What is "human-computer interaction"

n. The study of interaction between people and computers.

HCISec is the study of interaction between humans and computers, or human–computer interaction, specifically as it pertains to information security. Its aim, in plain terms, is to improve the usability of security features in end user applications.

Unlike HCI, which has roots in the early days of Xerox PARC during the 1970s, HCISec is a nascent field of study by comparison. Interest in this topic tracks with that of Internet security, which has become an area of broad public concern only in very recent years.

When security features exhibit poor usability, the following are common reasons:

• they were added in casual afterthought
• they were hastily patched in to address newly discovered security bugs
• they address very complex use cases without the benefit of a software wizard
• their interface designers lacked understanding of related security concepts
• their interface designers were not usability experts (often meaning they were the application developers themselves)

Human–computer interaction (commonly referred to as HCI) researches the design and use of computer technology, focused on the interfaces between people ( users) and computers. Researchers in the field of HCI both observe the ways in which humans interact with computers and design technologies that let humans interact with computers in novel ways.

As a field of research, human-computer interaction is situated at the intersection of computer science, behavioral sciences, design, media studies, and several other fields of study. The term was popularized by Stuart K. Card, Allen Newell, and Thomas P. Moran in their seminal 1983 book, The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction, although the authors first used the term in 1980 and the first known use was in 1975. The term connotes that, unlike other tools with only limited uses (such as a hammer, useful for driving nails but not much else), a computer has many uses and this takes place as an open-ended dialog between the user and the computer. The notion of dialog likens human-computer interaction to human-to-human interaction, an analogy which is crucial to theoretical considerations in the field.