The Role of Human Factors in Expert Systems Design and Acceptance

The goal of expert systems is to provide competent advice and assistance to users in tasks that require some degree of specialized knowledge. The success of expert systems depends not only on the quality and completeness of the knowledge elicited from experts but also on the compatibility of the recommendations and decisions with the end user's conceptualization of the task. This paper discusses the critical psychological and human factors issues that must be addressed in the design, prototyping, and acceptance of expert systems. Specifically, human factors considerations are addressed from the development, rapid proto typing, and end-user perspectives. Where possible, human factors guidelines are offered for each knowledge-processing stage underlying expert system development, prototyping, evaluation, and acceptance.