In “HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION: Psychology as a Science of Design,” John M. Carroll explores the re-evaluation of software design throughout recent decades that has led to a user oriented design, opening up the door for psychological relationships between people and technology.

Carroll explains the challenges to software psychology systematically throughout the paper. The fist problem described was the way in which humans view the development of technology. According to Carroll, in order to successfully cultivate human-computer interactions, they needed to, “establish the utility of a behavioral approach to understanding software design, programming, and the use of interactive systems” (62). Carroll encourages people, namely software developers, to consider the characteristics of human beings present in technology in order to do this. Carroll argues that progress in this effort really took shape with the GOMS project that took place in 1983 and advanced cognitive psychology. This project provided a framework for, “analyzing the goals, methods, and actions that comprise routine human-computer interactions” (66). Carroll goes on to explain that this popular mindset regarding the nature of technological systems is the framework for the way in which humans classify their relationships with technology. Carroll then goes on to chronologically recount the evolution of HCI, arguing that software development has become more user-experience oriented, leading to closer, more calculated, and more frequent human and computer interactions.

Carroll goes on to contextualize the relationship that an individual and a computer have, when zooming out and looking at a wider picture. We form intricately webbed local networks where people are connected to people, people are connected to computers, and computers are connected to one another. Which warrants an entirely new way of thinking about social psychology, that considers the development of technology.