The other week I was asked to prepare a one page overview of HCI in CS here at Manchester (for the EPSRC) – it seems to have evolved into the beginnings of a manifesto in part. You may find it interesting..
If your interface has personality, good or bad aesthetics, quality, flow, satisfaction, or fulfilment are not important; I’d probably even go as far as saying that usability is not important either. Personality trumps all the rest because it is the only one that can give the user an emotionally valuable engagement with the software engineering artefact. There are no tests for this principle, if it has personality you’ll know it!
Recently I1 was interviewed by Claus Atzenbeck for the SIGWEB Newsletter (http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2073244). While it isn’t appropriate to reproduce the while thing – you can read the full interview it in the ACM DL, I was asked the question ‘If you had the choice, would you dis-invent any technological advancement?’ – the answer came as a bit of a shock even to me…
The Star system (circa 1980, and as described in Byte) gave rise to five principles, which in my opinion, are so important and timeless that their formulation and practical application as part of the Xerox Star user interface was without doubt revolutionary.
It is my opinion that these five principles are so important and timeless that their formulation and practical application as part of the Xerox Star user interface was without doubt revolutionary.
Bugs Become Features... 