Lecture Topics in HCI, by Saul Greenberg
Contents for:	All Topics	CPSC 481	SENG 609.05	Industrial Course

History of Human Computer Interaction

To make students aware of the intellectual and historical foundations of human computer interaction, a brief history of the early major breakthroughs in HCI are covered. Presentations are followed by historical videos, which the students greatly enjoy. Some are flabbergasted that many so-called "modern" ideas were implemented before they were born!

Overheads

• History of HCI: [Adobe PDF]

Topics Covered

• Vannevar Bush and Memex
• J.C.R. Licklider and man-computer symbiosis
• Time sharing
• Sutherland's Sketchpad
• Engelbart's NLS
• Personal Computers: Dynabook, Computer Lib, Alto, Altair
• Commercial Machines: Xerox Star/Apple Lisa and the Macintosh
• Innovations from the MIT Media Lab

Readings from Baecker Grudin Buxton and Greenberg

• Chapter 1: A Historical and Intellectual Perspective, p.35-47 gives an excellent overview of early advances in HCI.
• Case B: The Emergence of Graphical User Interfaces, p.49-52, briefly highlights the progression of what are arguably the most important commercial systems to influence modern computing: the Xerox Star, the Apple Lisa, and the Apple Macintosh.
• The Xerox Star: A Retrospective, p.53-70, details the many important innovations in the Star user interface, as well as providing a history of how other systems influenced (and were influenced by) the Star.

Videos

The videos are of historic systems. Sutherland's Sketchpad influenced graphics and graphical user interfaces. Engelbart's visionary NLS system contains the essence of many of the ideas in modern interfaces. The Xerox Star was, of course, the first commercial product that we would consider "modern". Kay, in the first half of his video, walks through the history of interfaces which include the Dynabook vision and the Alto. Finally, the MIT Media Lab has an important place in history in terms of innovation and invention, and two samples of MIT work is shown: a multimedia movie manual and a speech-based haptic system.

• Sketchpad, by Sutherland (1983, SGVR 13)
• A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect, by Engelbart and English (1994, SGVR 106)
• Xerox Star User Interface, by Smith and Irby (1983, SGVR 56)
• Doing with Images Makes Symbols, by Kay (1987, University Video Communications)
• The Movie Manual, by MIT (1983, SVGR 13)
• Put That There, by MIT (1983, SVGR 13)

Major sources used to prepare lecture material

• The readings mentioned above, particularly Chapter 1, contain a wealth of information about the history and evolution of HCI.
• Card, S. (1996) Pioneers and settlers: Methods used in successful user interface design. In M. Rudisill, C. Lewis, P. Polson and T. McKay (eds) Human-Computer Interface Design: Success Stories, Emerging Methods, and Real-World Context, p122-169, Morgan-Kaufmann. Successful systems are reconsidered against a variety of design and evaluation methods as well as real deployment requirements.
• Personal Recollections of the Apple MacIntosh Design, collected by Guy Kawasaki