Interaction, Zoom Data, and Crowd Sourcing

    Human-Computer Interaction involves computer and behavioral sciences, design and other fields of study. HCI studies people and computers together. The goal of HCI is to improve the relationship between people and their computers. HCI is a very complicated process because it involves all aspects of the computer including both hardware and software. It also very much involves human studies such as behavior, psychology, ergonomics, languages and a whole range of other things. It’s pretty obvious how HCI can benefit anyone who uses a computer. The more user-friendly anything is, the more happy the person using it becomes.


    Zoom Data allows the user to look at a picture or an image from a distance and then get closer and closer and more detailed without needing to continually click to find more information.  Google Earth would be one of the more common uses of Zoom Data. The Zoom Data video explains more about how Zoom Data works. Zoom Data will benefit me because it will be easier to keep zooming in to find information instead of searching numerous websites.

    Crowd Sourcing has been defined by Wikipedia as, “the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.” Probably the most famous example of crowd sourcing is Wikipedia. Anyone can, and is encouraged to, contribute to Wikipedia. There can be problems with crowd sourcing as Wikipedia has discovered. A couple of years ago, a contributor changed the description of Paul Martin from “the 21st Prime Minister”, to “the worst Prime Minister.” Apparently, it took a few days until this deliberate misinformation was caught by Wikipedia’s editors.

Crowd Sourcing will benefit me because I can type key words into the search engine of Google or Wikipedia and millions of websites about the topic will pop up.