ABSTRACT
In a document published recently entitled: ‘Factors Affecting Degree of Automation in Test and Checkout Equipment’, which, among other things, reviews the problems of allocation of functions, Swain and Wohl assert:’… A rather stark conclusion emerges: There is no adequate systematic methodology in existence for allocating functions (in this case, test and checkout functions) between man and machine. This lack, in fact, is probably the central problem in human factors engineering today. … It is interesting to note that ten years of research and applications experience have failed to bring us closer to our goal than did the landmark article by Fitts in 1951’ [5, p. 9]. Two competent and experienced observers summarize ten years of hard and intensive labour as having basically failed. This is a serious problem. Why this failure?
