Human-centred systems is a term (in economics, computing and design) coined by Irish engineer Mike Cooley in 1982 in reference to the transition in his industry from traditional drafting at a drawing board to Computer-Aided Design. Human-centred systems aim to preserve or enhance human skills, in both manual and office work, in environments in which technology tends to undermine the skills that people use in their work.
A number of projects have attempted to see whether and how human-centred systems can be developed:
- the Utopia project in Scandinavia, where a group of computer scientists, social scientists and print workers combined to design a workstation for newspaper layout.
- in machine tools and computer-aided manufacture.
- in clerical work.
A different approach with a similar name is Human-centered computing.
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)