Computer science students by their nature were recognised as having a rigid approach in their thinking and reasoning. This can give rise to incompatibilities between the more qualitative nature of psychological knowledge and the more quantitative heuristics needed by software developers. While computer scientists may be able to communicate to their students at this level, there is a danger that they may misapply psychological knowledge or oversimplify human behaviour. An example was given where a computer scientist had taught a class that graphical user interfaces were bad when they had more than seven items which was thought to be in conflict with Miller's recommendation for short-term memory. It was pointed out by both sides that no single person is likely to be able to give a comprehensive picture of HCI as a whole.
Computer scientists are likely to have a poor understanding of areas in the social sciences.
Psychologists are likely to have a poor understanding of the software engineering context required to build systems. Two general approaches were offered. The first makes use of a team of individual specialists to provide a broad scope. The second recognises HCI as a discipline in its own right which needs to be taught by those who understand HCI as a whole, rather than just specific components. However, neither of these approaches were seen as being particularly easy to implement.