ICT for Consumers or Human Beings - Human-Computer Interaction and Innovation in Handheld, Mobile and Wearable Technologies - page 260

Chapter 16

ICT for Consumers or
Human Beings:
What's the Difference?

Elizabeth Sillence
University of Northumbria,UK

Antti Pirhonen
University of Jyväskylä, Finland

ABSTRACT

The large scale deployment of mobile applications inevitably impacts upon our culture as a whole and
affects more intimately our daily lives. Not all of these effects are desirable. In a market economy, ethical
issues are not the most important drivers in the development of technology. In this chapter, the authors
ask whether the mobile human-computer interaction community could take an active role in discussing
ethical issues. In so doing as a community we could focus our attention on developing technology for
'human beings' rather than fine tuning our emerging gadgets.

INTRODUCTION computing, behavioural studies and design (see

e.g. Myer, 1998). The contribution of behavioural
studies has entailed the adoption of empirical
methods and the approach of the behavioural
sciences, psychology in particular.
Exploiting psychological methods in HCI
studies certainly reveals important issues for a
community intent on developing highly usable
products. HCI, as a paradigm, therefore seems
to have a mainly instrumental purpose in terms
of producing usable and ultimately best selling

The research paradigm of human-computer
interaction (HCI), despite its brief history, has
established itself as representing the human point-
of-view in terms of the research and development
of digital technology. However, what 'human'
means is far from clear in this context. The history
of HCI shows that the paradigm aims to combine