The goals and methods of computer users

Int. J. Man-Machine Studies (1982) 17, 375-399

The goals and methods of computer users KATHY LANGt AND, ROBIN AULD

University of Birmingham, U.K.

AND

TERRY LANGt

The Polytechnic, Wolverhampton, U.K.

(Received 31 August 1981)

Computer users who are not professional programmers need guidance in order to make effective use of computer systems. In practice, they seek this guidance from many sources; the focus of this study is on the help users give to each other. Three groups with differing histories of guidance-seeking were studied. Their goals and methods in computing and in guidance-seeking were found to be oriented towards achieving a satisfactory (rather than an optimum) balance between the costs to them, in terms of time and personal factors, and the benefits, namely a discipline-oriented solution to their problems. Suggestions are made for decreasing the costs to users of good guidance and increasing the quality of low-cost guidance.

1. Aims and methods of enquiry

The aim of the project reported here is to evaluate methods of guiding computer users, and to propose good strategies for guidance, in situations where the users are not professional computer people, but need to write programs and use applications software as a tool in their research in other fields. Our major work has concentrated on the interfaces between these users and the guidance given by their Computer Centre. This guidance is provided largely by professional computer people, usually at the explicit request of the user: it may be face-to-face advice, information in a document, formal taught sessions or on-line machine-based information.

1.1. FOCUS OF THIS STUDY

When we began, so little was known even about the formal situation that this emphasis in our work upon Compute r Centre guidance was an appropr ia te initial strategy. However, one study which looked at all the computing done by a group of users showed that only about 10% of all jobs run result in the user needing information f rom an outside source (including documentat ion he owns) (Lang, Lang & Auld, 1981a). Another study covering users at eight universities showed that where users do need to ask another individual for help, for the most commonly used software such as F O R T R A N and the local operat ing system the person whose help is sought is at least as likely to be another user as a member of the Compute r Centre staff (Lang, Lang & Auld, 1981b). It is clear, therefore, that exclusive concentration on situations in which users seek help f rom "professional" sources is likely to lead to distortion, since these encounters are rarer than those with other users and, in any case, users need help of any kind on only a small proport ion of occasions.

t Now at: Mayflower Computing Consultants, Looe, Cornwall. 375

0020-7373/82/0803754- 25503.00/0 O 1982 Academic Press Inc. (London) Limited

376 K. LANG, R. AULD AND T. LANG

Another factor which led us to explore more widely in the user community was a desire to find out more about users' approach to computers, since we felt that to focus on their goals might help to find more appropriate methods of guidance (Cronbach & Snow, 1977; Miller, 1979). This interest covered both reasons for computing at all, and also motives and aims in seeking guidance. Finally, we were interested not only in the individual as a focus of our attention, but also in the social structures within which individuals work in this kind of environment. This paper covers the results of our study relating to user goals and methods, including the process of seeking guidance. The social networks and interactions in our subject population are the subject of a companion paper (Auld, Lang & Lang, 1981a).

1.2. METHODS OF E N Q U I R Y

The interest in social structures meant that our first requirement was to draw boun- daries round appropriate social subgroups within the population, since the number of computer users at Birmingham alone numbers over a thousand research workers and students as well as undergraduates. There were overwhelming reasons, based on observation and experience, for focusing on the academic department as the social unit. The department is the primary organizational unit; the most frequently-used social areas, such as common rooms, tend to be department based; even in shared areas, such as cafeteria, there is from observation a strong tendency for members of a department to associate more with each other than with "outsiders". Our first task, therefore, was to select one or more departments for study.

Previous work had shown that users in some departments used the Computer Centre advisory service much more on average than users in other departments, with no obvious explanations in location, application or experience of computing (Lang, Auld & Lang, 1981c). We thought it likely that differing patterns of guidance-seeking within departments might be linked to such external variations, so we decided to differentiate by the attendance of groups of users over a period of time at the Computer Centre advisory service, and hold stable as many other potentially significant factors as possible.

Two of the departments we chose were thus very similar in terms of numbers of users, distance from the Computer Centre, type of application, volume of central computing and in academic discipline--numerate (scientific) users, rather than literate (arts or social science) users. The departments differed in their use of the Advisory Service in that in one case the average number of queries per user was higher than for any other department, while in the other the average number of queries per user was very low. Furthermore, this difference did not reflect simply a very high use by a few users in the first department. Both these departments were large enough to have a varied and diverse pattern of internal relationships. However, for comparison we decided also to look at a very different department , a small, literate department geographically nearer to the Computer Centre, with an "average" pattern of Advisory Service consultations. Table 1 shows the numbers of queries asked of the Computer Centre 's official ("front desk") Advisory Service by users in each department studied over a 6 month period, with the ratio of number of jobs run to number of queries asked (JPQ ratio). These figures are taken from a study which is reported in detail in Lang et al. (1981c); the idea of the JPQ ratio originates in A l ty & Coombs (1980).

The need to look at social networks also required that reasonably complete coverage of each group should be obtained, rather than sample within each department. There

G O A L S A N D M E T H O D S O F C O M P U T E R U S E R S 377

TABLE 1 Advisory queries and JPQ ratios

Department

A B C

No. of queries 22 206 11 no. of jobs 9053 6091 112 JPQ ratio 412 30 10

were therefore about 100 individuals altogether to be studied. The number of people concerned, the nature of their computing, which involves little publicly observable activity and is closely bound up with their research, and the limitations of available resources ruled out the systematic or exclusive use of participant or uninvolved observation. Our earlier work had confirmed the experience of others, that self- completion questionnaires are inappropriate instruments of data collection where very high response rates are required; we also thought we should need to take a more flexible approach than a formal questionnaire would permit. On the other hand, the study needed to be completed in a reasonably short period so that all the individuals were studied at a comparable time, and to maximize the chances of getting reports of both views of two-way interactions. We therefore decided to use individual interviews, based on a schedule with sufficient structure to provide reasonable comparisons across interviews and for two interviewers to work in parallel.

The initial interview schedule was piloted with a small number of selected users chosen to give a reasonable cross-section of those we expected to encounter, and some minor revisions were made. After formal agreement had been obtained from the departments concerned, each user was sent an individual letter requesting an interview. Two follow-up letters were sent where necessary, and in the event we achieved a nearly complete coverage of active users, and a significant proportion of users who had been inactive for a long time. (It is impossible to be more precise, because of the nature of the records of computer user names.) Respondents were assured explicitly of confidentiality to the extent of non-attribution of their responses. Each interview was tape-recorded to allow subsequent expansion of the interview schedule and supplementary note-taking. Although this did not have any apparent effect on the respondents during the interview, further information, usually of a delicate nature, was occasionally volunteered after the recorder was turned off, and handwritten notes were taken of these by agreement with the respondent. Interviews lasted between 10 minutes and an hour, and took place in the respondents' own offices. Where this was shared with others, it was sometimes, though not always, possible to use a nearby empty office instead. Predictably, the level of openness in these interviews in shared offices is noticeably lower than in the majority where privacy was possible: for instance, the person from whom the interviewee had most recently sought advice was often present in the room, and therefore the rating questions, in which respondents were asked to rate their adviser on reliability, friendliness and so on, were either not asked or received very guarded responses. The whole process of interviewing including piloting and follow-up but excluding analysis took about 4 months (i.e. about 8 person-months). There were 78 respondents, of whom 76 were male; 32 respondents were teaching staff, 13 were research staff and 30 research students. The two numerate

378 K. L A N G , R. A U L D A N D T. L A N G

departments supplied 74 respondents, 40 from one department and 34 from the other. In addition, a small amount of observation of user activity, in terminal rooms and in common rooms, was undertaken to supplement the direct data gathering.

When the interviews were complete, a more formal data collection sheet based on the interview schedule was used to quantify the data as far as possible to permit computer analysis. In the results sections, a mixture of quantified and anecdotal material is used to give as broad a picture as possible.

2. Review

Our approach in this study has been to explore, with as few prior prejudices as possible, the aims and motives of computer users who are not professional programmers. In this we have been influenced by the Constructivist paradigm rather than the traditional hypothetico-deductive model most common in the physical sciences (McGuire, 1980, p. 79):

According to the Constructivist paradigm, the role of the empirical side of science is not to test which of the [proposed] opposite formulations is valid but rather to explore and discover the range of circumstances in which each of the opposite formulations hold.

This desire to explore has also led us to adopt some of the approach of the anthropol- ogists in including some participant observation, along with relatively unstructured interviewing in the respondents ' "native" setting. However, it is clear that, while the field of motivational research has not dealt with our area of concern, it has contributions to make to our understanding of our users' behaviour, and thence to the implications for user guidance. We have therefore thought it helpful to review at this point those areas of motivational work which shed most light on the goals and motives of the users to whom we talked.

Common to all motivational work, beyond the most simplistic behavioural explanations dealing with primary drive reduction, is the notion that human beings attempt to make sense of their surroundings, and have expectations about outcomes of situations in which they take part (even if these "expectat ions" are of anarchy), and that the behaviour which results is motivated, that is deliberate (Deci, 1975). The most straightforward approach suggests that people seek consistency between their expectations of a situation and its outcomes (Korman, 1976), even when their expectations are unpleasant: this approach has particular value in attempting to explain self-destructive behaviour. [A related idea, particularly concerned with the search for consistency in intellectual situations, is that of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957).]

However, it is less easy using consistency theory to account for the kinds of exploratory and knowledge-seeking behaviour typical of our research users in their own disciplines, which may be regarded as the deliberate seeking of inconsistency and novelty. It is still less easy to account for the discrepancy between our users' approach to their discipline research and their approach to computing, which is oriented strongly towards minimal exploration and which views inconsistency--for instance in programming error messages--as positively unpleasant.

A more fruitful line of approach in our circumstances seems to start from the social learning approach due to Rot ter (1954), which suggests that a person's behaviour in a particular situation is attributable to the interplay of his needs, his expectations of the situation from past experience, and the situation itself. These needs may be


cognitive--e.g, for information to help solve a particular problem--or affective, for example for praise for the completion of a difficult task, or for the avoidance of unpleasant feelings such as "loss of face". This approach does not attribute values to particular outcomes of the needs/expectations interaction, which permits the consideration of a need for some degree of inconsistency. This notion is very similar to Berlyne's (1963) use of the concept of optimal incongruity to help explain behaviour which appears to be intrinsically motivated towards exploration and the acquisition of knowledge.

The extent to which expectations of a situation and predictions about outcomes affect behaviour is a function both of the situation and of the individual. Where the individual expects the outcome of a situation to be predictable, he will behave differently from how he would in situations where he believes that the outcome is not predictable; furthermore, individuals differ in the extent to which they expect predictability. This has led to the identification of the concept of locus of control (Rotter, 1966), which suggests that individuals vary along a spectrum from extreme internal locus of control, in which they believe that they exercise considerable control over their environment, to extreme external locus of control, in which people perceive events to be entirely unconnected with their behaviour, and the response/reinforcement link is non-existent. The importance of this idea in our work is two-fold. First, where people do not feel in control of their environment (Phares, 1975, p. 30):

They learn a good deal less, and this decrement in learning seems directly attributable to the effects on expectancy of a belief that, in a given situation, they do not control the relationship between behaviour and reinforcement.

This finding is true of people throughout the range of individual perceptions of locus of control, that is it is situationally determined.

Secondly, locus of control is also personality dependent: those individuals who are highly internal in their locus of control, as demonstrated in experimental circumstances, tend to avoid real-life situations which they will not be able to control, either because they desire control as well as expecting it or because they avoid exposing themselves to contrary evidence. Locus of control as a personality variable is unconnected with intelligence, but closely related to need for achievement and to socio-economic class, with those high on either dimension tending to have a highly internal locus of control (Phares, 1975). These findings are largely independent of cultural background.

The population under study is highly likely to be strong on need for achievement and is, by definition, high on socio-economic class. It would thus be reasonable to expect our subjects to be high on internal locus of control, leading to a desire to avoid situations of unpredictability or lack of control. This, however, seems to be contradicted by the evidence that they seek uncertainty through exploratory behavior, unless it is that the desire for control spurs such people to find out more about their environment in order that they can control it (cf. Phares, 1975, pp. 60-62). If this is so, then it is possible that our respondents are motivated by this spur in their own disciplines, but that the very open-ended nature of their own work allows them plenty of scope for achieving optimal incongruity there, without the burden of further incongruity raised by exploration in computing. In other words, they desire control over their environment perceived in discipline terms; this brings enough unknowns without their having to explore computing as well.


So far, this discussion has not dealt explicitly with the resources factor, and indeed the social learning theorists seem to include resources available in the "needs" and "si tuation" variables. This may explain the emphasis on optimization in all this work, whereas others, notably Simon and his colleagues (h~arch & Simon, 1958; Simon, 1959; Simon & Stedry, 1969) have suggested that because information-seeking is a costly exercise, which people do not always discount accurately, they often do not achieve optimal results. Simon has deduced from this the concept of "satisficing", which proposes that people collect information in order to decide on their behaviour in a particular situation, and cease data collection when a satisfactory--not necessarily opt imum--level is reached.

In summary, then, our subjects are likely to aim at a satisfactory (rather than an optimum) balance between their needs, which include the tools necessary to solve their cognitive problems, and their expectations, which include a high expectation of predictability and internal locus of control.

3. User goals

Our aim in examining users' goals in detail was to try to see what motivated their approach to computing. We were interested both in their actual goals, and also in their means of communicating them and the terms in which they were expressed.

One particular concern was with whether users see the constraints on their achieve- ments as limited by shortage of time to do all the computing they would like, or whether they have specific goals which govern their computing activities entirely. The difference between goal-limitation and time-limitation may be clearer if seen in the light of the effect of each orientation. Users who are goal-limited have computing aims which are viewed in discipline terms; when they come to the end of a particular piece of research, they stop computing while they write up, and then explore further possible discipline aims which may or may not give rise to more computing. Those who are time-limited tend, if they finish a particular piece of work within the time limit, to undertake more computing analysis and refine their techniques within the same discipline goals. The net effect is for the latter group to be more sophisticated in their approach to computing, and to spend a higher proportion of their time on computing, than the former.

3.1. USERS' STATEMENTS ABOUT GOALS

During our interviews, we asked each user to tell us about his patterns of computing, and about his usage of each system on which he had a user name. This gave us information about the proport ion of working time spent on computing, the pattern of work- -whether the computing was done regularly or in bursts with spells of no c0mputing--and about the factors which determined allocation of the users' time.

Our findings suggest, in summary, that most research users of computers in the departments we studied were interested in computing only as a method of doing their own research better or faster; the "addicts", who were rumoured to be widespread, were barely represented among our subjects. (The one true exception was someone who was taken on as a Research Associate primarily in order to provide computing expertise to complement the primarily discipline orientation of the other members of


his team; there were, however, two users who admitted to coming in at weekends occasionally because they enjoyed computing.)

This should not be taken to mean that they are reluctant computer users: most knew that a large element of computing would be involved when they began their current research project, and either chose the project for that reason or welcomed the need to use computers. But it does mean that such people see their computing needs firmly in terms of their own discipline, and perceive their own computing skills as being adequate if they are managing to get their research work done, however naive or inefficient some users may seem to the professional computing advisers.

One user whose working patterns and goals were typical of many of his colleagues, when asked about these patterns responded:

I don't think there is a typical pattern, it goes from one extreme to the other. It goes from using [the computer] practically all the time to not using it at all . . . . I know the sort of results I want for my next paper, and I try to get them as quickly as possible by spending all my time [computing] . . . . [I] get the results as soon as I can and then write the paper, and then possibly check a few of [the results] later on. (16)

Some research groups, particularly in the numerate departments, are strongly orientated towards industrial applications, and are strongly influenced by the need to develop solutions to problems which can be applied in firms with varying resources. Often this results in small computers, minis or micros, being used for applications where they have distinct limitations, simply because firms who are interested in these developments often do not have large mainframes available.

While the main limitation on computing activity is the research goals of the individual or group, the t ime/goal constraint dichotomy does seem to have a bearing on the work of postgraduate students. Quite a number of those we spoke to began their research with virtuous intentions, preparing heavily commented, generally applicable programs, and gradually yielding, as the deadline for submission of their thesis approached, to writing "quick and dirty" special purpose programs, or "patching" existing programs to produce the "spaghett i" coding well known to many computing advisers.

The implications of these observations for the guidance services are fundamental. First, the fact that users see their problems in discipline terms is one reason for the lack of communication between users and professional computing advisers, which is often commented on by members of both groups. This is partly mitigated by the practice of recruiting users who are particularly skilled in computing for training as computing advisers within the central service. But it can be very hard for such a person to maintain his discipline expertise once he has left the user department. Equally, the discipline orientation of the user is a major factor in the tendency to exploit as far as possible the computing expertise within his own department (see section 4.2.6, below), but the very discipline orientation of these colleagues means that often their knowledge is out-of-date or inadequate for helping other users. This is especially relevant to the phenomenon we noted of postgraduate students gradually becoming less elegant, and probably less efficient, programmers as they draw near their deadlines, which is just the time when they are increasingly likely, because of their lengthening experience, to be asked for advice by less experienced colleagues. The evidence of our study suggests that such advice tends to be in the "do as I say, not as I do" tradition, but example too could be expected to play a part in influencing the novices.


Thus it seems that ways need to be found for professional computing advisers to retain real contact with users' research activities, and more experienced users within departments need help and encouragement to stay up-to-date. Similar conclusions apply to documentation and to formal training: the need for these to be discipline, or at least application orientated is clear.

4. User methods

This section covers the ways that users achieve their goals in computing terms. The implications for guidance services are discussed in section 5, below.

4.1. STATUS AND ORGANIZATION OF USERS

Most computing services, whether departmental or centralized, can identify the numbers and levels of activity of various classes of user name (those of undergraduate students, postgraduate students, academic staff being the main categories). However, for our study we needed more detailed information, first because the actual users of user names are not always those registered to use them and second because we have previously found other attributes [not identifiable from accounting records--see Auld, Lang & Lang (1981b)] to have a bearing on the forms of guidance which might be appropriate. We asked all users whether they had used each of the systems on which they were registered since the beginning of September 1980, and this question usually elicited the desired information about who was actually using any particular user name. The information about patterns of computing referred to in the previous section also enabled us to find out about users' frequency and regularity of computing, and subsequent questions about their patterns of consultation gave us much data about the social interactions of each user (for more details, see section 4.6.2, below).

In our study, virtually all the respondents did some computing themselves, but five people (6%) were doing computing for other people too, and 11 (14%) were having some or all of their computing done by others. Looking at the evidence inmore detail, three main patterns emerged. One was of individual users, particularly research students, working alone or with their supervisor on a project not closely related to others. The second type consisted of groups of research students working with one or two members of staff, where the research students do virtually all the actual computing, often on the usernames of the staff. The third pattern comprised groups of staff and students working together, where one member of the group was specifically designated "computer person", and given responsibility for doing most of the computing in the group, if appropriate also advising those who continued to do some computing themselves.

The most interesting pattern, in its implications for user guidance, is the last. The specialization approach reduces the number of people who have to be kept informed of changes, or made aware of new facilities. It would be interesting to see if such an approach could be fostered explicitly in groups which did not yet use it, and whether this proved helpful. In this connection, it is worth noting that of the 47 respondents who reported on their feelings about consultations which other users had sought with them, 40 said they found them enjoyable and satisfying. "It's great when I know the answer" is the most common view.

GOALS AND METHOD S OF COMPUTER USERS 383

Another interesting possibility concerns further specialization. No group had for- mally gone further than having one or more "general specialists", that is they had designated "computer people", not one designated "graphics person", with another named "numerical library routines" person. However, such specialization did take place in a very informal way in one department in some areas. A research student particulary mentioned being known as a GINO user and often being consulted by other research students on that package. A member of staff in the same department had acquired the only departmental copy of the manual for a major engineering design package while he was the Departmental Computer Representative (the person appointed by the Head of Department to liaise with the Computer Centre over budgets, documentation, etc.), had retained it when he ceased to be DCR, and was occasionally asked for advice on its use, even though he had never used it himself. In both cases, however, the specialization seemed to have come about largely acciden- tally.

It would be very useful to see, first, whether such specialization is a fruitful approach and, second, whether it could effectively be encouraged within existing or newly- established research groups. Such specialization would involve some extra time com- mitment for the individuals in their area; however, they should save time by being able to consult local specialists in other areas of computing. This should help mitigate the very realistic fears of research supervisors about the amount of time research workers spend acting as unofficial consultants. One supervisor told us of a research worker who became so popular as a computing adviser that his main work was in danger of foundering altogether. The supervisor took the rather drastic step of pinning a notice on the research worker's door, telling callers that computing advice was available only outside the hours 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ! (The researcher was not completely happy with this solution, apparently because he enjoyed the work and status of a sought-after adviser.)

4.2. USE OF P A R T I C U L A R COMPUTER SYSTEMS

Another element in the guidance pattern is the nature and location of the computer system being used. The users in the departments we studied had available to them three systems supported by the central computing service. On campus, there is a batch system which has facilities for file editing and job submission from terminals, and an interactive system. Users could also use a Regional Computer Centre, for jobs which require special facilities or place heavy demands on resources, via a link with the local batch computer, which permits job and file transfer between the two systems. They also had access to a variety of departmental systems, none of which had at that time an easy file transfer link with any central system. Since we had a particular interest in users of several systems, we asked users about their patterns of use (as outlined in two previous sections) and about their patterns of seeking guidance on each system which they were currently using. The numbers of users of each system during the period of our study are shown in Table 2.

Our respondents' motives for using particular systems were quite consistent. Most users of the regional system were people whose programs had become too great consumers of mill time on the local batch system, and who had therefore requested, or had been asked by the Computer Centre, to transfer to the regional system. Many of those we spoke to developed their programs to the point of compiling correctly on


TABLE 2 Usage of computer systems

Inter- active

System used?

Local Regional Dept'l. SRC batch batch system IEF Micros

UN, never used 16 UN, not used in SP 0 Used during SP 7

45 13 5 2 5 6 3 0 0 1

25 9 8 4 8

-t Notes: UN = Username, SP = our study period.

the local batch system before sending them to the regional centre, and some made sure that they also executed correctly before making the move. All the regional centre users in our sample had been using the system for some time and had developed a stylized method of working which enabled them to avoid many of the problems found previously by users of remote systems (Lang, Lang & Auld, 1981d). The exact nature of this stylization depended very much on their personal preferences. One user had solved the problems of trying to use two systems simultaneously by making a functional distinction between them:

I perhaps tend to run a lot of programs on [regional system] that could just as easily be run on the [local batch system] . . . . I think when one is trying to use two systems one finds that for various reasons one is better than the other, for example in the case of [regional system] it's much better for my big finite element finite difference models because there's a much quicker turnround, and one gets used to the system because one's using it all the time and then one tends to run other programs on it, because then, by the time you go back to i t--I haven't run anything [i.e. any compilations or execution of own programs] on the [local batch system] for about six months or more--you know one forgets quite a bit. (9)

This was despite the fact that this user still used the local batch system for all his file editing and job submission, perhaps because there were no terminal facilities available to him on the regional system. The remote user 's pat terns of guidance tended to be atypical of users as a whole, but to be fairly consistent with those of the single-system experienced users (Auld et al., 1981a).

In theory, people were given a username on the interactive system only if they could demonstra te a need for true interaction, al though the practice tended to be much less restrictive. Interactive usage was much higher in two of the three depar tments studied than in the third, and there was some evidence to suggest that the active encouragement of the D C R (Depar tmental Compute r Representat ive) had been partly responsible. Users registering for the interactive system automatically acquire or retain a username on the local batch system; all those who had actually used the interactive system had largely transferred their work to it, using the local batch system only as a file archive (there are tight limits on the filestore made available on the interactive system). Twenty per cent of our respondents (16) had registered for that system but had not yet "got around" to using it. Some of these were studied as part of a separate investigation of comparat ive teaching methods (Lang, Auld & Lang, 198 le) .

GOALS AND METHO D S OF COMPUTER USERS 3 8 5

Reasons for the use of departmental systems fall into two categories: some people regard them as a way of getting better turnround and of avoiding leaving the department, but most use them as specialized tools in particular applications, such as real-time control. Most said they would welcome better links with central systems, since they would be able to use each system for what it did best. However, the evidence suggests that where people have access to a relatively powerful departmental system, particularly if it is interactive, they use it as much as they can, and acquire a pattern of use of central systems similarly stylized to that we noted in those using both the local and regional batch systems. In these findings, it appears that the user's desire for control over his environment, for quick results through fast turnround and interaction, and for using systems on which local help is available all play a part in a user's decision to accesss a particular system.

4.3. SOFTWARE USE AS A FACTOR IN G O A L O R I E N T A T I O N

Every user was asked which software he used on each of the systems currently in use. As we expected, this depended heavily on the nature of the discipline of the user. The numerate departments were almost exclusively F O R T R A N users, although a few used the extended version of BASIC implemented on the DEC20. By contrast, the literate users were mostly using a text-oriented language and packages such as SPPS, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, and CLOC, a concordance program. The usage of the major software items is shown in Table 3.

TABLE 3 Languages and applications software

Package

FORTRAN NAG GINO GHOST Specialt

No. of users 60 23 25 16 23 Percentage (N = 78) 77 30 32 21 29

-t Special purpose package, usually command language driven.

Some of the F O R T R A N users (38% of those questioned) included subroutines from the NAG library in their programs but many, as Table 3 shows, made little or no use of NAG. There seem to be three main reasons for this. First, when postgraduate students begin their research they often have little experience of writing programs for real applications, and they are often set to writing routines to solve common problems as a method of training. Once written, the students continue to use their own subroutines because, while they may be inefficient, their idiosyncracies are k n o w n - - another example of the tendency to satisfice. Second, many users are either ignorant of the full extent of the NAG facilities, or want minor adaptations of them which, since the source of the routines is not available, they can only have if they write the whole routine themselves. The restricted availability of the voluminous documentation may play some part in this. The third problem lies with the copyright on N A G routines, since some of the programming effort was directed to software which would be made

386 K. L A N G , R. A U L D A N D T, L A N G

commercially available. Such commercial installations often either do not have the N A G library or are using systems for which there is no N A G implementation.

Graphics packages, mainly G H O S T and GINO, were heavily used in the numerate departments, and in this case we did not hear voiced the objections to using proprietary software expressed with regard to the NAG library. The principal reason for this seems to be that graphical programming requires interfacing with hardware devices controlled by the operating system, and the skills needed to do this, without help from specially written routines, is beyond either the actual or desired competence of the average non-professional programmer. In a sense, the users seem to feel that they understand the numerical techniques used in numerical library routines, and that it is therefore "O.K." for them to program these themselves if they wish; however, they do not feel competent to cope with graphical interfacing, and therefore no loss of face is involved in relying on specially written routines for this purpose. It is noteworthy that many of the specific programming problems involving a consultation with someone else which we were told about involved graphics libraries. This finding is similar to our observations on the Computer Centre advisory service, in which a significant proport ion of the problems which were difficult to solve or took a long time, or both, involved graphics libraries. Whether this was because the interfacing problems make errors more likely, or whether the users made less effort to understand the graphics software because it was not "theirs", or whether the graphical libraries are simply difficult to use, was not clear. Another possible explanation is the documentation: the GINO manual, one of the few manuals used by respondents which came directly from the software suppliers, received a lot of criticism from our respondents.

4.4. PATTERNS OF COMPUTING

In previous studies we have found that users' patterns of working have a considerable impact on their attitudes and effectiveness. We therefore asked every respondent to tell us about the way they planned their computing work: whether they used the computer every day and for how long, or whether they tended to work in bursts with periods of inactivity in between. We were aiming to place these users along a spectrum of regularity and of volume of computing, measured by the proportions of their time spent on the activity. Computing was defined for this purpose as including both work done on the computer and time spent working directly on the results.

In our sample, the users ranged the whole spectrum of use, from those who had not used any system for some time, to those who spent nearly all their time on work connected with computing. The overall proportions of time spent on computing are shown in Table 4 and the regularity in Table 5.

The lack of planning of the computing aspects of their work was common among our users. A typical response to this question was:

When I think of a problem and want to solve it--there isn't so much planning as such for the computing, you see--I have a problem and I write down the statements or the mathematics of it--the equations--and then I think, well, this is the time I must start to write a program . . . . (64)

The most frequent comment from those who used the computer systems in burs ts- - most commonly doing very little during the term and picking up again in the vacat ion-- was that they had considerable difficulty in getting started again. Those who had taken

GOALS AND METHODS OF COMPUTER USERS

TABLE 4 Proportion of time spent on computins"~

387

Proportion

10-20% 30-50% 60-70% Over 70%

No. of users 22 25 6 6 Percentage (N = 59) 37 42 10 10

? Note: No reply: 19.

TABLE 5 Patterns of computing t

Pattern

Regular Occasional Bursts

No. of users 39 18 20 Percentage (N = 77) 51 23 26

t Note: No reply: 1.

the trouble to prepare their own crib sheets were in rather better shape than the rest. Other ways of refreshing memories included summary cards, provided by the Computer Centre for the local batch and remote systems, which show the main commands and editing instructions in summary form, and the extensive prompting and help facilities on the interactive system. However, as in previous work, there was no evidence that those who had managed to continue to do a small amount of computing in between bursts were any bet ter off than those who had stopped altogether. It seems that using a computing system involves skills that need pretty intensive use to keep them fully operational.

This in turn suggests that more could be done to help the many users who have to work in a peaky way. It might be desirable in an educational environment to pay particular attention to the natural peaks of term and vacation. Undergraduates usually do no computing in the vacation and therefore have to refresh their memories at the start of each term, while staff tend to concentrate their computing in the vacation and therefore have the complementary problem. Perhaps posters could be used to display, at the beginning of each vacation, changes to the system during the term. The value of quick reference guides which are highly portable, like the pocket cards used at Birmingham, is clearly shown by this study.

4.5. PERSONAL COMPUTING EXPERTISE

Clearly users differ substantially from one another in their personal characteristics, and we and others have found that some of these characteristics, particularly users' experience of computing, affect their efficacy and their attitudes (Auld et al., 1981b; Eason, 1976). We asked our respondents how long they had been using computers,


distinguishing between course work and serious research use. Some of our users had been computing since the first university systems were installed 20 years ago. At the other end of the spectrum, we had a proport ion of recently graduated research students with less than a year 's experience.

We also wanted to get some feel for users' percept ion of their experience, and we asked them to estimate the adequacy of their computing skills. Regardless of the length or breadth of their experience, the great majori ty of users felt that their skills were adequate for the tasks they wanted to carry out at present: Table 6 shows the relationship between years of research experience and perception of adequacy of skills. The proportion of users who felt their skills to be adequate is much higher than in our previous study; the lack of any relationship with years of experience is, however, a confirmation of ealier findings (Auld et al., 1981b).

TABLE 6 Computing experience and adequacy of skills (X 2 = 19.59, d.f. = 8, NS)

Adequacy of own skills

Research O.K., lots Computing experience Adequate don't know Inadequate Totals

6 months or tess 1 1 1 3 6 months to 1 year 2 3 3 8 2 years 2 4 0 6 3 to 5 years 3 9 0 12 6 to 10 years 6 3 1 10 Over 10 years 4 5 1 10

Totals 18 25 6 49

One very experienced user spoke for many of our respondents on this question of adequacy:

I think a lot of it is because you just want the answer to one specific problem, and there's almost certainly an element of over-eagerness with computing, to get the thing running as quickly as possible. One very rarely seems to sit down and take one's time over something, one tends to take all the short cuts. (9)

The extent to which users perceive their knowledge to be adequate, together with their generally rather low level of achievement in computing, suggests that users are mot ivated to satisficing rather than maximizing their effectiveness (March & Simon, 1958; Simon, 1959; cf. the discussion in section 2, above). Such a conclusion clearly gives rise to many problems for the guidance services. Since users are not motivated to seek to increase their skills, the guidance services must to some extent actively encourage any desired improvements in user skills rather than just making oppor- tunities available.

4.6. USERS' SOURCES OF HELP

Despi te the degree of satisfaction which users display with their own computing skills, there are times when these resources prove inadequate. Obviously, this is the case


when a person first starts computing, or when he sets out to acquire new knowledge within computing. Again, even for the knowledgeable user, there are times when his own skills are inadequate to solve a problem within his current range of activity. The users' primary sources of help were a major interest in our interviews. However, the network of helping relationships is dealt with in our companion paper (Auld et al., 1981a), and is t reated here only in relation to its impact upon the question of users' goals and working methods.

4.6.1. Methods of acquiring computing skills In accord with our observations about users' tendency to satisfice, we found that responses to question about the ways in which users acquired and extended their skills displayed a reluctance to invest time early in a project to acquire some basic computing skills. This follows the pattern of previous work, where we found that very few users take advantage of available courses, but tend to pick up the knowledge they need as they go along (Lung et al., 1981b). The skills which they do acquire they pick up mainly from reading documentation and asking the cognoscenti.

This inertia applies to discovering ways of doing things better, even at the simple geographical level. For instance, when a new batch job submission point was established in a part of the campus some distance from the Computer Centre, Depar tment A encouraged all its users to acquire output pigeon-holes in that location, while Department B did not. As a result, all the users in Depar tment A made the change, whereas none of those in Department B changed, even though they would have benefited nearly as much from the savings of time in collecting output. By and large, most users we talked to seem to take the view that, if their current solution to a problem works, then it is best left alone; they rarely say " there must be a better way", and even then they do tend to do nothing about it. Users' unwillingness to invest time in activities which are likely to save them time in the future, may stem from their incorrect discounting of the value of their time now and in the future, or from a belief that the benefit to be gained from the activity (particularly a rather "expensive" one such as going on a course) is unpredictable, or both.

4.6.2. Methods of seeking help in problem-solving situations The extent to which users feel their skills to be adequate has already been stressed. This then leads one to ask why they ever feel the need to ask others for help, except when acquiring new knowledge. The most commonly given reason is that, although their overall knowledge and skills are adequate, they need specific information which they do not currently have, or need help in debugging a program simply to get a "second opinion".

When asked why they consulted a particular person, most respondents give as their reason either availability or the knowledge that the helper had encountered this type of problem before. The main responses to this question are shown in Table 7.

Some users perceive a hierarchy of expertise within the department; some of these see themselves as knowing more than anyone else, usually about particular facilities such as a graphics package; others make comments such as "he knows much more than I do". The 50 respondents who consulted a member of their department in the 2 months before their interview reported a total of 78 consultations. In 49 of these reports, the respondent rated both his own skills adequacy and the relative expertise


TABLE 7 Reasons given for consultation

Reason consulted

Computing Discipline knowledge knowledge Helpful Available Combination

No. of consultations 31 6 3 11 9 Percentage (N = 78) 40 8 4 14 12

of the person consulted. Of these 49 reports, slightly fewer than half (23) rated the adviser as generally more skilled in computing, and almost all rated their own skills as "adequate, but there's a lot I don't know". The detailed figures are given in Table 8.

TABLE 8 Adviser's skills in relation to advice-seeker's

Adviser's skills

Adequacy of own skills

O.K., lots Adequate don't know Inadequate Totals

Greater general computing Greater general discipline Special computing skills Combination of these About the same as own

1 20 2 23 1 0 3 4 5 6 5 16 0 1 0 1 5 0 0 5

Totals 12 27 10 49

It seems, therefore, that most users see themselves as being "about average" for their department, and a substantial proportion of their queries involve asking others for help in circumstances where there is a likelihood of reciprocation. This is particularly true of research students sharing offices. A number of respondents mentioned consulting the Departmental Computer Representative, but this was not a consistent tendency across departments or across status groups: this point is discussed in more detail in our companion paper (Auld et al., 1981a) as is the variation between departments in ascription of advisers' skills.

We thought it likely that, when a user did need help with a problem, he would tend to consult people within his own department first, and would consult the Computer Centre only if this failed to solve the problem. In practice, we found three main patterns of working. One involved people who tended to discriminate according to the situation. Some of these had output pigeon-holes in the Computer Centre, and would commonly come to the Centre for several hours at a time to work. While there, they would often ask for help from the Advisory Service for problems which, by their

GOALS AND METHODS OF COMPUTER USERS 391

own admission, they would have sorted out themselves or consulted friends about had they been in their department:

I actually went up there [to the Computer Centre]--I had to go up to get some output actually---our line printer was broken . . . . When I got there I got the output, found something was wrong, I couldn't fathom it out, so I thought I might as well go to Advisory. (36)

Others among the "discriminators" would ask their friends about straightforward logical or syntactic problems with programming, while coming to the Centre for operating system problems or for help with more intractable debugging questions.

If there's something that cannot be sorted out among my friends, then I go to the Centre--mainly because it takes about half an hour to go there and back. (35)

A second group tended to ask their friends and to treat the Centre as a last resort; several users explicitly mentioned "loss of face" as a reason for not consulting the Centre unless it was essential.

Before I go to the Advisory I always ask someone else in my room or in the Department--I usually ask two or three people before I go up there--it's usually a last resort if I go up there . . . . No-one likes to have a silly problem solved quickly. (58)

The third group, consisting of the most experienced and extensive users, consulted the Centre as a matter of course on the rare occasions when they needed help:

If I've got a problem with running a program at [the regional centre] and I want to ask even a trivial question I don't waste my time going to anyone in the department . . . . (9)

Approximate figures for the numbers in each category are shown in Table 9. There was no record of anyone consulting a user in another department, but there was some informal consultation of Computer Centre staff, for instance at lunchtime.

TABLE 9 Preferred source of computing advice t

Preferred source of advice

Computer Depends on Depends on Colleagues Centre problem location

No. of users 26 9 13 6 Percentage (N = 54) 48 17 24 11

t Note: Non-respondents: 24. Of these, 16 had never consulted the Computer Centre Advisory Service.

A comparison of the answers to those questions which were asked about both Computer Centre and departmental consultations also gives some interesting insights into the views of users about the people they consulted. In both cases users were asked what the consultation was about, whether it was successful and how they rated the adviser on reliability of computing information, friendliness, clarity of exposition and understanding of the user's problem. Comparative figures for success of consultation and ratings of adviser, which were measured by five-point semantic differential


scales shown to the user, are shown in Fig. 1. (It is important to note, however, that fewer than half of those who consulted the Centre were able or willing to rate the Computer Centre adviser they consulted on friendliness, etc. The main reason reported for this was that they could not remember who they had consulted or anything about the personal interaction. We have no evidence about whether these consultations were any less favourable in outcome than those which were remembered.) One particularly important piece of evidence in Fig. 1 shows that users frequently (38% of consultations) consult a colleague in the department whom they regard as not very

: ........................................ :

Totally :++++++++I+++++++++++:++++2+++++:---3---:--4--:--5-:CC:N=35 )Totally

Success-: ........ : ....... : ....... : ...... : . . . . . : )unsuccess-

ful :+++++~ ::::~++l++++++~:::::P~++:++++2+++++:--3--:-5:Dep:N=41)ful

20:% 40:% 60=% 80:% 100:%

Totally :++++++++++4 I I I I I I ~ , , ~ : : : ~++++++++++:++++2+++:---3--:CC:N=16 )Totally

Reliable: ........ : ........ : ....... : ...... : . . . . . : ) Unreliable

:+++++++++i+~ ~ i I L I i ~:+++++2++++~4:--3-=-4-:---5 .... : Dep:N=49)

20:% 40:% 60:% 80:% i00:%

Totally : : : : : : H-H-+++++1++4 : : : : : : : I I I+++:4 I I I I 12+++++:-3 :-4:CC:N=16 )Totally

Clear )unclear

:+++++++++I : : : : : : :+++:~ tt ~ : : ~2: : : : : ~+ :----3--- :-4--: Dep:N=-49)

20:% 40:% 60:% 80:% 100:%

Totally ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: F+::::::2++++++:CC:N=I6 )Totally

Friendly: )Unfriendly

:++++~:::::::+++l+++++++++++++++~++++2++++:--3-:4:5:Dep:N=50)

20:% 40:% 60:% 80:% 100:%

Totally :++++++++++++++++++I+++++++~ : : ~: : :++++:+++2++:-3:-4:CC:N=16 )Doesn't

Underst-: ........ : ...... :------: . . . . : ....... : )Understand

ands my :+~-~ : ~: : : :i+++++++++:++++++2: : : : : ~++:----3 .... :4:5:Dep:N=49)my Probl-

Problems: ...... = . . . . : ...... : ....... : ....... : )eros at all

: 20:% 40:% 60:% 80:% I00:%

FIG. I. Comparison of Computer Centre and departmental consultations,


reliable or authoritative in the help he provides. One respondent, when asked if the person he had consulted on a particular occasion was his first choice, responded:

Not necessarily out of competence, but out of convenience, yes. (35)

Their willingness to seek advice from friends whom they regard as unreliable suggests that they are satisfied with a low reliability of answers, because the cost of getting those answers is low and predictable in terms of time and "loss of face".

From this evidence (making allowances for the very variable response rates) and from the anecdotal evidence it is possible to suggest a series of factors which influence the choice of adviser. Users seek knowledge of computing adequate to solve their problem, preferably applied in a problem-oriented way; these benefits they seek from someone whose advice they can "afford", and the costs are measured in approachability, availability (geographical) and perceived role (the extent to which the person is perceived as having a duty to help, rather than providing help at the price of incurring a social obligation). [More detail about the costs side of the equation will be found in our companion paper, Auld et al. (1981a).] The patttern of consultation which this amalgam of needs and resources brings about is shown in Fig. 2. We conclude that

ion COSt in

effort to get

effort to implement

YEs

User with

problem

�9 ~ ~ (Unsuccessful)

NO ~ Unsuccessful

( )

plonned solutiOn

f Consult J_~ within grO~Jp

I I

~~,~ r E s o u ~

No ~ Unsuccessful

nsuccessful

No

Consult in

deportment

t ConsUltoutside ]0 K i

( Give us)

FIG. 2. Pattern of consultation.

394 K. L A N G , R . A U L D A N D T. L A N G

there is substantial scope for improving the quality of local advice, or for reducing the "cos t" - - in terms of availability and approachabil i ty--of the professional advice. Where a computer specialist is appointed to a department, these two solutions coincide. Other ways of achieving improvement are presented in section 5, below.

4.6.3. Users' attitudes to Computer Centre advice It is clear from users' comments on the central guidance services that virtually all users expect the members of Computer Centre staff to know much more than users do about any computing matter. While this may be a reasonable expectation overall, it is bound sometimes to be the case that a user will encounter an adviser whose area of expertise is quite different from that in which his problem lies, and this gives rise to a complete mismatch between expectations and experience, leading to considerable dissatisfaction. One very experienced user commented on an Advisory session which he had found unsatisfactory:

he [adviser] didn't have the answers, and in a way I suppose I didn't have the questions either.

This dissatisfaction is not really evident from the ratings of Computer Centre advice, which are very high (see Fig. 1), as others have found (Alty & Coombs, 1981). However , fewer than half of those who were prepared to rate the success of the consultation also rated the adviser, and oral comments from others, particularly those who only very occasionally consult the Advisory Service, convey a different view.

There is some feeling among our respondents that advisers often do not listen properly to what the user is saying, and thereby tend to make judgements either about the user's problem or about his competence which are not appropriate. This is a problem of which most advisers are aware, and seems to stem from three sources. One is the difficulty of communicating in a common language when one party is thinking in computing vocabulary and the other in discipline-oriented vocabulary: note again the comment quoted above from the user who "did not have the questions". Frequent ly (although not in that instance) the user's mother- tongue is not English, and this further confounds the problem. The second difficulty is that users tend to have a considerable amount of knowledge about the area they are working in, and to be rather ignorant beyond it, thus tending to give perceptual clues to the adviser which suggest a degree of na~'vet~ overall. (For instance, many users are highly adept at writing F O R T R A N programs, but know nothing about the use of the local scheduler to improve their turnround.) Thirdly, the user's own perception of the problem has failed to give him a solution to it, and therefore for the adviser to take precisely the same orientation could lead him into the same perceptual traps as the user himself. A wry comment from another experienced user illustrates this exactly:

Whenever I go up there [to Advisory], I think, well, I've really got them this time. It's certainly not my mistake, there can't be anything wrong with that FORTRAN program, and I was absolutely sure of it in that case, but it was a silly mistake on my par t . . , he [adviser] spotted it . . . . (16)

Some evidence of the lack of communication is to be found in the responses to a question about sources of information consulted after the Advisory session ( a question suggested by a user in the pilot phase). In particular, it is noteworthy that of the 35 Advisory sessions reported, over half (18) were followed by further consultation. While at least some of the eight reports of checking documentation will be quite


proper outcomes, it seems likely that most of the other follow-up sessions s temmed from incomplete or ill-understood advice. Support for this view is found in the fact that exactly half of those who had to consult further found the session satisfactory, as against over two-thirds of the whole group.

4.6.4. Use of documentation In previous work on documentation, we have found that the amount of use which people make of documentat ion in problem-solving situations is very small (so small that we have not been able to get sufficient data to report our findings publicly). The only time when most people use documentat ion is when they need to acquire a new skill. These findings were fully confirmed by the present study. A number of people appeared to use the pocket card already ment ioned for reference (although some had not even heard of them), but very few used any other documentat ion outside learning periods. Even then, they will not use documentat ion which involves any real effort to understand or which is of any great length; short, carefully oriented documents are the only ones which get used. Even the most experienced users work this way:

�9 .. unfortunately in some ways, your just look up the specific thing. If you're interested in graph plotting you look that up, and you see windowing, for example, that's where the problem went wrong, because I didn't really understand windowing.., and then you just read snippets, rather than reading the whole literature. (9)

Users of the interactive system ment ioned that they had used the H E L P system provided, and found it extremely useful when pithy and appropr ia te to their current problem. Verbose documentat ion is even more unpopular on screen terminals than on paper! These findings reinforce Eason ' s (1976) conclusions about the low esteem in which computing is held, and the very short- term view which most users take about acquiring computing skills.

The antipathy to documentat ion may stem from the unpredictability of the invest- ment of t ime required; unless one is very familiar with a manual and the documentat ion scheme into which it fits, the cost of searching for the information is potentially infinite�9 It may therefore be more economical of one 's resources to ask a colleague, who one predicts is quite likely to have an answer worth trying, or alternatively some suggestions which may enable the user himself to find the answer. Moreover , since most of the users in our study reach a plateau in their skills with the techniques they are using and then apply them to problems, most of the problems they encounter are debugging difficulties, and here present documentat ion is not very helpful. To quote the same user again:

� 9 even when I did have [the graphics library document] I still couldn't get the program to run myself, and ] would never have got it to run without the help of this chap in the Computer Centre, so in other words without the Computer Centre I would have had to have given up, because I couldn't--well, I don't think it was my fault, not being able to understand it, I think that it wasn't particularly well documented in that case. (pause) Well, I think some of it was my fault, I think the penny sort of dropped afterwards, as it always does, when someone explains it to you. (9)

Some users had their own simple checklists of common problems. Other work we are about to under take is aimed at seeing whether this approach can be systematized to be of more general use (cf. Weinberg, 1979). There is also some evidence that a


particular problem with current documentation is the lack of a problem-oriented approach:

� 9 I still find it difficult [after five years' extensive experience] to pick out the little bit of information I need. I find I have to wade through pages and pages until I find what I'm looking for. (31)

We hope to experiment with a problem-oriented index to a short document to see if this can help users find appropriate information quickly.

5. Implications for the provision of guidance services

The conclusions about users which emerge from our study can be summarized as follows.

They want solutions to their problems in application-oriented rather than solution- oriented terms, that is the benefits they seek include both computing and discipline- related information, and they use these factors to measure the expertise of the helper.

They estimate the cost of advice in terms of the availability, approachability and perceived helping role of its source.

They are content with satisfactory, not optimal solutions, that is they satisfice. They seek predictability and control.

The general implications for guidance services suggest that the costs of seeking guidance-- in terms of time, effort and effect - -need to be kept low and made explicit, so that people know what their commitments in seeking guidance are likely to be. By contrast, the value of guidance which users regard as low-cost (such as the help of their friends) needs if possible to be improved. Specific improvements which might have these desired results are the following.

(1) Lowering and stating the costs of guidance to the user The contents of courses and the objectives of attending should be made clearer in advance, so that users have a more realistic set of expectations about their likely benefits and costs�9 These principles should also be applied to documentat ion and to face-to-face advice.

On-line help should be expanded, to exploit the immediacy of the guidance it provides. However, such help must be very carefully structured if it is not to meet the problems already encountered with documentation.

Courses should be orientated towards the corresponding documentation, so that documents are more familiar to users when they finish the course.

All guidance, and especially documentation, needs to be more problem-oriented. This could be particularly helped by problem-oriented indexes, which might usefully be constructed with the help of experienced users. Checklists directed towards a structured approach to debugging may also help. Plenty of working examples should be included; these give the user confidence that someone has actually achieved the ends he is striving towards, and thus the costs must be finite. Good examples which the user can modify for his own application also reduce his actual, as well as expected, c o s t s .

Adviser training needs considerable attention. It seems that those who use the Advisory Services regularly find them helpful and useful, but many do not use them


except as a last resort. The fact that the adviser is to a large degree an objective outsider who will quite possibly never encounter the user again increase the chances that the adviser will propose a high-cost solution--such as rewriting the program. It is important to find ways whereby a proper contract can be established between user and adviser, so that each knows what he is expected to put in and what he may expect to get out of the consultation. It may be that a better understanding of how users actually think about their difficulties may give advisers more help in considering the user's real problem, and also in finding ways of exploring solutions to them in a meaningful way. Of particular interest are the role-playing ideas which we have tried in seminars, and which have been used in training at Portsmouth Polytechnic (Rush, 1981).

Users have to be actively encouraged to use new or more appropriate facilities; their stylized habits and peaky utilization should be recognized and catered for. For instance, many users in education return to computing at the beginning of each term or each vacation. At these times, changes likely to affect them should be displayed on notice-boards where they regularly congregate. Posters, by definition short, display- ing common problems or good practices, should be displayed in as many user areas as possible.

(2) Improvements in quality of low-cost sources of advice Advice within departments is of very variable quality. Full-time professional computing advisers within departments can be very valuable, but in our study departments which did not have them had developed alternative solutions, including highly regarded advisory relationships based on members of lecturing staff. Much depends on the quality of the specialist computing adviser, the brief given to him and the extent of co-operation sought from or given by the Computer Centre, especially where the department has a wide range of applications in which no one person could be expert. One major problem is the lack of career structure for full-time advisers, who tend to be rather out on a limb in the departmental hierarchy. Solutions to this problem include having such posts staffed by secondment from the central service for reasonably long periods of time. This ensures continuity, a wide range of expertise and continuing liaison for the department, and a career structure and regular contact with others to help him keep up-to-date for the individual.

Consideration should be given, by departments and by the Computer Centre, of ways of making more systematic the informal advice networks. There is some evidence that those research groups which have nominated an individual to be their "computing person" find this approach valuable. Further experiments with general and more detailed specialization, such as in advice on graphics packages, could be very illuminat- ing. A quite simple mechanism for encouraging this, on the evidence of our study, would be to put the manuals for the relevant software in the office of the individual concerned.

Computer Centre staff should make more effort to get out frequently among their users and visit their RJE stations, remote terminal rooms and so on, and not neglect the informal meeting-places such as coffee areas either. The American idea of a "Bag Lunch and Bull Session" is well worth trying; observations of preliminary attempts suggest that they need to be focused on topics of concern for particular users, and held in a natural meeting-place.

398 K. LANG, R. AULD AND T. LANG

In the last 5 years, computing hardware has continued to fall in cost at a dramatic rate, and reliable and general-purpose software has become more widely available. The demand for guidance in using these tools has not, however, diminished; indeed, as the range of facilities available has widened and attracted an increasing number of users f rom the less " t radi t ional" computing disciplines, it has increased and broadened. Moreover , in the past users have been obliged to come to the central service for most of the hardware and software resources they needed, making it relatively easy for them to seek guidance there too. The advent of cheap microcomputers has removed this connection, thus increasing the "cost" to the user of seeking advice, while doing nothing to reduce the pitfalls awaiting the unwary or the tyros. The resources needed to provide good advice and to cope with the effects of bad advice or none at all are considerable. More than ever, it is important to consider the interplay of these factors with the goals and motives of the users whose needs provide the raison d'etre of computing service provision, and to improve the efficiency and efficacy of guidance.

The work reported here was supported by the Social Science Research Council under grant HR5671.

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The goals and methods of computer users