Beyond the Interface: Encountering Artifacts in Use

Abstract

This paper is written by two people who come from rather different backgrounds, yet who, at the same time, share similar concerns about the human-computer interaction (HCI) area. One of us has a background in computing and cognitive science. The other person has a background in software engineering and computer systems design. As both of us are concerned with making more useful and usable computer applications we decided to look further for frameworks to help us. In this paper we shall try to expose some of the problems that we encountered in our joint effort to understand the HCI area and contribute to it, and to discuss some of the tensions and alternative viewpoints that we met on the way. The paper does not contain a solution to the problems of HCI. Rather, it contains a dialogue with ourselves about the matters of our concern, and we invite the reader to join this dialogue: our focus is on technology in use, where we emphasize the setting in which a piece of technology is used.