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

Abstract

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.