Hari Nallan & Mohita Jaiswal - March 2021
Interested in Form, rooted in Behavior
Year
Event
The course of Evolution of Interactions
1970’s
Text based interaction with the first personal computers
This early personal computing era can be likened to the time before the Industrial Revolution, with digital craftsmen making machines primarily for themselves or their friends. The act of design became separated from the act of making for the first time.
Douglas Engelbart’s NLS demonstration- graphical user interface, hypertext, and the computer mouse.
GUI was a marked event in the history of personal computing, but making the software visual did not automatically make computers usable by masses.
Mid 1980’s
Bill Moggridge, along with Bill Verplank, coin the term “interaction design
“Interaction design” was now seen as a way of distinguishing design that focuses on digital and interactive experiences from traditional industrial design.
1981
Research projects at Xerox PARC
The Xerox Star was the first commercially available computer with a GUI that utilized the messy desktop metaphor – Files and folders were displayed as icons that could be, and were scattered around the display surface in a What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) approach.
1982
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) emerged as a recognized subdiscipline of computer science.
Because designing how people use digital systems was so new, and because the task required integrating so many fields of knowledge, it became a vibrant research area within multiple fields of study (psychology, cognitive science, architecture, library science, etc.).
1983
Apple released the Lisa/Mac
1985
Microsoft debuted Windows 1.0 i
As businesses embraced computers in every office, they overwhelmingly chose Windows as a more cost-effective and flexible option than the Mac. Platform approach of the Windows operating system had separated the physical and digital parts of the personal computer. Companies tended to focus on hardware or software exclusively, and designers could make few assumptions about how they were combined by end users.
The mouse and the standard 102-key keyboard became a generic duo of input devices, dependable but limited.
Although the GUI used a spatial metaphor, the variety of monitor sizes and resolutions made it difficult to know how the on-screen graphics would be physically represented. Software emerged as a distinct and autonomous market, which contributed to the largely separate evolution of interaction and industrial design.
1993
Launch of the Mosaic web browser
Brought to life Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the World Wide Web. The Internet had been around for years, but the graphical nature of the Web made it much more approachable.
Open to new forms of interaction, new interface metaphors, and new possibilities for interactive visual expression. Most importantly, it was accessible to anyone who wanted to create their own corner of the Web, using nothing more than the simple HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Web pushed interactive environments into an entirely virtual realm. A website could be accessed from any computer, regardless of size, type, or brand.
Mid-1990s
Wired described web users as Netizens, socializing in virtual reality was an aspiration, and there was growing excitement that ecommerce could replace brick-and-mortar stores.
The Web had brought about the consumer phase of computing, expanding the scope and influence of interaction design. The Web hastened the information revolution and accelerated the idea that “information wants to be free.” Free to share, free to copy, and free of physicality.
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
The dominant wireless networks (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon) didn’t make the operating systems that powered their phones, but they controlled how they were configured and dictated what software was preinstalled. Additional features such as color screens and high-quality ringtones, their software interactions remained primitive. Primitive browsers could access limited information services like stock prices, sports scores, and news headlines.
1986
Don Norman, a cognitive scientist, invented the term UX design
2007
Apple launched the iPhone and disrupted the mobile phone market.
Gaining freedom from the shackles of the carrier’s business decisions gave the iPhone an unprecedented possibility for a unified experience.
2008
Update to iOS allowed third-party applications to be installed.
Focus shifted not only to a mobile context but to the reintroduction of physicality as an important constraint and design opportunity.
Wave of smartphones that have since emerged uses direct touch manipulation to select, swipe, and pinch as you navigate between and within apps.
After 2010
Skeuomorphic user interface helped smartphones become the most rapidly adopted new computing platform
Designers started craft pixel-perfect interface layouts. The ability to map screen graphics to physical dimensions was concurrent with the rise of a new graphical interface style that directly mimicked the physical world. This visual style, often called skeuomorphism, presents software interfaces as imitations of physical objects, using simulated textures and shadows to invoke rich materials such as leather and metal.
The physical form of a smartphone was very neutral- designed to disappear as much as possible
A full-screen app providing the device’s momentary purpose and identity. Smartphones became convergence devices, embedding disparate functions that render a variety of single-purpose devices redundant —a phenomenon that investor Marc Andreessen refers to as “software eating the world.” The smartphone required designers to consider the physicality of users in terms of their fingertips.
Dawn of smart devices, sometimes referred to collectively as the Internet of Things.
These devices use embedded sensors and network connectivity to enhance and profoundly change our interactions with the physical world. Smart devices can augment our natural interactions that are already happening in the world, recording them as data or interpreting them as input and taking action.
These new connected devices require a broader consideration of a person’s full body and presence in space.
