DESIGNING INFORMATION SYSTEMS FOR USER ABILITIES AND TASKS: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

With the many choices that can be built into information systems, it is possible to customize such systems for users. This customization may be based on the tasks that users are accomplishing, or on the personal characteristics of users, or a combination of these factors. An experiment is reported in which detailed logging of use of experimental information systems was used to determine the optimal configuration of the systems for each user. Tasks were varied, and the cognitive abilities of users were tested to assess one important personal characteristic. The results showed that it was possible to create an optimal configuration to match the cognitive abilities of users, but that it was more difficult to assess which configuration was the best match for specific tasks. The person‐in‐task interaction proved to be the least powerful indicator of design configurations. These results suggest that usable information systems can be created for users by careful analysis of the interaction of design features with personal characteristics such as cognitive abilities.