Ease of use remains a barrier to growth and success in IT even in today's business markets. And it is surely the major challenge for emerging markets such as smart phones, home media appliances, medical devices, and automotive interfaces.

Before we explore the future of HCI, it's important to review some key lessons from the past. Many core ideas in HCI trace back to Vannevar Bush's "memex" paper ("As We May Think," Atlantic Monthly, July 1945), J. C. R. Licklider's vision of networked IT as DARPA director in the 1960s, and Douglas Engelbart's amazing NLS (online system) demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco in December 1968. While acknowledging these pioneers, we're going to jump straight to the "modern era" of HCI, which led directly to popular computing. The incubator for this was, not surprisingly, Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center).