This is a post about future developments in HCI from one of my studynet blogs. As my HCI exam approaches I figured – why not use it here as well? There are many of you twitterers and facebooky types interested in this too, no need just to share thoughts of this nature with the studious ones counting down to May 13th..
This is something I personally find quite interesting anyway; especially when related to ‘teh internetz’ and more specifically webdesign or social media applications.
Which is why this quote by Chris Johnson of the Department of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow. caught my eye:
Visual impact is currently more important than comprehension or error rates in many commercial contexts.
I’ve been reading a lot about usability for my WBL project (though you may not think so when looking at the finished product ) in this article he’s discussing ‘The Social Implications of Future Forms of Human Computer Interaction‘ as opposed to usability, but this ‘style over function’ thinking seems to permeate the internet – especially in a social media context.
Is it the same everywhere? We’ve just had to do an assignment looking at summative data on mobile phones – is ‘style over function’ really the way things are headed? Are Apple the embodiment of all that is evil for pushing ‘stylish’ over ‘functional’?
Is the true future of development in HCI?
Microsoft don’t seem to think so. They’ve published a rather interesting read in pdf format (click the link to download):Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 20-20 looking through this is like seeing the opening catalogue of a new toy shop – I WANT!
They see a trend in embeddable wearable technology and for a long time I’ve been saying that the future of the web is mobile and wrapped around a structure based upon social media – so what do YOU see as the future of HCI? I may be a tad narrow in my interests but I think biometrics will definitely start to play a larger role as the web and the real merge.
Thoughts?