Abdullah Maras Professor Susan McGuire English 110-26 18 February 2014 Humans and Computers
Did you ever think about how people and computers interact with one another? Well if you did you would probably guess that we are more than likely to be with computers most of the time. I have been studying computers for some time now and I know how important they are in our lives in this century but we never stop and think about other things to do besides just sitting home on a computer or phone all day long. Some research has been done to see these interaction and I would like to show just a few of them. Research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has been spectacularly successful and has fundamentally changed computing. Just one example is the ubiquitous graphical interface used by Microsoft Windows 95, which is based on the Macintosh, which is based on work at Xerox PARC, which in turn is based on early research at the Stanford Research Laboratory and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Another example is that virtually all software written today employs user interface toolkits and interface builders, concepts which were developed first at universities. Even the spectacular growth of the World-Wide Web is a direct result of HCI research: applying hypertext technology to browsers allows one to traverse a link across the world with a click of the mouse. Interface improvements, more than anything else, have triggered this explosive growth. Furthermore, the research that will lead to the user interfaces for the computers of tomorrow is happening at universities and a few corporate research labs. It is clear that all of the most important innovations in Human-Computer Interaction have benefited from research at both corporate research labs and universities, much of it funded by the government. The...