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reason that the system for information handling and transfer is being constructed. This is the basis
for most work in systems design, but can be lost, certainly in HCI, once concerns for usability
lead to a focus on interface features. HCI researchers tend to talk in terms of tasks when thinking
about usability, but tasks are not the basic unit of analysis within MIS research.
Usability has become rather narrowly understood to mean effectiveness, efficiency, and satis-
faction for specified users, tasks, and contexts (e.g., Bevan and Macleod, 1994). Work in this area
focuses on determining the criteria for usability and then measuring an interface against them in
a user test. Such work has often been criticized for emphasizing performance outside of normal
usage patterns and situations. Indeed, usability, as a formal concept, has barely made a move from
the HCI world to other areas such as MIS where its relevance is, at first blush, obvious.
Determining criteria for effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction, to use the major ISO 9241
outline of usability, could actually be a real shared concern for MIS and HCI researchers. Under-
standing the forces that shape expectations for task performance with a system will open up areas
of management, ownership, responsibility, and organizational expectations that are not typical of
usability-oriented research. Indeed, a more socio-technical form of analysis of computer use has
embraced usability in this manner with some success (e.g., Eason, 1989; Dillon, 2000), but it
remains the exception rather than the norm in HCI work. By adopting a view of context more typ-
ical of MIS work in considerations of usability, there may be a broadening of the typical HCI
approach that could benefit both communities and lead to a clearer articulation of what makes
people use information systems. Such an articulation would possibly have greater potential for
application to design than survey- or a user test-based approaches.
There are pockets of research in HCI on interface design, navigation in information space, or
task performance in non-work-related activities that have developed strong empirical research
findings and even some well-developed articulation of theoretical frameworks (e.g., Carroll, 1999;
Dillon, 2004). While predictive modeling in HCI is limited (and has something of a bad reputation in
this field) these areas are well enough understood for us to be able to predict user response with great
accuracy in some circumstances. This is, again, one more area in which shared approaches can yield
gains.
By turning our collective attention to information as product with purposive process or poten-
tial, we can start to articulate a more unified view of what problems we share and what methods
we may use to solve them. Seeking a greater perspective than a user and a task, HCI could gain
much from the organizational emphasis embraced by MIS, while yielding significant findings
itself to the MIS concern with end-user response. But to get there we need a basis for sharing
ideas that goes beyond the general terminology and concepts currently employed independently
by each discipline. A shared view of information seems a plausible first candidate for developing
a common platform for exchange.
WHY DO WE CARE?
The goals of research into information system design are many, including practical application of
the results to real organizations, the formulation of better theories of human activities, and the
design of new innovative products that can extend our capabilities as humans. No one discipline
has a monopoly on the issues or can claim to be the birthing ground for invention and design. Yet
disciplines such as MIS and HCI do have legitimate inputs that can help shape better systems.
Harnessing the insights and perspectives of more than one field is problematic but, if successful,
would likely yield real benefits to scholars and practitioners.
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