This document provides an introduction to human-computer interaction (HCI). It discusses how HCI considers all aspects of human perception, cognition, skills and experience with technology. It also discusses computers and how they mediate interactions between humans and tasks. The goal of HCI is to design interfaces that are as invisible as possible so users can focus on their tasks rather than the interface. HCI sits within the broader field of human factors engineering and is also related to fields like user interface design, user experience design and psychology.

1. Introduction to human computer
interaction

2. Human
• As humans, we have many ways to perceive the
world around us like: seeing hearing and feeling.
• There are few others as well like smelling and
tasting but we won’t deal with those in our
course.
• Since we have senses, we have also memories,
experiences, skills, knowledge.
• In HCI, we have to take into consideration every
element in the human, from the way they
perceive and interact with the world, to their long
history of using computers and technology.

3. Computers

4. Computers
• With computer devices, augmented reality,
HCI is quite literally everything.
• Augmented reality games like pokemon go
turn effectively the entire world into an
instance of HCI.

5. Interaction
• So, we have humans and we have interaction
and we’re interested to the interaction
between them.
• The interaction can take different forms
though.
• The most obvious would be the human
interacts with the computer and the computer
interacts with the human in response

6. Interaction
• They go back and forth interacting and that’s a
valid view, but perhaps it misses the most
important part of HCI.
• We can also think of the human interacting
with the task through the computer.
• The interaction is really between the human
and the task, and the computer in the middle
just mediates that interaction.

7. Interaction
• Or to put this differently, the human and the
computer together interact with the task.
• Ideally in this case, we are interested in
making the interface as invisible as possible,
so the user can spend as little time as possible
focusing on the interface and instead focus on
the task that they’re trying to accomplish.

8. Interaction
• Realistically, our interfaces are likely to stay
somewhat visible.
• But out goal is to let the user spend as much
time as possible thinking about the task
instead of thinking about out interface.
• We can all probably remember times when
we’ve interacted with a piece of software and
we felt like we spent all our time thinking
about how to work the software.

9. Interaction
• So our goal as designers, is to help the human
feels like they’re interacting directly with the
task; while our interface kind of vanishes in
the middle of that interaction.

10. Reflexion
• Try to think about an example when you
spend much of your time thinking about the
task an example when you spend most of your
time thinking about the tool itself.

11. HCI space
• One of the most exciting parts about HCI is its
ubiquity (the state and capacity of being
everywhere).
• Computers are all around us and we interact
with them everyday.
• It’s exciting to think about designing the types
of tools and interfaces we spend so much time
dealing with, but there’s a danger here too

12. HCI space
• Because we’re all humans interacting with
computers, we think we’re expert in HCI, but
that’s not the case.
• “we might be experts at interacting with
computers, but that doesn’t make us experts
at designing interaction between other
humans and computers”.
• Just because we’re experts does not mean we
can help other people be expert.

13. HCI space
• We’ll learn together how complex and large
the field of HCI is.
• we’re taking the first step into a larger world.

15. HCI and human factors
• This is a look at where HCI sits in a broader
hierarchy of fields.
• We can think if HCI as a subset of a broader
field of human factors.
• Human factors engineering is interested in a
lot of the same ideas that we’re interested in,
but they aren’t just interested in computers.
• Then there are sub disciplines within HCI

16. HCI and human factors
• Human factors in interested in designing
interactions between people and products,
systems and devices.
• But human factors are interested in non-
computing parts as well.
• As computers become more and more
ubiquitous, the number of application areas of
HCI is growing
• Things like shower heads and refrigerators has
started to become truly computerized devices.

17. HCI and human factors
• As computers integrate themselves into more
and more of our devices, the gap between HCI
and human factors engineering is shrinking.

18. HCI and user interface design
• HCI was largely about user interface design.
• The earliest innovation in HCI were the
creation of things like the light pen, the first
computer mouse which allow for flexible
interaction with things on screen, but the
focus was squarely on the screen.

19. • And so, we developed many principles about
how to design things nicely.
• We borrowed from the magazines and print
industries and identify the value of grids in
displaying content and guiding the users eyes
around our interfaces

21. • We created laws that govern how difficult it is
for users to select what they want on the
screen: we examined for example whether it is
easier to select a menu on a Mac, where the
menus are always on the top of the screen or
on a pc where they are grouped with the
individual window

23. • We developed techniques for helping interfaces
adapt to different screen sizes and we develop
methods for rapidly prototyping user interfaces
using pen and paper or wire frames.
• Through this rich history, UI design really became
its well defined field.
• In fact, many of the concepts we’ll cove in HCI
were originally developed in the context of UI
design.

24. • But in HCI we’re interested in things that go
beyond the user’s interaction with a single
screen.
• In HCI, we’ll talk about the more general
methods that apply to any interface.

25. HCI vs. Human experience design
• The relation between HCI and human
experience design is a little bit closer.
• In fact, if you ask a dozen people working in
the field, you’ll probably get a dozen different
answers about the differences.

26. • For the purpose of our conversation, we’ll
think about the difference like this:
• HCI is largely about understanding the
interaction between humans and computers
• While UX design is about dictating the
interaction between the user and computers.

27. • In order to design UX very well, you need to
understand their interactions with interfaces.
• We will use the principles and methods of HCI
to inform how we design user experience.
• We use that understanding to inform how we
design UX but we evaluate those designs
based on their success or failure.

28. • If our understanding leads to create good
designs, that provides evidence that our
understanding is correct.

29. HCI vs. Psychology
• The research side of HCI connects to the
relationship between HCI and psychology.
• Human factors engineering itself is in many
ways the merger of engineering and
psychology, as well as other fields of design
and cognitive science.
• In HCI, the engineering side takes the form of
software engineering, but this connection to
psychology remains symbiotic.

30. • We use our understanding of psychology, of
human perception, of cognition to inform the
way we design interfaces.
• We then use our evaluation of those interfaces to
reflect on our understanding of psychology itself.
• We came away with a better understanding of
the way humans think about their work spaces
because of our experience designing something
that was supposed to help them think about their
workspaces.

31. HCI and research