Usability Engineering

Generations

of

User Interfaces

earlier,

and many innovation laggards stayed

safely

a generation or

so

behind the early adapters.

The

historical development of user interfaces is interesting because

each

generation seems to contain the previous ones as special

cases.

Even as communication

bandwidth

has grown, previous

communication methods remain useful, and the addition of new

user populations does not mean

that

the previous users disappear.

Many

other technological developments involve the replacement

of

older technology with newer inventions, but a good designer of

modern user interfaces still needs to know how to best use interac-

tion technique ...