CS408 Midterm Highlighted Handouts by MAS All Rounder

Lecture 1.

Introduction to Human Computer Interaction – Part I

Learning Goals As the aim of this lecture is to introduce you the study of Human Computer Interaction, so that after studying this you will be able to:

Answer what is the significance of Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Discuss and argue about why Human computer Interaction (HCI) is important with reference to the way in which technology has developed during past forty years

Describe a formal definition of HCI.

At the end of this lecture you will be told about the course contents. This will be a brief overview of the topics that we will discuss in this course and the structure of the course.

Now it is twenty first century and during the past thirty years technology has advanced to such an extent that almost everyone come in contact with computers in one way or another. Look around yourself how many things are there which have some kind of computer embedded in them? Think about a minute about what you use in a typical day; ATM, cell phone, VCR, remote control, ticketing machine, digital personal organizers, calculator, watch, photocopier, toaster, bank, air conditioner, broadcasting, satellite, microwave, medical equipment, factories, companies….the list is endless. Computers are everywhere. We are surrounded by computers. Now they are part of our everyday life.

Traditional notion of computers is no more. Unlike in the early days of computing, when only highly skilled technical people used computers, nowadays the range of knowledge and experience of different users is very broad. Computers are no more just on your table. Now computer has become a tool of everyday use. They are everywhere, at everyplace and in everything. They are penetrating in every aspect of our life. They are taking our lives.

When computers first appeared on the commercial scene in the 1950s, they were extremely difficult to use, cumbersome and at times unpredictable. There were a number of reasons for this;

They were very large and expensive machines, so that by comparison human labor (that is, ’people time’) was an inexpensive resource. They were used only by technical specialists – scientists and engineers – who were familiar with the intricacies of off-line programming using punch cards. Little was known about how to make them easier to use. None of these conditions holds today: computers have become much less expensive, users come from every walk of life, and we understand a great deal more about how to fit the machines to people’s needs and their work.

Dramatic decrease in the cost of computing resources have resulted from new technological advances, the most significant being the development of the silicon chip. The ability not only to miniaturize circuits but also to pack large number of them on to tiny, individual chips paved the way for his development of powerful computers with large storage capacity. In less than thirty years computers changed from being huge machines housed in large, air-conditioned rooms to much smaller machines, including some that can easily be carried around by children. Computers have also become more reliable and today’s machines do not suffer from overheating like their ancestors. Computing has entered a new era and is becoming ubiquitous.

The development of the first personal computers in the 1970s was a major landmark because these machines provided interactive computing power for individual users at low cost. Consequently, instead of just a handful of highly experienced programmers being the only users, people from all walks of life – commerce, farming, education, retailing, defense, manufacturing and entertainment – began using computer systems. Computers are becoming increasingly POWERFUL.

Computers are performing more and more TASKS. These changes in technology have opened up a wide range of new possibilities for the way in which computers can be used. The sheer costliness and time required to run programs on the early machines dictated the kinds of commercial application in which computers could be used. Business such as banking and accounting, with large-scale record keeping activities, were the first to take up computing technology. Companies that were involved in activities with ‘fast’ cycles, such as transaction processing for airlines and retailing, could not make use of these machines. They were not sufficiently fast or responsive, but this is not a problem with modern computers.

Computers have also found a place in many private homes. In fact, such has been their pervasiveness that now just about everyone, young or old, able or disabled, skilled or unskilled, is using or is directly affected by computers in one way or another. Machines are leaking into every aspect of lives. So now the concept of life, without computer is same as concept of life without electricity, and obviously it is hard to live without light as well as with computer!

As computers are penetrating in our daily life, it has some results. The bright side of this invasion is:

Computers are enabling new discoveries Leading to efficiencies Computers are annoying us They are infuriating us They even kill a few of us.

In turn, we will be tempted to kill our computers, but we won’t dare because we are already utterly, irreversibly dependent on these hopeful monsters that make modern life possible. So we will have to think about them. We will have to think how we can make them better. We need to fundamentally rethink how human and machines interact. And rethink the relationship in deep and novel ways, for the fault for our burgeoning problems lies not with our machines, but with us.

1. 1 Riddles for the Information Age

What do you get when you cross a computer with an Airplane?

In December 1995, American Airlines Flight 965 departed from Miami on a regularly scheduled trip to Cali, Columbia. On the landing approach, the pilot of the 757 needed to select the next radio navigation fix, named “ROZO”. He entered an “R” into his navigation computer. The computer returned a list of nearby navigation fixes starting with “R” and the pilot selected the first of these, whose latitude and longitude appeared to be correct. Unfortunately, instead of “ROZO”, the pilot selected “ROMEO”, 132 miles to the northeast. The jet was southbound descending into a valley that runs north-south, and any lateral deviation was dangerous. Following indications on the flight computer, the pilots began an easterly turn and slammed into a granite peak at 10,000 feet. One hundred and fifty two passengers and all eight crewmembers aboard perished. Four passengers survived with serious injuries.