Perspectives in HCI: Future Developments and the Development Process

Abstract

This chapter covers issues which relate to groups of people. First, there are people in the design process. How users are involved in design and how design itself can be managed are vital issues for introducing and applying human- computer interface design. HCI in the large concerns applications development as much as does software engineering, indeed more so, since the focus is on design of the whole system rather than just software. Methods for constructing and controlling the design process will be reviewed along with techniques for user-centred analysis and design. This area is related to Requirements Engineering, which is a growing field emerging from the software engineering community. The second theme is support for group interaction, usually referred to as Computer Supported Co-operative Work (CSCW). The problem in supporting and controlling interaction between several people is investigated, and this technology is itself involved in the design process of computer systems in Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools. The chapter ends with some thoughts on the prognosis of HCI as a technology and its impact on design methodology and systems engineering practice.