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From: avr@hou2d.UUCP (Adam V. Reed)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng,news.groups
Subject: Re: comp.cog-eng
Message-ID: <1486@hou2d.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Jul-87 10:30:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: hou2d.1486
Posted: Fri Jul 24 10:30:05 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jul-87 14:34:39 EDT
References: <386@sdics.ucsd.EDU>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel
Lines: 23
Summary: One group is not enough
Xref: mnetor comp.cog-eng:222 news.groups:1277

In article <386@sdics.ucsd.EDU>, norman@sdics.UUCP writes:
> Sounds like a typical problem in human factors/ergonomics/
> human-computer interaction: selecting a name.
> Now, it is well known that one should not select design parameters
> simply by thinking about it.  One must either use previously accepted
> standards or do some experiments.

The standards may be de-facto ones: most people in the field refer to
themselves as "user interface developers"; almost none call themselves
"cognitive engineers". Another valid technique for correcting a
defective design is to diagnose the bugs, and fix them. Cognitive
engineering is strongly related to both ergonomics in general, and to
psychology. People working in those fields post in comp.cog-eng
because it is the "closest thing" to what they need but don't have,
namely separate groups for those disciplines. I think that
comp.cog-eng needs to be split into three related but separate groups:

	comp.user-interface
	sci.ergonomics
	sci.psychology

I have added news.groups to the heading.
					Adam Reed (hou2d!avr)