dir@cbosgd.UUCP (Dean Radin) (11/01/83)
TWO QUERIES: Is anyone aware of any references on the state of Japanese human factors work in computing systems? The Japanese written languages (Katakana, Hiragana, Kanji) are rather difficult to display on CRTs and enter by keyboard. I wonder how the Japanese are addressing this. On a related topic, most of the thrust of HF in CS has been in expert systems, user-friendly interfaces, etc. -- all designed to REDUCE human labor. Has anyone thought of what it means to apply HF in CS to labor-intensive societies wishing to use computers? Our international customers are happy to get computers and automation, but they also warn us that the systems should not displace workers. Do we (1) ignore HF in such systems, (2) actively apply HF knowledge to make the jobs more difficult, thus requiring more human labor (arggh!), or (3) use HF to optimize each job given that full automation is not being taken advantage of? Comments? Dean Radin - AT&T Bell Labs - Columbus
dave@rocksvax.UUCP (Dave Sewhuk) (11/04/83)
I have seen a Japanese Ink Jet word processing station. It consists of
about 2500 keys and has a CRT display. They did an amazing good job using
24x24 pixel fonts. The keyboard is not like what you think, it is an
elastimer sheet with each "key" consisting of a 0.1" sq characters. You hit
the characters/symbols with a stylus. I am told that the keyboard is layed
out phonetically. The whole US style alphabet is 1 row long. This includes
upper/lower case + numbers and some extra symbols in alphabetic order.
The disk system was in a style of "pick a function" hit the "execute function".
Files/documents are stored/retrieved like that and catalogs are displayed like
that. The "menu" were larger "keys" on the keyboard located on one side of
the keyboard. By trial and error I was able to figure out things, even
though I do not understand Japanese, we had the training manual but never
had it translated.
All in all I thought it was layed out nicely, placed to put your work, the
stylus thing, extra font packs, etc....
--
Dave
Arpa: Sewhuk.HENR@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
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