This work contains papers presented at the Interchi '93 conference, organized by the IFIP Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction and ACM/SIGCHI. It provides an overview of the current international state of the field. Scientists in this area include groups like psychologists, artists and designers, dealing with such problems as the organizational integration of technology. In Europe, this field has a broader focus than is usual in North America, going beyond the more usual office automation tasks to more embedded systems applications. The European user-interface designers concern themselves much more with "work psychology" and design of the total working environment than designers in North America have done in the past. Therefore, this work is a bridge between many kinds of worlds. Its view is a new multifaceted one: computing is present everywhere, not only via workstations; communication is low-cost and instantaneous; new input and output devices extend beyond keyboards and displays; applications encompass the casual and the critical work and play, art and science.
Isolated perspectives are integrated, the user is recognized as part of a social, physical and technical environment. The process of design is as important as the resulting products, whereas design is responsive to regulation, standardization and legal protection.