Thomas Erickson (1)

In aggregate, these 51 short essays provide an informal history of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). It’s hard today to imagine a time when there were no personal computers, no icon-oriented functions, not even a mouse. Early in the 1960s, when computers filled rooms, were fed with punched cards programmed with commands, and were only in the means of corporations, research centers, and government agencies, there were people who conceived of these things. This was also the time when most research centered either on automated offices or artificial intelligence. These visionaries saw a third way: that computers could extend the work of our hands and minds, they could augment us.
I’m a non-techie, this was my first introduction to concepts such as GOMS, Fitts’ law, iterative design and how to change space to place. I was pleased to find that almost all of the essays were within my range of comprehension. It was fascinating to see how the field of HCI draws on cognitive psychology, sociology, linguistics, and hermeneutics. I’m curious to sample some of the original books and papers referenced here. I was also interested to gain an insight into some of the continuing discussions, such as the relative merits of modeling versus field studies.
I would recommend this book to anyone who’s looking to bootstrap his or her way into this field. Given how ubiquitous computers are in our world, that should be just about anyone.… (lisätietoja)

A collection of some fifty short essays, written by HCI researchers on the common topic of "a single work, at least ten years old, that influenced their approach to HCI" – and the results are quite uncommon. Many of the classics are addressed, of course, but also a fair number of works outside the mainstream canon and even outside the HCI field. For example, I personally found Terry Winograd's discussion of the 1955 book Designing for People by Henry Dreyfuss quite stunning as it showed how much of what we today call user-centered design has long-standing (and generally unacknowledged) roots in industrial design. Another pleasant aspect of the book is the personal tone of many of the essays and how they foreground the intellectual development of the authors themselves. Altogether, I find that the book provides a rich and diverse picture of the beginnings of HCI, and hence a significant part of the intellectual heritage of interaction design.… (lisätietoja)

Not bad, not bad. If I was doctoral student in HCI I would be digging through this for some good tiddbits and also just an idea how to write. That being said, there were a lot of essays collected, probably more than needed. Towards the end I was skimming quite heavily. I also must confess a preference for those that talked about more concrete papers. I also found a few papers had the unfortunate thing where they described briefly a paper that was interesting, and then dawdled on all the research they did based on the paper which was usually less interesting. (There were exceptions of course).… (lisätietoja)