ABSTRACT
Abstract: In electronic commerce the user-company interface is the Web site that represents the online storefront of an e-tailer. This Web interface is the company’s “window to the world,” through which communication with customers takes place and relationships are built. Therefore, electronic commerce gives rise to new HCI challenges mainly associated with how to design the Web interfaces for effective communication between customers and online retailers. This paper describes a series of studies conducted to investigate topics associated with HCI design for electronic commerce, mainly concerned with improving customer-company communications on the Web, including customer-product, customer-customer, customer-salespeople, and customerrecommendation agent communications. The main objectives and findings of these studies are discussed, and how they can be incorporated into an overall research framework for conducting HCI studies in the age of electronic commerce is described. Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction, Electronic Commerce, IT-Mediated Communication
INTRODUCTION
Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is a sub-discipline of computer and information sciences that has been an important area of study since the early 1960s. According to the ACM special interest group on computer-human interaction (ACM SIGCHI) “human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them” (Hewett et al., 1996). This definition focuses on the interaction between people and computing systems. It also characterizes to a large extent the kind of HCI research management information systems researchers have conducted for the last three decades. Historically, MIS researchers have investigated designs for both person-computer interaction (e.g., direct manipulation interfaces, command abbreviation methods) and computerperson interaction (e.g., graphical information presentation, use of colors, multimedia interfaces, response time). Design quality was measured in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.
