Interface Management System Research Articles

A user interface management approach for object-oriented data base applications

This article discusses the development and management of object-oriented data base applications by use of an approach in which the user interface management is abstracted from the underlying data base, but nevertheless encapsulated in general purpose software: a user interface management system (UIMS) module. We identify a list of requirements that this application domain introduces and then present the LINCKS object-oriented data base system and the UIMS, which was designed to meet these requirements. After introducing the architecture of the system, we illustrate by means of an example how an application is built and executed. Finally, we discuss our approach and identify several features stemming from the specialization of the UIMS to the area of object-oriented data bases. These features include multiple views of application objects and encapsulated run-time behavior on the task level. Our conclusion is that the design of specialized UIMS for different application domains is a valuable alternative to the maximally general UIMS approach.

AN ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT FOR NATURAL LANGUAGE INTERFACES TO INTERACTIVE COMPUTER SYSTEMS

This paper discusses the development of natural language interfaces to interactive computer systems using the NALIGE user interface management system. The task of engineering such interfaces is reduced to producing a set of well-formed specifications which describe lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of the selected application domain. These specifications are converted by NALIGE to an autonomous natural language interface that exhibits the prescribed linguistic and functional behavior. Development of several applications is presented to demonstrate how NALIGE and the associated development methodology may facilitate the design and implementation of practical natural language interfaces. This includes a natural language interface to Unix and its subsequent porting to MS-DOS, VAX/VMS, and VM/CMS; a natural language interface for Internet navigation and resource location; a natural language interface for text pattern matching; a natural language interface for text editing; and a natural language interface for electronic mail management. Additionally, design issues and considerations are identified/addressed, such as reuse and portability, content coupling, morphological processing, scalability, and habitability.

Concept representation of the software tool PIDMaster for systems modelling and controllers tuning

The work deals with the representation of the concepts of program package PIDMaster for the signal analysis, system modeling and controller's synthesis. It is distinguished for the user-friendly interface which enables comfortable work for the less experienced users also. The required user-friendliness was achieved by the use of window interface, completed with some elements of the object oriented user interface management system. Center points of new interface are so-called movable graphical objects and it's usage in the phase of the system parameter estimation which is explained thoroughly.

The programming language standards scene, ten years on Paper 14: FIMS (Form Interface Management System)

This paper, one of a simultaneously published set, describes the establishment in 1987 of the standards project for FIMS, and the progress of the project to the end of 1993. FIMS (the Form Interface Management System) specifies a User Interface Management System (UIMS) with several components, among which is the programming language IFDL (the Independent Form Description Language). This paper gives the history of its development and an overview of its capabilities. The paper finishes with an assessment of the likelihood of acceptance of FIMS and a list of future enhancements.

DUET ? A database user interface design environment

The DUET database user interface management system aims to help database application programmers to create, modify, and maintain interactive graphical user interfaces for different applications. DUET supports the creation of a complete user interface via direct manipulation techniques. It provides a large set of database widgets which are necessary for database applications. DUET provides facilities to step through the validation of a created user interface. A user interface can be saved as C code which can be integrated into a database backend. In this paper, the features and the architecture of DUET are presented.

Developing a natural language interface for the UNIX operating system

Traditional operating system command languages have been shown to cause significant loss of productivity to novice and intermediate computer users when compared with alternative modes of interaction such as direct manipulation, menu selection, and natural language communication. Within the last decade, significant advances in the areas of direct manipulation and menu selection have resulted in the development of user interface management systems. These systems consist of tools for the specification, design, evaluation, and run-time support of graphical user interfaces. Our work extends the domain of user interface management systems to include development of restricted natural language interfaces to operating systems.This report discusses the use of the NALIGE user interface management system int he development of a natural language interface for the Unix operating system. Specifically, the task of developing such an interface is reduced to producing a set of well-formed specifications which describe lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of the selected application domain. These specifications are used by NALIGE to construct an autonomous natural language interface which exhibits the desired linguistic and functional behavior.

Practical user interface design notation

A notation for describing user interfaces has been developed which offers the benefits of being theoretically well-founded and reasonably formal while at the same time being of practical use in an industrial software design environment. The notation is based on a five-layer model of interface software derived from user interface management system and window management work, and is, essentially, a statetransitional approach to the description of interfaces and their behaviour. A short example of the use of the notation is given and its strengths and weaknesses are discussed.

Cooperative Visual Environments for the Design of Effective Visual Systems

This paper describes the architecture of cooperative visual environments (CVE). This proposal stems from the findings of several experiments which suggested overcoming the limitations of first-generation user-interface management systems (UIMS) by allowing the users to determine their own computational environment. To avoid user disorientation, as well as the possibility of creating ambiguous or contradictory systems, a novel discipline for the specification and use of the tools is adopted. A systemic approach has been proposed to identify the variables needed to use, observe and adapt a CVE. The design and implementation of tools satisfying this discipline led to the definition of network objects, generalizing composite objects, and to the introduction of typed links allowing a new technique for message passing. The paper illustrates the above points by discussing the rationale behind the design of CVEs, deriving the requirements which CVEs have to satisfy and outlining the architecture with the fundamental mechanisms which allow their use and evolution. The nature of the proposal is also clarified through an example drawn from a real case.

Design and integration of a graphic interface for an expert system in oncology

We describe a graphic user interface for an expert system in oncology. The main objectives of our work has been to facilitate the adaptation of the system to different clinical environments and potentiate the factors which more directly determine the acceptance of the system by its users. We present the design principles derived from the features of the clinical domain chosen and from the objectives of the system. These principles are reflected on the design of the screen and of the interaction and in the style of integration of the interface with the other components of the system. Underlying the application we describe is a graphic user interface management system which provides facilities for the fast prototyping and integration of interfaces. We describe here those features of this tool which make the practical application of the design principles we consider possible.

NALIGE: a user interface management system for the development of natural language interfaces

One of the major problems encountered by the average computer user is the syntactic inflexibility and linguistic opacity of existing operating system command languages. These characteristics, which are manifested in terms of rigid syntactical rules and cryptic/obtuse acronyms, have been shown to result in significant loss of productivity among novice and intermediate users. This paper investigates one approach to addressing this problem, namely the introduction of natural language interfaces placed on top of the standard operating system command language interpreters. Specifically, it presents a user interface management system which accepts a set of well-formed specifications and produces an autonomous natural language interface exhibiting the prescribed linguistic behavior. These specifications describe the linguistic knowledge to be encapsulated in the target interface in terms of the lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic elements of the application domain. Additionally, this paper discusses a systematic methodology to be used in identifying the linguistic elements of a given application domain. This methodology consists of a set of formal techniques, computational tools, and three knowledge-base specification languages to be employed by the interface designer during all stages of development and subsequent maintenance of a specific natural language interface.

Designing database interfaces with DBface

DBface is a toolkit for designing interfaces to object-oriented databases. It provides users with a set of tools for building custom interfaces with minimal programming. This is accomplished by combining techniques from User Interface Management Systems (UIMS) with a built-in knowledge about the specific kinds of techniques used by object-oriented databases. DBface allows users to create graphical constructs and interactive techniques by taking advantage of an object-oriented database environment and tools. Not only can database tools be used for creating an interface, but information about the interface being built is stored within a database schema and is syntactically consistent with all other schema information. Thus, an interface can deal with data and schema information, including information about another interface. This allows for easy reusability of graphical constructs such as data representations.

Design of an intelligent interface to standard PC applications which maximises the ability of the disabled user

The paper reports on work on the design of speech and switch-driven interfaces. It presents a design for a generic user-interface management system (UIMS) which allows the user access to any PC application via both speech and switched input. This generic UIMS allows an instantiation of an interface which is tailored to the requirements of a particular individual, and which can, if necessary, be changed over time as his/her condition changes. Interaction is aided by a knowledge of the user's requirements at the task level, drawing on interaction history and the knowledge of the application gained from a generic task model. A user-oriented task model is derived during the interaction, thus providing enhanced performance over time.

User interface issues for evolving open systems

The authors address the user interface aspect of energy management systems (EMSs) in the move to open systems. They discuss the evolution of the user interface for an EMS including current solutions and technologies that are being applied. The discussion is then extended to areas of issues that will need to be addressed as the design of the user interface subsystem is evolved to incorporate open systems concepts and standards. Specific areas that are discussed include graphical user interface (GUI) styles, user interface management systems (UIMSs), and three-dimensional graphics.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Completing the job interface design

HyperNews, a user-interface management system that lets a user separate application and interface design to link a new interface to an old application with very little programming, is described. Much of a HyperNews interface can be designed without writing any code at all. With direct manipulation, a user can design a graphical user interface simply by creating, moving, and resizing objects on the screen. Experimentation with different interface styles is possible with less effort in HyperNews compared to specification languages and tool kits, and immediate feedback can result in extremely fast development. The ways HyperNews provides communication capabilities among all HyperNews objects (such as control objects, cards, backgrounds, and stacks) and links interfaces to internal applications, which were developed within HyperNews, to external applications, or to existing applications developed without HyperNews are discussed.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

The Ignatius environment: supporting the design and development of expert-system user interfaces

The Ignatius user interface management system, with which designers can create user interfaces for conversational and model-based expert systems, is discussed. Because conversational and model-based expert systems require different approaches to user interface management, Ignatius consists of two separate but communicating tools: the surface interaction manager and the session discourse manager. The interaction manager represents user interface components as objects with attributes. The discourse manager manages the discourse structures of conversational expert systems, structures traditionally regarded as side effects of problem solving. Ignatius was tested by building a user interface to the Antibody Analysis Advisor (A/sup 3/), a conversational expert system that helps laboratory technicians choose analysis techniques for finding antibodies in blood samples. The surface interaction objects, session discourse structure, and an example execution in A/sup 3/ are described.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Separation of User Interface and Application with the Delft Direct Manipulation Manager (D2M2)

In this paper a user interface management system is presented based on the same object-oriented approach to the design of both the user interface and the application semantics. However, data for user interface and application semantics are stored and processed apart. The outstanding feature of the system is that the modelling technique is identical for both, using the same tool for semantic data modelling. The modelling technique supports most characteristics of the object oriented paradigm: objects, classes and inheritance. The diagrams used can describe among others the concepts classification, aggregation, decomposition, generalization. Attributes of objects can be described in property forms. Transition diagrams are applied to specify the interaction possible to the end user. From these specifications a run time version of the whole application can be generated. A protocol is used for the communication between application and user interface manager during run time. Some features of Delft Direct Manipulation Manager are demonstrated with the design and implementation of a small application with direct manipulation.

SX/Tools - An Open Design Environment for Adaptable Multimedia User Interfaces

In this paper a brief review of user interface management systems (UIMSs) and their advantages is given. Shortcomings of current UIMSs and open requirements imposed by industrial application areas are outlined. Among the most important requirements are uniform design mechanisms independent of interaction media, techniques, and styles as well as a straight forward end-user adaptability of user interfaces. A new approach to interactive interface construction, called “direct composition”, is introduced. In this approach all interface objects contain the means for their own modification and design and therefore offer consistent interaction techniques for both the construction and usage of user interfaces. Moreover, end-user adaptability is an inherent feature of direct composition interfaces. The user interface design environment SX/Tools is described to exemplify specific properties of user interface management systems following the principle of direct composition. The impacts of direct composition on user interface design include a uniform interface development process covering tool development, interface development, and “on-usage” interface adaptation. It is argued that the direct composition approach can overcome many of the problems with traditional UIMSs.

User Interface Management Systems for Engineering Applications

AbstractEssential features of a User Interface Management System (UIMS) from the perspective of engineering applications' user interface development are described. Three commercially available UIMS are validated against this set of essential features and the results of such a categorised evaluation are reported. The proliferation of user interface design tools necessitated an initialfiltering to select these tools on the basis of their availability on a wide range of platforms currently used by engineers, supplier support for the product and the prototyping tools the UIMS offer. Graphic Modelling System (GMS), TeleUSE and USEIT were selected for their potential utility to engineering applications.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1991 European X User Group Annual Conference held at Queens' College, Cambridge, UK.This comparative evaluation is compiled on behalf of the UK Science and Engineering Research Council, for the benefit of the UK academic engineering research community.

Towards a new quality of automation in complex man-machine systems

Supervisory control of dynamic technical systems can be changed towards a new quality of automation and cooperative man-machine decision making. This will be achieved by using technologies of knowledge-based support systems and cognitive engineering. Human-centred design approaches are needed for building such advanced automation systems for process supervision and control. Appropriate function and task allocations between human operators and computers as well as between computer control and computer support have to be found. A conceptual structure and a mathematical framework for describing the human-automation synergism in future technical systems are proposed in this paper. The conceptual structure differentiates between the general task categories of controlling and problem solving for both human and automation. It is further based on the structure of an extended User Interface Management System (UIMS) which suggests a separation into presentation, dialogue, user or operator model, application model, and tasks to be performed. Human operator behaviour, supervision and control, decision support (both application and operator oriented), and man-machine interfaces (with presentation and dialogue) are related to each other on different levels. Four examples from recent projects demonstrate the applicability of the human-centred approach towards advanced automation. Heuristic control of industrial processes as well as diagnosis of causes of technical failures in power plants are explained as examples for application oriented functionalities. Human error detection and flexible automation in aircraft guidance as well as procedural support for information search are described as possibilities for human operator oriented support.

Building reusable data representations with FaceKit

FaceKit is a toolkit for designing interfaces to object-oriented databases. It provides users with a set of tools for building custom interfaces with minimal programming. This is accomplished by combining techniques from the realm of User Interface Management Systems (UIMS) with a built-in knowledge about the specific kinds of techniques used by object-oriented databases. One of the main features of FaceKit is the ability to rapidly create reusable graphical constructs for representing schema or data objects. These constructs are stored within the database as methods, often dependent on attribute data. Building up a library of these data representations facilities reusability within a variety of databases.