Man-Computer Interaction: A Challenge for Human Factors Research

Abstract

This paper claims that the increasing heterogeneity of the community of conmputer users poses a challenge to psychologists and human factors researchers. There follows a brief discussion of why this challenge apparently has not yet evoked a strong response. Three problems, or problem areas, are identified as being particularly in need of human factors research. These are (1) the development and evaluation of conversational languages, (2) the determination of how the use patterns adopted by users depend on system characteristics, and (3) the description, or modelling, of man-computer interaction.