HUMAN FACTORS, CHI, AND MIS - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 401

Opportunities for mutual learning are abundant. CHI researchers have learned that experimen-
tal studies, still prevalent in MIS HCI, are not well suited for studying discretionary use.
Participants in lab studies are extrinsically motivated and directed—a decent model for nondis-
cretionary users in real life, but discretionary use relies on intrinsic motivation. In routine, expert
use, high volume, or high risk translate into small but prized incremental improvements that only
controlled experiments can reliably reveal. But coarser methods are efficient when assessing
highly variable initial use, and for exploring points in a vast design space. Some aspects of expert
performance can be assessed by surveys, another MIS HCI method, but CHI researchers
have concluded that behavior often does not match attitudes gleaned from surveys. Laboratory
studies can reveal interface flaws, but over two decades CHI has honed more ecologically
valid approaches. SIGHCI goals such as better integrating user-centered design into software
development and “usability engineering metrics and methods for user interface assessment and
evaluation” (Zhang, 2004, p. 1) were a CHI focus in the 1980s and 1990s that has now moved to
HFES.
Building a partial bridge by eliminating one barrier—the journal/conference orientation
difference—was accomplished in a forthcoming BIT special issue. Papers were actively solicited
from CHI and MIS on user experience, a topic of central interest to each. Authors of accepted
papers include no U.S. CHI researchers, but are a diverse mix of MIS, HF&E, and journal-
oriented European and Canadian CHI contributors.
Understanding and bridging differences is worth the effort. A unified effort could counter the
reduction in core strength in each of the three fields as the era of invisible yet omnipresent com-
puters approaches.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Scores of people contributed historical accounts. Phil Barnard and Ron Baecker inspired and
encouraged my interest. Brian Shackel and Dick Pew published invaluable accounts. Ping Zhang
and Dennis Galletta generously educated me on HCI in MIS. Judy Olson provided useful sug-
gestions. Responsibility for errors of omission, commission, or interpretation is mine.
NOTES
1. The authors listed IJMMS and IJHCS separately. Combined, the journal ranked twenty-third, HCI
ranked thirty-third, and BIT forty-seventh (Mylonopoulos, e-mail sent August 2, 2004).
2. Some consider a 1982 meeting in Gaithersburg to be the first CHI Conference. The plan to form
SIGCHI was announced there. SIGCHI was approved by ACM months later.
3. For example, William Ogden, who authored two of the three CHI database papers published at
INTERACT, then shifted to information retrieval publications.
4. Proceedings of UODIGS 76 were added to the ACM Digital Library CHI conference series in 2006.
5. Graphic designers participated in GUI efforts as early as PARC in the 1970s, but in a secondary role
(Evenson, 2005). In 1987 computer graphics pioneers Ron Baecker and Bill Buxton co-organized the CHI
conference in conjunction with the Graphics Interface conference, but this was not repeated.
6. I observed this as a member of program committees prior to the use of blind reviewing.
7. Defining quality is not simple in multidisciplinary settings. MIS and HF&E researchers focus more
on theory development than do CHI researchers, and stress experimental rigor over ecological validity.
Within each camp are people who accuse the other side of insufficient rigor. Nevertheless, I find general
agreement that CHI papers are the more polished conference papers, at least on their own terms.
8. A causal factor is likely the lack elsewhere of nonprofit professional societies that archive conference
proceedings and produce low-cost journals (Grudin, 2004b).