Database Systems: Human Factors in a Data Access

Intended functions of many interesting electronic database systems require humans to ask questions and be satisfied by the answers. This is no easy matter. Even a system that stores and retrieves vast quantities of information with great efficiency can fail utterly to satisfy its human partners. Somehow, information systems must be made to provide what users want, even when the users don't really know, or can't say very clearly. It seems fairly obvious that, to do this, database system design will have to incorporate systematic knowledge about people, as well as knowledge of hardware, algorithms, and data structures. The knowledge needed about people will be human-factors psychology, but of a somewhat new kind. In the past, machines (even electronic machines, like gun controllers or PBXs) primarily augmented people's perceptual and muscular abilities, and improving person-machine cooperation required psychological optimization of displays and control devices. Electronic databases will augment--serve as prosthetics for-- people's memories and problem-solving abilities. The collaboration 2487