Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Applications. Advances in Management Information Systems

Applications

Dennis F. Galletta, Yahong Zhang

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138692855
• eBook ISBN: 9781317468400
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

"Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Applications" offers state-of-the-art research by a distinguished set of authors who span the MIS and HCI fields. The original chapters provide authoritative commentaries and in-depth descriptions of research programs that will guide 21st century scholars, graduate students, and industry professionals. Human-Computer Interaction (or Human Factors) in MIS is concerned with the ways humans interact with information, technologies, and tasks, especially in business, managerial, organizational, and cultural contexts. It is distinctive in many ways when compared with HCI studies in other disciplines. The MIS perspective affords special importance to managerial and organizational contexts by focusing on analysis of tasks and outcomes at a level that considers organizational effectiveness. With the recent advancement of technologies and development of many sophisticated applications, human-centeredness in MIS has become more critical than ever before. This work focuses on applications and evaluations including special case studies, specific contexts or tasks, HCI methodological concerns, and the use and adoption process.

CHAPTER 1

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APPLICATIONS OF HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION IN MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

An Introduction

DENNIS GALLETTA AND PING ZHANG

Abstract: In this introduction to the second of the two complementary volumes, we provide a general context of applications of HCI research in MIS and then preview all papers in the second volume. This volume represents applications of HCI from the point of view of MIS research. Applications take particular courses that are carved out by researchers; we find that MIS researchers have taken HCI work in the directions of electronic commerce, team collaboration, culture and globalization, user learning and training, user-centered system development, and information technology in health care. Two reflective pieces at the end of this volume provide ample food for thought for researchers in this area.

Keywords: WWW, Electronic Commerce, Collaboration, Culture and Globalization, Training and Learning, User-Centered System Development, Health Informatics, Research Methodology

INTRODUCTION

This book is one of two complementary volumes that present scholarly works from a variety of thought leaders in HCI, especially those who have ties to the field of management information systems (MIS). The first volume (AMIS Vol. 5) covers concepts, theories and models, and general issues of human-computer interaction studies relevant to MIS. Addressing perspectives on HCI from different disciplines, the first volume’s topics include the nature and evolution of our understanding of who users are; theoretical understanding of how to design systems to support humans; theories and models of cognitive and behavioral aspects of using information technology (IT); and fundamental understanding of the affective, aesthetic, value-sensitive, and social aspects of HCI. This volume (AMIS Vol. 6) covers applications, special case studies, and HCI studies in specific contexts. Topics in this volume include HCI studies in electronic commerce and the Web context; HCI studies for collaboration support; culture and globalization issues; specific HCI issues in IT learning and training; theoretical understandings of system development processes; HCI issues in health care and health informatics; and, finally, methodological concerns in HCI research.

Each volume concludes with thoughtful reflections by well-known authors. In the first volume, Fred Davis discusses the connection between the technology acceptance model (TAM) and HCI, and Jonathan Grudin provides a historical reflection of the development of three closely related disciplines. In the second volume, an early, influential, and visible debate on soft versus hard science in HCI studies is revisited and updated from the perspective of one of the original debaters, John Carroll.

Application of theories, frameworks, and principles is crucial to the HCI-MIS field. Without theory, research would be haphazard, inconsistent, and inconclusive. Because of that undesirable potential, the MIS field has explicit requirements from editors of all of the major journals to provide adequate theory in performing studies.

Applications of human-computer interaction (HCI) theories, frameworks, and principles to MIS problems can be considered to be an organizationally based “proving ground” of sorts for those tools. Theories, frameworks, and principles provide an understanding of an issue or problem, while applications supply not only some partial evidence of whether or not the principles hold, but also some solutions, additional extensions, and new questions.

Therefore, in some ways, this second volume completes the story that was started in the first volume by complementing the perspectives and theories with those selected application areas that several of our most respected colleagues have chosen to examine. In other ways, this volume should stimulate the emergence of new applications and problem areas as it raises new questions—most papers suggest the need for additional research and even new areas of theory. Thus, this volume provides for tomorrow’s conceptual work and applications. Such is the hallmark of a vibrant and progressing field.

RESEARCH CONTEXT

It is important to establish an appropriate disciplinary base for studying HCI issues. In the introduction to the first volume, we assert that HCI is an interdisciplinary research arena. Several papers in this volume underscore the multifaceted and interdisciplinary nature of the field. These papers import theoretical perspectives and tools from a variety of reference disciplines. The astute reader will recognize theories from several areas, including such fields as psychology, sociology, computer science, economics, health science, cultural sciences, and organizational sciences.

There is one interesting benefit to the interdisciplinary nature of HCI. There is a highly publicized and dramatic trend towards outsourcing system development (and many other) tasks to offshore vendors, and hiring is down. At the same time, enrollments in systems-related academic programs have declined sharply. Fortunately, Schwartz (2005) provides a preview of an upcoming government report that indicates that “work that crosses multiple disciplines” and requires creativity, ingenuity, and, most interestingly, “integration of business processes with IT,” is less likely to be cast offshore in the foreseeable future. The HCI designer’s task fits with all of these notions.

In addition to being multidisciplinary, HCI is also a strong practical and application-oriented area. Applications requiring interactions with human users can be found everywhere in our surroundings, and are therefore of significant concern to both researchers and practitioners in a wide variety of disciplines. Long-term efforts are under way to pull these researchers and practitioners under a single metaphorical umbrella where duplication of effort can be avoided and synergies can be exploited (DevCon, 2005; Galletta et al., 2005; Instone, 2005). The MIS field’s main academic association, the Association for Information Systems (AIS), is participating in the dialog and movement. Other professionals include ergonomists, graphic designers, business analysts, product designers, engineers, and health professionals. There are few fields that escape the task of designing for a user’s experience, and the time has come to share important findings among these fields.

While efforts are under way to pool resources, the disciplines will remain distinct. Ergonomists will continue to examine physical impacts in human factors work, graphic designers will retain their skill base on layout and presentation, and mechanical engineers will not yield their ability to analyze materials that will go into a physical product. At the same time, it is striking that all of them need to be concerned with usability and users’ experience of their products. All need to ask if people will understand the product with little training, if the product will behave as users expect, and if the product will be appealing. These concerns are indeed also shared by systems designers in the MIS field. What distinguishes MIS researchers is the organizational context.

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Table 1.1

Framework for Applying Theory

	The Academic Researcher	The Practitioner
Goals	Generalization	Problem solving
Activities	Theory development and testing	System design and evaluation

Both MIS researchers and practitioners are interested in the organizational context. That context provides a notion of an organization’s strategic goals and users’ tasks. For researchers, the organizational context drives the choice of research problems and suggests methods for learning more. In a similar fashion, for practitioners, the organizational context bounds the problems that are examined and leads to approaches for solving them. The differentiating factor is that researchers are most often interested in acquiring generalizable knowledge, while designers are focused on providing a solution to the organization, with systems that have improved usability or enjoyment.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows: First, the notion of applying theory is described. Then each of the papers in this volume will be described, in order by section.

APPLYING THEORY

Theory is applied in a multitude of ways by researchers and practitioners, and there are important differences in the purpose and the application itself. Each part of the framework in Table 1.1 will now be discussed.

Generalization versus Problem Solving

Both academic researchers and practitioners are concerned with issues that arise at the organizational, system, user, and task level. What differentiates them is the level of generalization and problem solving that each desires.

Academic researchers who study a particular organizational system, user, or task are interested in what it will teach them about future systems, users, and tasks. Generalizability is of primary concern for building models and publishing papers. If the knowledge is not generalizable in some way, it is unlikely that other researchers will take an interest in that knowledge. Lessons learned can be shared with others and progress can be made for the entire field.

On the other hand, practitioners want to solve organizational problems. They need to build a system or make a particular decision. Sometimes theories published in journals are not immediately useful or visible to practitioners. However, some research undoubtedly filters through to practitioners, as many attend conferences, hear presentations by researchers, or read materials generated by researchers. In that case, pieces that they find useful could drive their problem solving.

The difference between the researcher’s and practitioner’s purpose is actually unexpectedly unifying. Applying theory to an organization’s problems should allow practitioners to develop systems that are responsive to the needs of the organization and its members. This puts MIS in a unique position to provide the necessary organizational focus. Stated another way, MIS needs HCI and HCI needs MIS, as mentioned in the introduction to the first volume. It is worthwhile to examine each part of this assertion in some detail.

HCI Needs MIS

Historically, HCI research has included some explicit consideration of organizational issues, especially with respect to managing a project for greatest usability. For example, the classic piece by Gould and Lewis (1985) specifies that the first step in designing usable systems is identifying users and their tasks. Failing to gain such an understanding could lead to vexing design problems, such as presenting dialog boxes or prompts that use terminology unfamiliar to users, or requesting users to follow steps that they cannot find in any documentation or training materials. Equally as vexing, designers sometimes err by providing detailed instructions for performing well-known tasks such as selecting File-Save to save a file or File-Print to print a document. Amidst the obvious instructions, it might be difficult to find the key aspect of help needed, or that key aspect might have not been provided.

Such a focus has existed in the MIS field for a long time in work on systems analysis and design. The organizational context for practical problems is often provided by a business analyst (i.e., an MIS person). A business analyst is a compelling candidate for designing a user’s experience. He can speak the user’s business language to gain a quicker and more accurate representation of the task. He can develop more effective design specifications with richer organizational knowledge. He can produce test goals and benchmarks that are meaningful to the organization. He can determine if usability is of adequate quality for release to users.

From the perspective of applying theory, the MIS field has models that would benefit the HCI field by providing such context more systematically. For instance, the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al., 2003) contains both effort expectancy and performance expectancy. As described by Davis (2006), the former had been called “ease of use” and the latter “usefulness” in the past. In this model, performance expectancy, along with outcomes of these expectancies, provide useful context for effort expectancy. Effort expectancy by itself seems to provide a focus that is incomplete.

As an example, the famous “Ernestine” project (Gray et al., 1992) provided evidence that support calls could be handled more quickly by avoiding purchase of a new system. The new system had touted an “HCI friendly” design (with an easier-to-use interface and faster connection speed), but in reality, several steps that were previously done in parallel (computer and human) would now have to be done sequentially. Broadening the analysis to organizational needs for overall efficiency helped provide the proper decision, and helped save several million dollars. Further, additional analysis of customer satisfaction, company image, and IT strategy might have provided crucial input to the decision as well. The context provided by MIS is valuable and necessary, hence, HCI needs MIS.

MIS Needs HCI

The converse is also true, that MIS needs HCI. We have models that would, and do, benefit from more detailed notions in HCI. Again, using the UTAUT (Venkatesh et al., 2003) example, neither MIS researchers nor practitioners should stop after making an overall assessment of effort expectancy. They should make use of HCI principles and theoretical perspectives for their application work. MIS researchers should drill deeper and specify more elements of usability. For example, some systems are easy to learn but hard to use (putting everything into deeply nested but understandable menus) while others are hard to learn but easy to use (forcing memorization of shortcuts). While that crucial notion has received broad coverage in the HCI literature, it has not in the MIS literature. Therefore, for similar deepening of issues that might not be explored in the MIS literature, MIS needs HCI.

DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF THEORY

Theory is addressed in different ways by researchers and practitioners. While researchers attempt to develop and test theory, practitioners will use theory to design systems or evaluate products.

Researchers have provided theory in many areas, but that work is not complete. Likewis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Series Editor's Introduction
• Foreword
• 1. Applications of Human-Computer Interaction in Management Information Systems: An Introduction
• Part I. Electronic Commerce and the Web
• Part II. Collaboration Support
• Part III. Culture and Globalization
• Part IV. Learning and Training
• Part V. User-Centered IS Development
• Part VI. Health Care/Health Informatics
• Part VII. Methodological Issues and Reflections
• Editors and Contributors
• Series Editor
• Index