Introduction to information systems T. Cornford, M. Shaikh is1 060 2013

4.4.1 Interfaces with the computer 
Reading activity
Read Chapter 3 of Curtis and Cobham (2008).
Information systems involve people, and many computers (client 
computers in particular) need to be easily accessible by people. All systems 
will have some form of input and output device to get data in, or to get it 
out. These include the basics of keyboards, screens and various types of 
printer. The machine upon which this is being written has a keyboard and 
a mouse as well as a scanner as inputs. For outputs, there are two colour 
flat screens and a colour laser printer. Using the operating systems and 
other software, all these devices work together to create a consistent and 
easy to use interface that uses windows on the screen, icons, pull-down 
menus and a mix of the keyboard and the mouse for interactive input. 
Other forms of input device and input media might include:
• barcodes read by a scanner at a supermarket till, or QR codes read by a 
mobile phone
• a digital camera capturing video
• the magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) system used on bank 
cheques
• a smartcard used to access a bank account via an ATM (cash machine), 
or to identify, say, each specific doctor using a hospital computing 
system.
New input devices have become widely available and usable in recent 
years. For example, we now use voice-recognition systems, which take 
human speech as an input. One example of where this is used is by 
radiographers (specialist doctors) as they interpret and report on X-ray 
images and other types of digital scan. They can dictate their report 
while looking at the image, which makes good sense as it allows them to 
concentrate on the image. 

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IS1060 Introduction to information systems
56
Activity
You are designing an information system to be used by foreign exchange dealers of a 
bank as they rapidly trade currencies in a noisy dealing room, gathering information 
and making trades. What particular characteristics would you want of input and output 
devices used?
When considering input and output, it is useful to recognise that any 
output from a system may need to be subsequently input – data generated 
and output by one computer is often read into another one (the basis 
of client-server computing). Networks support this exchange, but 
technologies such as barcodes or QR codes are useful for this and can be 
printed by one computer and read by another. It may be appropriate, at 
times, to think of a usb key (pen drive/thumb drive/data stick) or CD-
ROM as an output-input medium. The QR code here can be read by a 
scanner including many mobile phones.