Differerent Types of User Interfaces

The first computer interface I ever used was as a small child, playing on the punch card machines at Sydney University (where my older cousin was studying). The computer was a batch-processed mainframe, and the users would write their programs on punch cards like the one pictured below, and submit them to the computer staff for processing, and then later receive the output of their program as a paper printout. The “interface” itself, from the users perspective, was the machine which punched the cards (by typing on a keyboard) for the inputs, and the printout of results for the output.

Punch card image from Wikipedia [3].

The next most advanced computer interface used a video screen which allowed for real-time interaction with the computer. This could be either a multi-user system on a large computer, with many terminals attached, or a small computer (e.g. a home computer) which (in the early days especially) only supported one user.

The video screens were originally entirely character-based, that is, a “CLI” or Command-Line Interface. There were many OSes which worked this way, including Unix and DOS. An example of a CLI is seen below in this document in Question 7, in the screenshots for the Linux Terminal app, which runs in a window within the Linux GUI.

The next major development in user interfaces was the Graphical User Interface GUI. The term “GUI” refers to a fully pixel-based screen (rather than a character-only based one), a pointing device (such as a mouse), and usually individual “windows” which appear on the screen (often with many windows simultaneously, though this is not possible on some OSes like many phone ones, and some of the earliest GUI OSes), and can each contain their own running application program (or some aspect of a program such as a popup window). Drop-down (or some variant of this) menus, and form elements like check boxes, are other features of GUIs which make them easier to use than CLIs. The Apple Macintosh (along with its OS) was the first widely distributed computer with a GUI [4].

In 1990, Windows 3.0 was released, which was the first GUI for the (what was then still called “IBM-based”) PC which was fast and stable enough to be usable. (Windows 2 was very clunky and couldn’t do much, and I don’t even remember Windows 1). A GUI, with its visual representation of different applications, is inherently much more well suited to computers which run multiple apps simultaneously under the same user than a CLI. They are also easier to use for beginners than a CLI, as the layout of a GUI means that its operation is much more easily and naturally learned from the visual elements than a command-line, which requires knowledge of a particular specialised vocabulary of commands and other syntax.

Although technically not a “user interface”, another major development was the introduction of mobile phones, and then smartphones, which allowed for computer and internet use to become fully portable. The development of touch-screen technology (which was then used for larger devices such as tablets, and many laptops, etc.) then became the next stage in user interfaces, which do not need a “mouse”. Also, technological improvements have made possible interfaces based on human speech input (e.g. Amazon Alexa) and synthesised voice output, and others.

Cover image by Shutterstock

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