Susan Stewart

Date of Award

12-1994

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

First Advisor

Kim Sydow Campbell, PhD

Second Advisor

Michael M. Shoukat, PhD

Abstract

The DoD has budgeted over $9.8 billion for 1995 for information technology, yet many government office workers let their existing systems sit idle. This thesis explores why these computers are sitting idle. This researcher's initial hypothesis was that certain features of the human-computer interface can positively or negatively affect efficiency, retention, and satisfaction level of workers. Although some research is being done in this area, interfaces continue to be of poor quality, especially in the DoD, where long procurement cycles, forced purchases, and limited budgets result in out-of-date software. Intuitively most programmers know the human-computer interface impacts on a person's ability to learn, but to what degree? This study is designed to test four basic human-computer interface features: color, white space, verb tense, and parallelism. In addition, it is designed to test the interaction between visual and linguistic features, color and verb tense, as well as between white space and parallelism.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GIR-LAR-94D-6

DTIC Accession Number

ADA288908

Comments

The author's Vita page is omitted.

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Logistics and Acquisition Management of the Air Force Institute of Technology.

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