BIB_07: Gillan, D. J., & Bias, R. G. (2001). Usability science. I: foundations. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 13(4), 351-372.

The authors argue in this article that usability is an emergent "science" linking the basic behavioral and cognitive sciences and engineering. The authors point out the failure in transferring knowledge between experimental psychology and interface design, and argue that "usability science" can bridge this gap. They compare "usability science" to other applied sciences, particularly, medical science, and propose three guidelines for applied sciences: research problems are identified through understanding of real-world problems, observational methods are crucial, and practitioners must understand the scientific method to make inferences about processes and mechanism (p. 356). Comparing the "usability science" to other applied fields concerning technology and users such as human factor and HCI, the authors emphasize some crucial aspects of the "usability science": broader interest in use (not only related to work), empirical research and user-centered approach (p. 357-59). They go on to draw on a philosophical understanding of the relationship between theory and practice and argue that the usability science, taking a pragmatic stance, can yield research results from real world situations that controlled lab experiments as employed by the basic sciences cannot. In the remaining of the article, the authors discuss some issues that the usability sciences concern, such as information presentation, interaction and control, and methodology.

Apparently, the authors make the distinction between the "usability science" and "usability engineering." In other words, the authors' intention is to identify a field as "usability science," which emphasizes on the "scientific" value of usability studies in addition to, rather than in place of, usability engineering. To define a science, one needs to look at the research questions and methodology. The authors touched these two areas in the last part of the article when they discuss the "issues" of the usability science. The first two issues, information presentation and interaction and control, concern research questions, or what questions usability scientists are interested in answering. The third issue concerns methodology, which the authors situate in a multidimentional space. The authors have made a decent argument, but even if they are right in that the "usability science" has its distinctive research questions and methodology, defining usability research as a "science" may exclude the approaches and methodologies in humanities that can enrich our understanding about usability.