Summary
Henry Lieberman describes a "creative programming environment" called Pygmalion designed for letting children and beginners learn to program; however, the designer, David Canfield Smith supported and emphasized creativity, visual programming and programming by example, the idea that users can just show the computer what they would like to do, which the computer can generalize to a program that can work in analogous situations.
Discussion
I found it hard to fully understand and appreciate Pygmalion, but it was still fairly clear how it impacts HCI today. I thought it was interesting that it was the first system to introduce icons.
Chapter 7: Fundamentals in HCI: Learning the Value of Consistency and User Models
Summary
This chapter describes the Xerox Red Book released in 1981, intended as a user specification for the first Xerox Star workstation. Sara Bly explains that this "Red Book" features two main categories: document creation and document management. These sections cover text editing, formatting and layout, and filing, directories, e-mail, printing and removable storage. Bly states that the Red Book can serve as a textbook on interface design, for three important reasons: the UI was considered a primary concern in design, consistency was applied across the all aspects of the interface, and provided a good conceptual model for a desktop setting.
Discussion
I feel like taking Sara Bly's word on the Red Book still having an impact on interfaces today, but I feel I'd be more convinced if there were more detail and examples in the chapter.
Chapter 9: The Disappearing Computer
Summary
In this chapter, the author, Norbert A. Streitz, stresses that human-computer interaction is somewhat misleading, as people are really interacting with information and other people for collaboration, thus emphasis should be placed on human-information interaction and human-human interaction. As such, the computer itself should "disappear". This can be done physically, where devices are miniaturized and are integrated into other common objects, such as clothing, or mentally, where devices may still be sizable but do not appear as computers but "interactive" objects such that computers are not seen as computers anymore.
Discussion
I think this topic is very important to computer scientists and designers alike and is integral to HCI. On that note, I think Streitz's distinction between HCI, human-information and human-human interaction are unnecessary, as the disappearance of the computer is already a primary concern in HCI, or it should be, in which case his distinction may be important after all.
Chapter 10: It Really Is All About Location!
Summary
In this chapter, Anind Dey explores location-based services, such as Google Maps that use GPS for various activities like hiking. The first system of this kind was published in the paper "The Active Badge Location System". This system was capable of locating users indoors without requiring users to do anything other than wear the badge itself, as opposed to swiping badgers through readers or pagers. The Active Badge system showed that you didn't have to be limited by current technology to create and pioneer future ideas.
Discussion
I'm surprised I haven't heard about this system before, considering many of today's mobile devices exist in part because of Active Badge.
Chapter 46: The Essential Role of Mental Models in HCI: Card, Moran, and Newell
Summary
This chapter explores the concept of mental models, which are ideas users form about computer systems to help themselves interact with and understand the systems. Mental models have a strong impact on HCI, as they can make user of systems feel seamless and easier to use. Early on, S.K. Card, T. Moran and A. Newell appealed to a type of mental model called GOMS (goals, methods and selectional rules), itself a method for describing the tasks users wish to perform and how to perform it.
Despite its impact on functionality and usability, mental models have declined somewhat in favor of concepts based around "look and feel", and its importance has been debated among psychologists, computer scientists, engineers and designers in HCI.
Despite its impact on functionality and usability, mental models have declined somewhat in favor of concepts based around "look and feel", and its importance has been debated among psychologists, computer scientists, engineers and designers in HCI.
Discussion
The GOMS model does seem rather low-lowel and too structured, but I do not doubt that mental models are very important to HCI for understanding how people interact with computer systems. Of course, this chapter reminded me of Dr. Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things".
Chapter 47: A Most Fitting Law
Summary
In this chapter, Gary M. Olson explains that HCI is largely qualitative and does not follow many laws. He explores (Paul M.) Fitts's Law, which states that the time it takes to move to a target is a quantative function of the length of the movement and the size of the target. Examples of this include how the edge of the screen is infinite, in that when the cursor meets the edge, it stops; providing access to pop-up menus quickly, positioning items in pop-up menus with distance minimized. Olson acknowledges that Fitts's Law is not all-encompassing; for example it only considers rapid movements to a target, but not slow movements like drawing.
Discussion
The mention of on-click pop-up menus reminded me a lot of the Crunchbang Linux operating system and similar OSs that use the Openbox, Blackbox and Fluxbox window managers, as they feature a customizable system pop-up menu that can be accessed by right-clicking on the desktop or alternatively performing a function keystroke, independent of the cursor location.
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