This paper presents a case study involving the comparison of two programs which were designed for use in the logging industry. Of particular interest in this comparison are the human factors problems likely to arise during field use of such programs. This paper discusses the need for application of consistent sets of human factors design principles. A specific major conclusion related to the field use of these programs is that it is advisable to provide effective redundancy techniques against catastrophic loss of data in an environment where the user has multiple taks to perform. This paper also discusses the consequences of "good" as well as "poor" examples of menu design, display design, data entry error checking, and handling of erroneous keystroke and keystroke sequences.
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