Making computers people-literate

the long version

More than 80 percent of American office workers now use a computer in their work. But when a system is poorly designed, organizations can waste enormous amounts of time and money trying to make it work effectively. Elaine Weiss offers practical guidelines and techniques for uncovering, diagnosing, and correcting problems in the user interface - the menus, icons, data-entry screens, on-line help, and messages through which the computer communicates with the user and the user with the computer. Weiss provides twenty-six generously illustrated checklists to guide human performance technologists, instructional designers, trainers, and human resource professionals through each step of the process - from initial surveys and interviews to making redesign recommendations and measuring results. By focusing on four key areas of human-computer interaction - presentation, conversation, navigation, and explanation - Weiss demonstrates how computers can be made to serve the user - not the other way around.