Book Image

Learn Human-Computer Interaction

By : Christopher Reid Becker
Book Image

Learn Human-Computer Interaction

By: Christopher Reid Becker

Overview of this book

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a field of study that researches, designs, and develops software solutions that solve human problems. This book will help you understand various aspects of the software development phase, from planning and data gathering through to the design and development of software solutions. The book guides you through implementing methodologies that will help you build robust software. You will perform data gathering, evaluate user data, and execute data analysis and interpretation techniques. You’ll also understand why human-centered methodologies are successful in software development, and learn how to build effective software solutions through practical research processes. The book will even show you how to translate your human understanding into software solutions through validation methods and rapid prototyping leading to usability testing. Later, you will understand how to use effective storytelling to convey the key aspects of your software to users. Throughout the book, you will learn the key concepts with the help of historical figures, best practices, and references to common challenges faced in the software industry. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with HCI strategies and methodologies to design effective user interfaces.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1 - Learn Human-Computer Interaction
5
Section 2 - How to Build Human-Centered Software
11
Section 3 - When to Improve Software Systems

Using computer software to build software

As we move deeper into creating software, one thing you will start to see is the multitude of software and programming domains that exist in the services of building software. At its core, software is computer programming code. There are thousands of programming languages that have been created since the first programmable computer.

For the purposes of this discussion, we will focus on coding languages for the web, those rooted in HyperText Mark-Up Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript (JS), which are the three foundational coding languages for producing billions of web pages and web applications that populate the internet. The role and popularity of these languages are quite remarkable; we all use the same code to produce web pages.

If you have tinkered around with programming or have some skill with designing for the web, you will know that all computer code is a series of rules (syntax) written on computer software...