Introduction to the Special Issue on Interface Architects: The Evolution of Human–Computer Interaction

We are delighted to present this special issue entitled “Interface Architects: The Evolution of Human–Computer Interaction,” comprising a review article and three case studies that examine the theme of human–computer interaction (HCI), exploring how humans and computers relate to each other. The issue analyzes the history of human–computer interfaces through interdisciplinary approaches, involving scholars from distinct areas of research, including computing history, design, art history, and media history. It also broadens the focus from the US to European cases.

Writing in the pages of Annals in 2005, the computer scientist Jonathan Grudin pointed out that “People have interacted with computers from the start, but it took time for human–computer interaction to become a recognized field of research.” The formal moves to create a research community around interaction only began around 1980 with the arrival of the IBM PC. The ACM’s special-interest group on human-computer interaction (SIGCHI) was established in 1982 and the first CHI conference was held in 1983. Grudin argues that this timing is significant, as computing shifted to “discretionary” use (people using it for pleasure and leisure in addition to work and calculation), the concepts of computer operation being replaced by communication and interaction, computer operators being replaced by programmers and users, and “human factors” being replaced by cognitive engineering, usability engineering, and, ultimately, even by ethnography and design thinking. Yet, as Grudin also notes, debates about the roles of a computer in human life were prominent even among early computer pioneers, going all the way back to J. C. R. Licklider’s famously contrasting vision of “man–computer symbiosis” with “artificial intelligence.” The goal of the special issue is to provide case studies that open up a path for researchers to follow in the analysis of the evolution of human computer interfaces before HCI became a recognized field of study.

In the first article, Elizabeth Petrick summarizes the scholarly literature on HCI by attending to the disciplines of computer history, media studies, and science and technology studies. Petrick situates four theorists at the center of HCI: Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Kittler, Sherry Turkle, and Lucy Suchman. These theorists not only theorized the state of HCI, but they also profound influences on computer system design. Petrick then surveys two lenses through which HCI has been viewed: through the computer interface, and through the human body. Across both, Petrick finds a number of intersecting themes: how the computer and the human senses/body have fitted together, the ways in which the human and the computer interacted or communicated with each other, and finally, the different ways in which people have imagined the future of humans and computers together.

Our second article, by Elisabetta Mori, points out a gap in the literature: the underrepresented role of architects and designers in the history of computing. Her case study zooms back in time to Italy at the end of the 1950s to narrate the story of the ELEA 9003, the first of the Olivetti computer series. Aiming to improve international usability, the designers developed a visual language for HCI, which in theory could be easily learned by any operator, regardless of their native language. The task of designing this novel sign system was assigned to Toma's Maldonado, Director of the Ulm School of Design in Germany. Later discarded, the sign system prefigured the nowadays ubiquitous use of icons in computer interfaces.

Corinna Kirsch’s article moves the scene from Italy to West Germany in 1964, where Maldonado and the Ulm School of Design collaborated with the Berlin Institute of Cybernetics in 1964, to design the Geromat III, a computer meant as a teaching machine for students. Unlike many teaching machines of its time, especially in the United States, the Geromat III was unique in that it incorporated voice-driven collaboration between students into its teaching and learning framework. In order to remedy the lack of university funding for computer research and design, endemic to the social and economic conditions of West Germany just after World War II, the Geromat III consoles were...