ABSTRACT
As outlined in Chapter 2, the standard philosophy underlying much human factors work is that of iterative user-centred design involving the development of prototypes and their subsequent evaluation, leading to further prototyping and so forth. While such an approach, properly executed, makes the development of usable technology more likely, it is a non-optimum process which can prove extremely expensive in terms of time and resources. Few design companies therefore are willing to invest the necessary effort to iterate through several cycles (Hannigan and Herring, 1986). This had led to the attempted reduction in the number of iterations needed and a move to bring human factors inputs into the design process earlier (Eason, 1988; Catterall et al., 1989). Current emphasis is on rapid prototyping facilities which allow designers to mock-up disposable simulations quickly and cheaply. These can help, but even then the quality of the original prototype is dictated by the accuracy of the designer’s conceptualization of the intended users, as outlined in Chapter 2. This is an area that requires much human factors work.
