Talk:Human-computer interaction

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Contents 1 ISO 9421 Definition 2 Need for better Cross-Referencing 3 "Contextual Usability" paragraph poorly written 4 External Links Need Cleanup 5 hyphen or ndash 6 χ 7 Merge with User interface? 8 "Literal" human-computer interaction 9 Requested move 9.1 Survey 9.1.1 Survey - in support of the move 9.1.2 Survey - in opposition to the move 9.2 Discussion 10 "wet-dry interfaces" as a nickname for human-machine or human-computer interfaces? 11 departments and current research 12 external links removed 13 Computing or Computer Science? 14 Randy Pausch

[edit] ISO 9421 Definition

Edit comment on 14:39, 18 Jun 2005 says the ISO definition was removed as a redundant link, but I'm not sure where the redundancy is. Could someone please clarify? Thanks. --Alan Au 07:16, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Of course, sorry for being somewhat vague in the summary. The ISO definition of usability is already present in the article about usability, and in any case, links specific to some subtopic are better fit to the more specific article. Therefore I felt the link didn't add value to this article. Aapo Laitinen 15:40, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)

[edit] Need for better Cross-Referencing

We need to have a better cross-referencing of all of the terms related to HCI or CHI, and human factors or ergonomics, etc. —>normxxx_talk—> email 23:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Also, does anyone else find the title "design methodologies" extremely misleading? (Ronz 19:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC))

[edit] "Contextual Usability" paragraph poorly written

The "Contextual Usability" paragraph is poorly written. It uses a lot of jargon and analogy-laden language without explaining it. As a result, it is quite unclear. Those who work in HCI (who, as part of their work, take the perspective of the user) should do better than most people at avoiding such problems! -DoctorW 19:24, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Might take a whack at it this evening, just to see what comes out.

Mitchberg 00:59, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

It appears to be original content. Can anyone come up with some relevant references? (Ronz 19:51, 31 May 2006 (UTC))

The history of Contextual_Usability indicates that it is original content. Additionally, it's no equal user-centered design. I think the entire section should be removed. For now, I'm removing Nicoll's name, so the section appears less of a promotion.--Ronz 22:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External Links Need Cleanup

Few if any of the external links are appropriate (see External Links Guide). --Ronz 15:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

• External links are getting out of hand again; I'll take a shot at cleaning it up this week, but feel free to help out. --Alan Au 08:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Removed Education section since we certainly aren't going to list every university offering HCI education. --Ronz 14:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how a list of universities offering HCI courses and degrees could possibly be appropriate given WP:EL, WP:SPAM, WP:NOT. --Ronz 17:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

To achieve consensus: I agree. --Frodet 19:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Links to HCI education programs are listed in the HCI Webliography HCI Education. The HCI Webliography also has links in about 20 other categories, so duplicating them here seems counterproductive. It is easy to add links to the HCI Webliography. See HCI Webliography. Although they might be getting out of hand, I suggest adding this one to the wikipedia HCI entry: SIGCHI Curriculum Development Group Report because it is an official foundational publication. Gary 21:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] hyphen or ndash

I see the page has been renamed from Human–computer interaction to Human-computer interaction. I'm not an expert on this but acording to Dash

The en dash is used to indicate a closed range, or a connection between two things of almost any kind: numbers, people, places, etc. For example:

• Mother–daughter relationship

whereas a hyphen seems to be used when one term modifies the other. Form this I think the old name was actually correct. --Salix alba (talk) 10:35, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

• This is nitpicking since both names point to the same text, but I agree with Salix alba that using the en dash was just fine. In particular, this article is talking about the interaction between humans and computers, not the interaction of human-computers. --Alan Au 17:20, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
• Also, if nobody has any objections, I'll go ahead and move the page back after a week or so. --Alan Au 16:57, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

• Alright, it's been two weeks, I'll go ahead and get the move started as soon as I can track down an admin. --Alan Au 17:03, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey guys, how many articles do we have on Sinhalese history, by which I mean the lives and deaths of millions of people? TheLateDentarthurdent 20:19, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

• There's just the one article on Sinhalese people, but it has very little to do with HCI. --Alan Au 00:48, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the longer dash is the appropriate one in this case. The hyphen would indicate something that was a "human computer". The en dash indicates interaction between two different entities. --Elonka 18:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I've now listed Human-computer interaction and its talk page as WP:CSD G6, to allow for reverse move. --Salix alba (talk) 21:45, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] χ

(symbolized as χ Chi, the 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet)

Is that due to the initialism CHI for computer human interaction? --Abdull 15:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I guess so, I've not heard it being refered to by that letter. Does anyone have a source for this? --Salix alba (talk) 18:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I concur... the acronym CHI is usually pronounced that way, but I've never actually seen the Greek letter χ used in that manner. Some googling only turns up Wikipedia mirrors making that claim, so I'm removing for now, pending someone finding a source. --Delirium 08:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with User interface?

These two article seem to cover a great deal of common ground. Can they be merged? --Piet Delport 05:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest no... a user interface and the field of human-computer interaction are two related but quite distinct things. To me this would be like suggesting that the article "architecture" be merged with the article "building." --Andicat 14:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I concur with Andicat. --Frodet 17:54, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. --Ronz 20:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Literal" human-computer interaction

When I came to this page, I was expecting it to be about human-computer interaction in the literal sense: as in electrodes hooked up to the brain that can move a mouse around and so forth. I know this sort of technology is only in an early phase, but it is advancing. Should this article have a link to the thing I was talking about (if such an article exists), a separate section about "literal" HCI, or what? Sloverlord 17:14, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

It's still the same subject, so this should be a good location to start your search. After some looking around, I'm not finding anything, not even in Input_device. Frustrating. --Ronz 17:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I think Brain-computer interface (BCI) is probably what you're looking for. Forlornturtle 15:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

• Great, I take a short wikibreak and this gets moved again? I propose a move back, per the discussion of July 2006. Do people not check the previous entries when they propose this sort of thing? Since when does "no reponses in less than a week" = "consensus"? --Alan Au 15:50, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually, I didn't claim in closing the request that there was a consensus. I said there was no opposition, and Wikipedia:Moving guidelines for administrators is quite clear that requests drawing no opposition in five days are to be moved. I don't always read the entire talk page when closing a request; perhaps I should be more thorough about checking that proposals have not been previously discussed. On the other hand, if it turns out I made a mistake, it's pretty easy to correct.
  • I see that there are arguments for both sides - the en-dash is arguably more correct, but the hyphen is on people's keyboards, and most incoming links use it. Furthermore, there is a rather strong statement at Wikipedia:Manual of style (dashes): "Please do not use an en dash, em dash, or any type of dash other than a standard hyphen in a content page name because such symbols prevent some software (including Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP) from saving the page as a file on a computer." (guideline's emphasis). Given this guideline, I'm inlined to think I closed this move correctly, but you're welcome to request a move back if you disagree that we should apply our guideline in this case. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm actually fine with that argument, as I understand that there are technical limitations that make hyphens preferable, but at the expense of grammatical correctness. Mostly I just wanted to make sure that the implications of the name change are understood, seeing as this debate has come up before. --Alan Au 17:53, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "wet-dry interfaces" as a nickname for human-machine or human-computer interfaces?

I remember reading quite some time ago that devices that interfaced organic (living?) things with electrical, electronical and perhaps also mechanical devices were nicknamed "wet-dry interfaces", "wet" for the organic (humans for example have more water on their bodies than anything else iirc) and "dry" for the machines/devices (rarely a man made device is considered to be usually wet), should this be added to the article, and where could I find more info about what I've mentioned here?--TiagoTiago 18:58, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] departments and current research

I gave this a "top" rating because it is increasingly the focus of subdepartments and has been offered as an undergraduate major (not just a masters) at several universities. I'm not in the field, but I'd like to see more information on current research and researchers. SamuelRiv 14:32, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] external links removed

I removed the following commercial links:

• humanfactors.com: Human Factors International is on of the largest software usability organizations
• WebUsability.com: Dr. Bob Bailey on Evidence-Based Information, Training and Tools for Optimizing the Usability of Computer Systems
• Useit.com: Jakob Nielsen on Usability and Web Design

All three of these sites are commercial and including them does not add much to the topic of this article. If they belong anywhere it would be in Usability or Web usability (and in that case I think only useit.com has enough useful content to be worthwhile). —Preceding unsigned comment added by SeanGustafson (talk • contribs) 16:49, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Computing or Computer Science?

User:Ham Pastrami just changed this article's category from a top-importance Computer Science article to a high-importance Computing article, noting that HCI is "not a CS topic". I do not agree that HCI is not a CS topic -- I am a graduate student in a Computer Science department and I am studying HCI. There are a large number of computer science departments that offer HCI courses (mine has two). The University of Toronto has long had an option for Computer Science undergraduates to specialize in HCI (as noted in the SIGCHI sponsored curricula for HCI: http://sigchi.org/cdg/cdgC.html).

However, I recognize that HCI is of interest to the general computing community. Especially topics like Usability. Still I think HCI should remain in the Computer Science category. Any one else with thoughts about this? SeanGustafson (talk) 15:38, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

On the University_of_Lleida we a have a HCI Master degree on the Computer Science department [1], and a HCI block on one of the CS degrees available (the oriented more to management and object programming and less to electronics and microcontrollers) [2]. The CS carreer is called "Enginyeria Informàtica de Gestió" and the block is called "Interacció Persona-Ordinador" So, yes, HCI is part of computer science. I think it should return to the former category --Enric Naval (talk) 20:58, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Placed back in computer science category.SeanGustafson (talk) 00:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Randy Pausch

Why no mention of Randy Pausch and his contributions? Just curious, since he's so noteable at the present time, and thus awareness of Pausch likely makes more people aware of HCI as a field of study... 199.214.26.30 (talk) 20:52, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

If you have reliable sources, feel free to add a mention if you think it's suitable.--Sir Anon (talk) 14:39, 11 April 2008 (UTC)