Publication statistics
Pub. period:1974-1996
Pub. count:10
Number of co-authors:15
Co-authors
Number of publications with 3 favourite co-authors:
Hal W. Hendrick:1Colin G. Drury:1Jack I. Laveson:1 Productive colleagues
Alphonse Chapanis's 3 most productive colleagues in number of publications:
Colin G. Drury:32David Meister:22Hal W. Hendrick:15
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Alphonse ChapanisPh.D, Yale, 1943
For description, see this page from the Johns Hopkins University Gazette on the occasion of Dr Chapanis's death: http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2002/14oct02/14obit.html
Publications by Alphonse Chapanis (bibliography)
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Chapanis, Alphonse (1996): Human Factors in Systems Engineering. John Wiley and Sons
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Chapanis, Alphonse and Shafer, John B. (1995): Human Factors Methods. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 39th Annual Meeting 1995. .
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Chapanis, Alphonse and Budurka, William J. (1990): Specifying Human-Computer Interface Requirements. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 9 (6) pp. 479-492.
“Human factors principles are often not incorporated into the design of human-computer interfaces for a number of reasons, among them: Human factors is not part of main stream engineering, human factors has no binding way to influence development, and present guidelines and standards are too general. This article describes the rationale and technical features of a specification that provides a solution to these and other difficulties. The specification documents the results of translating standards and guidelines into project-specific requirements. Designs that meet requirements should be 'easy to use' and can be produced by designers without any human factors expertise. It puts human factors directly in the main stream of development and makes human factors more directly responsible and accountable for the usability of systems.”
© All rights reserved Chapanis and Budurka and/or Taylor and Francis
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Smith, Leighton L., Banks, William W., Chapanis, Alphonse, Drury, Colin G., Hendrick, Hal W., Laveson, Jack I., Meister, David and Cott, Harold P. Van (1987): The Case of the Missing Human Factors Data. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 31st Annual Meeting 1987. pp. 1042-1043.
“Human factors practitioners are continuously running into inadequate or missing data. This situation prevents or impedes the resolving of design dilemmas at hand. Why is this so? Is it because there are not enough researchers working in the empirical community? Are the empiricists not generating enough data? Perhaps the data that are being compiled are unusable. Is it because the data are redundant? Is it because the data are incompatible with other data sets? Are the current data sets too specific, i.e., ungeneralizable to broad applications? Or are the data that are available invalid, i.e. generated improperly? Are there any avenues that human factors specialists can pursue which would resolve this problem? Are there any policies or practices which could be developed which, if followed, would ensure more effective and usable data in the future? Is there any interest among Human Factors Society members to advocate any of the suggested activities? If so, how should this interest be best utilized? The panel will be represented by members from the practitioning community, the research community, and the academic community. The panel will be comprised of members of the Human Factors Society who will bring with them over a century of accumulated experience and thousands of published pages on human factors topics.”
© All rights reserved Smith et al. and/or Human Factors Society
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Sullivan, Marc A. and Chapanis, Alphonse (1983): Human Factoring a Text Editor Manual. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 2 (2) pp. 113-125.
“This article describes how we rewrote a manual for a text editor following human-factors guidelines and revised it according to the results of developmental testing. The new manual was then evaluated with secretaries who were given either the original or the rewritten manual and asked to do the two editing tasks. We measured the quality of the finished text; the number of different commands used; the amount and type of assistance requested; and attitudes towards the manuals, program and tasks. There were significant differences between the two groups of users on the performance measures and on attitudes towards the manuals in favour of the new manual. We propose a model of user-documentation interaction and suggest a methodology for preparing computer documentation.”
© All rights reserved Sullivan and Chapanis and/or Taylor and Francis
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Pagerey, Peter D. and Chapanis, Alphonse (1983): Communication Control and Leadership in Telecommunications by Small Groups. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 2 (2) pp. 179-196.
“Sixteen teams of four persons each solved four realistic problems, one on each of 4 days, by communicating over a closed-circuit television system with an audio capacity. Teams were assigned to conditions which either did or did not have centrally controlled switching so that only one person could talk at a time, and which either did or did not have one subject appointed to help perform some of the experimenter's tasks. Teams were paid bonuses depending on how well they solved each problem. Dependent measures include time to solution, the quality of solution, measures of verbal communication and questionnaire responses. Teams in the switch condition took longer to solved problems and used fewer but longer messages than did subjects in the non-switched condition. There were no striking differences between the quality of the solutions achieved in the two conditions. Designating a helper for the experiment produced fewer significant results than anticipated. It appears that mechanical variables such as those manipulated here are less important than other variables, perhaps personality, in the emergence of leadership.”
© All rights reserved Pagerey and Chapanis and/or Taylor and Francis
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Roemer, Joan M. and Chapanis, Alphonse (1982): Learning Performance and Attitudes as a Function of the Reading Grade Level of a Computer-Presented Tutorial. In: Nichols, Jean A. and Schneider, Michael L. (eds.) Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems March 15-17, 1982, Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States. pp. 239-244.
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Zoltan, Elizabeth and Chapanis, Alphonse (1982): What Do Professional Persons Think About Computers?. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 1 (1) pp. 55-68.
“A 64-item questionnaire was distributed through the mail to certified public accountants (CPAs), lawyers, pharmacists and physicians in the Baltimore City area to determine their experience with, and attitudes towards, electronic computers. Return rates were not significantly different for the four groups and averaged 27.7 per cent for all groups combined. The data analyses are based on 521 replies. Analyses of the background information supplied by the four groups show that CPAs in general have more training on, are more familiar with, and have greater access to computers than do the other professional groups. Lawyers in general have the least exposure to computers. A factor analysis of the responses to the attitude items yielded six factors. Three of the more important clusters of attitudes are associated with: (a) a view of computers as efficient and beneficial machines; (b) dissatisfaction with their depersonalizing nature; and (c) enthusiasm for working with computers. Finally, a multivariate analysis of variance indicated significant differences in attitudes among the four groups. CPAs and pharmacists tend to view computers more positively than do the other two groups. Lawyers are most likely to describe computers with negative terms, such as depersonalizing, formal and difficult.”
© All rights reserved Zoltan and Chapanis and/or Taylor and Francis
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Kelly, Michael J. and Chapanis, Alphonse (1977): Limited Vocabulary Natural Language Dialogue. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 9 (4) pp. 479-501.
“Two-person teams of subjects worked at realistic problem-solving tasks by communicating through a teletypewriter system. One third of the teams had to limit their vocabulary to words on lists of 300 words, one-third were required to use words on lists of 500 words, and one third of the teams worked with no vocabulary restrictions. Each team solved a different problem on each of three successive days. Dependent measures were taken on four classes of variables: (1) time to solve the problem, (2) measures of overt behavior, (3) measures of verbal output, and (4) errors made by subjects who used the restricted vocabularies. The main finding of the experiment was that subjects who worked with the restricted vocabularies interacted and solved problems as successfully as their counterparts who worked with no vocabulary restrictions. The results indicate that, at least for the kinds of problems tested here, it is possible to develop vocabularies of limited size that can be used effectively in man-computer communications.”
© All rights reserved Kelly and Chapanis and/or Academic Press
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Ochsman, Robert B. and Chapanis, Alphonse (1974): The Effects of 10 Communication Modes on the Behavior of Teams During Co-Operative Problem-Solving. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 6 (5) pp. 579-619.
“Sixty teams of two college students each solved credible "real world" problems co-operatively. Conversations were carried on in one of 10 modes of communication: (1) typewriting only, (2) handwriting only, (3) handwriting and typewriting, (4) typewriting and video, (5) handwriting and video, (6) voice only, (7) voice and typewriting, (8) voice and handwriting, (9) voice and video, and (10) a "communication-rich mode." Performance was assessed on three classes of dependent measures: time to solution, behavioral measures of activity, and linguistic measures. Significant and meaningful differences among the communication modes were found in each of the three classes of dependent variable. This paper is concerned mainly with the results of the activity analyses. Behavior was recorded in 21 different categories from which three additional composite categories were formed. The analyses of the behavioral data yielded 51 statistically significant terms. The data support the conclusion that the single most important decision in the design of a telecommunications link should center around the inclusion of a voice channel.”
© All rights reserved Ochsman and Chapanis and/or Academic Press
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