It is beyond doubt that computers stand by for human participation. Much like the window that helps to see the world. Who wants to see the metaphorically other worlds need to accept the looking thought the screen. (+Alice, +Matrix)
Human-computer interface comes to act as a new form through which all older forms of cultural production are being mediated. (Manovich)
When the telematics and virtual intelligence has met, the machine becomes a partner. The interactivity of materials has taken its place in our daily lives. In fact, human Computer interaction isn’t a field with 100 years of history. Yet, when the electronics started to take place of the mechanics our way of interaction with everything has changed.
“As computers begin to shape everyday life, we’re interested not only in what this technology can do for us, but also in what owning it means for us. When we buy something for our home, a toaster for instance, we choose it because it toast bread, certainly, but maybe also because how it looks, feels, sounds.”(Moggridge, 2007)
Human computer interaction is constrained not only by the computing problem but also includes media of representation. Human computer activity requires multisensory representation.
Interaction Design
“Just as a person needs clothing, a computer needs a case to protect its insides and to allow us to enter and manipulate information in a convenient way (that is, a human-computer interface, typically a keyboard and a screen). Text needs to be displayed in ways suitable for us to be able to read it, be it on a screen, paper, or e- paper. Therefore, although the word “information” contains the world “form” inside it, in reality it is the other way around: in order to be useful to us, information always has to be wrapped up in some external form.” (Manovich, 2008)
Bill Verplank, who worked as a design consultant from 1986 to 1922 for bringing graphical user interfaces into the product design world, recapitulate interaction design by three questions about how you act, how you feel, and how you understand.
If we go though the some key concepts that delineate the interaction design, these are;
- Functionality
- Navigability
- Consistency
- Reassuring Feedback; by a well design system we are aware of what we have done when we have done it.
“The field of human computer interaction is really an amalgam of other fields, including computer science, sociology, psychology, communication, human factors engineering, industrial engineering, rehabilitation engineering, and many others.” (Johanattan Lazar, Research Methods)
Research methods in HCI are always changing and improving. Interaction researches have a broad scope from desktop computers to laptops, potable devices, smart phones, tangible and wearable computing, audio, touch and tactile computing. They are about what people can do with computers, how they perceive the environment, how they communicated and what kind of tools are becoming out of their interaction and needs.
Favourite Films about HCI Movies:
- The Matrix
- Artificial Intelligence
- Brazil
- Her
- Minority Report
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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