History and Future of HCI

Liam Bannon has a very interesting article on the history and future of HCI in the July+August 2011 issue of Interactions. In it he traces some of the key moments and movements that have influenced the development of HCI: human factors, human centred automation, participative design, CSCW, and most recently interaction design. Liam’s account positions these developments as moves toward a more nuanced approach to understanding how people design and use technology. He concludes this account by considering how a more human-centred approach might re-frame current research topics such as ambient assisted living and the assumed benefits of recording everything about our lives through complete logging of our locations, communications, and purchases. His optimism about this being a time to re-imagine our field through openness to new forms of thinking about human-technology relations captures the commitment to human potential and rigorous thinking that drew many of us to HCI. This article deserves a serious read, and our students deserve to read it too.