PARADIGMS

Today’s Outline
 Topics of discussion included today are,
 Paradigms, interaction and Example
 Time Sharing
 Video Display Units
 Programming Toolkits
 Window systems and the WIMP interface
 Metaphor
 Direct manipulation
 Modern evolving paradigms of computing
OVERVIEW
 Examples of effective strategies for building
interactive systems provide paradigms for
designing usable interactive systems.
 The evolution of these usability paradigms also
provides a good perspective on the history of
interactive computing.
 These paradigms range from the introduction of
timesharing computers, through the WIMP and
web, to ubiquitous and context-aware computing.
Introduction to Paradigm
 The primary objective of an interactive system is
to allow the user to achieve particular goals in
some application domain, that is, the interactive
system must be usable.

 The designer of an interactive system, then, is

posed with two open questions:
1. How can an interactive system be developed
to ensure its usability?
2. How can the usability of an interactive
system be demonstrated or measured?
What are Paradigms
 a framework containing the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and
methodology that are commonly accepted by members of a scientific
community.
 Predominant theoretical frameworks or scientific world views
 e.g., Aristotelian, Newtonian, Einsteinian paradigms in physics
 a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or
discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the
experiments performed in support of them are formulated. (MD)
 Understanding HCI history is largely about understanding a series of
paradigm shifts
 Not all listed here are necessarily “paradigm” shifts, but are at
least candidates
 History will judge which are true shifts
A paradigm is a way of thinking
about the world.
Paradigms of interaction
• New computing technologies arrive, creating a
new perception of the human—computer
relationship.

• We can trace some of these shifts in the history

of interactive technologies.
The initial paradigm
 Batch processing

Impersonal
computing
Batch processing
Example Paradigm Shifts
 Batch processing
 Time-sharing

Interactive computing
Example Paradigm Shifts
 Batch processing @#$% !

 Timesharing
 Networking

???

Community computing
Example Paradigm Shifts
 Batch processing C…P… filename Move this file here,
dot star… or was and copy this to there.
 Timesharing it R…M?

 Networking
% foo.bar
 Graphical ABORT
dumby!!!

displays

Direct manipulation
Example Paradigm Shifts
 Batch processing
 Timesharing
 Networking
 Graphical display
 Microprocessor

Personal computing
Example Paradigm Shifts
 Batch processing
 Timesharing
 Networking
 Graphical display
 Microprocessor
 WWW
Global information
Example Paradigm Shifts
• Batch processing  A symbiosis of physical and
electronic worlds in service
• Timesharing of everyday activities.
• Networking
• Graphical display
• Microprocessor
• WWW
• Ubiquitous
Computing
Time-sharing
 In the 1940s and 1950s, the significant advances in
computing consisted of new hardware technologies.
 Mechanical relays were replaced by vacuum electron
tubes. Tubes were replaced by transistors, and
transistors by integrated chips, all of which meant that
the amount of sheer computing power was increasing
by orders of magnitude.
 By the 1960s it was becoming apparent that the
explosion of growth in computing power would be wasted
if there was not an equivalent explosion of ideas about
how to channel that power.
Time Sharing
 A new concept of time sharing is
introduced.
a single computer could support multiple
users.
 Time sharing means that a single computer
could support multiple users. The introduction of
time sharing meant the end of batch-processing,
in which complete jobs processed individually.
Time Sharing
 Time-sharing systems of the 1960s made
programming a truly interactive venture
and brought about a subculture of
programmers known as ‘hackers’
 i.e.; single-minded masters of detail who took
pleasure in understanding complexity.
 Now with time-sharing capability, true
human computer interaction is possible.
Video Display Units
 As early as the mid-1950s researchers were
experimenting with the possibility of presenting and
manipulating information from a computer in the form
of images on a video display unit (VDU).
 These display screens could provide a more suitable
medium than a paper printout for presenting vast
quantities of strategic information for rapid assimilation.
 The earliest applications of display screen images
were developed in military applications, most notably
the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE)
project of the US Air Force.
Old monochrome vs Lcd
Video Display Units
 In1962, a young graduate student at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), Ivan Sutherland, astonished the
established computer science community
with his Sketch pad program, that the
capabilities of visual images were realized.
Sketch pad Program
Video Display Unit
 Sketchpad demonstrated two important
ideas.
First,computers could be used for more
than just data processing.
Secondly, Sutherland’s efforts
demonstrated how important the
contribution of one creative mind.
Programming Toolkits
 Douglas Engelbart’s ambition since the
early 1950s was to use computer
technology as a means of
complementing human problem solving
activity.
Engelbart’s idea as a graduate student at
the University of California at Berkeley
was to use the computer to teach humans.
Programming Toolkits
 Ideas that Engelbart’s team developed at
the Augmentation Research Center
includes
Word processing and
The mouse
 the right programming toolkit provides
building blocks to producing complex
interactive systems
Programming Toolkits
 The idea of building components of a computer
system that will allow you to rebuild a more
complex system is called bootstrapping and has
been used to a great extent in all of computing.
 The power of programming toolkits is that small,
well-understood components can be composed
in fixed ways in order to create larger tools.
 Once these larger tools become understood, they
can continue to be composed with other tools,
and the process continues.
Personal computing
 1970s – Papert's LOGO
language for simple graphics
programming by children
 Seymour Papert, wanted to
develop a language that was
easy for children to use. He and
his colleagues from MIT and
elsewhere designed a
computer-controlled mechanical
turtle that dragged a pen along
a surface to trace its path.

• A child could quite easily pretend they were ‘inside’ the

turtle and direct it to trace out simple geometric shapes,
such as a square or a circle.

• A system is more powerful as it becomes easier to user

Personal computing
 Alan Kay was profoundly influenced by
the work of both Engelbart and Papert.
 Future of computing in small, powerful
machines dedicated to the individual

 Kay at Xerox Palo Alto Research

Center (PARC)– the ultimate handheld
personal computer – he called it the
Dynabook
 Window systems and the WIMP interface
 humans can pursue more than one task at a
time
 The personal computer needs to be just as
flexible in order to be an effective dialog partner.

 The modern PC is, and by using windows it can

present messages to the user in the context of
their task, so the user is able to distinguish the
messages from different tasks.

 1981 – Xerox Corporation introduced the 8010

Star Information System. The first commercial
windowing system

 windows, icons, menus and pointers now

familiar interaction mechanisms
Metaphor
 relating computing to other real-world
activity is effective teaching technique
 LOGO's turtle dragging its tail
 file management on an office desktop
 word processing as typing
 financial analysis on spreadsheets
 virtual reality – user inside the metaphor

 Problems
 some tasks do not fit into a given metaphor
 cultural bias
Metaphor
 In developing the LOGO language to
teach children, Papert used the metaphor
of a turtle dragging its tail in the dirt.
 Children could quickly identify with the real-
world phenomenon and that instant familiarity
gave them an understanding of how they
could create pictures.
Metaphor
 Metaphors are used quite successfully to
teach new concepts in terms of ones
which are already understood.
 Metaphors are used to describe the
functionality of many interaction widgets, such
as windows, menus, buttons and palettes.
Direct Manipulation
 In the early 1980s as the price of fast and
high-quality graphics hardware was
steadily decreasing, designers were
beginning to see that their products were
gaining popularity as their visual content
increased.
Direct Manipulation
 As long as the user–system dialog remained
largely unidirectional – from user command to
system command line prompt computing was
going to stay within the minority population of the
hackers (programmers) who reveled in the
challenge of complexity.
 In a standard command line interface, the only way to
get any feedback on the results of previous interaction
is to know that you have to ask for it and to know
how to ask for it.
Direct Manipulation
 Rapid feedback is just one feature of the
interaction technique known as direct
manipulation.
Direct Manipulation
 1982 - Ben Shneiderman highlights the following
features of a direct manipulation interface:
 visibility of the objects of interest
 incremental action at the interface with rapid feedback on all
actions
 reversibility of all actions, so that users are encouraged to
explore without severe penalties
 syntactic correctness of all actions, so that every user action is a
legal operation
 replacement of complex command languages with actions to
manipulate directly the visible objects (and, hence, the name
direct manipulation)
Direct Manipulation
 The first real commercial success which
demonstrated the inherent usability of
direct manipulation interfaces for the
general public was the Macintosh
personal computer, introduced by Apple
Computer, Inc. in 1984
Direct manipulation – in overview
 1982 – Shneiderman describes appeal of graphically-
based interaction
 visibility of objects
 incremental action and rapid feedback
 reversibility encourages exploration
 syntactic correctness of all actions
 replace language with action

 1984 – Apple Macintosh

 the model-world metaphor
 What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interface
 Hypertext
 Hypertext is based on the memex-technique:
a storage and retrieval apparatus used to link
different texts together.
 The name hypertext points to the nonlinear The memex (a portmanteau of "memory"
structure of the information. and "index" or "memory" and "extender")
is the name of the hypothetical proto-
 1945 – Vannevar Bush and the memex hypertext system that Vannevar Bush
 Ted Nelson coined the term hypertext in 1963. described in his 1945 The Atlantic
Monthly article "As We May Think".
 Earlier hypertext: footnotes
 Multimodality
a mode is a human communication
channel
emphasis on simultaneous use of
multiple channels for input and output
A multi-modal interactive system is a
system that relies on the use of multiple
human communication channels.
Each different channel for the user is
referred to as a modality of interaction.
Computer Supported Cooperative Work
(CSCW)
 CSCW removes bias of single user / single computer
system
 consists of software tools and technology that
supports a group of individuals working on projects at
different sites.
 It is based on the principle of group coordination and
collaborative activities supported through computer
systems.
 Electronic mail is most prominent success
World wide web
The World Wide Web
 The World Wide Web (WWW) is combination of all
resources and users on the Internet that are using the
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
 "The World Wide Web is the universe of network-
accessible information, an embodiment of human
knowledge.“
 the Web is a communications model that, through HTTP,
enables the exchange of information over the internet.
 Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in
1989, a British computer scientist
 Ubiquitous Computing
“The most profound technologies are those that disappear.”
Mark Weiser, 1991

Late 1980’s: computer was very apparent

 Ubiquitous computing is a paradigm in which the processing of information

is linked with each activity or object as encountered.
 It involves connecting electronic devices, including embedding
microprocessors to communicate information
 The intention of UC is to create a computing infrastructure that permeates
our physical environment so much that we do not notice the computer any
longer
 How to make it disappear?
 Shrink and embed/distribute it in the physical world
 Design interactions that don’t demand our intention

computing is made to
appear everywhere
and anywhere
 Ubiquitous Computing
 Ubiquitous computing is an advanced computing concept where
computing is made to appear everywhere and anywhere.

 ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location,

and in any format. A user interacts with the computer, which can
exist in many different forms - laptop, tablets, terminals, phones, etc.

 The underlying technologies to support ubiquitous computing

include Internet, operating system, mobile code, sensors,
microprocessors, new I/O, new user interfaces, networks, etc
Sensor-based and Context-
aware Interaction
 Humans are good at recognizing the “context” of a
situation and reacting appropriately.
 Automatically sensing physical phenomena (e.g., light,
temp, location, identity) becoming easier.
 Context awareness is the ability of a system or system
component to gather information about its environment
at any given time and adapt behaviors accordingly.
 context-aware computing uses software and hardware
to automatically collect and analyze data to guide
responses.
Summary
 Today we have covered
 Examples of effective strategies for building interactive systems
provide paradigms for designing usable interactive systems.
 The evolution of computing usability paradigms also provides a
good perspective on the history of interactive computing.
 Paradigms range from the introduction of time-sharing
computers, through the WIMP and web, to ubiquitous and
context-aware computing