De máquinas a meios de comunicação: como interfaces auxiliam no processo de apreensão de novos aparelhos multimidiáticos

Abstract

Initially served for military purposes, the computer had its evolutionary course changed, from the second half of the twentieth century, by researchers, social groups and computer specialists in the United States. What we actually known as interface was determinant for the computer to become popular and evolve to the current level of technological efficiency. The purpose of the present work is to determine how the graphical’s web interfaces language becomes understandable to allow users to "navigate" through their content. Starting from an epistemological analysis on the subject of interfaces, this dissertation starts with Gestalt theory and the idea of figure and ground; Affordances’s theory and the possibilities of interaction with the environment; Perception’s theory and the cognitive process; And ultimately the Tetrads proposed by Marshall McLuhan as a technology analysis tool. Each of these theories allows us to understand how the brain learns and perceives things. The discussion about the Graphical User Interface advances presents elements that go through the psychology, computer science, design and pedagogy, which affirms its character as a communication medium. It will be present the main features that make up the web interfaces, from scroll bar, icons, menus and toolbar to flat design. To do this, we presentes example magazine's HotWired, of the web’s design professionals, that use direct manipulation, to explore the virtual environment proposed by the studies of the theory of human-computer interaction. Finally, is presented a comparative analysis between the web's interfaces Yahoo! and of the G1, both on the desktop and in the smartphone it can be visualizate how these elements are presented or not and what is changed the computer to the mobile devices. The results indicate that the interfaces are the main responsible for the appearance of several technological devices and this evolution expands the cognitive user repertory, favoring their perception and apprehension capacity, since they are built with psychological bases that attend to the functioning of the brain. They also shows that learning takes place, in part, through the exploration of the environment and, how much more pleasant the interaction, we'll have more interaction with the medium. The web is reinforced as an interface, and there was no significant change in the passage of the software to web and, at the same form to the desktop to mobile.