1. 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 are encouraged. Permission is granted to use with acknowledgement for non-profit purposes. Last revision: August 2004.

2. 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

3. 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

4. Early Personal Computers
1975 IBM 5100
1977 Radio Shack TRS-80
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$ Weight: 55 pounds. Code name during development was Project Mercury. [9] [197.xi] [606.22] [ ] [ ] (Price over US$10,000 [203.10])

5. Early Personal Computers
1979 Apple II
1979 VisiCalc - “killer app” for Apple II
1981 IBM XT/AT

6. 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

7. 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

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

9. 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
Dick Shoup

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

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

12. 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, …

13. Xerox Star
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

14. Xerox Star Desktop

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

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

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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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
, 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)

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

22. 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

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

24. Ted Nelson’s Book(s)

25. The World-Wide Web Two Key Components Tim Brenners-Lee did both
URL = Uniform Resource Locator
Browser
Tim Brenners-Lee did both
See for more web history

26. Early Tim B-L Browser (On a NeXT)
Source:

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

28. 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

29. 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)

30. 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)

31. 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

32. 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

33. 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

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

35. 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

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

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

38. The End