Using Norman's Seven Stages of User Action Model

David C. Brown, Ph.D.
Department of Computer Science, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

9 September 2005
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Fuller Labs 320

The "potential support ratio" measures how many people aged 15-64 are there to provide support for each person over 65.

The ratio was 12:1 in 1950, it dropped to 9:1 in 2000 and it's projected to be 4:1 by 2050 [Ian Hosking, Scientific Generics, 2005].

If we don't improve the usability of products and computer systems, then, in the future, older, less capable people will need to rely more and more on very small numbers of people for assistance.

Norman's model of the seven stages of user action provides a way of evaluating the potential for problems when users interact with interfaces.

Norman's model can be coupled with descriptions of disabilities to predict which older users will find a particular interface difficult, and why.

David Brown is Professor of Computer Science and has a collaborative appointment as Professor of Mechanical Engineering at WPI. He has B.Sc., M.Sc., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, is a member of the ACM, IEEE Computer Society, AAAI, and an elected member of IFIP WG 5.2. He is the Editor in Chief of the Cambridge UP journal AIEDAM: AI in Engineering, Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, and is on the Editorial Boards of several other journals. He is a Vice Chair of the Design Computing and Cognition conferences, and was Local Chair for AID'00. Dr. Brown's research interests include computational models of engineering design, and the applications of Artificial Intelligence to Engineering and Manufacturing.

Host: Michael Gennert

Refreshments will be served.

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Last modified: Sep 27, 2006, 16:05 EDT