History of HCI

Objectives By the end of the class, you will be able to… –Describe major milestones in the history of HCI and explain their impact in the discipline. –Explain why some historical products succeeded commercially while others did not.

Memex - Vannevar Bush (1945) New knowledge does not reach the people who could benefit from it

Bush’s Memex Conceived Hypertext and the World Wide Web! –stores all personal books, records, communications etc –items retrieved rapidly (indexing, keywords, cross references) –can annotate text with margin notes –can save a trail (chain of links) through the material Based on microfilm records but not implemented mmmm mmm mm mmmm mmm mmmm mmm mm mmmm mmm mmm m mmm mm mmm m mmm mmm m mmm mm mmm m mmm

Sutherland’s SketchPad-1963 Sophisticated drawing package hierarchical structures defined pictures and sub-pictures object-oriented programming: master picture with instances constraints: specify details which the system maintains through changes icons: small pictures represented more complex items copying: pictures and constraints input techniques: light pen world coordinates: separation of screen from drawing coordinates recursive operations: applied to children of hierarchical objects From

Why weren’t pen interfaces adopted until recently? Ergonomics – pen on vertical display Lack of widespread uses outside of CAD? Other reasons?

Douglas Engelbart The Vision (Early 50’s) …I had the image of sitting at a big CRT screen with all kinds of symbols, new and different symbols, not restricted to our old ones. The computer could be manipulated, and you could be operating all kinds of things to drive the computer... I also had a clear picture that one's colleagues could be sitting in other rooms with similar work stations, tied to the same computer complex, and could be sharing and working and collaborating very closely. And also the assumption that there'd be a lot of new skills, new ways of thinking that would evolve...Doug Engelbart

The First Mouse (1964) “….the human foot was a pretty sensitive controller of the gas pedal in cars. With a little work, we discovered that the knee offered even better control at slight movements in all directions. In tests, it outperformed the mouse by a small margin.”...Doug Engelbart

NLS Demo (1968) Document ProcessingDocument Processing –modern word processing –outline processing –hypermedia Input / OutputInput / Output –the mouse and one-handed corded keyboard –high resolution displays –multiple windows –specially designed furniture Shared workShared work –shared files and personal annotations –electronic messaging –shared displays with multiple pointers –audio/video conferencing –ideas of an Internet User testing, trainingUser testing, training

Alan Kay’s Dynabook (1969) - Cardboard Mockup “Imagine having your own self-contained knowledge manipulator in a portable package the size and shape of an ordinary notebook. Suppose it had enough power to out-race your senses of sight and hearing, enough capacity to store for later retrieval thousands of page-equivalents of reference materials, poems, letters, recipes, records, drawings, animations, musical scores...”

Early PCs Apple MacIntosh Xerox Alto Xerox Star Apple Lisa

Knowledge Navigator Conceived by John Sculley of Apple in 1987 Envisioned tablet computers, speech production and understanding, remote collaboration, intelligent software agents

Key Points Successful technologies were modeled after human needs (user centered design). Evolution of ideas into commercially viable products took several iterations. Computers have not always looked like the modern PC and do not need to look that way. Think outside the box when doing design.