Prologue
The core of this book covers three pillars:
- HCI skills, theory, and historical context:
Use of stories, contextual examples, and some brief history of widening your HCI knowledge. - HCI Activities and practical challenges:
A series of hands-on methods to deepen your HCI understanding.
- HCI Community resources and source materials:
A vast set of knowledge and experience that I could never surpass but am happy to share and grow with you as you read in the share your experience:
As the author of this book, my background comes from the Design point of view via user experience (UX)/graphic design/human-centered research into computers rather than via computer science, mathematics, engineering, or computer coding, however, I have gained much of this knowledge over time. Therefore, the content of the book will focus more on the human component of HCI over the computer component.
However, the framing of skills and considerations are designed to improve either side. So read on.
Since you have continued reading, you are along for the ride, and we will start out by considering HCI from the beginning and why HCI inside software has become successful.
HCI challenges
Throughout this book, you will be given a series of challenges designed to get you to practice the skills and knowledge necessary to apply HCI in the world. Each challenge will take between 10 min up to 2+ hours. I highly recommend you create a folder in Google Drive or on your computer to store your work and label all your files. Activities will combine physical making (paper, pen, pencil, sticky-notes, etc) to more digital executions (Google Docs, Adobe XD/Figma/InVision) and will combine together over time. Take the challenges seriously as they can be applied to your HCI portfolio as well as be tangible representations of the skills and experience outline in this book.
As you continue to grow your HCI skills, understand that there is a lot to take in and no one book will capture the entire field. I promise to help you establish a solid foundation but you must also take this information I am covering and run with it.