HCI Remixed

Comments:
Ross Peterson

Summary:
The first chapter we read from HCI remixed highlighted a music system.  The paper, written by the musician that used the system, gave high praises to the system and its easy to user interface.  The author was very explicit regarding his love for the system and even went so far as to say that the engineers who designed this system knew more about HCI than anyone would for the next 60 years.

The second essay was about Sutherland's light pen system.  In the 60's a researcher named Sutherland designed a system that worked somewhat like a CAD program.  Using constraint programming he provided a light pen that a user could point at something that they were trying to draw and the computer would record the input that the user gave and display it to the screen.  The impressive part of this program was that it set the stage for so much work in the future.

The third and final essay we read was in regards to the creation of the mouse and its initial demo.  Written by an MIT graduate, the essay marveled at how good the demonstration was and how simplistic the mouse was. The author gushed over the creation of such a simple device and how it was presented with such modesty.

Summary:
This book and the three chapters we read were pretty interesting.  I really liked the one about the mouse, the way it was presented was pretty interesting.  The music chapter was pretty cool as well.  Initially when I started reading it, I was concerned that it was going to be very boring and I would just have to get through it.  The further I got in however, I realized that he was actually talking about something quite revolutionary.

The essay about Sutherland, while impressive, was somewhat boring.  I found it pretty impressive that they had a light pen as early as the 60's but I would have to question its usefulness.  I highly doubt that even the best systems of the day would have been unable to run the light pen smoothly enough to be worth anything though.  I guess having the jump start would have been helpful though.