[1] It was proposed by Stuart K. Card, Thomas P. Moran and Allen Newell in 1980 in the Communications of the ACM and published in their book The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction in 1983, which is considered as a classic in the HCI field.
[2][3] The foundations were laid in 1974, when Card and Moran joined the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and created a group named Applied Information-Processing Psychology Project (AIP) with Newell as a consultant aiming to create an applied psychology of human-computer interaction.
[4] The keystroke-level model is still relevant today, which is shown by the recent research about mobile phones and touchscreens (see Adaptions).
The keystroke-level model has several restrictions: Also, one should keep in mind when assessing a computer system that other aspects of performance (errors, learning, functionality, recall, concentration, fatigue, and acceptability),[26] types of users (novice, casual)[23] and non-routine tasks have to be considered as well.
[28] The following example slightly modified to be more compact from Kieras shows the practical use of the KLM by comparing two different ways to delete a file for an average skilled typist.
One of the significant contributions to this field is done by Holleis, who retained existing operators while revisiting the timing specifications.