Reading Response 2 - Eylie Buehler

This article is mainly about how people communicate and interact with individual computer interfaces.  The author puts the reader in a position to evaluate how computer interaction changes when the computer programmer begins to look at how the user and computer communicate rather than just what a computer should do or display.

The author compares theater and psychology at first.  Showing the reader how similar the two disciplines are just with a different goal in the end.  At first I would have never thought to compare the two, nor would I have reason to.  But, the chapter highlights their similarities in an effort to warm you up to the next comparison between theater and computer programming.  How could theater, which has been around since the Greeks have anything to do with a technological object that could still be considered relatively new?  At first I thought it couldn’t, but the more I read the more I understand what the author was trying to say.

How people see things can affect how they do things.  A boring computer set up yields forth no creativity or excitement.  When an interesting, appealing interface catches some ones’ eye they are more drawn to it, more likely to use it and create a better product.

How people interact is also a large art of this chapter.  Looking at how humans communicate with each other can be studied and applied to computers and programming.  People like something familiar and within their comfort zone and at the time computer companies were still trying to figure out how to market the computer, it was neither.  When an interface or new product can be related to by people they are more likely to grasp the idea, which is exactly what programmers are trying to do.  By including the consumer in mind while programming new interfaces, the consumer feels they have helped create something for themselves and can appreciate it.

This chapter makes you look at how simple things one normally wouldn’t look into can be considered an art as grand as theater.  Not everything artistic happens within a canvas and paint nor does it need to be traditional in any way, shape or form.  Art can be within something as unexpected as an interface and should be acknowledged and appreciated as such.