Still, practitioners say it has existed for much longer. The university's Human-Computer Interaction Institute has about 30 student's in its master's degree program and 80 in its undergraduate program. In general, classes teach students how to design and evaluate programs that are easy to use. The need for knowledge of computer science is obvious. We leave a lot of room for creativity.
Students have a lot of ways to meet the design goals.
But everyone agrees that nothing is very easy now. What I constantly see now is, 'I believe it can do what I need, but I just don't know. Maya, the South Side design firm, consults with corporate and governmental clients to make their software, hardware and networks simpler and more intuitive. Lucas, who founded the company almost exactly 10 years ago with two Carnegie Mellon colleagues, remembers beginning his venture with a mixture of confidence and uncertainty. If the roster of sponsors at the CHI '99 is any indication, then the industry has embraced the cause of usability with a vengeance.