The user survey as a basis for developing a system for controls and operation

Holger Oortmann

The design of systems and products fit for use by humans will play a key role in future technical design, and will be more and more significant as a marketing factor. Ease of learning will play an increasingly important role here, as well as an important economic consideration. If the user has to be spared the trouble of learning and gathering more knowledge just to use the control and operation system, it will be very important to tune the communication between man and machine to suit the needs of both partners in communication, instead of expecting human ‘flexibility’ to adjust to the requirements of the machine, as has been the practice till now. This means that the future users will have to be involved to a greater degree in the development process. This article shows how end users can actually be integrated into the development process.