Usability and Educational Software Design: Special Issue of Interacting with Computers

The focus of this issue is the design of usable educational learning environments which are based on the use of modern information and communications technologies. While there are now established traditions of research and development in educational computing and in human–computer interaction (HCI), workers in these areas rarely speak to each other or take note of each others' work: the educational computing literature is littered with naive and simplistic interpretations of interface design issues, and many writers in the HCI literature appear to be unaware of the significant developments that have been made in theories of learning. The premise of a one-day meeting of the British Computer Society HCI Special Interest Group held at King's College London in December 1996, was that these two communities have much to learn from each other, and that a dialogue between them should be fostered. Three papers in this issue are based on presentations given at this meeting. It is hoped that they will provide an impetus for debate about the relationship between usability as interpreted by the HCI community, and learning with information and communication technologies as perceived by the educational computing community.