Computer + Human
2.6 Humans + Computers + Interactions
2.6.3 Examples: Disciplinary Trajectories across History
In this section, I illustrate the use of the proposed 3D diagram for the nature of HCI by visualizing some historical HCI and Informatics disciplinary trajectories described in the literature. In Table 2.12, I quote some authors who commented on HCI’s historical development.
People Technology
Figure 2.17: The nature of Human-Computer Interaction: A 2D Projection of HCI’s Conceptual Space. This space can be extended with other information. In Chapter 4, I further extend this diagram with process models from software engineering to illustrate this capability.
1984 Allen Newell and Stuart K. Card
The Prospects for Psychological Science in Human Computer Interaction (Newell and Card, 1985, p 235)
To all intents and purposes, then, the psychology of human-computer interaction is the psychology of interaction with the canonical interface.[. . .] It sharply distinguishes the psychology of human-computer interaction from general human factors.
1998 Daniel Boyarski
Designing Design Education(Boyarski, 1998, p 9)
Human-centered Attitude [. . .] takes into account the human factors of cognition, behavior, even social and cultural influences. [. . .]
This human-centered approach is undergoing an evolution from user-centered design (considering the audience) in the 80s, to participatory design (involving the audience) in the 90s, to design partnerships (involving the audienceand client) in the first decade of the new century.
1999 Eamonn O’Neill, Hilary Johnson and Peter Johnson
Interacting in the Large: Developing a Framework for Integrating Models in HCI (O’Neill et al., 1999)
Modelling in early HCI concentrated largely on the individual user of a computer system. HCI has expanded its range of concerns to include the social, organizational, and environmental setting of interaction between possibly more than one user and more than one computer. The range of models used in HCI has correspondingly increased.
1999 James D. Hollan
Entry onHuman-Computer Interaction (Wilson and Keil, 1999)
Overall, as Grudin (1993) has pointed out, we can view the development of HCI as a movement from early concerns with low-level computer issues, to a focus on people’s individual tasks and how better to support them, to current concerns with supporting collaboration and sharing of information within organizations.
1999 Lars Oestreicher
Six Golden Rules to Shake the Student’s Mind (Oestreicher, 1999)
One problem with HCI is the narrow focussing on the computer, and it was also stated [by the workshop participants] that the HCI needs to free itself of the burden of the computer. Thus there will be a transfer from teaching Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to Human-Machine Interaction or even in the most general perspective Human-Artefact Interaction.
Table 2.12: HCI’s foci trajectories across history
In particular, I exemplify the use of the 3D diagram to illustrate the historical trajectories developed by Jonathan Grudin and other authors. Jonathan Grudin pub-lished a series of articles addressing the historical development of CSCW, and of the concept of interface in different settings and cultures.43 Liam Bannon’s publications also address several issues in HCI’s historical development, describing his pilgrimage from cognitive sciences to cooperative design, from human-factors to human-actors, from HCI and CMC to CSCW, and from storage to active remembering in organiza-tions.44
As a reference point I start with Newell and Card’s delimitation of HCI carried out in the early 1980s. Newell and Card used the limited correlated variability across interactive equipment to propose a canonical interface, simplifying the analysis of human-computer interaction with the imposition of similar constraints on different interfaces (Newell and Card, 1985, p 235). For Newell and Card capability of inter-active equipment increases over the years, but slowly enough to be factored out in a
“hard science” of HCI. According to them, this sharply distinguished HCI from the
“immensely more variable open environment” of general Human Factors.45 Newell and Card actually wrote:
1984 Allen Newell and Stuart K. Card
The Prospects for Psychological Science in Human Computer Interaction (Newell and Card, 1985, p 235)
The canonical interface[:] Most human-computer interaction takes place by means of only a few devices that are in mass use. The features of the members of each device class tend to be similar (e.g. all typewriter terminals tend to have speeds in a similar range). As years go by, the number of users with various types of equipment slowly changes.
43See Grudin (1990, 1991b,c,a, 1993, 1994b,a, 1996, 1998) and Grudin and Poltrock (1995).
44See Bannon (1990, 1991, 1992b), Bannon and Shapiro (1994), Bannon and Kuutti (1996), and Bannon (1997).
45The relative order used by Newell and Card to classify HCI and human factors is the inverse of the one depicted in the human dimension used here. This reinforces my remark that such scales are only conceptual and do not demarcate boundaries, but indicate main trends.
This limited and correlated variability in equipment simplifies the analysis of human-computer interaction by imposing similar constraints on different interfaces. [. . .] To all intents and purposes, then, the psychology of human-computer interaction is the psychol-ogy of interaction with the canonical interface. This is a remarkable situation. It sharply distinguishes the psychology of human-computer interaction from general human factors, which must deal with an immensely more variable operating environment, and hence has a much harder task. The canonical interface is the feature, if any, that might make possible a separate discipline of human-computer interaction.
By comparison, while Newell and Card considered these changes to be slow enough to be factored out, they are the actual focus of Grudin’s analysis. Grudin described the history of interface design as a continuous drift starting at the inner workings of hardware issues and reaching the work setting. Grudin’s description of the focus of interface design is accordance with the traditional description of informatics, in which its main focus has drifted from narrower to broader issues. Grudin characterized this trajectory in five periods:
1990 Jonathan Grudin
The Computer Reaches Out: The historical continuity of interface design (Grudin, 1990, p 262)
[1] Initially, the user interface was located at the hardware itself – most users were engineers working directly with the hardware.
[2] The focus than moved to the programming task – higher-level programming languages and progressively freed the user from the need of being familiar with the hardware.
[3] Next, with the widespread appearance of interactive systems and non-programming
“end-users,” the user interface shifted to the display and keyboard, with early attention to perceptual and motor issues.
[4] Recent years have seen increasing research focus on users’ “conversational” dialogues with systems and applications, involving deep cognitive issues underlying the learning and use of systems: the user interface is extending past the eye and fingers, into the mind.
[5] Finally, with the advent of “groupware” and systems to support organizations, we are beginning to see the focus of user interface design to extend out into the social and work environment, reaching even further from its origin at the heart of the computer.
In other works Grudin discussed CSCW’s history from 1965 to 1985 (Grudin, 1994a,b, 1998). In these papers Grudin presented the scope of Informatics through concentric circles spanning the individual and the organization, passing through the small group. A closer look, however, shows that the years associated with each circle do not increase linearly. In Figure 2.18(b), I list Grudin’s collected information. I took the liberty to add two periods, one before the 1960s (1945 –) and one after the 1990s.
Apparently, the trajectory described by Grudin of CSCW’s history follows the same expansive pattern. However, once the two trajectories are plotted on the three dimensional diagram, the curve that CSCW draws does not grow monotonically. See Figure 2.18(a) for the foci of interface design according to Grudin.
Figure 2.19 exemplifies how the 3D diagram introduced earlier can be used to visualize the historical trajectory of interface design and of CSCW as told by Grudin and by other authors.46 In Grudin’s original circular diagram, mainframes, systems, and the organization were the foci in 1965. The respective disciplinary focus was on data processing, information technology, and the management of information systems.
In 1975 Informatics drifted to minicomputers, workflow, and specific projects, with a respective shift to software engineering and office automation. Later on, the foci shrunk to the individual computer and product development, but expanded towards HCI and human factors as approaches. With networks of PC’s, the scope increased again, and CSCW emerged as a field. Chronologically, this goes from the broader environment of the organization, passes through the local issues of the individual user, and goes back to the slightly broader issues of small groups. This resembles the disciplinary funnelling of Informatics discussed in Chapter 1. During the nineties, HCI has expanded towards uncharted and earlier avoided or prescinded realms.
46It is interesting to see Figure 2.19 in the light of Figure 2.9, in which human and technical dimensions are correlated in two pictures. I remark that Figure 2.19 only illustrates conceptual foci.
1985 1975
1965 Organization Project
Small Group Individual
Systems GDSS / Workflow
Computer-Mediated Com.
Applications Internal
Contract and Internal
Product and Telecom.
Mainframe Minicomputers Networks Personal Computer
(PC)
Networked PC ’s Workstations
Development Example
1980 1945
Product Scope
Product
Group Calculating
Machines Research and
Military labs Mainframe,
Robots
1990 Large groups Product and E-service
Service Networked PC ’s ,
mobile devices
Computer Supported Cooperative Work Human Factors CHI
Software Engineering Office Automation Data Processing Management IS, IT
Area/Discipline
Cybernetics Automation
Informatics?
IT?
1990s-1970s-1980s 1960-1970s
1980s-1950s
Interface specialist discipline
Human factors, cognitive psychology, and graphic design Cognitive psychology and cognitive science (and dramatic arts?) Social psychology, anthropology, and organizational studies.
Engineers, programmers Programmers
“End users”
“End users”
Groups of users Hardware
Software Terminal Dialogue Work setting
Principal Users
Electrical Engineering Computer Science
CSCW’s
Interface Design as
(a)
(b)
Figure 2.18: CSCW and interface design history: (a) based on Grudin (1990, p 265) (b) based on Grudin (1994a, 1998)
device computer system information system technological system
Human Technical
operation action
activity Ethical, Mediated,
Interactive, AxiologicalCommunicative HCI’s and CSCW’s History
Boyarsky 1998 cognition behavior culture
80’s 90’s 00’s
mainframes, Systems Organization 1965 -1975
Minicomputers Project, Workflow
networked PCs CMC, CSCW 1985
1940-automation Operation
physiological
individual
organizational
social
hardware software
terminal
dialogue
work setting
PCs, human factors, HCI 1980
Figure 2.19: Historical trajectories of CSCW and interface design
I have also depicted in Figure 2.19 the trajectory described by James D. Holland in reference to Jonathan Grudin (1993)’s analysis of the evolution of the concept of interface and the trajectory described by O’Neill et al. (1999) who mentioned the increasing range of models used in HCI.