Human-computer interaction is an evolving field in the area of computer science that aims to engage the user and the computer in an interactive experience. Unlike other areas of computer science, there are few formal rules to abide by; "it is a field shaped by people". In his talk on January 21, Professor Terry Winograd discussed some of the intricacies of human-computer interaction (HCI) and how important it is to "design the experience".

There has been two essential waves in the development of HCI. In the first wave, people were more concerned with what Prof. Winograd calls the "out-of-the-box experience". The computer industry focused mainly on making computer devices easy to use right out of the box—trying to minimize the time it takes to learn how to use the machine. But in this second wave, that concept is extended even further. The goal now is to recognize that interfaces are a form of communication with the machine and to basically "make it a good experience for the user".

There are three main dimensions to human-computer interaction: human characteristics, devices, and activities. Because it is hard for people to know what they want, experiments involving psychology and physiology are performed to determine the design to fit what people think and feel. Human characteristics drive the design for the devices, but can also constrain the activities between them and the machine.

The design of devices includes adapting sensory modalities like audio and speech, and motor and physical modalities like eye-tracking and body-monitoring. Portability and scale are also factors in designing devices. For example, wearables are contraptions that fit and look like an eye-piece but has the remarkable feature of projecting images in front of the user. Prof. Winograd also touched upon a technique called physical embedding that creates an environment where the computer is aware of the user in his surroundings and is used in visual gesture analyses.

During his talk, Prof. Winograd also stressed usability as being one of the key features of HCI. Two basic components of usability are guessability and learnability. How quickly the user can guess and learn their way around the machine has always been the main focus of HCI. But the ultimate goal is to go beyond this. It is not enough just to allow the user to quickly grasp onto the new technology.

Prof. Winograd emphasized a component called transfer which tries to utilize the skills and knowledge the user has previously acquired from similar machines, and to build on that. He presented an example involving a timeline accelerator. During the process of designing the buttons to control the movements of the accelerator, there were two options that could have been implemented. The first was to simply use the familiar and ubiquitous stop, forward, and backward buttons like those on VCRs. The second was to transfer that knowledge into a collection of gestures that allowed the user, with the help of a laser pointer, to "swipe" in the direction that he wanted the timeline to go. Forward movement would be represented by one "swipe" to the right, stopping would require one "swipe" to the left, moving backward would require another "swipe" to the left, and so on. The only common reference between the timeline accelerator and the user would be a vertical bar that indicated where the user was on the timeline.

The last component of usability Prof. Winograd discussed was called delight. This part of the design creates the draw for the user and is as important as the content. Content alone will not create the total experience for the user. The delight factor must also be considered in order to make the product a novelty.

Human-computer interaction will become increasingly important as more and more computer devices are invented and improved upon. People will be expecting more from their machines than just the basic functionality. With all of this driving the design of computing devices, the future of HCI lies wide open.