As its name suggests, Human Computer Interaction is centrally concerned with understanding how people experience computational technologies, and with designing technologies with peoples' capabilities, characteristics, preferences, passions and proclivities in mind. In this talk I will discuss the increasingly broad remit of human computer interaction (HCI) as a discipline. This expansion is... [read more]

As its name suggests, Human Computer Interaction is centrally concerned with understanding how people experience computational technologies, and with designing technologies with peoples' capabilities, characteristics, preferences, passions and proclivities in mind. In this talk I will discuss the increasingly broad remit of human computer interaction (HCI) as a discipline. This expansion is driven in large part by the proliferation of everyday consumer devices, the applications that are being built for them and the Internet as a far-reaching platform for creation, distribution, recruitment, evaluation and experimentation. I will talk about some of the projects being conducted by the Internet Experiences Group of Yahoo! Research, and consider the ways in which research, practice and development can and do speak to each other. I will lay out some of the
challenges and opportunities we face as HCI researchers, practitioners and students. In the process I will reflect on what are, in my opinion, some familiar terms associated with HCI methods that are in need of a dusting off, among them: user-centered, end-user, interactive, iterative, qualitative, quantitative, scale, sample and population.