Human-computer interface (HCI) is the study of interaction between people (users) and computers. It is an interdisciplinary subject, relating computer science with many other fields of study and research. Interaction between users and computers occurs at the user interface (or simply interface), which includes both hardware (i.e. input and output devices) and software (for example determining which, and how, information is presented to the user on a screen).
Human-Computer Interface, often called HCI, is a sociotechnological discipline whose goal is to bring the power of computer and communication systems to people in ways and forms that are both accessible and useful in our working, learning, communicating, and recreational lives.
Toward this end, technologies such as the graphical user interface, virtual environments, speech recognition, gesture and handwriting recognition, multimedia presentation, and cognitive models of human learning and understanding have been developed and applied as part of HCI research agendas.
HCI is sociotechnological because it concerns how people, both as individuals and as groups, use and are affected by computer and communication systems.
Human computer interaction
HCI
English: The Fold n' Drop interaction technique.As such, HCI draws on computer science, computer and communications engineering, graphic design, management, psychology, and sociology as it endeavors to make computer and communications systems ever more usable in carrying out tasks as diverse as learning a foreign language, analyzing the aerodynamics of a new airplane, planning surgery, playing a computer game, accessing information on the World Wide Web, or programming a VCR.
Goals
A basic goal of HCI is to improve interaction between user and computers, by making computers more user-friendly and easier to use. More broadly, HCI is also concerned with
* methodologies and processes for designing interfaces (i.e., given a task and a class of users, design the best possible interface within given constraints, optimizing for a desired property such as learnability or efficiency...