International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)

ISSN: 2319-7064
SJIF (2020): 7.803

Introduction to Human Computer Interaction

Aitham Suhas
Bachelor’s Student, Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECM) JB Institute of Engineering and Technology Yenkepally, Hyderabad,
India

Abstract: Human-computer interaction (HCI) is the study of how people design, implement, and use interactive computer systems and
how computers affect individuals, organizations, and society. This encompasses not only ease of use but also new interaction techniques
for supporting user tasks, providing better access to information, and creating more powerful forms of communication. It involves input
and output devices and the interaction techniques that use them; how information is presented and requested; how the computer’s
actions are controlled and monitored; all forms of help, documentation, and training; the tools used to design, build, test, and evaluate
user interfaces; and the processes that developers follow when creating Interfaces. HCI in the large is an interdisciplinary area. It is
emerging as a specialty concern within several disciplines, each with different emphases: computer science (application design and
engineering of human interfaces), psychology (the application of theories of cognitive processes and the empirical analysis of user
behavior), sociology and anthropology (interactions between technology, work, and organization), and industrial design (interactive
products).

Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Human Factors Engineering, Cognitive Science

1. Introduction  Text entry: traditional keyboard, phone text entry, speech

and handwriting
Research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has been  Pointing: principally the mouse, but also touch pad,
spectacularly successful, and has fundamentally changed stylus, and others
computing. Just one example is the ubiquitous graphical  3D interaction devices
interface used by Microsoft Windows 95, which is based on
the Macintosh, which is based on work at Xerox PARC, Output display devices for interactive use:
which in turn is based on early research at the Stanford  Different types of screen mostly using some form of
Research Laboratory (now SRI) and at the Massachusetts bitmap display
Institute of Technology. Another example is that virtually all  Large displays and situated displays for shared and
software written today employs user interface toolkits and public use
interface builders, concepts that were developed first at  Digital paper may be usable in the near future
universities. Even the spectacular growth of the World-Wide
Web is a direct result of HCI research: applying hypertext Memory:
technology to browsers allows one to traverse a link across  Short-term memory: RAM
the world with a click of the mouse. Interface improvements  Long-term memory: magnetic and optical disks
more than anything else has triggered this explosive growth.  Capacity limitations related to document and video
Furthermore, the research that will lead to the user interfaces storage
for the computers of tomorrow is happening at universities  Access methods as they limit or help the user
and a few corporate research labs.
Processing:
The most famous definition of “Human Computer
 The effects when systems run too slow or too fast, the
Interaction” is “Human-computer interaction is a discipline
myth of the infinitely fast machine
concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of
 Limitations on processing speed
interactive computing systems for human use and with the
study of major phenomena surrounding them.”  Networks and their impact on system performance

The Human Computer Interaction (HCI) program will play a Instead of workstations, computers may be in the form of
leading role in the creation of tomorrow's exciting new user embedded computational machines, such as parts of
interface software and technology, by supporting the broad spacecraft cockpits or microwave ovens. Because the
spectrum of fundamental research that will ultimately techniques for designing these interfaces bear so much
transform the human-computer interaction experience so the relationship to the techniques for designing workstations
computer is no longer a distracting focus of attention but interfaces, they can be profitably treated together. But if we
rather an invisible tool that empowers the individual user weaken the computational and interaction aspects more and
and facilitates natural and productive human-human treat the design of machines that are mechanical and passive,
collaboration. such as the design of a hammer, we are clearly on the
margins, and generally the relationships between humans
Computer and hammers would not considered part of human-computer
A computer system comprises various elements, each of interaction. Such relationships clearly would be part of
which affects the user of the system. Input devices for general human factors, which studies the human aspects of
interactive use, allowing text entry, drawing and selection all designed devices, but not the mechanisms of these
from the screen: devices. Human-computer interaction, by contrast, studies

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Paper ID: SR21908212158 DOI: 10.21275/SR21908212158 450
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 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN: 2319-7064
SJIF (2020): 7.803
both the mechanism side and the human side, but of a style of the interface.
narrower class of devices.  The interaction takes place within a social and
organizational context that affects both user and system.
Human Human-computer interaction is concerned with the joint
Humans are limited in their capacity to process information. performance of tasks by humans and machines; the structure
This has important implications for design. Information is of communication between human and machine; human
received and responses given via a number of input and capabilities to use machines (including the learnability of
output channels: interfaces); algorithms and programming of the interface
 Visual channel itself; engineering concerns that arise in designing and
 Auditory channel building interfaces; the process of specification, design, and
 Haptic channel implementation of interfaces; and design trade-offs. Human-
 Movement computer interaction thus has science, engineering, and
design aspects.
Information is stored in memory:
 Sensory memory Goals
 Short-term (working) memory The goals of HCI are to produce usable and safe system, as
 Long-term memory Information is processed and applied: well as functional systems. In order to produce computer
system with good usability, developer must attempt to:
 Reasoning
 Understand the factors that determines how people use
 Problem solving
technology
 Skill acquisition
 Develop tools and technique to enable building suitable
 Error
system
 Achieve efficient, effective and safe interaction
Emotion influences human capabilities.
 Put people first
Users share common capabilities but are individuals with
differences, which should not be ignored. Human-computer interaction arose as a field from
intertwined roots in computer graphics, operating systems,
If we allow the human to be a group of humans or an human factors, ergonomics, industrial engineering, cognitive
organization, we may consider interfaces for distributed psychology, and the systems part of computer science.
systems, computer-aided communications between humans, Compute graphics was born from the use of CRT and pen
or the nature of the work being cooperatively performed by devices very early in the history of computers. This led to
means of the system. These are all generally regarded as the development of several human-computer interaction
important topics central within the sphere of human- techniques.
computer interaction studies.
Work on operating systems, meanwhile, developed
Interaction techniques for interfacing input/output devices, for tuning
The communication between the user and the system. Their system response time to human interaction times, for
interaction framework has four parts: multiprocessing, and for supporting windowing
environments and animation. This trends of development has
 User
currently given rise to "user interface management systems"
 Input
and "user interface toolkits".
 System
 Output Cognitive Science is generally described as the
interdisciplinary study of the acquisition and use of
knowledge by an information processing system. All the
fields that are involved in Cognitive Science share an
interest in the mind. The five primary fields include:
Psychology, Linguistics, Computer Science, Neuroscience,
and Philosophy. Additional disciplines of study, such as
Anthropology and Social Psychology, are also participating
in Cognitive Science as they, too, research and develop
formal structures and processes to represent the complex
human system as it receives, stores, retrieves, transforms,
and transmits information.

Cognition
 Interaction models help us to understand what is going on Cognition is the processing of information from the world
in the interaction between user and system. They address around us. It includes perception, attention, pattern
the translations between what the user wants and what the matching, memory, language processing, decision making,
system does. and problem solving. Cognitive load is the amount of mental
 Ergonomics looks at the physical characteristics of the resources needed to perform a given task.
interaction and how these influence its effectiveness.
 The dialog between user and system is influenced by the All user interfaces make cognitive demands on users. Users
Volume 10 Issue 9, September 2021
[Link]
Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Paper ID: SR21908212158 DOI: 10.21275/SR21908212158 451
 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN: 2319-7064
SJIF (2020): 7.803
must master special rules of system use, learn new concepts, Human information processing analyses are used in HCI in
and retain information in short-term memory. They must several ways.
create and refine a mental model of how the system works  Basic facts and theories about information-processing
and how they should use it. Systems that use purely auditory capabilities are taken into consideration when designing
interfaces further challenge human memory and attention interfaces and tasks
because they present information serially and non-  Information-processing methods are used in HCI to
persistently. conduct empirical studies evaluating the cognitive
requirements of various tasks in which a human uses a
Successful user interface designs must respect the limitations computer
of human cognitive processing. If a design requires the user  Computational models developed in HCI are intended to
to hold too many items in short-term memory or to learn a characterize the information processing of a user
complex set of commands too quickly, it will fail. interacting with a computer, and to predict, or model,
human performance with alternative interfaces.
There are three cognitive challenges you should consider as
your design progresses: The Multi-Store Model of Memory
 Conceptual complexity: How complex are the new A model of memory formed of three ' buffers', which will
concepts callers must learn? How well do new mental store memories and control processes, which move
structures match concepts and procedures that users are information between the buffers. The three stores identified
already familiar with? are:
 Memory load: How much information must callers hold  Sensory information store
in their short-term memory? How much new material (e.  Short-term memory (more recently known as working
g., commands, procedures) must they learn? memory)
 Attention: Is it easy for the caller to attend to the most  Long-term memory
salient information? Will callers' attention be divided? If
they are momentarily distracted (e. g., while driving), can The Model Human Processor
they seamlessly continue their interaction with the An important concept from cognitive psychology is the
system when they are ready? model human processor (MHP). This describes the cognitive
process that people go through between perception and
Cognitive Frameworks action. It is important to the study of HCI because cognitive
Cognition is the process by which we gain knowledge. The processing can have a significant effect on performance,
processes, which contribute to cognition, include: including task completion time, number of errors, and ease
 Understanding of use. This model was based on the human information-
 Remembering processing model.
 Reasoning
 Attending The model human processor consists of three interacting
 Being aware systems. Each has its own memory and processor.
 Acquiring skills
 Creating new ideas Perceptual processor
 Outputs into audio storage
A key aim of HCI is to understand how humans interact with  Outputs into visual storage Cognitive processor
computers, and to represent how knowledge is passed  Outputs into working memory.
between the two.  Has access to:
o Working memory
The basis for this aspect of HCI is the science of cognitive o Long term memory
psychology. The results of work of cognitive psychologists
provide many lessons, which can be applied in the design of Motor processor
computer interfaces. These results are expressed in the form
of cognitive frameworks. This section describes some of the Carries out actions Distributed Cognition
important frameworks, which have been developed by Distributed cognition is a framework proposed by Hutchins
psychologists. (1991). Its basis is that to explain human behavior you have
to look beyond the individual human and the individual task.
Human Information Processing The functional system is a collection of actors, technology,
setting and the interrelations to one another. Examples of
HCI is fundamentally an information-processing task. The functional systems, which have been studied include:
human information processing approach is based on the idea  Ship Navigation
that human performance, from displayed information to a  Air Traffic Control
response, is a function of several processing stages. The  Computer Programming Teams
nature of these stages, how they are arranged, and the factors
that influence how quickly and accurately a particular stage The technique is used to analyze coordination of
operates, can be discovered through appropriate research components in the functional system. It looks at
methods.  Information and how it propagates through the system
 How it transforms between the different representational

Volume 10 Issue 9, September 2021

[Link]
Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Paper ID: SR21908212158 DOI: 10.21275/SR21908212158 452
 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN: 2319-7064
SJIF (2020): 7.803
states found in the functional system  Data Analysis
 User Modeling
 Design
User Interaction Design  Prototyping
Interaction design is about creating interventions in often  Evaluation
complex situations using technology of many kinds
including PC software, the web and physical devices Data Collection Techniques includes surveys, user
questionnaires, Statistical Analysis. It collects all the
a) Design involves: information about users who going to use this product and
 Achieving goals within constraints and trade-off environment they are working.
between these
 Understanding the raw materials: computer and In data analysis phase, it characterize the people who will
human use your system, it analyze the tasks that user has to perform
 Accepting limitations of humans and of design to accomplish their goals, environment analysis that where
b) The design process has several stages and is iterative this product will work.
and never complete.
c) Interaction starts with getting to know the users and
their context:
 Finding out who they are and what they are like. . .
 Talking to them, watching them
d) Scenarios are rich design stories, which can be used
and reused throughout design:
 They help us see what users will want to do
 They give a step-by-step walkthrough of users'
interactions: including what they see, do and are
thinking
e) Users need to find their way around a system; this
involves:
 Helping users know where they are, where they have
been and what they can do next
 Creating overall structures that are easy to understand
and fit the users' needs
 Designing comprehensible screens and control panels
f) Complexity of design means we don't get it right first
time:
 So we need iteration and prototypes to try out and
evaluate In User Modeling, a computational model for how people
 But iteration can get trapped in local maxima, designs perform tasks and solveproblems based on psychological
that have no simple improvements, but are not good principles. For example, GOMS is a family of techniques for
 Theory and models can help give good start points modeling and representing knowledge necessary for a person
to perform a task.
Usability
In design phase, all the analysis are used to design a system.
“It is a measure of the effectiveness, efficiency and in interface design, it shows how this product present itself.
satisfaction with which specified user can achieve specified And in interaction design, it tells how should this product
goals in a particular environment”. It asks following: works.

Rapids prototypes are early and inexpensive ways to identify

 Is effective to use
usability problems before committing lots of resources. In
 Is efficient to use
interaction design main concern here is with usability. So
 Is safe to use using prototypes we can better understand the needs of user.
 Has good utility
 Is easy to learn In usability testing and evaluation phase, users perform a
 Is easy to remember how to use variety of tasks with a prototype (or other system) while
observers record notes on what each user does and says.
Issues in Design Typical tests are conducted with one user at a time or two
 Who are the users? users working together. Testing may include collecting data
 What do we mean by needs? on the paths users take to do tasks, the errors they make,
 How do generate alternative design? when and where they are confused or frustrated, how fast
 How do we choose between design? they do a task, whether they succeed in doing the task, and
how satisfied they are with the experience. The goal of most
User Centered Development usability testing is to uncover any problems that users may
 Data Collection encounter so those problems can be fixed.
Volume 10 Issue 9, September 2021
[Link]
Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Paper ID: SR21908212158 DOI: 10.21275/SR21908212158 453
 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN: 2319-7064
SJIF (2020): 7.803
Interaction Styles  Scrollbars allow the user to move the contents of the
Interaction can be seen as a dialogue between the computer window up and down or from side to side
and the user. Some applications have very distinct styles of  Title bars describe the name of the window
interaction.
Icons
We can identify some common styles Small picture or image, used to represent some object in the
 Command line interface interface, often a window. Windows can be closed down to
 Menus this small representation (iconised) allowing many windows
 Natural language to be accessible. Icons can be many and various-highly
 question/answer and query dialogue stylized or realistic representations.
 Form-fills and spreadsheets
 WIMP Pointers
Important component, since WIMP style relies on pointing
Command Line Interface and selecting things such as icons and menu items.
Way of expressing instructions to the computer directly. Can  Usually achieved with mouse
be function keys, Single characters, short abbreviations,  Joystick, trackball, cursor keys or keyboard shortcuts are
whole words, or a combination also used
 Suitable for repetitive tasks  Wide variety
 Better for expert users than novices
 Offer direct access to system functionality Menus
 Command names/abbreviations should be meaningful Choice of operations or services that can be performed
offered on the screen. Required option selected with pointer
Menus  Problem-menus can take up a lot of screen space
Set of options displayed on the screen. Options visible so  Solution-use pull-down or pop-up menus
demand less recall-rely on recognition so names should be  Pull-down menus are dragged down from a single title at
meaningful. Selected by using mouse, numeric or alphabetic the top of the screen
keys. Often options hierarchically grouped: sensible  Pop-up menus appear when a particular region of the
grouping is needed. screen is clicked on

Menu systems can be Some menus are pin-up menus-they stay on the screen until
 Purely text based, with options presented as numbered explicitly requested to go away. Another type is the fall-
choices, or down menu-similar to the pull-down, but the bar doesn’t
 can have graphical component, with menu appearing in have to be explicitly selected.
box and choices made either by typing initial letter, or  Also cascading menus-one menu selection opens another
moving around with arrow keys menu adjacent to it, and so on.
 Pie menus-menu options arranged in a circle.
Natural language
An attractive option: familiar speech recognition or typed Easier to select item (larger target area) and quicker
natural language can be used Problems: Keyboard accelerators sometimes offered – key
 Vague combinations that have same effect as selecting the menu
 Ambiguous item.

Form-Filling Interfaces Interaction Devices

 Primarily for data entry or data retrieval. Different tasks, different types of data and different types of
 Screen like paper form. users all require different user interface devices. In most
 Data put in relevant place. cases, interface devices are either input devices or output
devices, though, for example, a touch screen combines both.
 Requires good design and obvious correction facilities.
In either case, the devices available provide the frameset for
the interaction setting.
WIMP Interface
 Windows
 Interface devices correlate to the human senses
 Icon
 Nowadays, a device usually is designed either for input or
 Menus
for output Input Devices
 Pointers
Most commonly, personal computers are equipped with text
Windows input and pointing devices. For text input, the QWERTY
Areas of the screen that behave as if they were independent
keyboard is the standard solution, but depending on the
terminals
purpose of the system, more specialized input devices like
 can contain text or graphics special keyboards, scanner with character recognition, pen or
 can be moved or resized even voice input may be the better choice.
 can overlap and obscure each other, or can be laid out next
to one another At the same time, the mouse is not the only imaginable

Volume 10 Issue 9, September 2021

[Link]
Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Paper ID: SR21908212158 DOI: 10.21275/SR21908212158 454
 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN: 2319-7064
SJIF (2020): 7.803
pointing device: Alternatives for similar but slightly Alternatively, from studying how human physiology and
different purposes include touch pad, trackball, joystick or psychology, we can design better interfaces for people to
even eye gaze. interact with computers. Work in this domain is only
beginning (indeed the number of papers written on this topic
Just for completeness, devices for 3D manipulation should has increased in the past few years), and there is much that
be mentioned as well. Note that 3D manipulation is a matter we don’t yet know about the way the human mind works
of not only moving to a particular location, but also choosing that would allow more perfect user interfaces to be built.
a particular orientation. To determine pitch, yaw and roll, in
addition to the location, requires six degrees of freedom, not References
only three
[1] A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction
Output Devices Technology- Brad A. Myers
Output from a personal computer in most cases means [2] Introduction to Human Computer Interaction- Matthias
output of visual data. Devices for "dynamic" visualization Rauterberg
include the traditional cathode ray tube (CRT), liquid crystal [3] Human Computer Interaction- Prof. Dr. Keith Andrews
display (LCD), or specialized devices like a pilot's head-up [4] Human Computer Interaction, 2nd Edition- Alan Dix
display. Printers are also a very important device for visual [5] Cognitive Architectures and HCI- Susan S.
output, but they are substantially different from screens in Kirschenbaum, Wayne D. Gray, Richard M. Young
that their output is static-it won't change over time except for [6] Usability Design- Jan Gulliksen
the yellowing of paper. . . [7] Future of Human Computer Interaction- Michael H.
Coen
In order to increase bandwidth for information reaching the [8] User Centered Design- Chadia Abras, Diane Maloney,
user, it is an important goal to use more channels in addition Jenny Preece
to visual output. One commonly used supplement for visual [9] Human Computer Interaction- Nicky Danino
information is sound, but its true potential is often not
recognized. Audible feedback can make interaction
substantially more comfortable for the user, providing
unambiguous information about the system state and success
or failure of interaction (e. g., a button press), without
putting still more load onto the visual channel.

Future of Human Computer Interaction

Predicting the future is notoriously difficult. Suppose 100
years ago someone suggested that every home in the United
States would soon have a bell that anyone in the world could
ring anytime, day or night. Would you have believed it?
Nevertheless, the telephone caught on and has become a
technology conspicuous only by its absence.

So we can’t say anything about future, where it will take us.

It depends on both advancement in Computer industry and
Psychology of human. We only know basics about human. If
we can understand human more better then we can make
better interaction designs.

New areas like AI and Virtual Reality are opening new

doors for Human Computer Interaction. New interfacing
devices like wearable clothes and etc. are the future of HCI.

2. Conclusion
The subject of Human Computer Interaction is very rich
both in terms of the disciplines it draws from as well as
opportunities for research. Discussed here was just a small
subset of the topics contained within HCI. The study of user
interface provides a double-sided approach to understanding
how humans and machines interact. By studying existing
interfaces (such as the graphical user interface or the
command line interface), we gain an understanding of how
the human mind processes information. We gain insight into
how human memory deals with the information presented, as
well as its limitations.

Volume 10 Issue 9, September 2021

[Link]
Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Paper ID: SR21908212158 DOI: 10.21275/SR21908212158 455