Human - computer interaction

The intense and constantly increasing research activity within Human-computer Interaction reflects the growing importance of the field for the introduction and use of information services. The widespread introduction and increasing use of information technology has immediate effects on people and organisations in industrialised countries, highlighting the need for even more extensive efforts in HCI. The five papers contained in this volume describe areas which together cover a broad spectrum of current HCI research. A systematic reader might most profitably read them in the sequence in which they are reproduced, but they can be read independently of each other. Thomas Green in his paper reviews user modelling from the perspective of human information processing. The author distinguishes three research paradigms within this area - the science, engineering and system design paradigms - stressing that his paper is devoted to describing user modelling from science perspective. Gerrit van der Veer in his paper focuses on individual differences in relation to learning with or about computers. The author stresses from the outset that for the near future there is no possibility of replacing human teachers with computerised tutors, but that the computer may be applied as a tool by student and teacher offering special possibilities for adjusting to individual learning behaviour. The paper reviews recent work on computers, learning and individual differences on the one hand, and interface design methodology with a special emphasis on learning, training and metacommunication aspects on the other. Montmollin devotes his paper to a review of some recent and current research in human activities in actual, complex work environments. During a period when information technology is widely applied to work places in the form of integrated work stations offering support in multiple functions and leading to a reversal of the earlier specialisation into more diverse and discretionary task requirement, it is important to consider not only human-computer interfacing, but human-task interfacing. In this development towards much less proceduralised work settings, the study of human performance in actual work becomes an important prerequisite for understanding the role of information technology in work contexts. Discussions of human-computer interaction are often focused on the interaction of an individual user and his work terminal. This is a natural consequence of the usual preoccupation with interface design. It is a major argument of the papers in the present collection that the essential issue is the idea of the computer as a mediator between humans and their actual work content; hence, it becomes of crucial importance to analyse the implications of modern information technology on cooperative work performance. This is the topic taken up by Bj<179>rn Andersen and Lars Ginnerup. They emphasise the need to view the individual agents in the context of what they try to achieve. The last paper on HCI by Hollnagel, in much the same spirit as Montmollin in his review, confronts the classical ergonomic approach to human computer interaction - characterised by a fairly narrow concern with interfaces and separate optimisation of individual tools, and he contrasts this with an approach which is directed at a more general concern with human-machine interaction and which therefore considers deliberately and much more explicitly the content of work. The author discusses what he calls the "technology gap" between technical invention and conceptual understanding; i.e., the gap between the continuous and accelerating development in information technology and the slower. stepwise development of the conceptual background.