Key people, events, ideas and paradigm shifts HCI History Part 2 of 2 Key people, events, ideas and paradigm shifts This material has been developed by Georgia Tech HCI faculty, and continues to evolve. Contributors include Gregory Abowd, Jim Foley, Diane Gromala, Elizabeth Mynatt, Jeff Pierce, Colin Potts, Chris Shaw, John Stasko, and Bruce Walker. This specific presentation also borrows from James Landay and Jason Hong at UC Berkeley. Comments directed to foley@cc.gatech.edu are encouraged. Permission is granted to use with acknowledgement for non-profit purposes. Last revision: August 2004.

The Evolution of HCI Series of technological advances lead to and are sometimes facilitated by a Series of paradigm shifts that in turn are created by a Series of key people and events

Paradigm: Personal Computer System is more powerful if it’s easier to use Small, powerful machine dedicated to individual use Made possible by single-chip processor and less semiconductor memory - drives down costs - Moore’s Law

Early Personal Computers 1975 IBM 5100 1977 Radio Shack TRS-80 http://www.cedmagic.com/history/ibm-pc-5100.html http://oldcomputers.net/trs80i.html Sept 1975 IBM's Entry Level Systems unit unveils the IBM 5100 Portable Computer. It is a briefcase-size minicomputer with BASIC, 16 KB RAM expandable to 64 KB, tape storage drive holding 204 KB per tape, keyboard, and built-in 5-inch screen. Price: US$8975-19975. Weight: 55 pounds. Code name during development was Project Mercury. [9] [197.xi] [606.22] [902.137] [1112.144] (Price over US$10,000 [203.10])

Early Personal Computers 1979 Apple II 1979 VisiCalc - “killer app” for Apple II 1981 IBM XT/AT http://apple2history.org/history http://www.bricklin.com/history/saiearly.htm http://www.vintagecomputers.freeserve.co.uk/ibmpc/

The dawn of the PC & GUI Xerox PARC - 1970 Established 1970 Bob Taylor heads CSL - Computer Systems Lab Goal: “The Paperless Office” Are we there yet? “Inventing the future” Researchers using their new creations as their own tools - bootstrapping

PARC Hardware Milestones Laser printer 1971 Gary Starkweather Ethernet 1973 Bob Metcalfe Alto personal computer 1973 Chuck Thacker Ed McCreight, Chuck Thacker, Butler Lampson, Bob Sproull, and Dave Boggs Real-time windowing operations (BitBlt) 1973 Dan Ingalls

Xerox PARC – The Alto - 1973 First personal computer! 808 x 606 raster bitmapped display 3-button mouse, keyboard Ethernet Merges printing, display and networking

PARC Software Milestones Bravo WYSIWYG text editor/formatter 1974 Butler Lampson and Charles Simonyi Gypsy text editor with GUI and modeless cut and paste editing 1975 Larry Tessler and Timothy Mott Draw drawing program 1975 William Newman Superpaint paint program 1974-75 Dick Shoup http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~amulet/papers/uihistory.tr.html

Innovator: Alan Kay Dynabook - Notebook sized computer loaded with multimedia and can store everything @PARC Personal computing Desktop interface Overlapping windows

HCI Researchers at Xerox PARC in 1970s and early 1980s Stu Card Tom Moran George Robertson David Smith Bill Verplank Jeff Johnson ……

Paradigm: WIMP / GUI Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers Graphical User Interface Timesharing=multi-user; now we need multitasking WIMP interface allows you to do several things simultaneously Has become the familiar GUI interface Xerox Alto & Star; Perq, Lisa, Macintosh, …

Xerox Star - 1981 First commercial PC designed for “business professionals” desktop metaphor, pointing, WYSIWYG, high degree of consistency and simplicity First system based on usability engineering Paper prototyping and analysis Usability testing and iterative refinement

Xerox Star Desktop http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~mbsclass/hall_of_fame/xerox.htm

Xerox Star - 1981 Commercial flop Video - the Star in use $15k cost closed architecture lacking key functionality (spreadsheet) Video - the Star in use

Apple Lisa - 1982 Based on ideas of Star More personal rather than office tool Still $$$ - $10K to $12K Failure

Apple Macintosh - 1984 Aggressive pricing Good interface guidelines $2500 Good interface guidelines Third party applications Great graphics, laser printer

Paradigm: Direct Manipulation ‘82 Shneiderman describes appeal of rapidly-developing graphically-based interaction object visibility incremental action and rapid feedback reversibility encourages exploration replace language with action syntactic correctness of all actions WYSIWYG, Apple Mac

Paradigm: Metaphor All use is problem-solving or learning to some extent Relating computing to real-world activity is effective learning mechanism File management on office desktop Financial analysis as spreadsheets The tension between literalism & magic Eject disk or CD on Mac by dragging to trash can

Pardigm/Technology – Person-to-Person Communications Enabled by several technologies Ethernet and TCP/IP protocol Personal computer Telephone network and modems And by killer-app software Email, Instant Messaging, Chat, Bulletin Boards CSCW - conferencing, shared white boards Not quite yet a killer-app Micro-sociological phenomenon are central to successes (and failures)

Paradigm: CSCW Computer-Supported Cooperative Work No longer single user/single system Micro-social aspects are crucial E-mail as prominent success but other groupware still not widely used

Paradigm: Hypertext Think of information not as linear flow but as interconnected nodes Bush’s MEMEX gave the idea in 1945 Nelson coined term in 1965 Engelbart’s NLS did it in 1965 WWW in ’93 was the real launch

Innovator: Ted Nelson Computers can help people, not just business Coined and popularized “hypertext” term (1965)

Ted Nelson’s Book(s)

The World-Wide Web Two Key Components Tim Brenners-Lee did both URL = Uniform Resource Locator Browser Tim Brenners-Lee did both See http://www.w3.org/History.html for more web history

Early Tim B-L Browser (On a NeXT) http://www.w3.org/History/1994/WWW/Journals/CACM/screensnap2_24c.gif Source: http://www.w3.org/History/1994/WWW/Journals/CACM/screensnap2_24c.gif

The WIMP Plateau ? User Productivity ? Time WIMP (Windows) Command Line Batch ? 1940s – 1950s 1960s – 1970s 1980s - Present Time

Paradigm: Multi-modality Mode is a human communication channel Not just the senses e.g. speech and non-speech audio are two modes Emphasis on simultaneous use of multiple channels for I/O

Innovator: Nicholas Negroponte MIT Architecture Machine Group ’69-’80s - prior to Media Lab Ideas wall-sized displays, video disks, AI in interfaces (agents), speech recognition, multimedia with hypertext Put That There (Video)

Paradigm: Speech / Agents Actions do not always speak louder than words Interface as mediator or agent Language paradigm How good does it need to be? “Tricks”, vocabulary, domains How “human” do we want it to be? (HAL, Bob, PaperClip)

Innovator: Mark Weiser Introduced notion of Ubiquitous Computing and Calm Technology It’s everywhere, but recedes quietly into background Was CTO of Xerox PARC Died too early

Paradigm: Ubiquitous Computing Person is no longer user of single device but occupant of computationally-rich environment "Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives.” - Marki Weiser, circa 1988 Can no longer neglect macro-social aspects

Computing is Everywhere, ... From the desk-top to the set-top to the palm-top to the flip-top to the wrist-top… Dick Tracy ®&© 1999 Tribune Media Services, Inc

Paradigm: VR & 3D Interaction Create immersion by Realistic appearance, interaction, behavior Draw on spatial memory, proprioception, kinesthesis, two-handed interaction

Paradigm: Mobile Computing Devices used in a variety of contexts Employ sensors to understand how user is working with devices Wireless communication PDAs, Cell Phones, GPSs, etc etc etc

What Next? What are the next paradigm shifts? What are the next technical innovations? Who knows? I don’t But, more importantly,

Who Will… Drive future technical breakthroughs? Lead future paradigm shifts? It just might be YOU!

The End