I took an HCI course from BYU just last semester, and it was eye opening to me how integrated psychology and computers really are. As an IT major, we strive to make our products as user-friendly as possible. The entire class was the least technical of all my major classes. It was mainly about studying the user, how the brain works, and how to make a product easy to use, no matter what the background may be.
Don Norman's book was a required book, and I am happy to say that it is the first book mentioned in class that I have ALREADY read! In fact, I shared a link of Diigo that summarizes all the chapters pretty quickly and efficiently. Go check it out!
While I'm on Don, he gave a great talk in 2003 where he talks about the 3 aspects of design that really make us happy. He takes design to a deeper level than normal, and actually categorizes our emotions and reactions.
There is an 'interactive transcript' with the video here. You just click on a sentence and it takes you to that point in the talk. really cool.
Anyways, HCI (Human Computer Interaction) is all about drawing from the psychology of the human brain and implementing it in a computer product.
Why does almost EVERY program have a menu bar at the top? Why not the side? Why not icons? Why not icons on the bottom? It has a menu bar (with the basic options File, View, Options...etc.) because that is what our brain is used to. It makes the ability of us to learn a new program really easy, because we already know how the menu is like.
The last mentioned bit can be a problem with technology development - even if they find a way which is supposed to be better, it has to be worth learning a new way of thinking about things, and sometimes people just don't have time to do that.
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