The Future of Human-Computer Interaction

ChelleChelle writes "Starting with the Xerox Alto and the Star, ACM Queue briefly covers the history of human-computer interaction from past to present. It doesn't stop there, however. Using a hypothetical situation involving context-awareness in cellphones, the author lays out his thoughts on the future of HCI, offering opinions, advice, and examples."

Comments

Bonifieds.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we start this story off with a proper question. How many here are in the HCI field?

Now. On your mark. Get set. Post!

Re:Bonifieds.

[Lux]

If you're writing software, but don't feel competent to have an informed opinion about HCI-related topics, you need to read up on the topic.

And I'm not just talking about UIs and user-facing stuff, either. I work on a backend storage system. I have a web browser, a front-end server, and a middle-tier server seperating my back-end servers from my end-users, and I still feel that having taken a cogsci class that presented HCI principles well has been invaluable to my job. Examples include solid API design for the middle-tier folks, and designing fault-evident test automation.

If a human isn't consuming your code in some way, you probably aren't getting paid. :)

At a minimum, I think every programmer should read The Design of Everyday Things. It doesn't talk much about code, but the lessons are 100% applicable.

Good article

[bunions]

I was surprised by this:

"Smart-phone sales are about 15 percent of the market now (around 100 million units), but with their faster growth should outnumber PCs by 2008."

Wiimote

[Constantine XVI]

The mouse in its current form is about to be rendered obsolete. With XGL, Quartz3D, AeroGlass, and Looking Glass, we are most assuredly moving twoards fully-3d computer enviroments. As the mouse only moves in two dimensions, it will be time for some change. The Wiimote is perfect for a 3d enviroment. It also has very little learning curve (as much as the adjustment to 3d will have, anyway).

Re:Picasso

[ackthpt]

As Picasso said, "Good artists borrow from the work of others, great artists steal."

That was about the only useful information I got FTA.
Now off to go and steal some artworks...

Unfortunately what *I* seem to see is the stealing of a lot of ideas which really don't have that much day-to-day value OR are really bad, annoying ideas. Whereas really good ideas seem to have been lost.

I really couldn't give a care about a 3D desktop or pretty icons. I really want to know why the heck some task keeps dying and what I can do about it. (In *nix operating systems this is usually pretty easily sorted, but with Windows I don't have clue number 1 unless I get one of those An error occured. [Send it] [Cancel] requestors. Where's the log on this alleged operating system?

Speech is not the future

[rufusdufus]

I participated in a study done at..a major research lab..that studied the future of speech as a computer interface. The study was done in such a way as to ignore technology limitations and assume a perfectly working speech and AI system. The conclusion of this study was that speech was not a very good interface for most applications, and would remain a niche forever. The gist was that other modalities, most notably direct manipulation, had less cogntive load, lower latencies,caused less cognitive dissonance, and incited less social friction (eg there is a reason people text message on their phones) compared to speech.
As you might expect, these results were never published, but instead replaced by another more..paycheck oriented..paper that extolled the bright future of speech interfaces.
This article is very similar to the researcher-paycheck oriented paper. It appeals to anecdotal fantasies about technology that don't actually work well in reality. Think about the location context phone for example; their example sounds nice but is it really useful? How many people walking around San Francisco would actually be helped by a "dinner,taxi rapid transit" menu on their cell phone? Even if it was useful in theory, in practice that list would simply be more advertising spam intruding into your life.

Speech? Where's the multi-touch?

[euxneks]

I'm certain it was posted here before for some other article, but I fail to see posts for this article that link to this?

Multi-touch interface is where it's at - personally, I wouldn't want to talk to my computer to get it to do something. The processing power can be put to much better use calculating a cure to cancer. Plus, it's an annoyance to everyone around, sure, it's cool in that Star Trek kind of way, but for constant use? No way man. It would suck having to tell your computer what to do - really.
Think about it, late at night, you want the computer to do something: "Find me porn" "Honey? What are you doing?", uh, yeah, that's not gonna fly.
Playing games: "shoot that creature there! Damnit! This is much too slow!".
Or programming: "int main bracket argh.. no. Delete. No. Delete del- ah screw it."
Or word processing: "Dear mom, fix aunt, delete that, delete that, delete that, select all, I think it's picking, I think it's picking up a bit of echo here, delete- select all" yeah, no. I think I'll stick with my multi-touch interface.

Multi-touch is completely natural and virtually no learning curve. We all have fingers or limbs, or feet, or noses or whatever else with which you use to interact with things - multi-touch interface takes that into account. Plus, information has traditionally been shown on a screen. How often do you hear the story of the newb trying to use the screen as a touch interface?