What Do We Mean by HCI,

Usability, and User Interfaces

Usability Engineering: Process,
Products, and Examples
Chapter 2

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 What Do We Mean by Human–
Computer Interface?
• HCI
– Human-computer interaction is the discipline
concerned with the design, evaluation and
implementation of interactive computing systems for
human use and with the study of the major phenomena
surrounding them.
• UI
– “User interface.”
• Usability
– The quality of an interface that measures if it is
appropriate for the user or the task for which the
system was built.
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 What we are not...
• We are not interested in "user friendly."
”User friendly" is an anthropomorphic
term.
– Do you wish to be friends with your computer?
• “User-friendly” suggests a one-
dimensional attribute. The system is
either user friendly or not!
– Clearly there is a range of usabilty values as
user interfaces can be more or less usable.

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 Factors that Influence the Success
of a User Interface
• Type of user
• Type of task
• Hardware constraints
• Social and cultural limitations

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 Who participates in HCI
• The backgrounds of HCI professionals include:
– Computer science
– Psychology
– Anthropology
• Professional computer scientists often have no
formal training in these fields.
• Myers (1998) notes:
– “If students do not know about user interfaces, they
will not serve industry needs. It seems that only
through computer science does HCI research
disseminate to products.”

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 Why an interest in HCI Now?
• Interest in interactive and user-oriented
computing did not just appear in the last ten
years.
• Basis for today’s user interfaces were set in the
1950s, 1960s, and even earlier.
• Focus on usability has evolved with
computing technologies.

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 Factors Influencing Interest in
Usability
• Changes in hardware environments
• Diversification of users
• Diversification of applications

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 Changes in Hardware
Environments
• Hardware has become much more powerful.
– This has permitted the development of more sophisticated
user interfaces, such as graphical user interfaces.
• The hardware that the user interacts with directly
(peripherals) has become more diversified.
– This has also contributed to the development of different
user interfaces.
• The hardware has become more accessible to a wider
range of users.

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 Changes in User Characteristics
• The proportion of professional computer
scientists to discretionary users has changed
dramatically.
– Many more users are discretionary instead of
professional computer scientists today.
• Novice users have sophisticated expectations
about the computer systems that they use.

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 Changes in Software Applications

• The software applications that the user

interacts with directly have become more and
more diversified.

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 Overview of the History of HCI
• Activity
– Build a timeline of events that you think are
relevant to the history of HCI.

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 Perspective
• Building usable interfaces is difficult.
• Many myths about usability persist.
– Good user interfaces are just appealing graphics.
– Usability is an outcome of common sense.
– Guidelines, applied to user interface problems, will
lead to usability.
– Usability problems can be solved with
help/training/documentation.

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 What are the Big Issues?
• How do we improve user interfaces and
the user interface development process?
• What is the future of HCI?
• How can computer scientists ensure good
usability in the systems that they build?

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 Conclusions
• Concerns for software usability evolved in the
context of computing technology and usage
patterns.
• Building usable interfaces is not easy.
• Building usable interfaces is not just common
sense.

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