Interfaces. I would define them using it’s keywords. So inter-, being normally a prefix used to indicate a communication or co-operation between two things, and face, thought of here as the frontal, first seen thing. That’s pretty close to what an interface is when it comes to computers. Whatis.com defines it as a “means to communicate with another person or object” (Rouse, 2006) with the user being the person and the object being the computer.
Reflection on the Topic
By it’s description and definition, an interface is the way we interact with a computer. What I found interesting, mostly because of never thinking about it, was the fact that the book defined many types of interfaces. So what I would have called just “Interface”, or perhaps formally “The User Interface”, the book split it up much further into voice, graphical, brain, command and many others. I guess I just fell into the habit of calling them a single interface because I only ever frequently worked with two (GUI and command-line interface) and context was always enough to communicate which one I used, should that ever have needed to be communicated that is. Another interesting thing that was touched on in class was that unlike most things in HCI, the interface type is a little more dependent on the type of user, a linkedIn article discusses this a little, about how a menu or gui is easier to use because there are visual elements that can be seen and are self-explanatory (that is, if it is a good interface), but with cons like development price and slower overall performance. Or how a command-line interface is faster and far more powerful because you can make a single command to tell the computer exactly what you want without ever having to go search, go through and toggle a list of options, but it’s much harder to learn because it relies on recall and not recognition. (Gali, 2017)
My Thought
“Something that was not said in class discussion that should have been said is that, though there may an interface that someone naturally uses better than another, it does not mean that you can just pick the interface type for your target audience. Careful thought in the design of your interface is still a must. A user who might perform best with a voice interface will probably switch to another type of interface if every time they ask to search for an apple cider recipe they got a guide for building a tree house” (L.Spencer, 2018).
Reference List
⦁ Rouse, M. (2006, April). interface. Retrieved from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/interface
⦁ Gali, K. (2017, May 29). What are the different types of user interfaces?. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-different-types-user-interfaces-kalyan-gali
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