Design practice and interface usability

Abstract

Research into human-computer interaction (HCI) is mainly conducted by engineering psychologists, cognitive psychologists and computer scientists. The principal consumers of applied HCI research, on the other hand, are human factors practitioners and system designers and developers. The HCI researcher who believes his or her findings to be of practical relevance has therefore to consider the interface between researcher and practitioner as well as that between system and user: the products of HCI research must not only be relevant but also “user-friendly” to the practitioner. This problem is not merely one of communication between different professional communities, as the optimal route for the translation of research findings into terms that will be of practical use in the design process is itself a matter of considerable uncertainty and debate. Thus there are many instances in the research literature where apparently contradictory recommendations can all too easily be drawn from findings based on sound but, by its very nature, limited experimentation (e.g., compare the findings of Landauer et al., in press, Ledgard et al., 1980, and Scapin, 1981, on naming text-editing operations).