ABSTRACT
It is a compelling exercise to examine a definition for the term interaction that existed before researchers, practitioners, designers, and educators were even interested in interactions of the human-computer variety. In 1942, The Royal English Dictionary defined interaction as “action of one body on another; mutual influence” (p. 304). It is this mutual influence that is still of interest when we speak of interaction in the domain of human-computer interaction, despite the fact that, in this day of sophisticated systems and complicated humans, we have become much more precise about the ways in which mutual influence is studied and understood. In contemporary, domainrelevant times, Marcus (1995, 1998) defines interaction as the means by which users communicate input to the system, as well as the feedback supplied by the system. The term implies all aspects of input devices (e.g., mice, joysticks, track pads, keyboards) and sensory feedback, which may be presented with, for example, visual displays, auditory cues, graphical buttons, and tactile surfaces, or some combination therein.
