A Brief History of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
For designers — or anyone working in tech — an understanding of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) can come in handy. As a graduate student of HCI, I’ve found that exploring the history and trajectory of the field has enriched my understanding of UX. It’s helped shape my understanding of the larger ecosystem of design, research, and product development.
What is HCI?
Human-computer interaction looks at how people interact with computers. It’s a community of people studying and practicing user experience design, user research, software development, and more. The close integration of research and practice makes this field extremely unique.
As UX and interaction designers, we represent the craft side of HCI — and we share this responsibility with other practitioners.
As UX and interaction designers, we represent the craft side of HCI — and we share this responsibility with other practitioners. It’s interesting to note that UX was created within HCI and has since expanded its influence into the design world.
Overview
Below is the story of how HCI transformed from a specialty area to a multifaceted community of tech professionals. The field has come a long way since the 1980s — evolving from a single focus on scientific testing to the complex role of explaining and generating new designs. Today we look to HCI for self-expression and seeking solutions to society’s most wicked problems.
Wave 1: Desktops & mental models
(1980s — 1990s)
During this time, HCI was mainly focused on creating systems that were easy-to-learn and easy-to-use. There were endless possibilities for personal computing, but desktop computers were not very usable tools at first.
Enter the desktop metaphor.
To us, this seems second-nature — this is how most of us interact with our computer systems. The desktop-folder metaphor was part of a larger effort to apply mental models to the way we use computers. By mapping our physical office environment onto computer interfaces, we can more easily grasp how information is store on desktops.
Mental modeling and human factors engineering were the driving factors in software development. This era was all about usability, and we learned a great deal about what people could and couldn’t do while completing tasks on a computer.
As designers, we continue to use techniques from this era, such as cognitive walkthroughs, heuristic evaluations, and usability testing.
From this point on, it was clear that personal computing was the future. HCI would serve the role of empowering users through the design of intuitive systems.
Wave 2: Collaboration & communication
(1990s — early 2000s)
During this era, we shifted our focus from cognitive modeling to interaction design. As computers became communication tools, mental models could not longer explain the broader context of computer use. It became necessary to explore external influences, and to look at how interactions varied across tools and organizations.
Email gained popularity during this time, which meant that people were not just interacting with computers — they were interacting with each other through computers. There was growing interest in how computers were used to support communication and collaboration, signaling the rise of social and organizational computing.
There was a crucial need to understand how interfaces influenced behavior. As a result, HCI expanded to adopt the expertise of sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists so they could study the social components of human-computer interaction.
As designers, we continue this tradition of using social science methodologies — like ethnography—to inform our work. We help create technologies that facilitate social activity and that enrich the human experience through communication and knowledge sharing.
Wave 3: Self-expression, social change
(mid 2000s — 2010s)
This is a time of self-expression, self-reflection, and social consciousness. During this era, value-driven design takes the lead in engaging communities and designing for sustainable change. We’re encouraged to think about the role of technology in our lives, and the paradox of being “alone together” when we shift our attention to personal devices in social settings.
A holistic approach to design emerges as well, emphasizing complex interactions across people, spaces, and technologies. Qualities of pleasure, enjoyment, play and exploration become central to design.
During this era, HCI draws increasingly from philosophy and ethics to provide rhetoric on the consequences of habit-forming technology, and the responsibility of their creators.
As designers, we become weary of dark patterns. Rather, we craft technologies to enhance the human experience — to encourage people to interact with technology on their own terms, and to support their individual development and aspirations. We strive to address complex and systematic problems through technology and design.
Conclusion
We see ideas from each era influencing our work as designers today — these ideas co-exist, providing us with a rich body of knowledge to draw upon. It will be fascinating to see how HCI continues to evolve, and to see how design evolves alongside it.
