Building OpenHCI
Tackling the initial challenges in the pilot concept
OpenHCI is an upcoming open guide to introduce the body of Human-Computer Interaction knowledge to the beginners. It aims to create a crowd-sourced collection of topics and examples pertaining to HCI.
HCI or Human-Computer Interaction is a field of research, that studies the design and use of computer technology, focused on the interfaces between people and computers. Researchers in the field of HCI observe the ways in which humans interact with computers and design technologies that let humans interact with computers in novel ways.¹
OpenHCI serves to be an open-source repository intending to capture what it means to study, research or contribute to the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Given its focus on end-users, interfaces, technology, and the creation and use of novel tools, Human-Computer Interaction challenges and enhances human experiences in various contexts.
It may be wise to recognize that while HCI at present is popular amongst Computer Science majors and Design Researchers, the development of the field is not restricted to just these fields and must be made familiar and accessible to anyone who enhances human experiences through research or creation. That being said, my approach to the same was to come up with a way in which this idea may be represented effectively.
1. Human-Computer Interaction: The narratives to choose from
Human-Computer Interaction as a field of study, through the things I’ve read from varied but popular sources, is described as the following-
- HCI is at the forefront of interdisciplinary research in the sub-disciplines of computer science.
On the one hand, there are approaches that study how computer technology influences all facets of human beings from a humanistic point of view. Considered part of the subfield called media studies, these approaches have become an autonomous research field separate from HCI research itself. …presenting research mainly in anthropology, ethnography, and journalism-based studies, but also incorporating in some cases archaeological professionals and visions.
On the other hand, there are new areas of knowledge that study the adaptation of computer technology solutions to the intrinsic characteristics of the human being from an engineering perspective, both physically (in areas such as ergonomics, etc.) and cognitively (adapting machine processes to the senses, emotions, and aspects studied in human cognition).²
- A mix between social science and psychology on one hand and computer science and design on the other.³
- A multi-disciplinary field of study focusing on the design of computer technology and, in particular, the interaction between humans (the users) and computers.⁴
- The study of how people interact with computers and to what extent computers are or are not developed for successful interaction with human beings.⁵
- The field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is devoted to the design, implementation, and evaluation of interactive computer-based services and applications. Examples of HCI products include intelligent computer tutors and educational games, online communities, smartphone apps, and interactive robots.⁶
- Key Applications: Academic Research or Practice in the industry
Human-Computer Interaction finds itself emerging from different contexts, making each of ‘human’, ‘computer’, and ‘interactions’ debatable and evolving:
- Initially concerning itself with computers, to covering all forms of information technology design.⁴
- ‘User’: an individual user, a group of users working together.
- An appreciation of the way people’s sensory systems relay information (sight, hearing, touch) is vital. Also, different users form different conceptions or mental models about their interactions and have different ways of learning and keeping knowledge.⁵
…which makes me wonder about the relevance of presenting the history of HCI. But how much, and what all? Do we bifurcate the accomplishments of research and practice differently? How must the relationship be depicted?
Project intent: A concise repository of everything a new-comer to HCI should be aware of
Components: Visual map and Need to know(s)!
2. The Pilot Visualization
Identifying sub-fields and branches in HCI to feed into a network graph (For the visualization)
Seeking a list of all subjects that contribute to the study of HCI, to first imagine how it may consolidate on a graph, I found a resource from Morgan Claypool on the internet enlisting 90 entries. It was re-organized and categorized into 4 key sub-headings, namely human systems, computed solutions, interaction, and design. The categories were then manually connected with each of the sub-fields and given a weight value to attribute how it contributes to HCI.
3. The Fallouts
Having mistakenly understood the resource of these entries from a private publication, it has not been worked upon further. Except, if such a list may truly exist, the approach in the visualization above was unable to cater to the following: (*keeping in mind a new-comer to the field of HCI)
a) establish relevance between two connected nodes. It needed supporting examples.
b) priority or weightage between the connections. How important or closely linked should a node be to the central node, and how should it be decided?
c) and a directive approach or route to navigate between the nodes. Are there suggested paths?
4. Approaches to tackle these challenges
To fix these fallacies, the following approaches have been devised and studied a little:
- Looking at curriculums offered within prominent HCI institutions: to be able to identify the subjects studied under HCI instead of the field of application. (Since the study of subjects would lead to applications, but must that be true for all cases?)
Which ones must be showcased- subjects or applications? If both, then how?
- Some universities like CMU suggest a “T-shaped” knowledge-base in a practitioner: as professionals with broad knowledge and diverse technical skills, as well as a valuable focus in the specialization area. Thus keeping a mix of technical skills and designing & prototyping interactive solutions with digital technologies.
2. Prominent keepers of publishings in HCI: Amongst n google search results, ACM — SIGCHI, and HCIBib were the links of publications I could find and browse through.
- They contain publications in HCI conferences over the years, collectively claiming information from 1967–2020.
- A word cloud of dominant key-words could be fetched using this data. It could also be used to show trends through history towards the future.
3. Work being pursued in HCI applications (examples between nodes): How might one decide which ones to display, how prominently, and why? (Back to point 1.)
4. How might one navigate their way in? (What path(s) to follow?) Some SIGCHI chapters from around the world have listed free-online courses for HCI. There is little way of confirming their relevance, and also their contribution to HCI as a whole.
5. Word Frequency analysis from existing HCI literature. The most cited/relevant papers published under HCI could reveal the key ideas in the field.
5. Next Steps
With what I have gathered so far, I think it makes sense to:
- Pick up curriculums from 10–15 prominent schools to collect different leading perspectives, re-organize and create a list of the broader themes that contribute to HCI.
- Collect either Titles and Abstracts from major HCI publications over the years or the most-cited papers or both to look for patterns that may feed-back into the visualization.
- Devise a way of crowd-sourcing information from different contributors to HCI. Reaching out to them, and getting their suggestions to approach the field may help construct more entry-points to HCI than Computer Science and design alone. This would also help construct examples within HCI, connecting nodes in the graph visualization.
- Run an inquiry for the ratio of research to application in HCI, in terms of how it is often understood to be defined for a layman, through different perspectives and the related concepts that support them.
Conclusion
The research so far questions how the definition must be defined graphically, by connecting HCI with its related fields and applications. To be able to create an effective repository introducing HCI to a new-comer, the problems of identification, prioritization, and navigation between either the subjects, or applications or both are speculated to represent visually. This aims to be presented on the OpenHCI website with a crowd-sourced list of resources they could learn from.
References
[1] “Human-Computer Interaction”. 2020. En.Wikipedia.Org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93computer_interaction
[2]Martín-Rodilla, Patricia. (2018). Human-Computer Interaction Research. 1–4. 10.1002/9781119188230.saseas0274.
[3]Carroll, John. (1997). Human-computer interaction: Psychology as a science of design. Annual review of psychology. 48. 61–83. 10.1146/annurev.psych.48.1.61.
[4]“What Is Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)?”. 2020. The Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/human-computer-interaction
[5]“Introduction To HCI”. 2020. Cs.Bham.Ac.Uk. https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~rxb/Teaching/HCI%20II/intro.html
[6] “B.S. In Human-Computer Interaction | Human-Computer Interaction Institute”. 2020. Hcii.Cmu.Edu. https://hcii.cmu.edu/node/8934
Approach 1 Resource: https://www.morganclaypool.com/page/hci_list
Inspirations-
Thoughts: The field continues to remain broad with its foot in all domains because of the large-scale application of technology impacting people’s decisions and lives. With human-centered computing in human-computer interaction, the rising implications of data in ever-expanding technologies would always demand human interventions to represent them better. HCI with its multiple-disciplines then opens opportunities for all domains associated with humans and technology to enable the-interested to effectively design technology for humans.
