HCI

Technology & Computing abbreviation · Computer

HCI
Stands forHuman-computer interaction
CategoriesTechnology & Computing

HCI stands for Human-computer interaction, a computer abbreviation.

Academic and professional field that studies how people use computers and designs technology around human abilities and limits. It draws on computer science, cognitive psychology and design, and underpins usability testing and accessibility work.

Example: She completed a master's in HCI before joining the accessibility team at a software company.

Usage notes

The field's main academic venue is the ACM CHI conference, held every year since the early 1980s. Fitts's law, which predicts how long it takes to move a pointer to a target of a given size and distance, is one of its classic results and explains why screen-edge menus are easy to hit. Some writers reverse the order as computer-human interaction.

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