Introduction
This is a unique time in our nation's scientific and technological history. We
are experiencing a scientific and technological revolution of unprecedented
proportions. The information explosion has greatly increased our understanding
of the world around us. It has brought us a high standard of living and
economic prosperity. The modern computer and telecommunications information
infrastructure has revolutionized science and commerce and has increased
innovation and the speed of adoption of technology. Much of the knowledge
generated by this process has been transformed into useful applications that
affect every part of our society.
It has been estimated that science-based information industries account for more than half our nation's gross national product and half the jobs. The growth and exploitation of information rests, however, not only on the ability of science to produce knowledge, but also on society's capacity to absorb and to use it. Therefore, the real limits of scientific as well as economic growth may well be humankind's limited ability to absorb and to apply new information. In so far as the human-computer interface affects this ability, it serves as a gating function to the goals of the NII.
It is the belief of many within government that, if society is to continue to benefit from the production of new knowledge, and if business is to be more competitive, we must devise new and better ways to expand human capacity, multiply human reasoning, and compensate for human limitations. We must create new techniques and use powerful, new technologies to significantly augment the skills that are necessary to convert data into information and to transform information into knowledge. This knowledge and these skills must be translated into effective design, design not merely of graphical displays, but initial design that takes into account users and constraints in such a way that later changes are not necessary and users can immediately employ the products. We must spend as much effort on studying the inner frontiers of knowledge (human capacity) that affect the uptake of information as we do the outer frontiers of science, if we are to reap the benefits of the knowledge generated by science.
Since computers can contribute to the successful impact of information on society by making information accessible and usable, efforts must be focused on the design and development of user interfaces that promote these goals. Efforts to create such interfaces have already been made, and the effort has steadily increased. Recent reports estimate that over half the total cost of new computer systems can be attributed to the user interface (Bass 1993; Myers & Rosson 1992).
A recent report of a research group of 10 top industrial representatives concluded that "if the interface is ineffective, the system's functionality and usefulness are limited; users become confused, frustrated, and annoyed; developers lose credibility; and the organization is saddled with high support costs and low productivity." (Nolan, Norton & Co. 1992:19). Another comprehensive summary of studies of information technology productivity presents the difficulties and outright failures of attempts to document productivity gains as a result of using information technology (Brynjolfsson 1993). It may be that 'difficulty of use' should be added to that report's list of four reasons why computers have not appeared to improve productivity (Brynjolfsson 1993:76).
In 1988, a report entitled "Computing as a Discipline: Final Report of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Task Force on the Core of Computer Science" (Denning at al. 1988) and a later 1991 joint ACM/IEEE report (Tucker et al. 1991) established human-computer interaction (HCI) as one of the subareas of the field of computer science. This report was followed by a more recent effort of ACM's Special Interest Group in Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI) to identify the content of HCI, to define specific HCI courses for computer science as well as for related disciplines, and to illustrate how such courses could be fit into various curricula (Hewett et al. 1992). Computer science departments have been slow, however, to embrace HCI as a core topic to be taught in all CS departments. The need for HCI training has been heightened by a recent call (Mulder 1994) to establish a separate discipline that trains information professionals as distinct from computer scientists. This call includes human-computer interaction and general design and problem-solving skills as important components, while indicating a lack of such training in the established discipline of computer science.
HCI is identified as the main gating function to the successful use of technology to increase the availability of information to the public and that, for this reason, computer science must establish HCI as a fundamental, core topic. It was therefore proposed to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) that the infrastructure surrounding HCI be assessed and that suggestions be made on ways to improve it.