Computer Paradigm

What did you draw?

How many of your group drew a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse – either desktop or laptop style as indicated in the illustrations?

My prediction is that you all did. This is because this is the style of human computer interaction that has been ingrained in our recent culture, where each person is immersed in his/her own computer display, removed from the world outside.

• From the mid 80’s the prevailing paradigm in human- computer interaction was how to design user- centred applications for the desktop computer.
• Questions about what and how to design were framed in terms of specifying the requirements for a single ‘user’ interacting with a screen  based ‘interface’ (Preece, Rogers & Sharp, 2007, p. 218).
• WIMP was the one way of characterising the core features of an interface for a single user.
• GUI became the standard terminology after the development of Macintosh computers. For a history of the GUI see: http://www.sensomatic.com/chz/gui/history.html