Modeling Human–System Interaction

PREFACE

This book has evolved from a professional lifetime of thinking about models and, more generally, thinking about thinking. I have previously written seven books over a span of 42 years, and they all have all talked about models, except for one privately published as a memoir for my family. One even dealt with the concept of God and whether God is amenable to modeling (mostly no). So what is new or different in the present book?

The book includes quite a bit of the philosophy of science and the scientific method as a precursor to discussing human–system models. Many aspects of modeling are discussed: the purpose and uses of models for doing science and thinking about the world and examples of different kinds of models in what has come to be called human–system interaction or cognitive engineering. Along with new material, the book also includes many modeling ideas previously discussed by the author. When not otherwise cited, illustrations were drawn by the author for the book or were original works under the author’s copyright or previously declared by the author to be in public domain prior to publication.

I gratefully acknowledge contributions to these ideas from many colleagues I have worked with, especially Neville Moray, who has been my friend and invaluable critic over the years, and Bill Rouse, who shepherded the book as Wiley series editor. Modeling contributions of past coauthors Russ Ferrell, Bill Verplank, Gunnar Johannsen, Toshi Inagaki, Raja Parasuraman, ...