Following a successful demonstration of the applicability of human factors
guidelines to the design of aircraft maintenance documentation (Patel et al
., 1994, Applied Ergonomics, 25 (5) 286-293) a natural extension was to rep
lace paper-based workcards with a computer system. Using additional human f
actors guidelines for design of computer systems, a prototype hypertext sys
tem was developed for use on a portable computer. A number of different wor
kcards were accommodated, and an evaluation made of the computer-based work
card against both original and improved paper-based workcards. For the task
studied, eight inspectors rated the computer-based system highly on scales
derived from the guidelines. The computer-based system was a significant i
mprovement over the original paper-based workcards.
Relevance to industry
Process documentation and work instructions need to be used in many industr
ies, particularly those certified under the ISO-9000 series of standards. A
n obvious way to improve the management of documentation is to deliver it t
o the user electronically. This paper shows how the user interface to such
a system can be designed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserve
d.