New Forms of Collaboration for NII Usability

Abstract

Massive investments in office technology during the 1980s had little impact on business productivity. One of the key issues for productivity is the usability of the technology; relatively small changes in usability, considered as both ease of use and utility, can have large effects on the adoption of a technology. One challenge for human factors activities supporting the National Information Infrastructure is that the question "Who is the user?" is too broad, and another is that current technological constraints are rapidly evolving and dissolving. Market research and anthropological and social psychological techniques are required to identify groups with similar characteristics and needs and to understand the daily lives of those groups.