Human Computer Interaction

"Integrating Human Computer Interaction Development into the System Development Life Cycle." The title of Ping Zhang's article study almost sounds like the plot to some cult sci-fi novel. The computer interaction has gone too far! Computer robots are taking over the earth!

No, but really, this is a very interesting article. All persons studying or involved with creating and/or organizing Information Systems should  read this study and consider applying it to their library. What good is the information we are organizing if it is not user friendly and practical?

Zhang mentions the use of HCI in the education field. Last year I worked in special education for the San Francisco Unified School District. Yes, even the worst inner city schools are on board with practical computer human interaction. And truly, it is a success with education. I'm excited to see the progress that HCI will be in education in coming years. I'm sure parents are constantly blown away by the information their children are able to access on school computers. But, as Zhang points out, this is old news. We have succeeded in HCI in Education. How can we increase the Information Systems Development Methodology with in Public HCI? We need practical, sufficient information systems for adults, for the general public, researchers, students, etc. And they need to be user friendly.

I finished my History degree with an internship at the Erie County Historical Society. The Director of Library and Archives is amazing, she's a great librarian who has been in the profession for many many years. I spent the summer helping to organize the different artifacts. But I couldn't help to observe that nothing was digitized! Not even the catalog. It is such a shame, there is so much information and unfortunately, if Annita isn't there, no one is able to access it. I'm not looking for an opportunity to vent about my Undergrad internship. This article made me think about how useful a user friendly computer information system would be for the Erie County Historical Societies Library and Archives. Patrons could easily access information about their relatives, their property, images of their home town when it was a great industrial city. Really neat things that no one gets to enjoy because its too hard to access it. Maybe if there was a user friendly practical IS, created using the methodology that Zhang suggests, then community members would utilize their Historical Society, in all small cities. And maybe they would then donate more money to keep the Historical Societies open.

To say we have come a long way from the first computers use ability is an understatement. Which were of course the complete opposite of user friendly. Zhang raises a great point for libraries and archive's to address. The information field would benefit from sufficient human centered information systems. There has been progress since the article was published in 2005. Mostly in University libraries. Perhaps there needs to be a re-evaluation on HCID in SDLC.





I do want to say that I really enjoyed my internship at ECHS, it was a wonderful opportunity where I learned so much about Libraries and Archives. Thank you ECHS.