MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (6/17/24)—University of Pennsylvania, Doctoral Candidate in the History and Sociology of Science Department Sam Schirvar is the recipient of the 2024 Recipient of the CBI HCI History Award for his 2023 article “Machinery for Managers: Secretaries, Psychologists, and ‘Human-Computer Interaction’, 1973-1983, published in the British Journal of the History of Science (10: 1-14).
Schirvar’s article analyzes the history of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center’s (PARC) Applied Information-Processing Project (AIP). This project, launched by Carnegie Mellon’s Allen Newell, and two of his doctoral students, Stuart Card and Thomas Moran in 1974, was a critical foundation to the emerging Human-Computer Interaction field.
Schirvar’s research highlights the tension between a human factors-style approach advocated by Card, and a cognitive science-oriented one favored by Moran. It explores the transformation of AIP’s early user focus on women secretarial workers to that of male middle managers, and how the group’s gendering of word processing hardware and software tools changed. Importantly, Schirvar also shows how Moran and Card’s work drew from cognitive science and psychology in ways that distinguished HCI from both artificial intelligence research and from industrial engineering. The article is not only an important contribution to early HCI history, but also to labor and gender in the history of technology.
The Annual CBI Ben Shneiderman Award in Human-Computer Interaction History recognizes excellence in advancing the history/social study (focus must be change over time) of HCI. The principal award is for a published book, article, documentary, podcast, website, or other media on HCI’s past; a second award is for a top dissertation or thesis (Ph.D./Master’s degree) on HCI history.