Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is the study of interaction between people (users) and computers. A basic goal of HCI is to improve the interaction between users and computers by making computers more user-friendly and receptive to the user's needs. Specifically, a long term goal of HCI is to design systems that minimize the barrier between the human's cognitive model of what they want to accomplish and the computer's understanding of the user's task.

Information management is the handling of information acquired by one or many disparate sources in a way that optimizes access by all who have a share in that information or a right to that information. It refers to the acquisition, organization, control, dissemination and use of information.

User-Centered Design (UCD) is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use an interface, but to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of an interface to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like.