The General Conception of the HCI Engineering Discipline is generalised from the EU Conception . The General Conception comprises HCI Engineering Knowledge, which distinguishes the interactive system of user and computer, the tasks it performs as desired and the goodness of that performance in terms of specific criteria. The knowledge supports HCI Engineering Practices, seeking to solve design problems. Design here includes specification, followed by implementation, of users interacting with computers ( the interactive system), to perform tasks as desired in some domain of application.
Key Concepts, Footnotes and CitationsThe General Conception of the HCI Engineering Discipline is generalised from the EU Conception (1.3). The General Conception comprises HCI Engineering Knowledge, which distinguishes the interactive system of user and computer, the tasks (F1) it performs as desired and the goodness of that performance in terms of specific criteria. (F2) (C1) The knowledge supports HCI Engineering Practices, seeking to solve design problems. (C2) Design here includes specification, followed by implementation, of users interacting with computers ( the interactive system), to perform tasks as desired in some domain of application. (C3)
Key concepts are shown in bold on their first appearance only.
Footnotes
(F1) Task here is to be interpreted widely, as anything a user can do with a computer, either desired or undesired, well or badly.
(F2 ) Criteria, here, may include: time; errors; completeness etc.
Citations
Long and Dowell (1989)
(C1) ‘It (the Conception) dichotomises ‘interactive worksystems’ which perform work, and ‘domains of application’ in which work originates, is performed, and has its consequences’. (Page 24, Lines 39 and 40)
(C2) ‘The discipline of engineering includes the engineering practice addressing the general (engineering) problem of design.’ (Page 12, Lines 3-5)
(C3) ‘The discipline of engineering may characteristically solve its general problem (of design) by the specification of designs before their implementation.’ (Page 24, Lines 11-12).