Human-Computer Interaction: A New Challenge for the South Africa IT Industry

For the vast majority of IT practitioners, the field of Human-Computer interaction is probably very obscure and far removed from their everyday work and interests. However, more and more they are becoming conscious of the typical problems that users as well as developers of computer systems experience: unwanted complexity, unintuitive interfaces, too much training required, too much documentation, long development cycles, costly user support and on and on.

Unfortunately many traditional software designers still say that the idea of supporting a user with "productivity tools" is not new and that they have been doing it all along. They will also tell you that the idea of "usability" is not new - they know exactly what users need and have always been developing "user-friendly" software.

If this were true, why do so many users curse their computers and why do we need so much "computer literacy" and application training? Why do all of us make so many task mistakes when using computers? Why do we get frustrated with software that is difficult to use? Why do we grow increasingly dissatisfied with the amount of things we need to know to use our computers effectively? Haven't we yet realised that computers are one of the major sources of poor productivity?

Mitch Kapor of Lotus Corp has said in his "Software Design Manifesto": "Despite the enormous outward success of personal computers, the daily experience of using computers far too often is still fraught with difficulty, pain, and barriers for most people. The lack of usability of software and the poor design of programs are the secret shame of the industry".

The reason for this is found in the difficulty that most traditional designers experience when they have to make provision for users and their tasks. They simply do not have the training or inclination to spend time on really understanding users. They prefer to stay in their comfort zone and do what they do best - apply engineering techniques to technical problems. The obvious result of this approach is poor application usability, which in turn leads to users' poor performance and increased dependence on support and training. We know that productivity in South Africa is notoriously low - badly designed software can only make this situation worse!

One of the objectives of the CHI-SA 2000 Conference was to throw light on some of these issues. But the conference was also about understanding the deeper, strategic implications of HCI as one of the most important enablers of information technology.

South African society finds itself in one of the most critical evolutionary phases in its history. It seems that no aspect of our everyday life and work is left untouched by the changes. One of the more complex issues is understanding how South Africa's diversity of culture, economy, and education is shaping the way information technology is developed and assimilated into our society.  Conversely, do we understand how the rapid development of information technology in turn shapes the evolution of our society? In particular, we must be concerned about the effect of technology integration into the workplace where employers often have to cope with poorly educated workers. Do we understand that Information Technology can both distort and preserve real-life cultural identities? Without this understanding, the gap between the technological "haves and have-nots" is likely to grow rather than shrink.

The technological society has advanced to the stage where very few people can avoid technology. Furthermore, large parts of society have actually become entirely dependent on technology in daily life and work. People's attitudes toward new devices change as they discover new benefits. These devices can often have great personal or social value, for example, cellular phones. At the same time, the population that could potentially use and benefit from information technology, has grown culturally, economically and educationally more diverse. Not only have users different expectations of technology, their expectations are coloured by their frame of reference, educational level, cultural prejudices, career expectations, income, and many other variables that are very poorly understood by software developers, nor allowed for by current design practices. But one thing is certain: information technology can no longer be "one size fits all". We can no longer afford to exclude any individual or any sector of society from access to, and benefiting from information technology.

Without proper understanding of the cultural variables involved, new media and communication devices threaten to expand, rather than resolve, certain cultural conflicts. These modern information technology advances encompass developments beyond the desktop - computing devices are becoming portable, embedded and wearable, moving into nearly every environment. The emerging links between television, radio, communication and computers, combined with improved accessibility, are changing entertainment habits, information seeking strategies and communication behaviour.

Increasingly people's ability to make choices about their lives is being determined by their ability to communicate, access and process information by electronic means. Information and communication poverty is a condition resulting from an inability to communicate, access and process information critical to one's life and livelihood, due to either the absence of personal or technological means, or the unavailability of human agents to perform these tasks. Unless we take the trouble to understand the impact of cultural variables, we are in danger of alienating many people and increasing the gap between the "wired society" and the "technologically disadvantaged."

The science, technology and techniques necessary to help bridge the existing gaps and avoid creating new ones, are already found in Human-Computer Interaction. The tools already exist for us to understand the scope and nature of the problem and to create the solutions needed. Some very useful and pragmatic tools are found in usability principles, techniques and standards. In developed countries more and more organisations, from government to small start-ups, are discovering the added value offered by investing in usability.

But in South Africa, a country with 11 official languages, where 80% of blacks and 40% of whites cannot read, let alone compute, at a Grade 7 level, it is clear that we need to understand the complex interaction between culture, communication and technology. The statement in the media that "by the year 2010 anyone who is not computer literate will be out of a job" is probably closer to the truth than we care to admit.

To prepare ourselves for future challenges, we need to understand the role of the many cultural factors at work in the design of interactive software, and how they have a very real impact on the bottom line for organisations.

It would be foolish to ignore the demands that these dramatic changes are going to make on South African education, industry and society. We need to understand how human-technology relationships are evolving to help set new directions for the design of products and services. However, all of this requires new, rare skills and resources and something rather dramatic needs to be done to mobilise all available resources to reduce the ignorance in this country. It can only be hoped the CHI-SA conference was a step in the right direction and will help to wake up the IT industry!

In South Africa, as in all developing countries, the industry has to move beyond tradition, convention or imitation as the primary strategies for software interface design. We need to focus more on designing interactive information environments that will facilitate access and in so doing, exploit the new cultural and work representations enabled by information technology. For a healthy IT marketplace that can enrich people's economic, social, cultural, and political lives, we must find solutions to a series of crucial issues that revolve around understanding how to build effective human-centred computer systems.

Over the past 20 years, research in HCI has been spectacularly successful, and HCI people have all helped to fundamentally change the face of computing. Virtually all software written today employs user interface toolkits, interaction concepts and evaluation techniques that were developed by HCI practitioners around the world. Even the spectacular growth of the World-Wide Web is a direct result of HCI research. More than anything else, it is the user interface improvements that have triggered this explosive growth. The research that will lead to the user interfaces for the computers of tomorrow is happening now at universities and corporate research labs all over the world - in fact, almost everywhere else except in South Africa! This was our main plea with the conference: again, a wake-up call for South African IT professionals!

It is also important to stimulate university, corporate, and government-supported research in South Africa so that we can develop the science and technology needed for the user interfaces of the future. The international experience provides an obvious lesson for South Africa: an interdependent relationship between industry and academia is vitally important for continual innovation. As always, universities should play a leading role in the development of new principles, models and techniques that can be applied by industry. But R & D organisations in the private sector must provide feedback to universities from the real world in the form of user experience and requirements, market intelligence, development techniques, and the latest technological advances. But more important, they must support basic research that cannot be funded by Government alone - universities should not have to rely totally on the South African Government's Innovation Fund.

It is also obvious that South African computer science and multimedia students need to know about user interface issues, perhaps even more so than in more developed countries. User interfaces are likely to be one of the main value-added competitive advantages for the IT industry in the future, as both hardware and basic software become commodities. If students do not know about user interfaces, and the undeniable importance of human issues in computing, they will not serve industry needs. It seems that only through the combination of cognitive science and computer science would HCI research find its way into products. Furthermore, without appropriate funding of academic HCI research, there will be no PhD graduates in HCI to perform research in corporate labs, and fewer graduates in this area will be interested in being educators, so the needed user interface courses will not be offered.

If all of this does not happen, we in South Africa will forever remain at the receiving end of computing developments. Software will never reflect and acknowledge our diversity, nor will it accommodate the true needs of our upcoming generations. The reason for this is plain - none of the brilliant research in other countries takes cognisance of the unique situations brought about by our economic, political, and cultural diversity. Without our own investment in HCI research and development for South Africa, there will be no interfaces for the Rainbow Nation!