1 HCI History – Part 1 of 2 Key people, events, ideas and paradigm shifts This material has been developed by Georgia Tech HCI faculty, and continues to evolve. Contributors include Gregory Abowd, Jim Foley, Diane Gromala, Elizabeth Mynatt, Jeff Pierce, Colin Potts, Chris Shaw, John Stasko, and Bruce Walker. This specific presentation also borrows from James Landay and Jason Hong at UC Berkeley. Comments directed to are encouraged. Permission is granted to use with acknowledgement for non-profit purposes. Last revision: January

2 The Evolution of HCI Series of technological advances lead to and are sometimes facilitated by a Series of paradigm shifts that in turn are created by a Series of key people and events

3 Why study HCI’s history? Understanding where you’ve come from can help a lot in figuring out where you’re going - repeat positive lessons “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” (Santayana)- avoid negative lessons Knowledge of an area implies an appreciation of its history

4 What are Paradigms Predominant theoretical frameworks or scientific world views  e.g., Aristotelian, Newtonian, Einsteinian (relativistic) paradigms in physics 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

5 Howard Rheingold – Tools for Thought History of interactive breakthroughs  On-line at One of several good sources

6 (Some of the) Key Technological Advances Starting point  Computing in 1945  Batch processing Interactive graphics systems Time sharing computers  One computer to many people Internet

7 More Key Technological Advances The desk top / personal computer  One computer to one person Inexpensive, low-power chips  Many computers to one person Wireless connectivity

8 Paradigm Shifts – How We Use Computers Interactive Computing - time sharing, Basic WIMP Interfaces  Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointing  Direct Manipulation  Metaphors Hypertext / WWW Computers for person-to-person communications – not just for computing  , CSCW

9 More Paradigm Shifts Multimodal interfaces Immersive (VR) interfaces Ubiquitous computing Mobile computing

10 (Some of the) Key People and Events People  Vannevar Bush  Doug Engelbart  Ivan Sutherland  J. R. (Lick) Licklider  Alan Kay  Ted Nelson  Nicholas Negroponte  Mark Weiser  Jaron Lanier Events  Founding of Xerox PARC  Lisa / Macintosh

11 Telling the Story Key Technological Advances Key Paradigm Shifts Key People and Events Interleaved in more or less chronological order

12 In the Very Beginning Digital computer grounded in ideas from 1700’s & 1800’s Technology became available in the 1940’s and 1950’s

13 In the Beginning – Computing in 1945 Harvard Mark I 55 feet long, 8 feet high, 5 tons Jason Hong / James Landay, UC Berkeley, Picture from useuv/indexmark.htm

14 Context - Computing in 1945 Ballistics calculations Physical switches (before microprocessor)‏ Paper tape Simple arithmetic & fixed calculations (before programs)‏ 3 seconds to multiply Jason Hong / James Landay, UC Berkeley, Picture from

15 Context - Computing in 1945 First computer bug (Harvard Mark II)‏ Adm. Grace Murray Hopper  Cobol Jason Hong / James Landay, UC Berkeley

16 Innovator: Vannevar Bush “As We May Think” Atlantic Monthly  “…publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record.” Postulated Memex device  Stores all records/articles/communications  Items retrieved by indexing, keywords, cross references (now called hyperlinks)‏  (Envisioned as microfilm, not computer)‏ Interactive and nonlinear components are key /bushf.htm

17 More About Vannevar Bush Name rhymes with "Beaver" MIT faculty member Coordinated WWII effort with 6000 US scientists Social contract for science  federal government funds universities  universities do basic research  research helps economy & national defense

18 “As We May Think” Futuristic inventions / trends  Wearable cameras for photographic records  Encyclopedia Britanica for a nickel  Automatic transcripts of speech  Memex, Trails of discovery  Direct capture of nerve impulses

19 As We May Think Very optimistic about future  Technology could help society  Technology could manage flood of info Bush – one of most informed people of his time  Look at trends, guess where we're going If you read it  Which feature is your favorite? Why?  Which feature is your least favorite? Why?  What was he right about? Wrong about?

20 As We May Think Some have come true  Increased specialization  Flood of information  Faster / Cheaper / Smaller / More reliable Some he missed or we are still waiting  Microphotography?  Digital technologies?  Non-science / Non-office apps?  Memex?

21 As We May Think Not so much predicting future as "inventing it" by publishing article  hypertext  wearable memory aid Use technology to augment human intellectual abilities New kinds of technology lead to new kinds of human/machine & human/human interaction Be aware that science/engineering can impact society

22 Context - Computing in 1960s Transistor (1948)‏ ARPA (1958)‏ Timesharing (1950s) Terminals and keyboards Computers still primarily for scientists and engineers Vacuum Tube Jason Hong / James Landay, UC Berkeley

23 Batch Processing Computer had one task, performed sequentially No “interaction” between operator and computer after starting the run Punch cards, tapes for input Serial operations

24 Innovator: J. R. Licklider Postulated “man-computer symbiosis” Couple human brains and computing machines tightly to revolutionize information handling

25 Technological Advance: Interactive Graphics More suitable medium than paper - picture worth a thousand words Sutherland’s SketchPad as landmark system Start of Direct Manipulation Computers used for visualizing and manipulating data

26 Innovator: Ivan Sutherland SketchPad PhD thesis at MIT  Hierarchy - pictures & subpictures  Master picture with instances (ie, OOP)‏  Constraints  Icons  Copying  Light pen input device  Recursive operations

27 Technological Advance / Paradigm Shift: Time Sharing (Mid 1960s) Command line - teletypes, then “glass teletypes” Computers still too expensive for individuals timesharing  increased accessibility  interactive systems, not jobs  text processing, editing  , shared file system * There was an unrecognized need for HCI in the design of programming languages Need for HCI*

28 The Ubiquitous ASR 33 Teletype ASR: Automatic Send / Receive Save programs on punched paper tape The first direct human- computer interface experience for many in the 1960s About 10 characters per second bps

The Ubiquitous Glass Teletype Source: 24 x 80 characters Up to 19,200 bps (Wow - was big stuff!)‏

30 Innovator: Douglas Englebart Landmark system/demo:  Hierarchical hypertext, multimedia, mouse, high-res display, windows, shared files, electronic messaging, CSCW, teleconferencing,...  Invented the mouse

31 Augmenting Human Intellect 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference (SF)‏ Video of NLS (oNLine System)‏ All this took place before  Unix and C (1970s)‏  ARPAnet (1969) & later Internet MouseSite/MouseSitePg1. html

32 About Doug Engelbart Graduate of Berkeley (EE '55)‏  "bi-stable gaseous plasma digital devices" Stanford Research Institute (SRI)‏  Augmentation Research Center 1962 Paper "Conceptual Model for Augmenting Human Intellect"  Complexity of problems increasing  Need better ways of solving problems Picture from

33 Engelbart NLS Video

34 Augmenting Human Intellect Advantages of chorded keyboards? Disadvantages? Jason Hong / James Landay, UC Berkeley, SitePg1.html

35 Augmenting Human Intellect “At SRI in the 1960s we did some experimenting with a foot mouse. I found that it was workable, but my control wasn't very fine and my leg tended to cramp from the unusual posture and task.”

36 Augmenting Human Intellect Chorded Keyboard Early 3-button mouse

37 Augmenting Human Intellect Discussion, if you watched the video What did we just see?  Interaction devices  Interaction styles  Applications

38 Augmenting Human Intellect First mouse First hypertext First word processing First 2D editing and windows First document version control  First groupware (shared screen teleconferencing)‏  First context- sensitive help  First distributed client-server  Many, many more!

39 Augmentation not Automation "I tell people: look, you can spend all you want on building smart agents and smart tools…" "I'd bet that if you then give those to twenty people with no special training, and if you let me take twenty people and really condition and train them especially to learn how to harness the tools…" "The people with the training will always outdo the people for whom the computers were supposed to do the work."

40 Augmenting Human Intellect Example: Roman Numerals vs Arabic What is XCI + III? Now what is XCI x III? What is 91 * 3? New kinds of artifacts, languages, methodologies, and training can enable us to do things we couldn't do before or simplify what we already do

41 End of Part 1 of 2

42 HCI History Part 2 of 2 Key people, events, ideas and paradigm shifts This material has been developed by Georgia Tech HCI faculty, and continues to evolve. Contributors include Gregory Abowd, Jim Foley, Diane Gromala, Elizabeth Mynatt, Jeff Pierce, Colin Potts, Chris Shaw, John Stasko, and Bruce Walker. This specific presentation also borrows from James Landay and Jason Hong at UC Berkeley. Comments directed to are encouraged. Permission is granted to use with acknowledgement for non-profit purposes. Last revision: August

43 The Evolution of HCI Series of technological advances lead to and are sometimes facilitated by a Series of paradigm shifts that in turn are created by a Series of key people and events

44 Paradigm: Personal Computer System is more powerful if it’s easier to use Small, powerful machine dedicated to individual use Made possible by single-chip processor and less semiconductor memory - drives down costs - Moore’s Law

45 Early Personal Computers 1975 IBM Radio Shack TRS-80

46 Early Personal Computers 1997 Apple II 1979 VisiCalc - “killer app” for Apple II 1981 IBM XT/AT

47 The dawn of the PC & GUI Xerox PARC Established 1970  Bob Taylor heads CSL - Computer Systems Lab Goal: “The Paperless Office”  Are we there yet? “Inventing the future”  Researchers using their new creations as their own tools - bootstrapping

48 PARC Hardware Milestones Laser printer 1971  Gary Starkweather Ethernet 1973  Bob Metcalfe Alto personal computer 1973  Chuck Thacker  Ed McCreight, Chuck Thacker, Butler Lampson, Bob Sproull, and Dave Boggs Real-time windowing operations (BitBlt) 1973  Dan Ingalls

49 Xerox PARC – The Alto First personal computer! 808 x 606 raster bitmapped display 3-button mouse, keyboard Ethernet Merges printing, display and networking

50 PARC Software Milestones Bravo WYSIWYG text editor/formatter 1974  Butler Lampson and Charles Simonyi Gypsy text editor with GUI and modeless cut and paste editing 1975  Larry Tessler and Timothy Mott Draw drawing program 1975  William Newman Superpaint paint program  Dick Shoup

51 Innovator: Alan Kay Dynabook - Notebook sized computer loaded with multimedia and can store Personal computing Desktop interface Overlapping windows

52 HCI Researchers at Xerox PARC in 1970s and early 1980s Stu Card Tom Moran George Robertson David Smith Bill Verplank Jeff Johnson ……

53 Paradigm: WIMP / GUI Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers Graphical User Interface Timesharing=multi-user; now we need multitasking WIMP interface allows you to do several things simultaneously Has become the familiar GUI interface Xerox Alto & Star; Perq, Lisa, Macintosh, …

54 Xerox Star First commercial PC designed for “business professionals”  desktop metaphor, pointing, WYSIWYG, high degree of consistency and simplicity First system based on usability engineering  Paper prototyping and analysis  Usability testing and iterative refinement

Xerox Star Desktop

56 Xerox Star Commercial flop  $15k cost  closed architecture  lacking key functionality (spreadsheet) Video - the Star in use

57 Apple Lisa Based on ideas of Star More personal rather than office tool  Still $$$ - $10K to $12K Failure

58 Apple Macintosh Aggressive pricing  $2500 Good interface guidelines Third party applications Great graphics, laser printer

59 Paradigm: Direct Manipulation ‘82 Shneiderman describes appeal of rapidly- developing graphically-based interaction  object visibility  incremental action and rapid feedback  reversibility encourages exploration  replace language with action  syntactic correctness of all actions WYSIWYG, Apple Mac

60 Paradigm: Metaphor All use is problem-solving or learning to some extent Relating computing to real-world activity is effective learning mechanism  File management on office desktop  Financial analysis as spreadsheets The tension between literalism & magic  Eject disk or CD on Mac by dragging to trash can

61 Paradigm/Technology – Person- to-Person Communications Enabled by several technologies  Ethernet and TCP/IP protocol  Personal computer  Telephone network and modems And by killer-app software  , Instant Messaging, Chat, Bulletin Boards CSCW - conferencing, shared white boards –Not quite yet a killer-app Micro-sociological phenomenon are central to successes (and failures)

62 Paradigm: CSCW Computer-Supported Cooperative Work No longer single user/single system Micro-social aspects are crucial as prominent success but other groupware still not widely used

63 Paradigm: Hypertext Think of information not as linear flow but as interconnected nodes Bush’s MEMEX gave the idea in 1945 Nelson coined term in 1965 Engelbart’s NLS did it in 1965 WWW in ’93 was the real launch

64 Innovator: Ted Nelson Computers can help people, not just business Coined and popularized “hypertext” term (1965)

65 Ted Nelson’s Book(s)

66 The World-Wide Web Two Key Components  URL = Uniform Resource Locator  Browser Tim Brenners-Lee did both See for more web historyhttp://

Early Tim B-L Browser (On a NeXT) Source:

68 The WIMP Plateau Time User Productivity Batch Command Line WIMP (Windows) 1940s – 1950s 1980s - Present 1960s – 1970s ? ?

69 Paradigm: Multi-modality Mode is a human communication channel  Not just the senses –e.g. speech and non-speech audio are two modes Emphasis on simultaneous use of multiple channels for I/O

70 Innovator: Nicholas Negroponte MIT Architecture Machine Group  ’69-’80s - prior to Media Lab Ideas  wall-sized displays, video disks, AI in interfaces (agents), speech recognition, multimedia with hypertext  Put That There (Video)

71 Paradigm: Speech / Agents Actions do not always speak louder than words Interface as mediator or agent Language paradigm How good does it need to be?  “Tricks”, vocabulary, domains How “human” do we want it to be?  (HAL, Bob, PaperClip)

72 Innovator: Mark Weiser Introduced notion of Ubiquitous Computing and Calm Technology  It’s everywhere, but recedes quietly into background Was CTO of Xerox PARC Died too early

73 Paradigm: Ubiquitous Computing Person is no longer user of single device but occupant of computationally-rich environment "Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives.” - Marki Weiser, circa 1988 Can no longer neglect macro-social aspects

74 Dick Tracy ®&© 1999 Tribune Media Services, Inc Computing is Everywhere,... From the desk-top to the set-top to the palm-top to the flip-top to the wrist-top…

75 Paradigm: VR & 3D Interaction Create immersion by  Realistic appearance, interaction, behavior Draw on spatial memory, proprioception, kinesthesis, two-handed interaction

76 Paradigm: Mobile Computing Devices used in a variety of contexts Employ sensors to understand how user is working with devices Wireless communication PDAs, Cell Phones, GPSs, etc etc etc

77 What Next? What are the next paradigm shifts? What are the next technical innovations? Who knows? I don’t But, more importantly,

78 Who Will… Drive future technical breakthroughs? Lead future paradigm shifts? It just might be YOU!

79 The End