User Interfaces

Abstract

The corpus of digital media artifacts demonstrating animated phenomena includes works from an array of media types. One of these is the user interface. This kind of artifact, which can be a device or a program, is created to mediate between users and machines, mostly computer-based in today’s context, for effective communication and control. Since the demonstrations of Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad (1963) and Douglas Engelbart’s early computer mouse, user interfaces have become one of the indispensable constituents of computer-based systems, giving rise to a new area of study in the computing discipline: human-computer interaction (HCl). The initial objective is to enable users to complete certain tasks such as data processing, information access, content creation, or telecommunication. One of the design criteria is to make interfaces more ‘user-friendly’ or ‘usable’. Following the views of Donald Norman (Norman, 1988), Jakob Nielsen (Nielsen, 1993), and others, these terms generally describe a tool that is easy and rapid to learn, to understand, or to operate. Their ideas have led to the prevalent user-centered approach to interface design. The paradigm emphasizes usability, effectiveness, and efficiency.