Technical and human engineering problems in connecting terminals to a time-sharing system

Abstract

Today, an increasing number of computer systems are used interactively by their user communities. Interactive use of computers, involving more prolonged man-machine contact than non-interactive use, requires a well human engineered user-system interface. The interactive user's performance---his rate of doing work and his ability and desire to utilize system capability---is a sensitive function of the success of this human engineering. In turn, the computer system's effectiveness depends on achieving a satisfactory level of user performance with reasonable efficiency.