What subjects are beneficial to learn in order to understand human interaction with computers

Question

I was inspired by this question, and it's first answer to ask my question.

What specific areas of study, if any, focus on human-machine interaction and the study of human behaviour with regard to computers?

From my understanding of the issue I am considering study in the following (broad) areas:

1. Design
2. Psychology

Are there any particular disciplines in these areas or others that would benefit me in understanding how users think? EDIT: It seams the question I was inspired by is closed now, this may mean my question will be closed too. I think the difference is that rather than saying "I want to be good at design" I am asking how I can improve my undestanding of the human factors that makes a design a good one, I don't know if that's sufficxiently different or not, I hope so

Answer 1

If you want to get better at something, practice is important. Try using some new UIs and analyzing what you feel works well and what doesn't. You could also try making UI changes to software that you have the source to.

Answer 2

I'm sure theres a whole school of thought on this in the Design school curriculum. Look up Fitts' law, read the Apple Human Interface Guidelines and the Windows User Experience Guidelines and go from there.

As for understanding the science behind it, I think you have to come to terms with the fact that Design is an Art. I don't think anyone knows why the golden ratio defines a perfect sized rectangle - it just does.

Answer 3

User Interface best practice documents are a good start. However...

UI's are difficult for programmers to get right for one singular reason: programmers think differently than end users. Programmers have an entirely different mindset than the users of the software, and have a different perspective on what makes sense in a user interface. Until a programmer sits in on a focus group, and sees how easily users can get confused and distracted by what seems simple to a programmer, they will never understand that.

Consequently, there are tools that have evolved to help discern what needs to be in the user interface in order for your users to comprehend it and, more importantly, to be able to use it effectively. One of these tools is paper prototyping. Paper prototyping works because it focuses both the programmer and the user on program flow, rather than subjective incidentals like color and layout.

Being good at design doesn't necessarily mean you understand psychology. What it does mean is that you can open your mind to the end user's mindset, and have the skill (with a little practice) to coax out of them what they need from the interface via actual interaction. Your best science is letting the users tell you (by observing their interactions) what works and what doesn't.

Microsoft uses focus groups to test their interface designs, watching users from behind one-way glass. Once, when they were testing the new Office Ribbon, they came across a user who was a savant at using it. He worked faster than any of the other users. When the session was over, they interviewed this person and found out that he was using the mouse wheel to scroll through the tabs as a shortcut...a "feature" that was accidentally left in the prototype prior to the focus group. That feature is still in the ribbon today.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx

Answer 4

There has been a lot written on design and human-machine interaction. Alan Cooper is well known for his contributions. I used one of his books in college. You may also be interested in a book called 'The Design of Everyday Things' by Donald Norman. In the book he discusses the design of many things we use on a regular basis. It is very interesting. Joel Spolsky has also written some interesting things on interface design.

Answer 5

There's a study called human-computer interaction (HCI) which looks at just that -- the interaction between humans and computers.

Wikipedia has a list of studies and disciplines which are related to HCI.

Answer 6

Look to art.

Programmers and engineers make horrible interface designers. We can make great widgets and tools and the plumbing underneath, but don't market something that we've specced.

It takes some lateral & out-of-the-box thinking to get things right (ipod's thumbwheel...I still admire it).

Edit: Thin of the difference between a structural engineer & architect.