INFORMATION INTERACTIONS - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 5

commercial or industrial heart of most MIS work. The design process, the implementation of sys-
tems, and the human response to information technologies are all key to work in HCI, so
much so that, at first glance, the unaligned researcher might easily confuse HCI with MIS. But there
is no such confusion within the ranks. Developments such as the emergence of an HCI track at the
AMCIS conference, or the publication of special issues of HCI journals dealing with MIS issues, are
a very recent phenomenon (Zhang and Dillon, 2003), a formal acknowledgement of the existence of
shared concerns, but with no commensurate doubts as to which way the ideas may flow.
One might propose a direct fit between HCI and MIS whereby those in MIS could exploit the
relevant ideas and findings of HCI work on interface design when such design activities become
part of their process. This would be a simple recommendation for bridge building, but not one that
would necessarily lead to any conceptual cross-fertilization. MIS would draw on HCI much as
computer science does, for insight or assistance at the point where users meet the tool. In return,
HCI could exploit MIS as a specific application domain for its work, a context of use involving
specific user types (managers) with a fairly bounded set of tasks (though it should be acknowl-
edged that many MIS researchers would object to such a classification of their work).
In this vein, Dillon and Morris (1999) examined the relationship between MIS and HCI disci-
plines through a comparison of two key areas of research: acceptance theory in MIS and usabil-
ity evaluation (UE) in HCI. They argued that these approaches were complementary, but rarely
combined, and pointed to a lack of awareness in each camp of the value of the other approach.
Obviously, both approaches have utility, but they do not cleanly complement each other. The
operational definitions of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in UE are not equivalent to
TAM's “ease of use” construct. Indeed it is possible that measuring usability in the UE manner
might produce findings that are contradicted by TAM, since part of UE's definition of usability
is more likely measured by usefulness in TAM. UE measures behavior of users with the sys-
tem, while TAM measures affect, and, unfortunately, the relationship between the two is com-
plicated. What seems to be missing from the current literature in this area is a unified model of
use that supports both the process of design early on and clarifies the relationship between
usability and acceptability. (Dillon and Morris, 1999, p. 232)
In a preliminary comparison of data obtained from both usability and acceptability measures,
these authors noted that acceptance scores correlated highly with satisfaction, but neither were
particularly good predictors of effective use. In other words, research could usefully explore both
approaches to develop a more informed model of why people use and adopt certain information
technologies. These authors advocated broadening the range of measures employed to include not
only perceptual or attitudinal (e.g., TAM) and performance (e.g., task completion) measures, but
objective analysis of a system's technical power or functionality (a characterization of what utility
it objectively provided) to produce a hybrid model of use that drew equally from both traditions.
However, it is not clear that such an approach is ultimately the best way forward. To truly build
bridges across disciplines, there needs to be a deeper sharing of key ideas and core concepts. But
the obvious candidates for conceptual sharing are probably not, as might first appear, interfaces
and users, since neither of these carry with them sufficient theoretical power on their own (though
see DeSanctis). Attributes of interfaces or of users cannot alone explain sufficiently well how and
why information systems work or fail. Research studies of users are contingent on addressing what
is being used where, how, and why. Attempts to divorce user studies from these contextual issues
show little prospect for revealing significant design insights (Dillon and Watson, 1996). The same
is true for interfaces, which beg to be analyzed not as stand-alones, but as boundaries between