Essential Guide to User Interface Design

PART 1 The User Interface – Introduction and Overview

Chapter 1 – Importance of the User Interface

Chapter 1 – Importance of the UI

Amount of programming code devoted to UI > 50%

Defining the UI (subset of HCI) I/O Importance of Good Design

What is “good design”? Is there time?

Benefits of Good Design

Chapter 1 – Importance of the UI

History of HCI

Punch cards, Line printers Early computers (1950s-60s)

Keyboards, Monitors Command language based (1970s-1980s)

Mouse, trackball, touch pad, touch screens

Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) (1990s - )

Multitouch screen, Voice, synthesized speech, gesture

“Intelligent” interfaces (2000s - )

04/19/23 Columbus State University

18th Century: Jacquard’s Loom

London Museum of Science

19th Century – Difference Engine

1940s British Computers

Collusus – Bletchley Park Manchester Baby – University of Manchester

(reproduction)

RAND’s vision of the future

From ImageShack web site //www.imageshack.us ; original source unknown

Eniac (1943)

ENIAC, the world's first all electronic numerical integrator and computer.

From IBM Archives.

Punch card, keypunch and then VDUs

Slide 1- 9

PLATO (computer system)

Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations -first (ca. 1960, on ILLIAC I) generalized computer assisted instruction system.

Ivan Sutherland’s SketchPad-1963

Sophisticated drawing package hierarchical structures defined pictures and sub-pictures

object-oriented programming Icons input techniques (light pen) separation of screen from

drawing coordinates

From http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/images/ivan-sutherland.jpg

The First Computer Mouse (about 1964)

Designed by Douglas Engelbart and Bill Inglés at the Stanford Research Institute (improved at Xerox PARC).

Dynabook vision - Alan Kay (1969)

prototype of a notebook computer:

“Imagine having your own self-contained knowledge manipulator in a portable package the size and shape of an ordinary notebook. Suppose it had enough power to out-race your senses of sight and hearing, enough capacity to store for later retrieval thousands of page-equivalents of reference materials, poems, letters, recipes, records, drawings, animations, musical scores...”

Xerox Alto (1974) & Star (1981)

MITS Altair 8800 - 1975

Apple Lisa (1983)

REFERENCES

• A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology by Brad A. Myers – 1996

• Dealers of Lightning XEROX parc and the dawn of the computer age by Michael A. Hiltzik – 1999

• http://oldcomputers.net/