Gender HCI is a subfield of human-computer interaction that focuses on the design and evaluation of interactive systems for humans. The specific emphasis in gender HCI is on variations in how people of different genders interact with computers.
Gender HCI research has been conducted in the following areas (among others):
Gender HCI investigates ways in which attributes of software (or even hardware) can interact with gender differences. As with all of HCI, Gender HCI is a highly interdisciplinary area. Findings from fields such as psychology, computer science, marketing, neuroscience, education, and economics strongly suggest that men and women problem solve, communicate, and process information differently. Gender HCI investigates whether these differences need to be taken into account in the design of software and hardware.
The term Gender HCI was coined in 2004 by Laura Beckwith, a PhD candidate at Oregon State University, and her advisor Margaret Burnett. [2] They discovered that, although there had been some activity that could be characterized as Gender HCI work, people did not know about each other's work. The relevant research reports were isolated and scattered about various fields. Since that time, they and others have worked to help researchers know about each other's work and practitioners to be aware of the findings, so as to allow this area to mature as a subarea of HCI.
The following are a brief set of milestones in the history of this emerging subarea.
Here are some results from the Gender HCI research conducted to date – ordered from most to least recent, within categories:
Personal information management (PIM) is the study and implementation of the activities that people perform in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, and use informational items such as documents, web pages, and email messages for everyday use to complete tasks and fulfill a person's various roles ; it is information management with intrapersonal scope.
Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the study of how people utilize technology collaboratively, often towards a shared goal. CSCW addresses how computer systems can support collaborative activity and coordination. More specifically, the field of CSCW seeks to analyze and draw connections between currently understood human psychological and social behaviors and available collaborative tools, or groupware. Often the goal of CSCW is to help promote and utilize technology in a collaborative way, and help create new tools to succeed in that goal. These parallels allow CSCW research to inform future design patterns or assist in the development of entirely new tools.
In human–computer interaction, WIMP stands for "windows, icons, menus, pointer", denoting a style of interaction using these elements of the user interface. Other expansions are sometimes used, such as substituting "mouse" and "mice" for menus, or "pull-down menu" and "pointing" for pointer.
Bonnie A. Nardi is an emeritus professor of the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where she led the TechDec research lab in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction and computer-supported cooperative work. She is well known for her work on activity theory, interaction design, games, social media, and society and technology. She was elected to the ACM CHI academy in 2013. She retired in 2018.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to human–computer interaction:
Multimodal interaction provides the user with multiple modes of interacting with a system. A multimodal interface provides several distinct tools for input and output of data.
User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. In computer or software design, user interface (UI) design primarily focuses on information architecture. It is the process of building interfaces that clearly communicates to the user what's important. UI design refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms of interface design. The goal of user interface design is to make the user's interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals.
End-user development (EUD) or end-user programming (EUP) refers to activities and tools that allow end-users – people who are not professional software developers – to program computers. People who are not professional developers can use EUD tools to create or modify software artifacts and complex data objects without significant knowledge of a programming language. In 2005 it was estimated that by 2012 there would be more than 55 million end-user developers in the United States, compared with fewer than 3 million professional programmers. Various EUD approaches exist, and it is an active research topic within the field of computer science and human-computer interaction. Examples include natural language programming, spreadsheets, scripting languages, visual programming, trigger-action programming and programming by example.
A user is a person who utilizes a computer or network service.
Computer science education or computing education is the field of teaching and learning the discipline of computer science, and computational thinking. The field of computer science education encompasses a wide range of topics, from basic programming skills to advanced algorithm design and data analysis. It is a rapidly growing field that is essential to preparing students for careers in the technology industry and other fields that require computational skills.
Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design technologies that allow humans to interact with computers in novel ways. A device that allows interaction between human being and a computer is known as a "Human-computer Interface (HCI)".
Marilyn Mantei Tremaine is an American computer scientist. She is an expert in human–computer interaction and considered a pioneer of the field.
Mouse tracking is the use of software to collect users' mouse cursor positions on the computer. This goal is to automatically gather richer information about what people are doing, typically to improve the design of an interface. Often this is done on the Web and can supplement eye tracking in some situations.
Alan F. Blackwell is a New Zealand-British cognition scientist and professor at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, known for his work on diagrammatic representation, on data and language modelling, investment modelling, and end-user software engineering.
Feminist HCI is a subfield of human-computer interaction that focuses on helping the field of HCI build interactions that pay attention to gender, equity, and social justice in research and in the design process.
Jacob O. Wobbrock is a Professor in the University of Washington Information School and, by courtesy, in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. He is Director of the ACE Lab, Associate Director and founding Co-Director Emeritus of the CREATE research center, and a founding member of the DUB Group and the MHCI+D degree program.
Joëlle Coutaz is a French computer scientist, specializing in human-computer interaction (HCI). Her career includes research in the fields of operating systems and HCI, as well as being a professor at the University of Grenoble. Coutaz is considered a pioneer in HCI in France, and in 2007, she was awarded membership to SIGCHI. She was also involved in organizing CHI conferences and was a member on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.
Anicia Peters is a Namibian computer scientist specializing in human–computer interaction (HCI). She is the CEO of the National Commission of Research, Science and Technology (NCRST).
Margaret M. Burnett is a computer scientist specializing in work at the intersection of human computer interaction and software engineering, and known for her pioneering work in visual programming languages, end-user software engineering, and gender-inclusive software. She is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Oregon State University,, a member of the CHI Academy, and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Wisdom is a software development process and method to design software-intensive interactive systems. It is based on object modelling, and focuses human-computer interaction (HCI) in order to model the software architecture of the system i.e. it is architecture-centric. The focus on HCI while being architecture-centric places Wisdom as a pioneer method within human-centered software engineering. Wisdom was conceived by Nuno Nunes and first published in the years 1999-2000 in order to close the gaps of existing software engineering methods regarding the user interface design.