The Paradigm Birth of HCI and User Experience Design:
Starting a Discipline and Launching an Industry
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland,
April 28, 2017, ben@cs.umd.edu
Introduction
There is a lot more to starting a discipline than writing a few papers or teaching a novel seminar course. As I studied the components of nascent disciplines, it seemed that they were often motivated by new problems and invigorated by new research methods. This process might be called “paradigm birth” rather than Thomas Kuhn’s “paradigm shift”, as described in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn’s paradigm shifts occur when normal science theories and experiments can no longer explain observed data, but paradigm birth is when new problems and opportunities enable fresh theories and experiments to produce useful knowledge.
This essay describes processes by which the paradigm births of human-computer interaction (HCI) and user interface/experience design (UXD) gave us happy fraternal twins: a remarkably successful research discipline and an amazingly influential profession. The many components of success documented in this essay may have lessons for others who seek to promote new directions. HCI and UXD have had a huge impact on the lives of 8 billion users, so I hope these processes for paradigm birth can be put to work to produce other disciplines and industries that have equal or greater benefits.
HCI’s paradigm birth came from the happy union of computing technologies with psychological research methods. The early research and design efforts focused on airplane cockpits and industrial control rooms, while later work was associated with the rapidly growing domain of programming languages and then user interfaces (Shneiderman, 1980). As HCI and UXD grew, their devotion to universal usability helped make widespread successes in e-commerce, productivity tools, online education, multimedia, and social media.
The analysis in this essay highlights only a small number of the many contributions that were needed. There are thoughtful and more thorough historical reviews of HCI (Grudin, 2016; Myers, 1998) and excellent citation analyses (Barkhuus & Rode, 2007; Bartneck & Hu, 2009; Guha et al., 2013; Henry et al., 2007). The perspective of this essay is as a guide for those who are starting fresh disciplines and launching new industries (Grodal et al., 2015). The National Research Council reports (1998, 2003, 2012), which include the tire-tracks diagram to show the evolution from research to products for information technology, provide a foundation for this personal reflection. My essay on a tire-tracks diagram for HCI shows the cross-fertilization between academic research and industry research which leads to billion dollar markets (Shneiderman, 2017).
Components of Success
Young scholars working in an established discipline assume that their community has always been around, but for older scholars their struggle for acceptance was a key feature of their careers. The dramatic growth of the HCI discipline and the UXD profession was symbiotic with the exponential growth of chip speeds and decline of chip prices. HCI & UXD when combined with powerful cheap chip technology gave huge numbers of users remarkable capabilities. The availability of music, photos, videos, e-commerce, email, and social media attracted huge audiences to laptop tools, web services, and mobile devices.
Young scholars doing HCI research often show admirable self-confidence as they present papers in conferences and publish papers in journals that are older than they are. However, those who were the conference initiators and journal founding editors have worked hard to establish the field, define its research methods, launch degree programs, and develop funding sources from government agencies and companies.
Similarly, young professionals in user interface/experience design self-confidently launch startups, while senior professional look on in astonishment at their billion-dollar payouts. The growth of HCI and UXD is filled with compelling stories of visionary thinkers, passionate researchers, and inspired entrepreneurs. It has the drama of young scholars challenging conventional thinking, bold innovators competing for billion dollar markets, and fervent dreamers who sought to change the world — some succeeded and became cultural icons.
These seem to be the components of a successful paradigm birth (Figure 1):
Research projects, labs, institutes: HCI was also born out of human factors, which early leaders, such as Brian Shackel (1962), put to work at Loughborough University when he formed the HUSAT (Human Sciences and Advanced Technology) Research Institute. These and other researchers sought to understand how computer displays, input devices, and command languages could be designed to enable users of air traffic control, military, and medical systems to be more effective by speeding performance, lowering error rates, and shortening learning time (Edmonds & Lee, 1974). Visionary leaders, such as J.C.R. Licklider coined the phrase “man-computer symbiosis” (1960). These projects soon expanded into labs inside corporations (e.g. Xerox PARC), or government-funded research labs (e.g. SRI) and then larger institutes at universities.
Presentations, workshops, conferences: The success of research projects was propagated by early leaders visiting colleagues to give presentations on their work, leading to small workshops, seminars, tutorials, and discussion groups. Once these small events generated enough interest, the key participants sought to create larger conferences as was done in Ann Arbor, MI in May 1981 (Raben et al., 1981), Gaithersburg, MD in March 1982 (Nichols & Schneider, 1982; Shneiderman, 1986), and Manchester, UK in July 1982 (IEE, 1982). Many more conferences followed, weaving together a network of researchers with shared interests.
Articles, review articles, books, textbooks: Soon enough the growth of articles, from less than 100/year to more than 11,000/year demonstrate the explosive growth of HCI. These include the influential review articles, which organize an emerging topic, highlight the influential papers, and anoint the significant researchers. Then come the narrowly focused research books that identify subfields (Shneiderman, 1980; Card et al., 1982), the authoritative edited books (Norman & Draper, 1986) and eventually the widely-used textbooks that serve newcomers (Shneiderman, 1987). The ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI) and the British Computer Society’s HCI specialist group played important roles in convening groups, organizing conferences, and developing leaders.
Book series, journals, magazines: Sufficient interest in new disciplines encourages publishers to support book series, edited by prominent leaders, and soon enough a respected leader or aspiring trailblazer will gather an editorial board for a professional peer-reviewed journal. Brian Gaines and colleagues made an important contribution in starting the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies in 1969, which eventually was renamed as the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. If there is sufficiently broad interest there may also practitioner-oriented newsletters and magazines, and following contemporary practice there will be blogs, videos, and social media efforts. A memorable occasion was when Brad Myers, Marilyn Mantei, Dave Kieras, and I, representing the SIGCHI-Executive Council, went to ACM Headquarters in 1993 to encourage the development of what would become the ACM Interactions.
Courses, curricula, programs: Another component of success is the development of a course on a new discipline, typically housed in a related discipline. An influential and long-standing course was Terry Winograd’s Stanford University seminar on People, Computers, and Design (https://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs547/abstracts/93-94/940304-winograd.html). While early HCI courses were often given in computer science or psychology departments, there were also courses in industrial engineering, business, education, and library schools (Hewett et al., 1992). The more recent growth has been in the interdisciplinary iSchools (Information Schools) where HCI is a key component for their agendas (Churchill, Bowser, and Preece, 2013).
Degrees, departments, colleges: Once courses are established and student interest demonstrated, the courses are often shaped into certificate, minor, or full degree programs. Later departments and colleges address the emerging discipline. Within HCI the University of Michigan creation of their School of Information (1996) marked an administrative change that stabilized the position of HCI and related topics, creating a School devoted “to prepare socially engaged information professionals, and to create people-centered knowledge, systems and institutions for the Information Age.” Other influential examples of administrative commitments to HCI were the Georgia Tech’s Graphics, Visualization and Usability Lab in 1991 and (http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/) 1993 formation of Carnegie-Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute (https://www.hcii.cmu.edu/). Our University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab (http://hcil.umd.edu), formed in 1983, has also been successful, but we remain a more informal association of faculty with shared interests (Shneiderman et al., 2013).
Conference committees, journal editorial boards, professional societies: The lists of conference committees and journal editorial boards demonstrate that a new discipline is coalescing around a network of people who are ready to put their efforts behind it. A set of respected names from respected institutions builds trust for younger researchers, indicating that they are safe to submit to these venues. Eventually groups within existing professional societies will support the new discipline, but there may be bolder approaches such as starting a new professional society. Within HCI, the ACM SIGCHI quickly gained recognition in the U.S., eventually sponsoring a large annual conference and 35+ smaller conferences. Similar groups formed in United Kingdom, France, Germany, Scandinavia, and elsewhere, while international organizations such as IFIP sponsored their own conferences, such as the INTERACT series. Practitioner-oriented groups such as the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) formed in 1994, and later became the User Experience Professionals Association (https://uxpa.org/).
Guidelines, principles, theories: Key components of a discipline that launches an industry are the compact encapsulation of new knowledge in the form of practical guidelines, widely understood principles, and accepted theories. HCI has been richly engaged with guidelines beginning with the early US Military Standard 1472, which influenced guidelines and standards documents in many countries as did the detailed guidelines from Smith and Mosier (1986). These efforts led to the human interface guidelines documents from Microsoft and Apple as well as international standards such as ISO 9241 and national web standards such as those from the U.S. National Cancer Institute. A remarkable success story was the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which have been adopted in almost every nation that promotes web accessibility. The battles over design principles and theories enriched HCI by demonstrating that there were powerful cognitive, motor, and perceptual factors at work and later emphasizing the role of social theories of social media and mobile devices.
Controlled experiments, qualitative methods, usability testing: Early HCI research grew out of psychological controlled experiments on perceptual, motor, and cognitive tasks that could be carried out in a laboratory setting within a few hours. These micro-HCI studies remain important, but macro-HCI studies that emphasize ethnographic observation and qualitative methods over months grew in importance for studying trust formation, empathy growth, and community development. UXD practitioners quickly developed usability testing strategies, A/B testing strategies, and web-based logging of actual usage patterns to resolve design decisions.
Influence, integration, transformation: In addition to HCI focused disciplines, HCI has steadily increased its influence in diverse disciplines, such as parts of courses in engineering, business, education, library science, and beyond. Eventually whole courses and major commitments to HCI grow in these disciplines, transforming them to be variations on HCI, while related initiatives are invigorating digital humanities and media studies. In some cases, HCI has moved out of computer science departments, but in many universities, especially in Europe, HCI remains as a part of computer science.
Terminology harmony, reference merging, leadership formation: A significant amount of work is necessary to bring the divergent threads of a new discipline into harmony. The effort consists of resolving differences in terminology, which clarifies the key concepts and enables more successful collaborations. Another necessary effort is the slow process of ensuring that citations are made to the key references in the field. These steps typically promote some researchers to leadership positions, such as editing journals, organizing conferences, and giving keynote addresses.
Best Paper Honors, Test-of-Time Awards, Academy Fellows: As conferences expand to include dozens or hundreds of papers, conference committees recognize the benefits of choosing best papers or honorable mention awards to highlight exceptional work. Since prospective selections have not been shown to predict citation counts, a retrospective approach eventually gains support for the idea of awarding Test-of-Time Awards to the papers that 5 or 10 years after publication have had the most influence. Other signs of disciplinary maturity are for professional societies to create an Academy or Fellows award, launch doctoral consortia, start video series, and sponsor design contests.
Products, companies, industries: One of the advantages of HCI researchers, is that their work was tied to an exponentially growing industry. Graphical user interfaces, web browsers, mobile devices, and social media were much more than interesting research topics, they were hot products from booming companies, engaged in intense competition. Corporate interest in HCI research results about menu design, touchscreens, or e-commerce engendered live seminars, video courses, satellite TV programs, and eventually web-based tutorials. Research results were put to work at scale by leading companies to serve billions of users. Apple’s design strength became a huge business story as it grew to be the most-valued company in the world.
Grants, contracts, funding programs: Early research funding for HCI came from companies who were competing to make better bank machines, consumer devices, educational technology, and healthcare systems, but slowly government funding became available. Often mission-oriented agencies like NASA, Census, Defense, and Library of Congress gave grants or contracts to carry out advanced work that drove practical applications and theory development. The UK Science and Engineering Research Council organized the Roberts panel, which in 1982 led to increased funding, as did the Alvey Project, both having a strong emphasis on “man-computer interaction.” Eventually, HCI was supported by National Science Foundation programs and now is included in a growing number of NSF divisions and in programs at many other agencies. HCI has become part of many branches of information and computing technologies such as cybersecurity, data science, information visualization, virtual/augmented reality, mobile devices, and social media. These affiliations may lead to funding from university-industry-government partnerships such as the successful US-based advanced manufacturing initiatives or UK-based Innovate UK. Contemporary shifts to seek the twin-win of research papers and disseminated solutions could work out favorably for HCI researchers (Shneiderman, 2016).
Threats to Paradigm Births
Paradigm births and childhood can be perilous periods with threats to continued growth from external and internal forces. Pressures from related disciplines can suppress growth, capture emerging leaders, or make competitive attacks. All of these occurred in the case of HCI and UXD, but the community was strong enough to endure. Internal conflicts among competing journals, conferences, and universities also produced turbulence but no existential threats.
As disciplines mature they accumulate a shared body of knowledge with an accepted set of research methods, but then there is a danger that fresh ideas will be rejected by established leaders. While a mature field benefits from cohesion, it also needs to support exploration at the frontiers and be open to new ideas, directions and research methods. The process of progressive differentiation spawned dozens of specialized conferences, including 30+ that the ACM SIGCHI sponsors and 30+ that they cooperate with. Still the countervailing process of hierarchical integration means that the main annual CHI conference is a unifying event that consistently draws more than 3000 attendees. Related conferences such as the HCI International draw almost 2000 people annually, but HCI and UXD continue to grow so there is room for multiple initiatives around conferences, journals, educational programs, etc.
Conclusion
The birth of the HCI paradigm produced fraternal twins: an academic discipline and user interface/experience design as a professional field. Tracking the trajectory of paradigm births and understanding the underlying components is a difficult job, but one that is worthwhile doing to understand how different fields emerge or dissipate. It’s possible that a network analysis that studies the growth of connections between disparate communities could reveal others insights. Improved quantitative data would help, especially to track movement of ideas, as would a clearer theory of what drives success or failure. A truly valuable theory would assess the role of individuals, universities, industry, and professional societies, and how they collaborate. A broader contextual analysis would have to see how well new disciplines align with broader societal movements, economic conditions, and relevant cultural shifts.
Other analyses might indicate which combinations of components are necessary for successful paradigm births and which are merely optional. A final aspect of disciplinary success that is worthy of study is the role of the inspirational passion shown by leaders, intense energy invested by organizers, and astonishing creativity of devoted students.
Acknowledgements: Warm thanks to Jack Carroll, Alan Dix, Paul Dourish, Ernest Edmonds, Steven Feiner, Gerhard Fischer, Jim Foley, Thomas Hewett, Jim Hollan, Bonnie John, Jonathan Lazar, Marilyn Mantei, Gary Perlman, Jennifer Preece, Jean Scholtz, and Ping Wang for constructive and supportive comments.
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Ben Shneiderman is a Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering.
