USER‐COMPUTING SYSTEM INTERACTION IN A TIME‐SHARING NETWORK

The last decade has witnessed a growing concern among computer scientists to understand the complex interactions between humans and computer hardware. The work described in this paper is an experimental study of a user‐computer interaction on a time‐sharing computer terminal network over a period of 1 year. The user‐system interaction described in this paper refers to a university environment. The user‐system performance variables considered are arrival patterns of jobs, inter‐arrival time, connect time, cpu time and think time. The users of the systems are grouped into on‐ and off‐campus users; a two‐way analysis of variance without replications established that arrival volume depended upon the weekday but not upon the user group. The pattern of arrivals throughout one day required an empirical distribution. Coefficient of variation indicated hyper‐exponential distributions for inter‐arrival time, connect time and cpu time, but an exponential distribution for think time. Furthermore, the experimental research described in this paper supports the fact that a hypothesis to characterize the interaction between the user and the computing system can be developed for an efficient use of the system.