Human-computer interface management, from a computer science viewpoint, focuses on the process of developing quality human-computer interfaces, including their representation, design, implementation, execution, evaluation, and maintenance. This survey presents important concepts of interface management: dialogue independence, structural modeling, representation, interactive tools, rapid prototyping, development methodologies, and control structures. Dialogue independence is the keystone concept upon which all the other concepts depend. It is a characteristic that separates design of the interface from design of the computational component of an application system so that modifications in either tend not to cause changes in the other. The role of a dialogue developer, whose main purpose is to create quality interfaces, is a direct result of the dialogue independence concept. Structural models of the human-computer interface serve as frameworks for understanding the elements of interfaces and for guiding the dialogue developer in their construction. Representation of the human-computer interface is accomplished by a variety of notational schemes for describing the interface. Numerous kinds of interactive tools for human-computer interface development free the dialogue developer from much of the tedium of "coding" dialogue. The early ability to observe behavior of the interface—and indeed that of the whole application system—provided by rapid prototyping increases communication among system designers, implementers, evaluators, and end-users. Methodologies for interactive system development consider interface management to be an integral part of the overall development process and give emphasis to evaluation in the development life cycle. Finally, several types of control structures govern how sequencing among dialogue and computational components is designed and executed. Numerous systems for human-computer interface management are presented t o illustrate these concepts.

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Human-computer interface development: concepts and systems for its management

A dialogue model is an abstract model that is used to describe the structure of the dialogue between a user and an interactive computer system. Dialogue models form the basis of the notations that are used in user interface management systems (UIMS). In this paper three classes of dialogue models are investigated. These classes are transition networks, grammars, and events. Formal definitions of all three models are presented, along with algorithms for converting the notations into an executable form. It is shown that the event model has the greatest descriptive power. Efficient algorithms for converting from the transition diagram and grammar models to the event model are presented. The implications of these results for the design and implementation of UIMSs are also discussed.

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A survey of three dialogue models

One of the goals of User Interface Management Systems (UIMS) is the automatic (or semi-automatic) construction of user interfaces. In order to accomplish this a description of the user interface to be implemented must be available. This report addresses three questions related to user interface descriptions. These questions are: what user interface descriptions are required to automatically produce a user interface, how do these descriptions relate to the human factors of user interfaces, and how can the existing user interface description techniques be classified? In order to address these questions an abstract model of a UIMS has been developed. This model does not represent how a UIMS should be’ structured or implemented, instead it presents the logical components that must appear in a UIMS. Each of these components has a different function, and different description techniques are required for each one. The logical model of a UIMS is shown in fig. 1. This model is similar to ones proposed by Edmonds [Edmonds 1982], Green [Green 1984], and Olsen [Olsen 1984]. Each of the components of this model will now be discussed.

Report on Dialogue Specification Tools

User interface management systems

The contents of this document are the result of intensive discussions among the workshop participants. The names listed by each section are the discussion leaders and principal editors. Without the dedicated enthusiam from all the participants, the ideas presented could not have been formulated.

Graphical input interaction technique (GIIT)

How Should One Approach the Design of an Interactive Interface? This Method Provides Both a Basic Approach and Some Powerful New Tools to Aid in Dialogue Programming.

Borufka

Papers

Dialogue Cells: A Method for Defining Interactions