Paul van Schaik

Despite ubiquitous powerful technologies such as networked computers, global positioning systems, and cell phones; human failures in decision-making and performance continue to have disastrous consequences. Electronic Performance Support: Using Digital Technology to Enhance Human Ability, reminds everyone involved in education, training, human performance engineering, and related fields of the enormous importance of this area. Ironically, the more complex technology becomes, the more performance support may be needed, and that's why the extraordinary expertise shared in this book is especially valuable. The authors emphasize the psychological aspects of performance support, the fundamental limitations of human memory, perception, cognition, conation, and psychomotor skills and how they can be reduced through electronic performance support, as one of the most important pursuits of this century. Readers will find the material presented extremely useful because of its generic basis - which underlines much of the contemporary use of electronic technology for supporting people who are engaged in problem-solving activities. At the same time, the book gives examples of the application of electronic performance support in a number of specific domains. Possible future developments for electronic performance support are also discussed. The technological challenges we face today, both globally and locally, are more urgent than most people seem willing to acknowledge, and there is no time to waste putting the ideas expressed in this book into action.