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The design and evaluation of interactive computer systems should take into account the total performance of the combined user-computer system. Such an account would reflect the psychological characteristics of users and their interaction with the task and the computer. This rarely occurs in any systematic and explicit way. The causes of this failure may lie partly in attitudes towards the possibility of dealing successfully with psychological factors, such as the belief that intuition, subjective experience, and anecdote form the only possible bases for dealing with them. Whatever may be true of these more global issues, one major cause is the absence of good analysis tools for assessing combined user-computer performance. There exists quite a bit of research relevant to the area of user-computer performance, but most of it is preliminary in nature. Pew et al.(1977), in a review of 40 potentially relevant human-system performance models, conclude ‘that integrative models of human performance compatible with the requirements for representing command and control system performance do not exist at the present time.'Ramsey and Atwood (1979), after reviewing the human factors literature pertinent to computer systems, conclude that while there exists enough material to develop a qualitative'human factors design guide', there is insufficient material for a ‘quantitative reference handbook'.