HCI Interfaces

HCI Interfaces

1. Analytical Engine by Charles Babbage

   • Takes encoded data as input and calculates formula.
     • Babbage mentored Ada Lovelace. She published the first algorithms.

2. Vannevar Bush has different vision

   • He wrote an article called “As We May Think.” in The Atlantic Monthly
     • Bush envisioned a device called "Memex" to store people's information
       • He imagined the Memex as an “enlarged intimate supplement to one’s memory.”
         • J.C.R. Licklider was amazed by Bush's vision and later mentioned it in his writing “Man-Computer Symbiosis”. (Highlighting the importance of asking "What is the Question?")
           • He had visions of a “thinking center” that “will incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval.”
             • He facilitated the research that eventually led to the internet and the graphical user interface.
               • Based on Bush and Licklider’s ideas, , Ivan Sutherland created Sketchpad.
                 • It was the first interactive system and performed the transformation of shapes.
                   • Inspired by Bush and Licklider’s ideas Douglas Engelbart found the Augmentation Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI)
                     • Engelbart with his team prototyped the “oN-Line System” (or the NLS) to implement much of Bush’s vision.
                       • NLS had networking, windows, graphics, command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, and numerous other features of modern computing. Hence the demo is called "The mother of all Demos"
                         • Engelbart’s team eventually disbanded and most of them joined the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC)
                           • Alan Kay, who had worked with Ivan Sutherland and seen Engelbart’s demo has created SmallTalk environment and programming language.
                             • Alan Kay was a key member of Alto, which has the first OS on GUI with desktop metaphor, WYSIWYG word processing, email client and many more.
                               • Steve Jobs was excited about the GUI, and recruited several of the Xerox PARC researchers to join Apple, leading to the Lisa and later Macintosh
                                 • Macintosh has inspired various to come up with powerful inventions like power point.
                                   • Many companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google have driven much of the engineering of user interfaces.
                                     • Governments continued their research programs on the new possibilities that lead to touch screen phones.
                                       • Around the same time of Macintosh, many computer scientists who had worked in computer graphics spun off a new conference the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. which helped them focus on different paradigms of interface like touchscreens, animation and augmented reality.