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From: cdshaw@cs.UAlberta.CA (Chris Shaw)
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: Human Factors or also called Ergonomics
Message-ID: <1991Jun13.000119.4664@cs.UAlberta.CA>
Date: 13 Jun 91 00:01:19 GMT
References: <1991Jun12.091705.2823@actrix.gen.nz> <31211@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Sender: news@cs.UAlberta.CA (News Administrator)
Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
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In article rc7@prism.gatech.EDU (Richard Catrambone) writes:
>...research by psychologists in this area has had at best a
>relatively modest impact on interface designs and the design process. 

I think mainly because the research concentrates on designs that are largely
out of date. Some people think that window-based interfaces are new. 
They are not. If you're going to do a study on window interaction using
mice to manipulate text in some constrained circumstance, then forget it. 
It's like fishing for minnows. Ditto for keyboard layout. 
Ditto for command-line interfaces.

Ergonomicists also have a bad habit of getting into the design loop way
too late. Perhaps this is because early involvement is viewed as being
methodologically impure, and because ergonomics is viewed as a product
testing discipline. Both of these views work against design effectiveness
simply because it's too late in the game.
--
Chris Shaw     University of Alberta
cdshaw@cs.UAlberta.ca           Now with new, minty Internet flavour!
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