Book Reading #17 - HCI Remixed

Chapter 6
Summary
This article was on the author studying and meeting the creator of essentially the first icon based interface. The inventor worked at Xerox and should be created with how everyone interacts with their computer today. It was borrowed and used for work at Macintosh.

Discussion
I like the angle that this article took in that these fundamental changes in HCI just don't occur very much anymore. This project had its share of problems but changed the industry in a big way. People need to quit the building upon the last idea approach.

Chapter 7
Summary
This chapter continued the discussion with the Xerox Star project. There existed a "red book" which spelled out all the standards that were in place and how the interface was supposed to be.

Discussion
Again this detailed even more the excitement that this project had on the entire computer interface world. It allowed many more people to get into computing than before.

Chapter 9
Summary
Streitz talks about the idea of having technology fade into our everyday lives. Good ideas should just integrate with what we already have.

Discussion
I believe this idea is entirely obvious, however, much harder to actually put into practice than most think. For these ideas to happen well, a critical mass must be met in adoption for the item to really take off. And trying to get obscure expensive objects to take off when the regular objects still exist is quite hard. The real factor is staying innovative and making it affordable.

Chapter 10
Summary
In this article the idea of location based services is talked about. This is an extremely hot topic at the moment and is allowing for many new ideas for programs to flourish. Cheap, location based hardware has been out of our reach but is now ubiquitous in smart phones.

Discussion
This really is and has been a big leap for a lot of ideas that are being pursued now. Catering to your customer from a world perspective is not very efficient. But when you know where that customer is exactly on earth it allows for a much better experience for them.

Chapter 46
Summary
In this chapter, mental models are discussed. This was basically studying how people interpret and perceive the system they are using in their mind.

Discussion
I like the idea of this because I have always been interested in the human mind and its workings. The author mentions that she has studied how the mind comprehends language and she does the same work on this topic. I think it is quite important to find out how our brain works with various interfaces because this information could be used to make it much more efficient.

Chapter 47
Summary
Olson discusses the idea of laws when it comes to designing with human-computer interaction. There are technically no laws but he mentions one in particular, Fitt's Law. Basically this law states what the movement time is based on target size.

Discussion
This law does not seem like it applies but when thinking about it differently it in fact does. The person dealing with human-computer interaction must deal with this all the time such as with interfaces. The designer must always keep track of the users "movement time" when going to a specific function that he or she wants to do. This can be very helpful in making the interface easier to use.