Articles

Leading ArticleS

• Leading Article: Human Performance at the Computer
• Introduction to the Highlight Topic "Human Performance at the Computer"

Introductory Articles

• Performance – Merely A Technical Problem?
• The Three Pillars of Human Performance at the Computer – Which One Fits Best?
• Have You Ever Heard of Performance-Oriented (UI) Design?
• What Matters Most?

Human Performance at the Computer

• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: Making Applications More Responsive
• Part 3: Perceived Performance
• Part 4: Towards Performance-Oriented UI Guidelines

Human Performance at the Computer

Special: Highlight Topic 2 – published November 13, 2008

We would like to continue the tradition of a highlight topic on the SAP Design Guild with a collection of articles covering different aspects of human performance at the computer. Again, we hope that having related articles in one place will make it easier for our visitors to catch up on a certain topic.

Don't we far too often find ourselves sitting in front of our computers waiting for them to respond and let us continue our work? Since the beginnings of personal computers at the end of the 1970s computer CPUs have become thousands of times faster. Does that mean we "feel" that computers are faster today? Not really, often it seems that we wait even more now than we did in the old days. There are a number of reasons for this paradox: Today computers do a lot of things at once – so many things that this may easily outweigh the increase in CPU speed.

Speed or system performance is one important aspect to consider. Other factors are the performance of the human users and the system's responsiveness. Last but not least, subjective aspects come also play a part because there is a difference between the objective performance of a system and how users judge its performance – known as perceived performance.

The articles offered in this highlight topic have been published in different areas of the SAP Design Guild: some as editorials, some as design tidbits, and one in the Books&People section. Since the articles have been published over a period of about a year, they also reflect differences in the depth of understanding of the topic. Some of the articles have therefore been slightly updated in order to eliminate out the biggest contradictions. Other adaptations are due to the articles' new placement within this highlight topic.

We have also provided a few new articles, including a glossary (in progress), a list of references and links, and a collection of performance analogies. We hope that we can also follow the tradition of the first highlight topic Universal Usability and add a few new articles over the course of the next year.

Read the leading article Human Performance at the Computer by Ulrich Kreichgauer, SAP User Experience.

As a starter, read also the article Introduction to the Highlight Topic "Human Performance at the Computer".

Further Highlight Topics

• Highlight Topic 1: Universal Usability (12/06)

Further Information

If All Else Fails...

• Waiting at the Computer: Busy Indicators and System Feedback – Part 1
• Waiting at the Computer: Busy Indicators and System Feedback – Part 2
• Waiting at the Computer: Busy Indicators and System Feedback – Part 3

References and More

• Book Review: GUI Bloopers 2.0
• Links and References for Human Performance at the Computer
• Performance Glossary in progress
• Performance Analogies