Behavioral Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the conduct of research to guide the development of more useful and usable computer systems. Experimental research in human-computer interaction involves varying the design or deployment of systems, observing the consequences, and inferring from observations what to do differently. For such research to be effective, it must be owned—instituted, trusted and heeded—by those who control the development of new systems. Thus, managers, marketers, systems engineers, project leaders, and designers as well as human factors specialists are important participants in behavioral human-computer interaction research. This chapter is intended as much for those with backgrounds in computer science, engineering, or management as for human factors researchers and cognitive systems designers. It is argued in this chapter that the special goals and difficulties of human-computer interaction research make it different from most psychological research as well as from traditional computer engineering research. The main goal, the improvement of complex, interacting human-computer systems, requires behavioral research but is not sufficiently served by the standard tools of experimental psychology such as factorial controlled experiments on pre-planned variables. The chapter contains about equal quantities of criticism of inappropriate general research methods, description of valuable methods, and prescription of specific useful techniques.