beyond the Desktop
One of biggest design ideas of the early
1980s was the so-called messy desk
metaphor, popularized by the Apple
Macintosh.
• Files and folders were displayed as icons that
could be, and were scattered around the
display surface.

• The messy desktop was a perfect incubator

for the developing paradigm of graphical user
interfaces.
• The second sense in which HCI moved
beyond the desktop was through the growing
influence of the Internet on computing and on
society.

• Starting in the mid-1980s, email emerged as

one of the most important HCI applications,
but ironically, email made computers and
networks into communication channels;
people were not interacting with computers,
they were interacting with other people
through computers.
• The third way that HCI moved beyond the
desktop was through the continual, and
occasionally explosive diversification in the
ecology of computing devices.

• Before desktop applications were

consolidated, new kinds of device contexts
emerged, notably laptops, which began to
appear in the early 1980s, and handhelds,
which began to appear in the mid-1980s
Why HCI?
What's the deal?
ACM SIGCHI

Concerned with the design, evaluation,

implementation of interactive computing
systems for human use and with the study
of major phenomena surrounding them.
Dix, quoted in Human-Computer Interaction, ed. By Baecker et al.

The study of people, computer

technology, and the way these influence
one another. We study HCI to determine
how we an make this computer
technology more usable by people
Why HCI?
HCI addresses the dynamic co-evolution of the activities people engage in
and experience, and the artifacts — such as interactive tools and
environments — that mediate those activities.

HCI is about understanding and critically evaluating the interactive

technologies people use and experience.
IT115 | INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

Do you have
any questions?
Further questions shall be entertained on our Messenger group.