User-Centered Systems Design: A Brief History - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 34

required by the working environment and/or training and selection are employed to
modify the user population to provide the most advantageous fit between the user
and the technology.
We can borrow from Rodger's (cited in Holloway 1991 ) encapsulation in the
1950s which was summarized as ''fitting the man to the job and the job to the
man'' 1 (FMJ/FJM). This is broken down into:
Fitting the man to the job through
Occupational guidance
Personnel selection
Training and development
and fitting the job to the man through
Methods design
Equipment design
Negotiation of working conditions and (physical and social) rewards.
Although Rodger's definition is limited, as it does not take into account the
organization in which the person works, we can see this useful encapsulation for
occupational psychology as extended by consideration of issues dealt with by
human factors.
The concept of 'fit' is a useful one. For physical devices and designed envi-
ronments, the term fit is used literally. For example, on amusement park rides there
are height restrictions—children have to wait till they are a certain height and
weight before they are allowed on rides. However, the concept of fit is also used
when people need to conform the way they act and think to accommodate how
tasks are laid out in interfaces. Sometimes this is appropriate, but sometimes
alternative designs which modify themselves to accommodate human traits would
be more effective. For example, Figs. 2.2 and 2.3 show two example web sites that
invite the user to fit themselves to the interfaces, suggesting they modify their
behavior to the interfaces. In Fig. 2.2 the web site can recognize that users often
put their email address in (e.g., [e-mail]), but rather than remove the domain
for the user (@psu.edu), it instructs the user to do so. Figure 2.3 shows a low-cost
airline web site where the user is trying to find a cheap flight from Edinburgh to
Naples in the run up to Christmas. The results on the 3 day view and 3weekview
tabs simply show there is nothing available. Even the Year view tab only shows the
cheapest prices against the months when flights take place. The user then has to
infer from the results on the Year view tab that the last flights take place in
October. The problem arises because the user is thinking in terms of flight dates—
1 We note that the language at the time used the word man to include both genders, a practice
that, appropriately, is no longer acceptable.