Why HCI?

The profound impact of computing stands among humankind's greatest achievements alongside the wheel, refrigeration, and sliced bread. The publication of this book itself in both printed and digital formats would be rendered impossible without computation. The reality is that our world is full of technology run by computers. They are here to stay, so let's figure out how they impact our lives and how we can design with them and for them. A big part of understanding computers is that humans make them for other humans and, therefore, can be changed based on how humans evolve. Technology moves at an incredible speed, and the way it impacts our society, our behaviors, and our education are sometimes hard to understand; however, this is HCI's role. We will explore the vast set of opportunities that can come out of harnessing technology and how to keep up with the rapid change.

Documenting HCI jargon

HCI jargon is a collection of unique words or expressions that are used by people in our particular profession and are difficult for others to understand. Here are a few HCI terms to get you up to speed:

• Operating System (OS)
• The mouse
• Windows
• Graphical User Interface (GUI)
• What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG)

There are hundreds of terms in HCI and if I listed them all here, you would be overwhelmed and bored out of your mind, as this is not a glossary book nor is it an almanack for HCI. I highly recommend reviewing the HCI community jargon and boning up on technical terms at https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-glossary-of-human-computer-interaction and https://uiuxtrend.com/ui-ux-glossary-jargon/.

Challenge 2 – Highlighting and collecting all HCI jargon

Setup:

1. Get out materials and a highlighter or marker.

Part 1: Highlight the text:

1. Use a highlighter and mark up words, terms, and technical content that you don't understand.

Part 2: Create a jargon collection:

1. Use Google to search for these terms if you need more help and create a Word doc or spreadsheet and start adding the highlighted jargon.
2. Collect the HCI jargon terms you encounter in a Google doc/Word doc that you can go back and review.

Part of learning HCI is "talking the talk," as well as "walking the walk," but for now, being able to understand that jargon will be essential to growing your skills. I encourage you to start using some HCI jargon in everyday descriptions of computers.