A.

Basic Interactions

Direct Manipulation: Early interfaces were text-based and required users to type
commands. The introduction of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) allowed users to interact
with objects directly on the screen using a mouse, making interaction more intuitive and
accessible. Ben Shneiderman, who is attributed with coining the phrase ‘Direct
manipulation’ in 1982 highlights the following features: ● visibility of object of interest
● rapid feedback on all actions
● syntactic correctness of all action
● replacement of complex command language with actions to manipulate directly
the visible objects
This Direct Manipulation was first demonstrated by Ivan Sutherland in Sketchpad, in his
1963 MIT PhD thesis . The sketchpad supported the direct manipulation using pen which
allowed grabbing objects, moving them, and changing sizes. The second development came
in 1966-67 as ‘Light Handles’ by William Newman, which was probably the first widget.
Visualization related to Direct manipulation is given by “WYSIWYG” ( what you see is what
you get). This implies that the difference between the representation and the final product
is minimal, and the user is easily able to visualize the final product from the computer
representation. The first commercial system to make use of direct manipulation were the
Xerox star in 1981, the Apple Lisa in 1982, and Macintosh in 1984.

Mouse- the mouse was developed at Stanford Research Laboratory in 1965 to be cheap
replacement for light-pens. Developed by Douglas C. Engelbart, it used two wheels that slid
across the desktop and transmitted x-y coordinates to the computer. The mouse was then
made famous as a practical input by Xerox Parc in 1970’s. It first appeared commercially
Xerox star in 1981, the Apple Lisa, and Macintosh.The mouse was initially developed for
computer-aided design (CAD) but quickly became a standard input device for GUIs. Its ability
to point and click on objects made navigation and interaction much easier.

Windows- Multiple tiled windows were demonstrated in Engelbart’s NLS in 1968. Alan Kay
proposes the idea of overlapping windows in 1969 at Xerox Parc. The first commercial uses
of windows were on Lisp Machines Inc and Symbolics Lisp Machine which grew out of MIT
AI lab projects. The main commercial systems popularizing windows were the Xerox Star
(1981), and most importantly Apple Macintosh(1984). The current international standard,
the X Window System , was developed at MIT in 1984.

B. Application Types

Drawing programs- William Newman’s Markup in 1975 was the first drawing program
for Xerox Parc ‘s Alto followed shortly by Patrick Bauldelarie’s Draw which added
 handling of lines and curves. The first computer painting program was probably Dick
Shoup’s “Superpaint” at PARC in 1974-75.

Text Editing- in 1962 at Stanford Research Laboratory, Engelbart proposed and

implemented a word processor with automatic Word wrap, search, replace scrolling text
and commands to move, copy and delete characters, words or block of text. Stanford’s
TVedit was on of the first CRT- based display editors that was widely used. NLS
demonstrated mouse-based editing in 1968. Teco, an early screen editor was developed at
MIT in 1974. Xerox PARC’s Bravo was the first WYSIWYG editor formatter designed by Butler
Lampson and Charles Simonyi. The first commercial WYSIWYG editors were Star, LisaWrite,
and MacWrite.

Spreadsheets- the initial spreadsheet was VisiCalc which was developed by Frankston and
Brickin in 1977-78 for Apple II. It was based on dependency directed backtracking algorithm
by Sussman and Stallman. Spreadsheets became essential for data analysis and
management. They evolved from simple grid-based systems to powerful tools with
advanced formulas, charting capabilities, and database integration.

Hypertext- Ted Nelson coined the term in 1945. The University of Vermont’s PROMIS was
the first Hypertext system released to user community in 1976. It was used to link patient
and patient care information at their medical center. Ben Shneiderman’s Hyperties was the
first system where highlighted items in the text could be clicked on to go to the pages. Tim
Berners-Lee used Hypertext to create the WWW in 1900. The first Hypertext browser for
WWW was developed at University of Illinois.

Computer Aided Design (CAD) – the 1963 IFIPS conference contained a number of CAD
systems which included Ross’s CAD project at MIT. The first CAD system was General
Motor’s DAC-1 in 1963.

Video Games- the first graphical video game was spaceWar by Slug Russel of MIT in 1962
including the first joysticks. The first popular commercial game was a Pong around 1976.

C. Up-and-Coming Areas
Gesture Recognition- sketchpad used light-pen gestures in 1963. Teitelman in 1964
developed the first trainable Gesture recognized. Tom Ellis’ GRAIL system on RAND
tablet, which was the first pen-based input device, was early demonstration of Gesture
recognition. Gesture recognition has been used in commercial CD system since 1970
and came its universal notice with Apple Newton in 1992.

Multimedia- the Interactive Graphical Documents project at Brown was the first
hypermedia as opposed to Hypertext system and used graphics and text but not video in
1979-83. The Diamond Project in 1982 explored Multimedia information. The movie manual
Architecture Machine Group was the first to demonstrate mixed video and computer
graphic in 1983.

3-D- Timothy Johnson’s 3-D CAD system was the first 3-D system. Larry Robert’s Lincoln
Wand was ultrasonic 3-D location sensing system developed in 1966. Late 60’s and 70’s saw
the flowering of 3D graphics research which much of it was funded by the government.

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality- Virtual Reality refers to the computer-generated
simulation of a world, or a subset of it, in which the user is immersed. Augmented Reality is
where virtually and Reality meet, where electronic images are projected over the real world.
The original work on VR was performed by Ivan Sutherland.

Computer Supported Cooperative Work- Engelbart’s 1968 demonstration in 1968 included

the remote participation of multiple people at various sites. E-mail, the most widespread
multiuser software was enabled by ARPAnet which become operational in 1969 and by
Ethernet in 1973.

Natural Language and Speech- the most attractive means of communicating with
computers is by natural language. Natural language understanding, both of speech and
written input is the subject of much interest and research. Researches which most of it
funded by the government has been conducted at CMU, MIT, IBM, and Bellcore.

D. Software Tools and Architecture

UIMSs and Toolkits- are software libraries and tools that support the creating interface
by writing code. The first User Interface Management System (UIMS) was William
Newman’s Reaction Handler in 1966-67. The term “UIMS” was coined by David Kasik at
Boeing in 1982. The XEROX Star was the first system to have large collection of widgets.
Apple Macintosh was the first to actively promote its toolkit for use in 1984. A C++
toolkit, InterViews, was developed at Stanford in 1988.

Interface Builders- are interactive tools year allow interfaces composed of widgets such
as buttons, menus, and scrollbars to be placed using mouse. The first object- oriented
graphics system was the Steamer project. Trillium was developed in 1981. SOS interface
created by Jean-Marie Hullot was the first modern interface builder in 1986, and then
created NeXT interface builder in 1988.
Component Architecture- Component architectures break down user interfaces into
reusable components, promoting modularity, maintainability, and reusability. The idea of
creating interfaces by connecting separately written components was first demonstrated in
Andrew project.