Saul Greenberg > courses > lecture topics in HCI > introduction to HCI

Introduction to the Course and to Human Computer Interaction

The industrial course starts with a brief motivation and introduction to Human Computer Interaction. This section includes course details, such as its purpose, structure, objectives, and so on. I usually bring many sample books on HCI into the class and present them as part of the introduction.

Overheads

Topics Covered

Required Readings

Additional Readings and Presentations

  1. Absorbing and Squeezing Out: On Sponges and Ubiquitous Media. Buxton, W. (1996) Proceedings of the
    International Broadcasting Symposium, November 13-16, Tokyo, 91-96. Bill Buxton's fun to read article presents a vision of future computing.
  2. A Taxonomy of Human Computer Interaction, ACM (1992) adapted excerpt from Section 2 of the ACM SIGCHI Curricula for HCI, ACM Press, gives details of the HCI taxonomy
  3. Overview and Taxonomy of HCI: [Adobe Pdf] or [Powerpoint] collects slides I created related to the above taxonomy

Videos

Videos are used in the first few classes to show futuristic and visionary interfaces. They not only inspire and motivate, but also illustrate how many major problems in Computer Science (outside of HCI) must be solved before these visions can be realized. For example, I ask students to write down all the innovations displayed in the Apple video. We then list them on the board, and relate them to computer science problems (here is an example list). I then use Ishii's delightful video because it goes beyond business users, showing kids and artists as well.

  1. 2020, by Apple Inc. (~1992, distributed with the video set from the Apple Developer's Conference)
  2. Seamless Media Design, by NTT - Ishii (1994, SGVR Issue 106)