Fundamental questions in human-centered computing
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mated, how one can automate those things, and how to achieve efficient and reliable implementations [ 4]. Those questions are indeed central to the work of many computing fields; they probe the theoretical and technical limits of machine computability, and they focus on what machines can do. Those questions crystallize the tradition of computing research that has been called “machine-centered computing [ 5].”
However, since the 1980s the focus in computing research has been gradually broadening from the machine and automation toward how and where computers are used, the actual activities of end users, and how end users collaborate and interact [ 6]. For instance, Ben Shneiderman has argued that a clear shift from machine-centered computing toward human-centered computing has occurred [ 5]. Also, the attention devoted to the social implications of computing has continued to increase. Human-centered views of computing,
implicitly or explicitly, incorporate the view that technology has no intrinsic value, but the value of any technology is measured by the way people’s lives change if they adopt that technology or if that technology enters the society. The shift of focus from the machine to the user of the machine seems small but has profound ramifications.
Neither the theoretician’s question “What can be efficiently automated?” nor the practitioner’s question “How can processes be automated reliably and efficiently?” include, explicitly or implicitly, any questions about why processes should be automated at all, if it is desirable to automate things or to introduce new technologies, or who decides what will be automated. Shneiderman argued that the key questions of human-centered computing are “not whether broadband wireless networks will be ubiquitous, but how your life will change as a result of them [ 5]”. But changing people’s lives is certainly not a
mere technical matter.
Technological development has always entailed questions of whether certain technologies should be introduced in society or not, and new media and communication systems have always been especially suspect to suspicion. However, many technologists set aside ethical and social concerns from their work by arguing that science, technologies, or technological development are neutral or value free. When the central concern is what machines can do, ethical issues can be tabled with the argument that machines have no conscience, that technologies are value free, and that theories are neither good nor evil. But when the central concern is what people can do or how people’s lives will be changed, the whole gamut of ethical and social questions cannot be ignored [ 4]. The questions of machine-centered computing are descriptive questions, questions about what is, but human-centered computing entails normative questions, questions about what ought to be.
The surfacing of human-centered computing alters some of the questions in computing and inevitably brings along new questions altogether. Those questions include:
• What should be automated?
• Should process p be automated or not?
• Why should process p be automated?
• When should process p be automated and when not?
• What individual or societal consequences does automating process p have?
• Are the changes that automation brings about desirable?
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