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Lecture 11 – HCI History

Terry WinogradCS147 - Introduction to Human-Computer

Interaction DesignComputer Science Department

Stanford UniversityAutumn 2006

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Learning Goals

• Be familiar with the development of the major strands of interaction design and the technologies underlying them

• Gain an appreciation for the research, development and thought that went into the interfaces which today seem so mundane and commonplace

• Have a perspective on where things are going at the moment and likely to continue in the future

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Generations of Human-Computer Interaction (Nielsen++)

• Pre-history – to 1945• Pioneer – 1945-55• Historical – 1955-65• Traditional – 1965-80• Modern – 1980-90

• Web – 1990-…• Mobile/Ubiquitous – 1990-…

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Pre-history

• Precursors (Babbage, Jacquard Loom, ...)• Plugboards and Punchcards

• Tabulating machines, calculators,..

• Communications – Teletype, Fax,…

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Jacquard Loom (1804) Babbage Difference Engine (1849)

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Hollerith Punch Cards (1890)

Hollerith Electric Tabulator, US Census Bureau, Washington, DC, 1908,Photograph by Waldon Fawcett. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-45687.

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Teletype (ca. 1910)

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Prehistory: Key Advances

• Ability for a mechanism to follow a sequence of operations according to pre-programmed instructions

• Digital encoding of information (both text content and instructions on what to do)

• Transmission of digital information

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Pioneer (1945-1955)

• Stored program computers (Von Neumann)

• Complex electromechanical control systems (eg., bomb controls, aircraft controls…)– Primary Interaction Mode: A person is playing a part

in controlling a complex realtime system. The interface is designed to provide information and control possibilities that are suited to the limitations of human performance and the demands of the task.

• Key Advances– Programmable digital computers– Systematic study of human factors

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Historical (1955-1965)

• Specialized computers and interaction modes, often for a single highly trained user

• Integrated systems (e.g., air defense / SAGE)

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Spacewar MIT PDP-1 (1960)

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Lincoln Labs TX-2 Sketchpad (1962)Ivan Sutherland - MIT

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Sage Air Defense (1963)

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Historical: Key Advances

• Real-time interactive systems• First interactive computer games• Graphic interaction

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Traditional 1965-1980

• Mainframe – Batch Processing• Time Sharing – Command Dialog

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Batch Processing

• A user prepares data off line, submits it for a "run", and is given back an off line version of the results. Cycle time can be short but in many installations was hours or days.

• The computer ran one job after another without waiting for users to do anything

• Interaction through card decks and printouts • Batch processing facilitated the efficient use

of computers without waiting for human input

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Time Sharing Text Command Line Interaction

login as: winogradwinograd@graphics's password:Last login: Tue Sep 20 15:22:48 2005 from xtz.stanford.edu************************ Welcome to SULinux! ** Authorized Use Only ************************Hint: run /usr/sbin/sulinux to reconfigure at any timeGraphics> echo "hello world"hello worldGraphics> connect to the webconnect: Command not found.Graphics> helphelp: Command not found.Graphics> rm –R *Graphics>

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Full-Screen Interaction

• Machine provides a pre-planned structure (often branching) of screens with blanks to be filled in and menus that offer options to go to other screens. User fills in the blanks, use menu to go to other screens

• Early embodiment in 3270 terminals • Common in data entry, service jobs, etc. • This was the interaction style for most early

Web pages, including most uses of forms

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Key Advances: Historical

• Spread of computers to industry and government

• Real-time data entry• Control over writing on screens• Interactive applications

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Modern (1980-1995)

• Personal Computers• Graphical User Interface (GUI)

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Personal Computers

• Early small hobbyist computers – MITS Altair (Roberts, 1975) – Apple I, (Jobs and Wozniak, 1976)

• Commercialized personal computers– Apple II, 1977 – IBM PC 1981

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Altair (1975)

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Apple I (1976)

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Key Advances: Hobbyist computers

• Machines cheap enough to be used by someone other than government and big business or research labs

• Created the opportunity for a wide number of developers to start building software– Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote version of BASIC for

MITS Altair – giving Microsoft its start

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Commercialized Personal Computers

Apple II, 1977

IBM PC 1981

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Visicalc (1979) and Lotus 1-2-3 (1980)

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Key Advances : Commercial PCs

• Apple II, 1977– Key advances: First general purpose personal computer

used widely in business (because of VisiCalc)

• IBM PC, 1981– Key advances: Making the PC respectable to business

in general by putting the IBM label on it

• Features– Character terminal– Text UI standards (IBM CUA)– Graphics: non-standard

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Graphical User Interface (GUI)

• Bitmapped screen – pixels rather than characters

• WYSYWIG (What You See is What You Get)

• Direct Manipulation• WIMP

(Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointing)

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Precursor - Augment (Engelbart, 1968)

• Key advances: Mouse, direct manipulation of text, outlining, word processing, hyperlinking, multi-function integration

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Augment at SRI (ca. 1965)

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Xerox PARC Graphical Workstations

Alto (research prototype), 1973

Star (commercial product), 1981

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Xerox Star (1981)

• Introduced windows commercially, $17K

• Key advances: Integrated networked document environment, WYSYWIG text editing, icons, property sheets, window management, ...– Unique design process (8 years of

prototyping)Design first, then codeObjects&ActionsGraphic designers

Apple Lisa(1983)

• Apple’s first bitmapped-GUI computer• Inspired by Alto (not Star)

– 1-button mouse• Key advances:

– Menu bar (instead of pop-up menus)• But: underpowered, bad marketing ($10K)

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Apple Macintosh (1984)

• Lisa follow-up• Key advances:

– GUI affordable to huge new user community

– First commercially successful WIMP system, $2500

– Hypercard for mass authoring– Most consistent commercial

WIMP UI• Macintosh Human Interface

Guidelines• Apple Evangelists

Hypercard

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GUI Software Platforms

• Windows 3.0, 95, 98, NT, XP, Vista…– Brought GUIs to the mass market

• Macintosh OS7,8,9, OSX, Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard…– One step ahead

• Variants– Open Look, Motif, Gnome, NextStep,, BeOS, …

The paradigm is basically stable. What’s next?

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Key Advances: GUI Workstations

• Xerox Alto (1973)– Menus, windows, pointing, dragging, etc. as we now

know them

• Xerox Star (1981)– Integrated networked document environment with many

of the features we now take for granted: WYSYWIG text editing, icons, property sheets, window management, etc.

– Unique design process (8 years of prototyping) • Apple Lisa (1983), Macintosh (1984)

– Made the GUI interface affordable and usable to a huge new community of users.

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Web Interfaces (1990-…)

• World Wide Web, Berners Lee, 1990• First Graphic browser – Mosaic

– NCSA - University of Illinois, 1993• Search Engine

– Webcrawler, Lycos, Altavista…1993-95– Google, 1998

• Graphic design (Director, Flash,…)– http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/flashpro/producti

nfo/features/

• Rich Web Interfaces 2000…

NCSA Mosaic

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Key Advances: Web interfaces

• First Generation – browsers and full screen interaction– Universal access to sites irrespective of location or

computing platform• Second Generation – Better visual design

(e.g, CSS, Flash, multimedia,…)– Aesthetic control and impact

• Web 2.0 – Browser as powerful client, accessing web-based services– Integrated networked-based applications that leverage

large-scale services (search, maps, etc.)– Blurs boundary between applications and web

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Mobile Computing (1995 - …)

• PDAs– Apple Newton (1993)

• Depended heavily on Handwriting, failed in the market

– Palm Pilot (1996)• Used Graffiti, first commercial success

• Mobile Connected Devices– Cell Phones ++– SoMoCo (Social Mobile Computing)

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Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)

Apple Newton (1993)

Palm Pilot (1996)

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Mobile Devices

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Research directions [for anotherlecture]

• Virtual Reality• Augmented Reality• Natural Language, Intelligent Agents• Pen-based interaction• Wearable Affective Computing• Multimodal Interaction• Tangible Interaction• Human-Robot Interaction• Ubiquitous Computing

These have been explored for many years, but not made it into mainstream use.

Which of them (or something else) will be the next big thing?