Humans interact with computers through a user interface. This includes software, such as what is displayed on the computer monitor, and hardware, such as the mouse, keyboard and other peripheral devices. As a result, the study of HCI focuses on user satisfaction. Attention to human machine interaction is important, because a poor interface can make it hard for users to benefit from even the simplest systems. In a corporate or factory setting, a poor user interface could have more severe consequences.
Usability and user experience goal awareness is essential to all HCI design, as follows:
Usability: Central to interaction design and operations through specific computer system criteria, including efficiency, safety, utility and learning/retention.
User Experience: Focuses on creating systems that are satisfying, enjoyable, entertaining, helpful, motivating, aesthetically pleasing, creativity supportive, rewarding, fun and emotionally fulfilling.
Human-computer interaction (HCI) is an area of research and practice that emerged in the early 1980s, initially as a specialty area in computer science embracing cognitive science and human factors engineering. HCI has expanded rapidly and steadily for three decades, attracting professionals from many other disciplines and incorporating diverse concepts and approaches. To a considerable extent, HCI now aggregates a collection of semi-autonomous fields of research and practice in human-centered informatics. However, the continuing synthesis of disparate conceptions and approaches to science and practice in HCI has produced a dramatic example of how different epistemologies and paradigms can be reconciled and integrated in a vibrant and productive intellectual project.