Human factors in the development of a family of plant data communication terminals

This paper has describeds ome of the human factors work done in the development of the IBM 3640 Terminal Family. Early survey work on data collection problems in existing installations helped to establish the design requirements of environmental protection and good feedback. Comprehensive iterative design made it possible to meet the goals set forth in the requirements. Tradeoff studies resulted in the selection of a pattern or set of optimal components such as the magnetic slot reader for time and attendance recording. Finally, extensive human factors testing provided the assurance that factory personnelc ould input data into the system easily and with acceptable speed and accuracy.