Human-computer interaction

1.User interface as means of human-computer interaction. Usability of interfaces.

Human–computer interaction (commonly referred to as HCI) researches the design and use of computer technology, focused on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. Researchers in the field of HCI both observe the ways in which humans interact with computers and design technologies that let humans interact with computers in novel ways.

Humans interact with computers in many ways; and the interface between humans and the computers they use is crucial to facilitating this interaction. Desktop applications, internet browsers, handheld computers, and computer kiosks make use of the prevalent graphical user interfaces (GUI) of today. Voice user interfaces (VUI) are used for speech recognition and synthesising systems, and the emerging multi-modal and gestalt User Interfaces (GUI) allow humans to engage with embodied character agents in a way that cannot be achieved with other interface paradigms. The growth in human-computer interaction field has been in quality of interaction, and in different branching in its history. Instead of designing regular interfaces, the different research branches have had different focus on the concepts of multimodality rather than unimodality, intelligent adaptive interfaces rather than command/action based ones, and finally active rather than passive interfaces

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) defines human-computer interaction as "a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them". An important facet of HCI is the securing of user satisfaction (or simply End User Computing Satisfaction). "Because human–computer interaction studies a human and a machine in communication, it draws from supporting knowledge on both the machine and the human side. On the machine side, techniques in computer graphics, operating systems, programming languages, and development environments are relevant. On the human side, communication theory, graphic and industrial design disciplines, linguistics, social sciences, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and human factors such as computer user satisfaction are relevant. And, of course, engineering and design methods are relevant."Due to the multidisciplinary nature of HCI, people with different backgrounds contribute to its success. HCI is also sometimes termed human–machine interaction (HMI), man–machine interaction (MMI) or computer–human interaction (CHI).

Poorly designed human-machine interfaces can lead to many unexpected problems. A classic example of this is the Three Mile Island accident, a nuclear meltdown accident, where investigations concluded that the design of the human–machine interface was at least partly responsible for the disaster. Similarly, accidents in aviation have resulted from manufacturers' decisions to use non-standard flight instrument or throttle quadrant layouts: even though the new designs were proposed to be superior in basic human–machine interaction, pilots had already ingrained the "standard" layout and thus the conceptually good idea actually had undesirable results.

Human–computer interaction studies the ways in which humans make, or don't make, use of computational artifacts, systems and infrastructures. In doing so, much of the research in the field seeks to improve human-computer interaction by improving the usability of computer interfaces. How usability is to be precisely understood, how it relates to other social and cultural values and when it is, and when it may not be a desirable property of computer interfaces is increasingly debated.

The human–computer interface can be described as the point of communication between the human user and the computer. The flow of information between the human and computer is defined as the loop of interaction. The loop of interaction has several aspects to it, including:

· Visual Based :The visual based human computer inter-action is probably the most widespread area in HCI research.

· Audio Based : The audio based interaction between a computer and a human is another important area of in HCI systems. This area deals with information acquired by different audio signals.

· Task environment: The conditions and goals set upon the user.

· Machine environment: The environment that the computer is connected to, e.g. a laptop in a college student's dorm room.

· Areas of the interface: Non-overlapping areas involve processes of the human and computer not pertaining to their interaction. Meanwhile, the overlapping areas only concern themselves with the processes pertaining to their interaction.

· Input flow: The flow of information that begins in the task environment, when the user has some task that requires using their computer.

· Output: The flow of information that originates in the machine environment.

· Feedback: Loops through the interface that evaluate, moderate, and confirm processes as they pass from the human through the interface to the computer and back.

· Fit: This is the match between the computer design, the user and the task to optimize the human resources needed to accomplish the task.

Topics in HCI include:

Definition of User Interface.

In computer science and human-computer interaction, the user interface (of a computer program) refers to the graphical, textual and auditory information the program presents to the user. The user employs several control sequences (such as keystrokes with the computer keyboard, movements of the computer mouse, or selections with the touchscreen) to control the program.

2. Types of interfaces: command line interface, text interface, graphic interface.

There exist several types of user interfaces.

· Command-Line Interface (CLI): The user provides the input by typing a command string with the computer keyboard and the system provides output by printing text on the computer monitor .

A Command Line Interface allows the user to interact directly with the computer system by typing in commands (instructions) into a screen

You cannot just type in any kind of instruction of course, because the computer will only react to a definite set of words.

These commands are very specific, for example in DOS you could type in:

copy c:\item.txt d:\

That tells the machine to copy the file 'item.txt' that resides in the root directory of drive C: into the root directory of drive D:\

Many commands have what are called 'switches'. These are extra parameters or flags which add extra functionality to the command. For example:

»Dir gives a directory listing

»Dir /w gives the listing across the page

»Dir /s includes the sub directories

»Dir /p pauses at the bottom of every page

Before Windows was developed, this type of user interface was what most people used to get the computer to follow instructions. Nowadays, very few people have the knowledge to be able to use a command line interface.

An example of this type of interface is DOS (Disk Operating System).

Sometimes referred to as the command screen or a text interface, the command line or Windows command line is a user interface that is navigated by typing commands at prompts, instead of using the mouse. For example, the Windows folder in a Windows command line (MS-DOS) is C:\Windows> (as shown in the picture) and in Unix or Linux, it may be % or >. Unlike a GUI operating system, a command line only uses a keyboard to navigate by entering commands and does not utilize a mouse for navigating.

Because a command line interface requires unique commands, this interface is often more difficult to learn because of the need to memorize dozens of different commands. However, a command line operating system can be a very valuable resource and should not be ignored. For example, users who have Microsoft Windows may find trivial tasks, such as renaming 100+ files in a folder, a very difficult task. However, renaming 100+ files in a directory can be done in less than a minute with a command entered into the command line.

Table 4- Advantages and Disadvantages