Society

HCI has an impact everywhere especially on society as a whole. Since HCI is improving the usability of almost all our devices that we use today then there is no surprise that it will have an impact on the way we go about our day to day lives. A user of a device with a good interface does not need to have as much training or even need to know a great deal of information. When a design is created for a device, the main agenda is the usability of the interface itself, its something that all UI developers ensure they have taken into consideration.

Touch screen technology is a good example of how using and navigating designs of interfaces has improved over time. It is particularly important and common on devices such as tablets, mobile devices and many other hand held devices as well as screens such as tills in food restaurants. This all has an impact on the way we can under go our day to day lives and go about it much quicker and with more ease.

Another attempt to change society with HCI was with voice recognition and that has been experimented with and that was with the Siri voice on the iPhone. Other phones to have tried their own versions such as the windows phone, however none of these have had anywhere near the same impact on society that touch screen had and has not caught on at quite the same speed. One of the main problems that devices with voice recognition have is actually being able to understand what anyone that uses it is saying, as people from different accents and languages are not always recognized.

This is the Siri voice recognition on the iPhone

This is all in place to make using devices easier to the public and moving the development process forward in order to keep up with competitors on the market. For example the iPhone, windows phone and Android are all competing with each other to make their device more user friendly than the other company. This effects society because we as the consumers have more of a choice in which device we can use or purchase.

The development of these easy to use interfaces has an impact on users with disabilities as well. There is technology such as text-to-speech, this enables people who have their vision impaired to be able to get a description read out to them, this way the only have to listen and don't have to try and read any writing. A good interface and design can be implemented into military applications to enable drones to be flown without actually having to put a pilot in, this saves many lives and reduces the risk of human loss.