Abstract
This report looks at the research trends over the years 1989 — 2004 as published in the International Journal of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Over this time period, there has been a concerned focus by scholars and practitioners to bring issues such as interface design, usability engineering, human information processing, and user-centric system development into the mainstream consciousness of engineers and developers. Our research aims to provide information to both scholars and developers on the past and current trends in the growing field of HCI. Using the PsycINFO journal database, we compiled an extensive Excel workbook containing relevant information on all the articles appearing in the journal since its inception. We were then able to classify each document using the ACM SIGCHI taxonomy, developed by Hewett, et al. This taxonomy permits classification of articles based on six factors, within one of 17 possible categories. Several other dimensions were examined including year & period of publication (1989–1993; 1994–1999; 2000–2004), author affiliation, geographic location, number of empirical studies per paper, and average sample size per study. We also reported the classifications of each article as reported by PsycINFO. Besides noting the clear growth in the total number of articles published each period, our results indicate that the field of Human Computer Interaction has seen changes in research focus. Current trends point to an increase in research focusing on developmental processes, usability evaluation methods, human communication and interaction, and applications. Another trend shows a notable decrease in empirical studies using human participants over the 15-year period.
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