Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Technology, first published in 1982 and also oriented toward human factors and ergonomics, now
publishes bimonthly.
Paradoxically, membership in the HFES Computer Systems Technical Group has declined in
real and relative terms. Once the largest technical group, it is now significantly smaller than sev-
eral others. The largest at the time of writing is Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making,
which formed in 1996. The newest is Human Performance Modeling, organized by Wayne Gray
and Dick Pew, which first met in 2004. This is a remarkable development. Cognitive engineering
and human performance modeling originated in CHI as an effort to reform human factors from
outside. Twenty years later, some of the same people have brought the effort inside.
HCI papers are published without HCI as a keyword (e.g., Peebles and Cheng, 2003). In addition
to CEDG and HPM, the Communication, Internet, System Development, and Virtual Environment
technical groups include HCI work. Aging, medical systems, and so on—all are infiltrated by “invis-
ible computers.”
MIS and the Formation of AIS SIGHCI
The success of the Internet and the Web changed the role of corporate IT departments and created
new opportunities and challenges for MIS. Whereas IT had focused on internal operations, organ-
izations needed Web interfaces to vendors and customers. Although the Internet boom revealed
how little was understood in these areas, online services and business-to-business systems did not
disappear with the bust.
The growing IT and MIS focus on discretionary customer interaction was reinforced by other
changes. Embrace of the Internet led to more porous digital boundaries. Employees accessed
external tools and software—search engines, consumer IM clients, blogging tools, music software,
and other applications that affect organizational behavior—despite some resistance from security-
conscious management. Familiarity with software use at home generated impatience with poor
interfaces at work. Managers evolved from hands-off to hands-on use and are now often dis-
cretionary early adopters of technologies that benefit them. For example, managers trapped
in large meetings with wireless network access can develop an interest in tablets and instant
messaging.
MIS research has responded to the greater significance of discretionary use in enterprise com-
puting. When the Association for Information Systems established the Special Interest Group in
Human-Computer Interaction (SIGHCI) in 2001, Internet and Web computing was included in its
broad charter; not surprisingly, most of the published SIGHCI work has been in these areas. Given
that CHI has addressed discretionary use for two decades, it made sense to build an alliance with
CHI, while retaining a concern with organizational and contextual factors that are often secondary
in CHI.
HF&E is less central for SIGHCI. Zhang et al. (2004) define HCI by citing twelve works by
CHI researchers. Five key disciplines and seven related fields are identified; ergonomics is last on
the list. These two volumes include contributions from several prominent CHI researchers, but none
by researchers active in HF&E.
SIGHCI aims “to promote research related to human-computer interaction within business,
managerial, organizational and cultural contexts . . . [encouraging] research that looks beyond
human-computer interfaces” (Zhang, 2004, p. 1). CHI's interface focus has long been seen as a
limitation by those involved with enterprise system development and use. It reflects differences in
priorities: Enterprises must consider domain-specific functional requirements, whereas commer-
cial, discretionary-use software products rely on their interfaces to compete against products with
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