History and Evolution
Richard W. Pew

Disclaimer
This outline is a work-in-progress. It is not complete and in places I am sure I do not have the dates right. I reserve the right to move things around and do not promise to cover everything listed here. I am hoping to weave it all together to tell three or four "stories", but that may be too ambitious.

I welcome comments, corrections and suggestions from anyone who reviews it.

1. Goals
   • To provide a sense of perspective on the field
   • To recognize significant visionary developments
   • To provide a rationale for where we are now
   • To suggest directions for the future
   • To provide references to the seminal work in the field
     [It is hard to write history when the past is so close to the present]
     People: [I am thinking of including thumbnails of significant contributors to the field, The problem is deciding who is in and who is out.]
   • The following would be definitely in
     • Licklider
     • Newell
     • Englebart
     • Sutherland
   • The next group are "maybe's" (alphabetical)
     • Brooks (Fred)
     • Buxton
     • Card
     • Carroll
     • Kay
     • Landauer
     • Moran
     • Negriponti
     • Nielsen
     • Norman
     • Shneiderman
     • Van Dam
     • Other Suggestions?
   • For each Era
     • Intro to period
     • What Visions came out of that period?
     • What was the dominant hardware and software technology
     • What were the important research and/or application methodologies
     • What were the significant application innovations
     
     Major areas to be covered
2. 1960s and Before
   • Intro to Period
     • Early period when computers were a novelty used by scientists and military planners for exotic mathematical calculations,
     • Baseline from which most further developments followed
     • Emphasis on human factors in programming
   • Visions
     • Licklider Man-Computer Symbiosis
     • Taylor Representation for user different from that for programmer
     • Englebart Computers as support for intellectual work
   • Hardware and Software
     • Single user machine
       Royal McBee LGP-30
       LINC
       TX-0, TX-2
       DEC PDP 1
     • Paper tape readers
     • Lightpen
     • Fortran
     • COBOL
     • DOS?
   • Research and Methodologies
     • Experiments on Programming language design and documentation
     • Real-time control of psychological experiments
     • Kay's Dynabook
   • Innovative Applications
     • Control for Psychological Experiments
     • Interpretive Compilers (JOSS)
     • Sutherland's Sketchpad
     • TV Edit word processing
     • Hypertext
     • Computer-aided design
     • Space War, Adventure game
3. 1970s
   • Introduction
     • During this period the perspetive moved from isolated machines to local area and wide area distributed networks
     • Batch to interactive programming
   • Vision
     • Remote access to centrally controlled machines through "concentrators"
     • Computers on every "knowledge worker's desk
   • Hardware and Software
     • Time Shared Computers
       TENEX Operating System
     • "Dumb Terminals"
     • First Object Oriented Languages
     • Early Symbolic languages
       Interlisp, Small Talk
     • Early Virtual Reality Tom Furness at WPAFB
     • Early Windows
     • Speech Production; DECTALK Hobby PCs
       Commadore What operating system did it use?
       Apple II
       Etc.
   • Research and Methodology
     • Ramsey & Atwood Bibliography, 1978.
     • Shneiderman Software Psychology (1980)
     • Cognitive Engineering
     • Early use of task analysis
     • Rapid Prototyping
     • First guidelines
     • Card, English & Burr study of Mouse
     • Early usability lab
     • Activity Analysis
     • First Speech Recognition/Natural Language Research
   • Innovative Applications
     • Bricklin, introduces Visicalc , 1978
     • Bravo WISIWYG Text Editor
     • Email
     • Pong, first commercial game
4. 1980s: Era of GUIs
   • Introduction
     • First Conference
       1982: First Computer-Human Interaction Conference, Gaithersberg MD .
     • First Interest group, SIGCHI
       1983: SIGCHI formed.
     • First Handbook (1988)
     • Greater public recognition of usability problems
   • Vision
     • Direct Manipulation Interfaces
     • Usability as a professional specialty
   • Hardware and Software
     • Moore's Law
       In the 80s, memory cost, and the availability of low cost storage media such as disk drives and CD Roms changed the size-cost structure so drastically that it has become cost-effective to invest more of the software cost in implementation of the user interface. Consumers have begun to demand usable products.
     • A Paradigm Shift in Hardware and Software
       Paradigm Shift to GUIs
       • Before the shift
         Glass Teletypes
         Keyboard controlled
         Frame-driven dialog
         Rigid format and coding constraints
         Interface embedded in application
       • After the shift:
         High-resolution bit-mapped displays
         Multiprocess windows
         Multiple interactive modes
         Object-oriented design
         Widgets
         Independent, generic interfaces.
         Personal Workstations
         Xerox Alto (first one 1973),
         Xerox Star (1982),
         Apple Lisa (1983)
     • UNIX
     • Object Oriented Languages
       LISP
       C
       C++
     • GUI-supported Operating Systems
   • Research and Methology
     • GOMS
     • Roberts and Moran on Text Editors
     • Organizational Progress
     • Evaluation as formative instead of summative (see Carroll)
     • Iterative design (see Carroll)
     • Structured Walkthrough
     • Users as active design participants
     • Verbal Protocols, Think-aloud
     • Wizard of Oz technique
     • User statistics
     • Naturalistic Observation, Ethnography
   • Innovative Applications
     • Graphics Editing
     • Presentation Graphics
     • Digital Image editing Photo Shop
     • Hypercard
     • MOTIF
     • Video teleconferencing,
     • Interface Builders
   • 1990s: Era of Internet
     • Introduction
       Hard to talk about computers per se because they are ubiquitous. Every device we use has or soon will have a chip in it.
       Many Textbooks
     • Vision
       • The world will go digital
       • Paradigm shift in communications technologies
       • Telecommuting will replace traditional workplaces
       • E-Business will dominate the use of the internet
     • Hardware and Software
       • Digital Television; HDTV, Wall-Mounted Television screens
       • Multimedia interfaces
       • Multi-user Dungeons (MUDs)
       • HTML, VRML, JAVA, XML
         They are cross-platform software
       • Secure network transaction systems (sort of)
       • Hand-held devices;
       • Digital Cameras
       • GPS
     • Research and Methodology
       • Wearable computers
       • Early wireless systems,
       • Virtual environment interfaces
     • Innovative Applications
       • Web Browsers
         Mosaic
       • Distributed systems
       • Shared whiteboards
       • Shared writing and drawing
       • Real Speech Recognition Applications
       • Music, Video Downloading
   • 2000s: Era of Multimedia integration
     Perspectives and Trends
     • Relaxation of design constraints
     • Convergence of Multimedia, communication, and Computing in the home and office
     • Wired homes
     • Convergence of wireless communication, miniturization of increased computing power
     • Recognized need for more front-end effort
     • Increased use of modeling during interface concept formulation phase of design
     • From individual machines to distributed computing via timesharing to PCs to client-server to client-server-internet
       Servers as intermediate processors between tailored clients and web-based data sources
     • Expansion of ubiquitous computing
     • Continued impact of Moore's Law