The main reason why mainly people study or are interested in HCI is because they want to increase the efficiency of their staff and hence, make more money. Another important factor is safety; some kinds of computer systems can affect safety issues if the design of HCI is not good enough. As HCI addresses needs for the computer to be widely accepted and used effectively they need to be well designed both for the need and the capabilities of people for whom they are intended.
HCI is important in many different ways for example, in the work place, the use of the Word Processor, Spreadsheet and other different planning applications are commonly used and without such application life would be more difficult as these make life easier.
One way of explaining the importance of HCI is showing clear benefits that can be talked about in terms of cash and by providing examples in where the work level has been improved and the costs have been reduced. However clear benefits are largely hidden in many aspects of HCI as things can go wrong and people do complain of health problems and the under se of technology in the industry. Also it is more difficult to show the financial benefits of HCI as there are many factors which attribute towards bad HCI design.
In studies that have been carried out by Chanis (reported in Shackel, 1990), HCI was shown to be more directly responsible for the improvements in installing IBM Systems. Issues that make HCI important and need to be considered in relation to any organization as a whole, would be to make sure that when people use systems like E-mail and Video-Conferencing for example, it is important to understand the kinds of activities that people wish to do, and how the technology will fit in and support individuals/groups as a whole.
The goals of HCI are to produce usable and safe systems, as well as functional systems. These goals can be summarised as ‘to develop or improve the safety, utility, effectiveness, efficiency and usability of systems that include computers.(Interacting with Computers, 1989, p.3).
To produce systems with good usability, HCI specialist strive to understand the factors that determine how people operate and make use of computer technology effective, and transfer that understanding into development. Such factors include Ergonomics, social and organizational factors. Development of tools and techniques to help designers ensure that computer systems are suitable for the activities for which people will use them, in order to achieve efficient , effective and safe interaction both in terms of individual HCI and group interaction.
It is necessary to consider the human when designing systems as they will be the primary users of the system. It is important to consider many factors such as; who the user is? Does the system have the correct requirements? And how the user would interact with the system? An example of this is, say the human user of a ticket machine at a station wanted to purchase a ticket a good design and interaction style would be limit the amount of menus as this would shorten the amount of learning the human would have to do. Also the use of touch screen would be easier to use and would limit the actions that are perceived from the system and provide people with a range of usage possibilities. This would link to affordance as it plays a large part in the design of objects but what is the perceived affordance and what the user thinks should be done with object e.g. should a door be pushed or pulled to open.
