Designing a world at your fingertips: A look at mobile user interfaces

Smart mobile devices have had a huge impact on the world today with new apps being produced at a prodigious rate. How we got to this point has a lot to do with the ease of use that manufacturers and app developers have achieved, which includes aspects such as quick response time, intuitive interfaces, and well-designed functionality. To explore how this came about, IEEE Software Editor-in-Chief Forrest Shull recently spoke with Ben Shneiderman and Ben Bederson, both of whom are former directors of the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL), the oldest center in the US focusing on research in HCI.