Human-computer interaction

The human-computer interaction or human-computer interaction (IPO) is the discipline dedicated to designing, evaluating and implementing interactive computing systems for human use, and to studying the most significant related phenomena. It is the study of how interactive computing systems are designed, implemented, and used, and how computers influence individuals, organizations, and society. These studies are a specialization within ergonomics, the multidisciplinary field that acts on the design of machines and the work environment to facilitate their use and adapt it to the physiological, anatomical, and psychological conditions and capabilities of the user.

In general terms, it is the discipline that studies the exchange of information through software between people and computers. This discipline is in charge of the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive technological devices, studying the largest number of cases that may affect them. The objective is to minimize errors, increase satisfaction, reduce frustration and, ultimately, make tasks involving people and computers more productive.

It is very important to design systems that are effective, efficient and easy to use, since society will enjoy these advances. The difficulty is given by a series of restrictions that force the design teams to make some sacrifices in this one. Some of the applications of this discipline could be: the creation of digital libraries where students can find virtual medieval manuscripts from hundreds of years ago; tools for the medical field, such as one that allows a team of surgeons to conceptualize, host, and monitor a complex neurological operation; virtual worlds for entertainment and social interaction; efficient and responsive government services, which could range from online license renewals to parliamentary witness analysis; or "smart" phones that detect geographic location and have the ability to respond to certain phrases in a language.

Introduction

Humans interact with computers in many ways; the interface between humans and computers is crucial to facilitate this interaction. Applications, Internet browsers, and laptop computers make use of today's prevalent graphical user interfaces. Voice-based user interfaces are used for speech recognition and synthesize systems. All of this allows humans to engage with personified characters in a way that we couldn't with other interface paradigms. The growth of the field of human-computer interaction has resulted in higher quality of interaction, and in a different branch of its history. Instead of designing regular interfaces, different branches of research have focused on the concepts of multimodality rather than unimodality, adaptive intelligent interfaces rather than order/action-based interfaces, and active rather than passive interfaces.

Human-computer interaction is a discipline committed to the design, evaluation, and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and to the study of the phenomena that surround it.” An important facet of this interaction is user satisfaction.. Human-computer interaction studies a human and a machine communicating, drawing from the support of knowledge both on the machine and on the human side. On the machine side, computer graphics techniques, operating systems, programming languages, and development spaces are important. On the human side, communication theory, graphic and industrial design disciplines, linguistics, social sciences, cognitive and social psychology, and human factors such as user satisfaction are important. And, of course, so are engineering and design methods. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of human-computer interaction, people from different fields contribute to its success. This interaction is also sometimes called human-machine interaction, human-machine interaction, or human-computer interaction.

User interfaces can lead to many unexpected problems. A classic example is the Three Mile Island accident, a nuclear meltdown accident, in which investigations concluded that the design of this interface was, at least in part, responsible for the disaster. Similarly, many aviation accidents have been the result of manufacturers' decisions to use non-standardized flight instruments: despite the fact that the new designs were proposed as superior in basic human-machine interaction, pilots had already internalized the "standard" plane and, thus, the conceptually correct idea had undesirable results.

Historical roots

The factors that have influenced the evolution of the discipline are:

• Human creativity: especially at the beginning of computer science several visionaries made imaginary projections about what could become computers
• The state of the art of technology: often acting as a limit to design.
• The computer market: directly related to the cost of the devices and which incites directly.

The origin of the IPO is in technology and in its beginnings. Computers were large machines that occupied entire houses and that processed commands in machine language in batch mode (the operation was organized in groups or batches of work), with long waiting times; input was via punch cards (originally from Herman Hollerith, who got the idea from Joseph Marie Jacquard's looms that created designs using punch cards) and output was via line-to-line printers; the users were basically the same programmers. They therefore needed great technical knowledge to be able to put a computer into operation.

The 1960s was crucial for the development of the IPO thanks to the increase in the number of people who began to have access to computers and the emergence of networks that allowed communication between machines and, therefore, between users. Computer graphics arose from the use of the CRT and the early uses of the light pen. That led to the development of pioneering techniques for human-computer interaction. Many of these date from 1963, the year in which Ivan Sutherland, an American computer scientist and computer scientist, developed Sketchpad for his doctoral thesis at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), which marked the beginning of computer graphics and changed the way how people interacted with computers. Although the incubation of the IPO occurred years later, we can consider the year 1969 as a key date in the emergence of the discipline, since there was the first international meeting and the first specialized magazine was published: International Symposium on Man- Machine Systems and the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, respectively. From that moment on, work has continued in this field, creating and improving the algorithms and hardware that allow objects to be displayed and manipulated with much more realism, all with the aim of achieving interactive graphics.

Some of the related advances were attempts to achieve a human-machine symbiosis (Licklider, 1960), an increase in human intellect (Douglas Engelbart, 1963), and the Dynabook and Smalltalk (Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, 1977). From here arose the foundations of human-computer interaction, such as the mouse, screens with bitmaps, personal computers, the desktop metaphor, and windows and pointers to click.

In addition, working with operating systems led to the creation of new techniques for interfaces to input/output devices, time controls, multiprocessors, and to support opening multiple screens or having animations.

The eighties are characterized by the personal computer. The advancement of computing and falling production costs had opened up a nascent market for consumer personal computers. The traditional context of computer use to date (universities, the military sector and companies) is extended to more social and civil contexts and activities, such as the home, schools or libraries. As a result of this, the "average" it becomes more diversified in skills, needs and technical knowledge. During this decade the IPO experienced a vertiginous development. It is a time full of theoretical advances; there is an enthusiastic atmosphere in the discipline and Palo Alto is the epicenter for the creation of future great computer companies. The wealth of existing ideas led to the creation of a special interest group on the IPO in the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), the ACM Sigchi (Special Interest Group on Computer- Human Interaction).

In the nineties the World Wide Web was born, the most important change of this period, understood as the star application of the Internet. It brings two novelties: it is an interface centered on the document and not on the application, which breaks the boundaries between local and remote information. and in addition, access to information is massified and hypertext is popularized. At this time the market begins to become truly aware of the importance of usability in the development of interactive products and, as a consequence of this, a professionalization of the IPO takes place under the name of usability engineering.

In the last decade the limitations of the cognitive models rooted in the discipline have become clear. Traditionally, IPO research has focused its study on the user's rational behavior, and has neglected their emotional behavior (affective states, moods, and feelings), and also the importance of aesthetics in this behavior. Thus,, it has begun to be recognized in the si of the IPO that these emotional aspects have a fundamental role in user interaction, since they have a great impact on the motivations for use, the evaluation of the product, the cognitive processes, the ability to attention and memorization and user performance.

One example of the new challenges facing the IPO is ubiquitous computing, which refers to a new paradigm characterized by the pervasiveness of "invisible" in our surroundings. An example of a project that is being carried out is that of New Songdo City, an island in South Korea whose only city will have all the information systems interconnected and the computers integrated into the houses, streets and office buildings.

Recently, thanks to the cheaper storage media and the increase in broadband Internet connections, we are witnessing the birth of a new paradigm, known as cloud computing. In this type of computing, both the software and the information are stored on servers that we access from a multitude of different devices connected to the Internet and that, in addition, greatly facilitate the activity of sharing information and content with other users and creating and modifying content collaboratively.

Objectives

Human-computer interaction studies the way in which human beings make or do not use computational artifacts, systems, and infrastructures. Because of this, much of the research in this field seeks to improve the human-computer relationship by improving the usability of computer interfaces.

That is why much of the research in this field focuses on:

• Methods to design new computer interfaces, and thus optimize the design of a property that is desired, such as learning capacity or use efficiency.
• Methods to implement interfaces, for example, through computer libraries.
• Methods to evaluate and compare interfaces with respect to their properties, such as their usability.
• Methods to study the use of computers and their sociocultural implications.
• Models and theories on the human use of computers, as well as conceptual frames of reference for the design of interfaces, such as cognitive user models, activity theory or ethnomethodological considerations on the use of computers in humans.
• Perspectives that reflect critically on the values that underlie in computer design, the use of computers and the investigation of the person-computer interaction.
• Design sacrifices.

In conclusion, the IPO addresses aspects of the human sciences, as well as engineering and design.

Differences with other disciplines

Human-computer interaction differs from other human factors and ergonomics in that it focuses more on users working specifically with computers, rather than other types of machines or artifacts. In addition, there is also an interest in how to implement hardware and software mechanisms to support human-computer interaction. Thus, human factors is a very broad term; human-computer interaction could be defined as human factors from computers – although some experts try to differentiate between these areas.

Human-computer interaction also differs from human factors in that there is less focus on repetitive tasks and procedures, and much less emphasis on physical stress or the industrial design of user interfaces, such as keyboards and mice.

Still, there are three areas of study that overlap significantly with human-computer interaction. Personal information management studies how people acquire and use personal information to complete tasks. In computer-assisted cooperative work, the emphasis is placed on the use of computer systems to support collaborative work. The principles of business process management extend the above field to the organizational level and can be implemented without computers.

Main components

The fundamental components of the system are the user and the computer.

Username

Human beings have a limited ability to process information that is stored in sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Human beings can communicate through four input/output channels: vision, hearing, touch, and movement. Once the information is received, it is processed through reasoning and acquired skills, such as being able to solve problems or detect errors. This entire process will affect the emotional state of the user, since it directly influences a person's capabilities. All users have skills in common, but there are others that vary from person to person.

Computer

The system used can affect the user in different ways. The classification of the different types of users is related to the type of interface devices that can come together. Devices are classified as input or output according to their function is to transmit information from the user to the product (input) or from the product to the user (output).

Input devices transmit information from the user to the product, capture and digitize the data entered by the user or by another device and send it to the computer for processing. The keyboard is the most common input device on personal computers. The size of the keys, the distance between them, and the path or pressure to exert on the key are aspects that significantly influence the use of a keyboard. Pointing devices, such as the mouse, are input devices that allow the user to enter spatial information. Technological and ergonomic advances in technology help provide a more rewarding user experience. Touch screens are output devices that function as input pointing devices through direct contact with the screen. Multi-touch screens operate just like a mouse in that the user can select, point, and drag information using their fingers.

The output devices have the function of transmitting product information to the user, displaying and projecting information outside the computer. Most are to inform, alert, communicate, project or provide information to the user. Screens represent the most important output device in conveying product information to the user. With the reduction in technology, it is increasingly common to find that they incorporate screens as output devices such as common household appliances. Most interactive products no longer use screens with CRT technology, but use screens with LCD, LED or PDP technologies because it entails lower power consumption, smaller size and better image quality. The user's position in relation to the screen or the ambient light is not the same in all products and contexts of use and this may affect the user's interaction with the computer. Interactive products that incorporate audio output devices are numerous, such as speakers or headphones. These devices can be used to stream content but also to deliver system messages or warnings to the user. Printers are an output device that is usually permanently attached to the computer by a cable.

Computers have short-term RAM and long-term magnetic and optical disks. It should be taken into account that they have a limited capacity in direct relation to the format of the document or video. Memory access methods can be helpful but sometimes also hinder the user. The computer will have a processing speed limit, on the other hand it will affect the processing speed when using a network or another.

Origin of the interactive process

It is important that there is good communication between the user and the computer, for this reason the interface has to be designed with the user's needs in mind. This good understanding between both parties is of vital importance since otherwise the interaction will not be possible.

Design principles

In order to evaluate or design an interface, the following principles of experimental design must be taken into account.

• Fix who will be the user/s and their task/s. The number of users required to perform the tasks must be established and the persons indicated should be identified. A person who has never used it and will not use it in the future would not be a valid user.
• Empirical measures. It would be very useful to carry out an interface test with real users, in the situation in which it would be used. We cannot forget that the results will be altered if the situation is not real. A series of quantitative specifications should be established, which will be of great use, as could be the number of users needed to perform a task, the time needed to complete it and the number of errors that occur during its realization.
• Iterative design. Once the users are determined, the tasks and the empirical measures are started again: the design is changed, the results are tested, the results are analyzed and the process is repeated again until the desired interface is obtained.

Design methodologies

Since 1980, the year in which the human-computer interactivity concept emerged, numerous methodologies have emerged for its design. Most of these are based on the fact that designers have to grasp how the interactivity between user and technical system is carried out. In this design process, a fact to take into account is the user's cognitive process, which will be affected by memory and attention, in this way, if a forecast is made, a much more favorable result will be achieved. The most modern models focus on feedback, communication, between users, designers, and engineers, in order to ensure that the user obtains the experience that he really wants to have.

• Theory of the activity: It is used to define the context in which the interaction between people and computers takes place. It provides a frame of reference for reasoning on actions in these contexts, analytical tools in the form of task lists that researchers should take into account and take part in the design of interaction from an activity-centred perspective.

• User-centred design (in English UCD, user-centred design): It is a modern concept, which is spreading a lot. Its philosophy is part of the idea that the user is the center of the design, in any computer system. Users, designers and the technical team work together with the aim of articulating what is desired, which is needed and know the limitations of the user to create an appropriate system. This methodology is similar to that of participatory design, which emphasizes the possibility that end users will contribute with the design of the system.

• User interface design principles: There are seven principles to be considered at all times when designing the user interface: tolerance, simplicity, visibility, feasibility, consistency, structure and feedback.

Screen design

Displays are human-made artifacts designed to support the perception of relevant system variables and facilitate the processing of this information. Before designing a screen, the task that it will perform must be defined (for example, navigate, consult, make decisions, learn, entertain, etc.). A user or operator must be able to process any information that the system generates and exposes; then, the information has to be exposed in a way that supports the perception, allows to be aware of the situation and its understanding.

Thirteen principles of screen design

These principles of human perception and information processing can be used to create effective screen designs. A reduction in errors and required training time, and an increase in efficiency and user satisfaction are some of the many potential benefits that can be achieved by utilizing these principles.

Certain principles may not apply to certain monitors or situations. Some principles may seem conflicting and there is no easy solution to say if one principle is more important than another. The principles must be adapted to a specific design or situation. Hitting the mark with a balance of functionality over principle is critical to effective design.

Principles of perception

1. Make screens readable (or audible). The legibility of a screen is critical and necessary for it to be usable. If the displayed characters or objects cannot be distinguished, the operator cannot make effective use of them.

2. Avoid absolute limits of judgment. Do not ask the user to determine the level of variables based on a single sensitive variable (eg, color, size, volume). These sensitive variables can contain different possible levels.

3. Top-down processing. Signals tend to be perceived and interpreted in accordance with what is expected based on the user experience. If a signal is presented contrary to what the user expects, more physical evidence will be needed to present that signal and ensure that it is understood correctly.

4. Redundancy upgrade. If a signal is presented more than once, it is more likely to be understood correctly. This can be done by presenting the signal in different physical forms (eg color and shape, voice and image, etc.), which does not imply repetition. Light traffic is a good example of redundancy, since color and position are redundant.

5. Similarity causes confusion: Use distinguishable elements. Signals that look alike tend to be confused. The ratio of similar features to dissimilar features produces similar signals. For example, A423B9 is more similar to A423B8 than 92 is to 93. Unnecessary similar features should be removed and dissimilar ones highlighted.

Principles of the Mental Model

6. Principle of pictorial realism. A display should look like the variables it represents (for example, high temperature on a thermometer shown with a high vertical level). If there are several elements, these can be configured in a way that resembles a rendered environment.

7. Principle of the moving part. Movable elements should move in a pattern and direction compatible with the user's mental model of how they should move in the system. For example, the moving element in an altimeter should move up as altitude increases.

Principles based on care

8. Minimize the cost of access to information or cost of interaction. When the user's attention is diverted from one location to another to access the necessary information, there is an associated cost between time and effort. A good display design should minimize this cost by allowing the most frequent sources to be accessed in close positions. However, adequate readability should not be sacrificed to reduce this cost.

9. Principle of proximity compatibility. Dividing attention between two sources of information may be necessary to perform a task. These sources must be intellectually integrated and defined to have close mental proximity. The cost of access to information should be low, which can be achieved in different ways (eg proximity, relationship through common colors, patterns, shapes, etc.). Still, proximity can be harmful by causing too much clutter.

10. Principle of multiple sources. A user can easily process information from various sources. For example, visual and auditory information can be presented simultaneously instead of presenting all information visually or aurally.

Principles of memory

11. Replacing memory with visual information: knowledge in the world. A user should not need to retain important information solely by working the memory or by retrieving it from long-term memory. A menu, list and another or another screen can help the user by facilitating the use of his memory. However, using memory can benefit you by eliminating the need to reference the world's knowledge (for example, an expert computer operator will use direct memory commands instead of looking at them in a manual. The use of knowledge in the head of a user and knowledge in the world must be balanced for an effective design.

12. Principle of predictive help. Proactive actions are normally more effective than reactive actions. A display should try to remove fonts that require cognitive tasks and replace them with tasks that are more easily perceptible to reduce the user's use of mental fonts. This allows you to focus on current conditions and consider future ones. An example of predictive help is a road sign showing the distance to a certain destination.

13. Principle of consistency. Old habits from other screens easily transfer to new screen processing support if designed consistently. The user's long-term memory will trigger actions that it expects to be appropriate. A good screen design must accept this fact and use consistency over different screens.

Human-computer interface

Main article: User interface

The human-computer interface can be described as the point of communication between the human user and the computer. The information flow between them is defined by the interaction circle.

Visual Features

Visual human-computer interaction is probably the most widespread area of human-computer interaction research.

Hearing characteristics

Auditory interaction is another important area in human-computer interaction systems. This area deals with information acquired from different audio signals.

Task Environment

These are the conditions and goals set for the user.

Machine environment

This is the environment that the computer is connected to, for example, a laptop in a college student's dorm room.

Interface areas

Non-overlapping areas imply processes that do not pertain to human-computer interaction. Whereas, the overlapping tasks only involve themselves in the process of their interaction.

Input flow

The information flow that starts in the task environment when the user has some task that requires the use of the computer.

Outputs

The flow of information that is generated in the machine environment.

Feedback

The circles that the interface evaluates and moderates and confirms the processes that pass from the user to the interface to the computer, and vice versa.

Fit

It is the relationship between the design of the computer, the user and the task to optimize the human resources needed to complete the task.

Current Research

User Personalization

End-user development studies how everyday users might routinely tailor applications to their own needs and invent new applications based on an understanding of their own capabilities. With their deep knowledge, users could increasingly be important sources of new applications waiting for generic programs with expert systems but little mastery.

Embedded Computing

Computation is moving from computers to any object in which it can be applied. Embedded systems make the environment alive with small computations and automated processes, from automated cookware to automated lights, light bulbs, and blinds. The difference is expected in the future in the addition of network communication that will allow many of these embedded computations to coordinate with each other and with the user. The human interfaces to these embedded objects will, in many cases, be different from the appropriate workstations.

Augmented reality

Main article: Augmented reality

Augmented reality refers to the notion of adding relevant information to our view of the world. There are projects that show real-time statistics to users who perform difficult tasks, such as manufacturing. Future work should include increasing our social interactions by providing us with additional information about the people with whom we converse.

Social Computing

In recent years, there has been an explosion of social science research that focuses on interactions as the unit of analysis. Many of these investigations are drawn from psychology, social psychology and sociology. For example, one study found that people expect a computer named after a man to be more expensive than a computer named after a woman. Another found that individuals perceive our interactions with computers more positively than our interactions with humans, despite behave the same way before these machines.

Human-computer interaction driven by knowledge

In interactions between people and computers, there is usually a semantic gap between what people and computers understand about each other's behaviors. Ontology (informatics), as a formal representation of the specific domain of knowledge, can be used to address this problem, through the resolution of semantic ambiguities between the two parts.

Human-computer interaction and emotions

In human-computer interaction, research has investigated how computers can detect, process, and react to human emotions to develop emotionally intelligent information systems. Researchers have suggested important "affect detection channels". The potential to detect human emotions automatically and digitally lies in improvements in the effectiveness of human-computer interaction. The influence of emotions on this interaction has been studied. in fields such as financial decision making using ECG and in the organization of knowledge sharing using eye tracking and face readers as affect detection channels. In these fields these channels have been observed to have potential to detect human emotions and that computer systems can incorporate the data obtained from them to improve decision models.

Disciplines

Within the field of human-computer interaction, a series of disciplines are considered such as:

• Computers: Technological and computer evolution has conditioned the evolution of IPO as a professional discipline and practice. Among areas of computer science that help IPO are software engineering, artificial intelligence and cognitive information.
  • La software engineering it deals with methodologies and principles to develop quality software, studying ease of use and usability, mainly with the appearance of the graphical user interfaces.
  • La Artificial Intelligence it deals with the development of systems that emulate a rational and intelligent behavior that allows to introduce elements that combine aspects of human behavior.
  • La cognitive try to understand the functioning of the human mind to get a similar operation on computers.

Examples of use in IPO would be the design of tutors and expert systems in intelligent interfaces, the design of interfaces in natural language, through voice (voice assistants such as Siri or Alexa), the design of intelligent agents to simplify the performing frequent tasks.

• Psychology (social, organizational...): science that studies the behavior and states of the consciousness of the human person, considered individually or as a member of a group.
  • La Cognitive psychology: tries to understand the human behavior and the mental processes it carries.
  • Social Psychology: tries to study the origin and causes of human behavior in a social context.

Psychology is the most reliable source of knowledge to predict or understand how users act and react to interactive objects, making it possible to know how they learn to use the product, how they make decisions, how they perceive the information presented or how they understand and internalize the information. information represented. The contribution of psychology in the IPO is based on the knowledge and theories about the behavior of people and the way they process information, the methodologies and tools to assess the degree of satisfaction of people with the design of the interface.

Of all the aspects of psychology, cognitive psychology is, without a doubt, the one that has had the greatest presence and impact in the development of the IPO, specifically the model known as human information processing.

• Documentation: There are various fields within the documentation's cyence involved in the IPO: The recovery of information deals with how to improve the algorithms and interficies that the search systems use to offer in this way more satisfying search results to the user. The information architecture is responsible for organizing, structuring and sorting content in digital environments (web sites, intranets, interactive CDs, etc.) in order for users of this content to find and manage information in an easy, effective and efficient way.
• Ergonomics: study of the interactive relationship between people, artifacts and working environments, with special attention to the psychological, social and physical human factors that condition this interaction. Its contribution to IPO is very relevant since the IPO is primarily nourished by the knowledge generated by the professional and scientific community of ergonomics (anthropometric studies, cognitive ergonomics, etc.), and adapts that knowledge to the characteristics of emerging technologies (informatics). At present it is not surprising that there are many contexts where ergonomics and IPO are used as synonyms.
• Engineering
• Anthropology
• Sociology: science that studies the customs and traditions of peoples (more specifically, ethnography).

Sociology is another source of knowledge used in the IPO to understand and predict the human factor of interaction. This science provides various techniques that allow studying the user and their social behavior. Large companies recruit anthropologists to better understand their customers and thus design products that better reflect cultural trends.

• Philosophy
• Linguistics: scientific study of languages from the different levels they have: phenticophonological, morphosintàctic, lexicon and semantic.

In the field of IPO, linguistics has played a role closely linked to artificial intelligence, since it has served as the basis for developing natural language processing (NLP) systems. It also has a very important role in the way in which the texts that make up the interfaces are to be treated so that the user understands and interprets each of the elements correctly, and also to analyze and understand the user through the use of language in new environments. of communication such as the Internet

• Graphic design and design: together with design, they are activities aimed at achieving a serie of useful and visually pleasing goals.

In the case of the IPO, until technology evolves enough (with regard to the resolution and color of computer screens in particular), design, and graphic design specifically, does not begin to have a significant role in the design of user interfaces. Knowledge of graphic design has been combined with that of the psychology of visual perception with the aim of improving the way of designing and composing usable, aesthetic and visually pleasing graphic interfaces.

We can distinguish some characteristics of the software, such as:

• Usability
• Utility
• Accessibility

All these refer to the experience with the interaction of a computer system.

Factors of change

Traditionally, computer use has been modeled as a human-computer pairing in which the two are connected by narrow explicit channels of communication, such as text-based terminals. Much work has been done to make this interaction reflect the multidimensional nature of everyday communication. Because of these potential issues, human-computer interaction has shifted the focus on interface to answer feedback, as articulated by D. Engelbart: “If ease of use were the only valid criteria, people would stick with trikes. and I would never have tried the bikes.”

The intent with which humans interact with computers continues to evolve rapidly. Human-computer interaction is affected by the development of computing. These forces include:

• Decreasing the cost of hardware, leading to greater memory and faster systems.
• Miniaturization of hardware, causing portability.
• Reduction of energy requirements, increasing portability.
• New screen technologies, allowing new packaging forms for different devices.
• Specialized hardware, which leads to new work.
• Development of communication networks.
• Increase in the extension of the use of computers, especially by people outside the IT profession.
• Greater innovation in information input techniques (e.g. voices, gestures, pen drive...) combined with a cost reduction, which leads to a rapid computerization of people who at first stayed out of the IT revolution.
• Wider social interests, leading to improved access to computers for disadvantaged groups.

Since 2010, the future of human-computer interaction is expected to include the following features:

• ubiquitous computing and communication. Computers are expected to be communicated through local high-speed networks, international networks and, probably, infrared, ultrasound, cellular and other technologies. Computer and data services will be accessible to many, if not most of the locations that users travel to.
• High functionality systems. Systems may have a large number of functions associated with them. There are also many systems on which most users, technical or non-technical, have no time to learn (e.g. through extensive manuals).
• Graphs of massive availability. The graphical capabilities of computers such as image processing, graphical transformations, rendering and interactive animation are spreading while chips, which are not very expensive, are becoming available for general inclusion in the workstations and mobile devices.
• Mixed media. Commercial systems can handle images, voice, sounds, video, text and formatted data. These are interchangeable communication links between users. The different fields of electronic consumption (e.g. stereo sets, VCR, televisions...) and computers, in part, melting and it is expected that the fields of computer and printing will be completely crossed.
• Interaction with a high bandwidth. The interaction rate between humans and machines is expected to increase considerably due to changes in speed, computer graphics, new media and input and output devices. This can lead to qualitative differences between different interfaces, such as virtual reality or computer video.
• Large and thin screens. New screen technologies are ripening, allowing the creation of very large and thin screens, light and that use little energy. This is having important effects on portability and probably will allow the development of systems of interaction with paper-like computers that are perceived very differently to desktops.
• Uses of information. Public information utilities (such as online purchases or banking services online) and specialized industry services are expected to grow. The proliferation rate can be accelerated with the introduction of interactions with a high bandwidth and improved interface quality.

Applications

Education

Currently, the use of ICT resources is very necessary at all educational levels. In this sense, there is a problem, since although many teachers do make an effort to actively incorporate these resources into their profession, there are many other cases in which this does not occur. This may be due, either to the fact that the design of the educational model of the centers in which they participate does not contemplate it (lack of resources, lack of flexibility to apply new methods, lack of recognition of the people who apply them...) or well because, on many occasions, the knowledge of teachers in this field is very limited (this may be due to a resistance to change, rejection of innovation or a demand for dedication that they are not willing to accept), sometimes reaching the point of, to be smaller than those possessed by the students.

In this sense, technology can be very useful to make these processes much easier to carry out and apply to education thanks to personalization, analytics, mobility or social approaches, for example. However, this should always be accompanied by the action of teaching professionals, since the improvement of human-computer interaction should not be understood as a substitute for human action.

Disability

When the first computers appeared, modifications were made to make them accessible and useful for people with disabilities. However, those adaptations became obsolete with the advancement of technology due to the inability to adapt them to new computing devices. Since then, attempts have been made in the field of human-computer interaction after observing its potential in helping disabled people, some of them also being used by other users because they also facilitate their use of the computers. In any case, there are still facilities, such as simultaneous translation into sign language, which remain utopian.

Some designers have also spoken out on this issue, emphasizing the need to create designs that are, from the outset, accessible to all people so that new technologies do not pose a new difficulty in the lives of people with disabilities. Although they do not forget that there are certain users who will always need designs with special characteristics to guarantee their accessibility. For this, users with special needs should be able to participate in the design process so that it adapts as much as possible to them.

The different government bodies have also become aware of these needs and, motivated by the action of associations of people with disabilities, have promoted different measures that have been seen, above all, in the United States and Europe. Some of these are TIDE, at a European level, which, although it has not met market expectations, has helped make these users visible and create awareness about their needs. In Spain, the PITER (Integrated Rehabilitation Technology Project) has been promoted, which has had similar effects.