Information systems may be regarded as an interaction of people and machines. In the past, however, human factors took second place. Nowadays, the need to provide: (i) a functionality that meets the user's needs and (ii) an ergonomic human-machine interface - which takes the way people would like to solve their tasks into consideration - are both recognised as primary concerns by the designers of information systems. The two major themes of this book are as follows: - As new methods and rigorous techniques come into use, the proportion of information systems development effort devoted to analysis and design is set to increase, and the study of human factors also to increase in importance. Methods, representation schemes, tools and environments cannot be applied without a systematic understanding of their use by analysts and designers in development teams. The book presents research results in this area. - Much study in software development has concentrated on a human factors perspective of the `end user'. However, this work has to be placed in the overall context of systematic analysis and design of information systems. The book presents some new developments.
