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How HCI research has inspired famous design inventions
You might be familiar with UX Design, but maybe not with the human-computer interaction field. This academic research field has long been known for closely studying how users handle and control computational interfaces.
What is less known is that the empirical experiments of HCI researchers have largely but quietly inspired the latest and most famous design inventions (no less than the personal computer, software and the mobile interface).
Here are 4 great HCI ideas that have influenced designers to create products that we now know and use every day.
HCI and the birth of Graphical User interface
When Ivan Sutherland conceived in 1962 a way to manipulate symbols on an interface with a tool as intuitive as a light pen, he considered that writing-based communication models based were a waste of time for users. Similarly, a year later, as Douglas Engelbart replaced the light pen with a pointer on a surface, what we now call the desktop mouse, he wondered how users could directly interact with a graphical interface.
This primary user experience problem was actually the foundation of the research field around human-machine interaction. To solve it, the HCI researchers agreed on the use of an experimental and empirical method to assess the usability of the first personal computer prototypes. For example, they made a comparative study between different product concepts (the mouse, the laser controller, the knee control and the joystick) to see what was the most effective pointing device. The mouse proved then to be the most flexible and accurate for pointing and selecting an object, although not the fastest (which was the knee control).
Similarly, the invention of the graphical interface and its menu display was informed by quantitative studies analyzing the relative performance of participants when faced with different interfaces (menus by depth or by width). It’s the same period when, as users do no longer make commands by typing but by visual recognition, thanks to the graphical interface, the designer’s work became crucial and essential. And this is why interaction researchers have become to studied very closely the interaction between users and their interface.
