Nine Interaction Guidelines for the Design of Human Computer Interaction in Detailed Scheduling Systems

With the help of modern software, the scheduling process in many fields can be automated nearly completely. However, these systems often provide insufficient interaction possibilities for the scheduler to incorporate his own expert knowledge. Finding and implementing suitable planning decisions is often a time-consuming and error-prone process that is not supported by the computer. This deficiency can impair the practicability of the schedules and hence the benefit of the planning system considerably. In this paper, we deduce 9 interaction guidelines that form a concept for the design of human-computer-interaction in scheduling systems. Unlike approaches that extend general HCI guidelines we derive the rules from recent research on human decision making. From that perspective we define computer support for both the formation and the implementation of planning decisions by the scheduler. The results of a user test show that the concept allows an effective incorporation of the human scheduler. Furthermore the concept can be applied to any detailed scheduling problem.