Is HCI homeless?: in search of inter-disciplinary status

Depending on how you look at it, human-computer interaction has either no home or many homes. We’re multidisciplinary without having become particularly interdisciplinary. The first HCI papers were Human Factors & Ergonomics, which is often located in Industrial Engineering departments. Business and Management schools then initiated relevant Information Systems research. CHI originally comprised mainly Cognitive Psychologists, with an influx from Computer Science some years later. HCI is now on the rise in Information and Design schools and departments. Is this a positive instance of letting a thousand flowers bloom, or a dire Franklinian, “We must all hang together or we shall all hang separately? ” If computers become invisible or disappear, the study and practice of human-computer interaction may be everywhere and nowhere. But HCI seems challenging enough to deserve to have a spotlight on it somewhere. To try to understand why different strands of HCI research and practice have not converged, I have been examining the history and interviewing participants in it. Everyone has a unique perspective, choosing what to emphasize and what to skip over. I have collected some perspectives in this article (though they are not comprehensive—add your own! ). The measure of a perspective is less whether it is right or wrong than whether or not it is useful: In this case, does it help us understand the field’s state of fragmentation and the possibilities for more effective integration? Three Faces of HCI. I will focus on the three long-standing threads of research shown in Figure 1. Human Factors reaches back to the World Wars and earlier application of “scientific management” to the design of assembly lines and other work processes. Information Systems arose around the needs of business computing that spread in the late 1960s. These fields were active when a computer was so expensive that it had to be kept in continual use, with most hands-on users, in Brian Shackel’s words, “almost slaves to feed it” [1]. Nondiscretionary use also marked the earlier human factors work on assembly lines and military technology (aviation psychologists formed the Human Factors Society after World War II). Efficiency and error reduction in skilled use were emphasized, with some focus on training to develop skill. To demonstrate small but valuable improvements in tasks such as data entry required controlled experiments and rigorous analyses of the sort identified by Don Norman in his column this issue [2]. Mandatory use was the norm through the mid-’70s, but visionary engineers, prototype developers, and writers anticipated a future in which people would use computers not because it was a job requirement but because they wanted to, because it “augmented their intellect” [3] or made jobs more enjoyable. When small mini-computers, home computers, personal computers, and workstations arrived, the visions began to be realized. Discretionary computer use has been a focus of CHI from the beginning. What difference does this make? For example, for understanding people’s reactions to a new discretionary technology, controlled experiments and statistical analysis are less effective, and often less necessary. Mandatory vs. Discretionary Hands-On Use. Figure 2 color codes these research threads to illustrate the distinction around discretion in use. Those interested in details—full names, acronyms and book titles; why items are positioned where they are; and what