Major theories Concept Map based on main research areas
Unfortunately for us, there is no general and unified theory of HCI that we can present. Indeed, it may be impossible ever to derive one; it is certainly out of our reach today. However, there is an underlying principle that forms the basis of our own views on HCI, and it is captured in our claim that people use computers to accomplish work. This outlines the three major issues of concern: the people, the computers and the tasks that are performed. The system must support the user’s task, which gives us a fourth focus, usability: if the system forces the user to adopt an unacceptable mode of work then it is not usable.
There are, however, those who would dismiss our concentration on the task, saying that we do not even know enough about a theory of human tasks to support them in design. There is a good argument here (to which we return in Chapter 15). However, we can live with this confusion about what real tasks are because our understanding of tasks at the moment is sufficient to give us direction in design. The user’s current tasks are studied and then supported by computers, which can in turn affect the nature of the original task and cause it to evolve. To illustrate, word processing has made it easy to manipulate paragraphs and reorder documents, allowing writers a completely new freedom that has affected writing styles. No longer is it vital to plan and construct text in an ordered fashion, since free-flowing prose can easily be restructured at a later date. This evolution of task in turn affects the design of the ideal system. However, we see this evolution as providing a motivating force behind the system development cycle, rather than a refutation of the whole idea of supportive design.
This word ‘task’ or the focus on accomplishing ‘work’ is also problematic when we think of areas such as domestic appliances, consumer electronics and e-commerce. There are three ‘use’ words that must all be true for a product to be successful; it must be:
useful – accomplish what is required: play music, cook dinner, format a document; usable – do it easily and naturally, without danger of error, etc.;
used – make people want to use it, be attractive, engaging, fun, etc.
The last of these has not been a major factor until recently in HCI, but issues of motivation, enjoyment and experience are increasingly important. We are certainly even further from having a unified theory of experience than of task.
The question of whether HCI, or more importantly the design of interactive sys- tems and the user interface in particular, is a science or a craft discipline is an inter- esting one. Does it involve artistic skill and fortuitous insight or reasoned methodical science? Here we can draw an analogy with architecture. The most impressive struc- tures, the most beautiful buildings, the innovative and imaginative creations that provide aesthetic pleasure, all require inventive inspiration in design and a sense of artistry, and in this sense the discipline is a craft. However, these structures also have to be able to stand up to fulfill their purpose successfully, and to be able to do this the architect has to use science. So it is for HCI: beautiful and/or novel interfaces are artistically pleasing and capable of fulfilling the tasks required – a marriage of art and science into a successful whole. We want to reuse lessons learned from the past about how to achieve good results and avoid bad ones. For this we require both craft and science. Innovative ideas lead to more usable systems, but in order to maximize the potential benefit from the ideas, we need to understand not only that they work, but how and why they work. This scientific rationalization allows us to reuse related con- cepts in similar situations, in much the same way that architects can produce a bridge and know that it will stand, since it is based upon tried and tested principles.
The craft–science tension becomes even more difficult when we consider novel systems. Their increasing complexity means that our personal ideas of good and bad are no longer enough; for a complex system to be well designed we need to rely on something more than simply our intuition. Designers may be able to think about how one user would want to act, but how about groups? And what about new media? Our ideas of how best to share workloads or present video information are open to debate and question even in non-computing situations, and the incorporation of one version of good design into a computer system is quite likely to be unlike anyone else’s version. Different people work in different ways, whilst different media color the nature of the interaction; both can dramatically change the very nature of the original task. In order to assist designers, it is unrealistic to assume that they can rely on artistic skill and perfect insight to develop usable systems. Instead we have to pro- vide them with an understanding of the concepts involved, a scientific view of the reasons why certain things are successful whilst others are not, and then allow their creative nature to feed off this information: creative flow, underpinned with science; or maybe scientific method, accelerated by artistic insight. The truth is that HCI is required to be both a craft and a science in order to be successful.