A flexible human-computer interface for accessing and interpreting human performance data

A flexible human-computer interface was developed for a multidocument ergonomics database to accommodate a variety of users with different backgrounds and levels of expertise. Multiple access and navigational pathways are provided to address users' varying needs and interests, including browsable outlines that take different perspectives on the data, an engineering-oriented question checklist, full-text searching and extensive hyperlinking within and between documents. Users can customize their interactions with the database by selecting text or graphic presentation formats, attaching notes to database components, creating bookmarks and hypertext links, and saving the current work context. Special tools to help users understand the technical material in the database include multimedia tutorial demonstrations of perceptual concepts and effects as well as a Perception and Performance Prototyper (P/sup 3/) that lets users interactively explore selected behavioral phenomena and the factors that influence them.