In Fatih Gurcan, Nergiz Ercil Cagiltay & Kursat Cagiltay research paper Mapping Human-Computer Interaction Research Themes and Trends from Its Existence to Today: A Topic Modeling-Based Review of past 60 Years, we take a deep dive as to what human-computer interactions (HCI) are and how they have evolved over the past few decades.

In the research paper, it is explained that an HCI consists of studies and research that shows the relationship between human users and computers, as well as the designs that allow for more interaction between the two parties. More specifically, it is described as “a dynamic discipline that studies how to design, build, implement and evaluate human-centric interactive computer systems and to maximize the usability, effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction of the interfaces between users, computers, and other phenomena surrounding these elements.” The study notes that they covered 41,720 different research papers spanning from 1957-2018, as well as using a topic modeling approach and a text mine technique to see which terms have grown popular over time with different human-centric interactive computer systems.

It is quite interesting to see how these interfaces have changed through different time periods and what has remained constant through the Legacy Systems Age (1959–1989), Internet Age (1989–2009), and Pervasive Age (2009–2019). Through these studies, we can learn what part of HCI development to expect such as current-day virtual reality, or future human-robot interactions.