Designing Interaction

Book excerpt: Designing Interaction, first published in 1991, presents a broadbased and fundamental re-examination of human-computer interaction as a practical and scientific endeavor. The chapters in this well-integrated, tightly focused book are by psychologists and computer scientists in industry and academia, who examine the relationship between contemporary psychology and human-computer interaction. HCI seeks to produce user interfaces that facilitate and enrich human motivation, action and experience; but to do so deliberately it must also incorporate means of understanding user interfaces in human terms - the province of psychology. Conversely, the design and use of computing equipment provides psychologists with a diverse and challenging empirical field in which to assess their theories and methodologies.