ABSTRACT
My students often groan when I tell them that this semester’s timetable is to include human-machine interaction (HMI). I find this reaction puzzling because for every second of every day we are surrounded by machines of one sort or another. We live and work in buildings that are effectively machines in their own right. (If you doubt this, just wait until the plumbing decides to cease cooperating!) We use machines constantly, and frequently find the experience frustrating. The burnt dinner, the wrong programme recorded on the video, the car’s lights left on and the battery flattened, the computer crash and work lost-the list of what can go wrong in our interactions with machines is endless. So wouldn’t you think that the study of the design of machines to make them better fitted to our human capacities and limitations would be an interesting prospect?
