In March 2007, academic and industrial researchers from many different countries and diverse backgrounds, including computing, social
science, and design, met in Seville,
Spain, for a two-day workshop entitled
“HCI in 2020.” The event, sponsored
by Microsoft Research Cambridge,
U.K., was a chance to air views, reflect,
and discuss the future of HCI as well
as issues of central importance to the
field. Needless to say, participants expressed a wide range of opinions, but
they were virtually unanimous that the
field of HCI must change its scope and
methods if it is to remain relevant in
the 21st century.
While the researchers agreed as
well on the need to keep human values at HCI’s core, they highlighted the
fact that our changing relationship
with computers means that determining what these values might be and
coming to understand them require
greater finesse than ever before. If in
the past HCI was in the business of
understanding how people could become more efficient through the use of
computers, the challenge confronting
the field now is to deal with issues that
are much more complex and subtle.
Here we summarize these issues, basing our discussion on the workshop’s
report Being Human: Human-Computer
Interaction in the Year 2020.
1
a Brief Look Back
When the field of HCI was in its infancy, a common activity was to model a
user’s interaction with a desktop computer so that the interface between person and machine could be optimized.
HCI was mainly a scientific and engineering endeavor, using techniques
derived from cognitive psychology and
human-factors engineering. 8 What
went on “inside the head” of a user was
specified by observing behavior under
controlled conditions, inferring what
kinds of perceptual, cognitive, and
motor processes were involved, and
developing pertinent theories. 2 Methods for optimizing “usability” were
devised, and iterative testing with real
users was seen as prerequisite to introducing any new software or hardware
product.
During the 1990s, the objectives of
HCI began changing along with the
growth of communication networks
Values are not
something that can
be catalogued like
books in a library
but are bound
to each other in
complex weaves
that, when tugged
in one place, pull
values elsewhere
out of shape.
that link computers. Researchers
started asking how users, with the aid
of computers, might interact with each
other. 13 Researchers with backgrounds
in more socially oriented sciences,
such as sociology and anthropology,
began to engage with HCI. These disciplines emphasized not only the effects of computing on groups of users
but also how those very same groups
appropriated computers, interpreted
them, and socially and emotionally experienced their relationships with the
technology. Several of the approaches
of these disciplines were added to the
mix with ethnographic approaches being especially visible.
The practical result of these developments is that HCI has become an academic discipline in its own right, with
conferences dedicated to the subject as
well as departments and courses offering HCI as a speciality, and it has also
become an integral part of the design
processes—typically, user-centered—
for nearly all technology companies. 14
Moreover, an understanding of HCI
(if not its details or techniques) has
seeped into the broader consciousness, as the common use of terms such
as “user-friendliness” and “user experience” in the news media and everyday
conversation attest. Such awareness,
among practitioners and users alike,
has encompassed computers not only in
the conventional sense of, say, desktop
systems but also as they are manifested
in cars, airplanes, mobile phones, and
a broad array of other products.
In parallel, important changes in
research objectives have also taken
place within the field. The HCI of today is exploring diverse new areas beyond the workplace, including the role
of technology in home life and education and even delving into such diverse
areas as play, spirituality, and sexuality. HCI is now more multidisciplinary
than ever, with a significant percentage of the community coming from
the design world. This shift has caused
the field’s practitioners to think more
broadly about their design goals, taking into account not just how technology might be functional or useful but
also how it might provoke, engage, disturb, or delight.
transformations in interaction
Despite the progress, gradual but now
