Principled approaches to the design of user interfaces are typically unsubstantiated by practical experience, or are validated only through laboratory experiments with toy programs. This experiment applies several theoretically motivated approaches to the user interface of an existing, practical program of moderate complexity; these approaches include conceptual models, task based design, the use of metaphor, direct manipulation, and empirical evaluation. Although necessarily informal, the experiment yields insight into the utility of these approaches, as well as observations on more general themes such as specialization versus generality, multiple models and their limits, the problem of context, and the elusiveness of consistency as a design goal.
Title
Designing BiblioText: An Experiment in User Interface Design
Published
1988-10-24
Full Collection Name
Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences Technical Reports
Other Identifiers
CSD-88-454
Type
Text
Extent
71 p
Archive
The Engineering Library
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