Information Technology: A challenge to the Human Factors Society?

In his presidential address at the annual meeting of the Human Factors Society, Julian Christensen urged the members of the society to spread the gospel and to persuade the members of other professional societies such as psychologists,sociologists and engineers to join the Human Factors Society, the argument being that advanced technology requires a cross-disciplinary approach to human factors problems.

In the present note, I would like to support this presidential effort. In fact, I will go further in that direction and argue that the present fast pace of information technology threatens to overrun the methodological capability of the human factors profession. In the following sections, I will briefly review this development, as I see it, and outline the approach to human factors problems needed in advanced technological systems.