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In 1979 Apple began to develop Lisa, a workstation to enhance the productivity of office workers. The hardware was built around a Motorola 68000, a bit-mapped display, and a mouse. The user interface is intuitive, using real-world concepts rather than computer concepts. It is easy to learn, and provides for both novice users still learning the system and users that have mastered the system. The user interface is modeless and consistent. The uniformity of the user interface supports transferable learning---the ability to learn an operation once and apply it over and over again in another application in a different context.The user interface also supports data interchange among documents of the same or different types. This interchange of data, coupled with the multitasking operating system and the multiple windows of the Lisa, permits the use of several tools to perform a task that one tool alone could not accomplish. The Lisa user interface and its applications provide an environment that allows the user to concentrate on what is to be accomplished rather than on how to accomplish it. In this way, Lisa provides tools to improve the productivity of the office worker.

Serpent (Software Engineering Rapid Prototyping Environment) is an example of the class of systems known as User Interface Management System (UIMS) . It uses the X window system to interact with the end user, and is useful both as a portion of a production system and as a separate prototyping tool. Serpent supports the development and execution of the user interface of a system. It provides an editor with which to specify the user interface and a run-time system which communicates with the application to get the data to display. The system then uses the specification previously output from the editor to decide how to display that data. This report provides a technical overview of Serpent, its components, the module used in specifying the user interface, and the editor used in constructing the user interface.

This is the second half of a two-part report on Virtual Editing. In the first paper, virtual editing was defined and its implementation described. In this paper, a user interface to the editor is described and some of the problems of introducing a new form of communication which conceptually merges various media are discussed. The aim is acceptance by the office worker, or eventual end user. Possible applications for this technology are suggested. In addition, the use of a mouse in the system as a way of entering the user commands is explained.

User interface design issues are discussed for a large interactive system. The assumptions about the user environment are explicitly described. Issues discussed include command language syntax, command recognition and completion, subsystem organization, user extension capabilities, user options, and various forms of prompting, help and feedback. These issues are discussed within the context of an existing system, the NLS system.

The intelligent console (INC) is a microcomputer inserted between a computer and its opetator console. Although INC is simple, it offers a very flexible user interface of a computer system. Usually, a user interface of a computer system is pre-specified by its operating system. So, if we want somewhat non-standard usage of a computer system, such as remote access to a batch opetating system, we must provide new hardware and software. It is very difficult for a user to implement such a system, because it requires the users to improve or modify the operating system. Using INC, we can easily add a new function to the computer system, without modification of its operating system.

On the basis of a graphical language for defining a dynamic picture and the control actions applied to it, a system is built for developing the presentation of application data for user interfaces. This system provides user interface developers a friendly and high efficient programming environment.

A high-level UIMS which automatically generates the lexical and syntactic design of graphical user interfaces is presented. The interfaces generated by the UIMS can easily and rapidly be refined by the designer by using highly interactive and graphical facilities. The UIMS accepts a high-level description of the semantic commands supported by the application, a description of the implementation device, and optionally, the end user's preferences. Based on these inputs the UIMS generates graphical user interfaces in which the commands are selected from menus and command arguments are provided through interaction with graphical interaction techniques.

This paper describes an environment that allows the user interface of an application to be generated automatically. The environment uses an approach based on the ideas of editor-oriented user interaction and object-oriented programming.

User Interface Development Systems (UIDS), as opposed to User Interface Management Systems or UI Toolkits focus on supporting the design and implementation of the user interface. This paper describes Ensemble, an experimental UIDS that begins to explore the electronic creation of interaction techniques as well as the corresponding design processes. Issues related to the impact on the components of the development system are discussed. Finally, problems with the current implementation and future directions are presented.

The term User Interface Management System has been coined to represent a set of software tools for the construction and control of the interaction dialogue between the user and the computational resource. This set of software tools will have a significant impact on the structure of applications in the future. Its advantages include faster and more reliable application development, consistent user interfaces across application domains, and easily modifiable user interfaces. Also, the user interface management systems are an essential experimental tool for research in the human computer interface. This paper describes a brief hi story of UIMS and an architecture for a specific UIMS to provide an adaptable user interface.

In January 1971, the AFIPS Information Systems Committee sponsored a workshop on "The User Interface for Interactive Search of Bibliographic Data Bases." This narrower topic was chosen intentionally to give the Workshop a focus suitable for intensive discussion within a small group. Now that the Proceedings are available it is appropriate to highlight those user interface characteristics shared by a less restricted range of applications. The keynote for the panel will be "what goes on in front of the terminal"---what facilities the user requires, what services the computer can provide, and how the user responds to data display. Understanding the exchange of data between the user and the computer at the interface during search will enable designers to implement systems truly responsive to search needs.

This paper describes a system for providing mixed graphical and verbal communications with a multi-access computer via a satellite computer with a display. We assume that such an arrangement is necessary to satisfy an on-line user's large-scale computation and storage requirements economically, and to provide graphical facilities at remote terminals. The general-purpose Display Interface System, parts of which reside in each machine, acts as an interface between the user's programs and the display terminal. It provides means for communication as well as system functions required in each machine. Since it is general purpose, and no user will require all the features it provides, the software exists in the form of system libraries from which a user may select an appropriate subset for his particular application. The user's interface with this system in each machine is intended to be hardware independent

We want to present a multimodal user interface for interaction with the virtual environment back-projected on the large projection screen. We use the interaction metaphor of a "spell-casting" wizard (the user) using a "magic wand" to interact with the VR environment and to complete some tasks. Our contribution is an user interface, which tries to take advantage of the past experience of the user such as fairy-tales or fantasy movies.

This paper describes a user interface framework called Moggetto for an object-oriented database system (OODB). Moggetto is proposed as an approach to the definition and management of tailorable object displays. The novelty of the approach lies in the use of embedded, inherently reconfigurable user interface components to realise object user interfaces which are modelled in the database. This obviates the need for close coupling between the OODB and the host windowing system through, for example, common language bindings and code libraries.

Nearly all software products have rigid and predefined interfaces. Users are usually unable to modify or customize features beyond cosmetic aspects. Interface adaptability is important because aspects such as user preferences and task sequences vary widely in engineering, even within specialized domains. A methodology for the creation of adaptable user interfaces using model composition is presented in this paper. User interfaces are generated dynamically through the composition of model fragments that are stored in a fragment library. When fragments are linked to models of physical behavior, interface model composition applications are likely to be easier to extend and maintain than traditional graphical user interfaces. A prototype system within the domain of bridge diagnosis illustrates the potential for practical applications.

Currently, many mechatronics devices make extensive use of complex user interfaces that control the functions of the system. According to contemporary design approach, the user interfaces need to be constructed by taking the expected end-users into account. In this paper, we present a case study in which we constructed a user interface for "pick-and-place configuration" of the Flexible Assembly Unit FAU. The goal of the study was to construct a user interface that is strongly based on clear organisational and user requirements and characteristics. Additionally, the aim was to construct a user interface for shop-floor users with different skill levels. This approach was realised by conducting a user survey in real environments: creating user characteristics, setting usability criteria, creating prototype user interfaces and testing the prototype. Multidisciplinary approach got realised through deeper analysis of technical, cognitive and training requirements by participating representatives. Based on findings from the study, the prototype was iteratively improved. The results indicated that based on users' experience and motivation, four different styles of use need to be taken into account if successful and efficient interaction is required. In addition to the user interface created within this study, the results provide design data that can be used when constructing F AU user interfaces with other types of user interface platforms like PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) devices.

Standard software engineering methods are not directly applicable to nonvisual user inter- faces due to the mismatch of user interfaces of developers and users. We have developed tools to visualize the nonvisual presentation and the nonvisual interaction. This requires to apply software interfaces as used by screen readers to collect data about widgets.

Designing user interface has special importance in Virtual Learning. Considerable portion of students' time is spent in attempting to learn system, work with present lists in user interface and so forth. Perhaps virtual education system has several computational powers, but it lacks adequate user interface. Then, using system would be difficult and user may encounter many confuses during the work and would be unsuccessful in reaching their goals. These are results of unfamiliarity with fundamental principles and in user interface design and disusing them in generating virtual learning systems. Thus, in any virtual learning system design, it is necessary to consider fundamental principles and rules of the user interface design in such system, and in this manner, in this research an adequate user interface is suggested for e-learning Environment in which has been evaluated with regard to these fundamental principles and rules. Evaluations have been done on this interface show its desirable ability to attract users' satisfaction.

An object-based intuitive user interface approach, based on a real life conceptual user model is introduced. The objects are represented graphically. A few simple concepts are applied to the whole user interface. These, together with high consistency in the interaction techniques, result in a highly user-friendly system. The design concepts are described and a design method for object-based user interfaces is proposed. >

3D applications, e.g. in the context of visualization or interactive design review, can require complex user interaction to manipulate certain elements, a typical task which requires standard user interface elements. However, there are still no generalized methods for selecting and manipulating objects in 3D scenes and 3D GUI elements often fail to gather support for reasons of simplicity, leaving developers encumbered to replicate interactive elements themselves. Therefore, we present a set of nodes that introduce different kinds of 2D user interfaces to X3D. We define a base type for these user interfaces called "InteractiveTexture", which is a 2D texture node implementing slots for input forwarding. From this node we derive several user interface representations to enable complex user interaction suitable for both, desktop and immersive interaction.

International audience; In this work the software application called Glotaran is introduced as a Java-based graphical user interface to the R package TIMP, a problem solving environment for fitting superposition models to multi-dimensional data. TIMP uses a command-line user interface for the interaction with data, the specification of models and viewing of analysis results. Instead, Glotaran provides a graphical user interface which features interactive and dynamic data inspection, easier -- assisted by the user interface -- model specification and interactive viewing of results. The interactivity component is especially helpful when working with large, multi-dimensional datasets as often result from time-resolved spectroscopy measurements, allowing the user to easily pre-select and manipulate data before analysis and to quickly zoom in to regions of interest in the analysis results. Glotaran has been developed on top of the NetBeans rich client platform and communicates with R through the Java-to-R interface Rserve. The background and the functionality of the application are described here. In addition, the design, development and implementation process of Glotaran is documented in a generic way.

We present a multimodal media center user interface with a hands-free speech recognition input method for users with physical disabilities. In addition to speech input, the application features a zoomable context + focus graphical user interface and several other modalities, including speech output, haptic feedback, and gesture input. These features have been developed in co-operation with representatives from the target user groups. In this article, we focus on the speech input interface and its evaluations. We discuss the user interface design and results from a long-term pilot study taking place in homes of physically disabled users, and compare the results to a public pilot study and laboratory studies carried out with non-disabled users.

The advent of Internet technologies since decades ago has propelled distance learning drastically. In this modern world, knowledge develops so fast that the amount of intellectual information that needs to be learnt before it becomes obsolete again is so huge. Distance learning through the use of Internet technologies has the advantage of being able to get across the information to the students remotely and effortlessly. The other advantage, which is the main focus of this paper, is that students are able to learn from their instructors on an entirely new media platform - the Internet-enabled and tangible user interface. This paper discusses how to use two main new media: multi-modal Internet technologies, namely remote physical interface and remote augmented reality technology in distance learning.

The paper addresses a research approach in the area of user interface development tools, namely to discover the helpful, structured, and organised ways to integrate the use of guidelines, standards, and styles into the development tools. The aim of this research approach is to assist the user interface designer during the design process with the help of a powerful design aid tool, called the user interface designer assistance, that will lead to user interfaces of high ergonomic quality, an important aspect for the end-users. >

In this paper we analyze how the elements in the Microsoft Authenticode interface influence final users' decisions about downloading code from the Internet. Results show that the users' behavior appears to be mostly driven from the code publisher name, without considering other information provided by the interface. A proposal to improve the user interface is currently under evaluation

Modern medical-focused appliances are sophisticated devices that can process complex data and control various subsystems. This is the reason why they require a custommade advanced Graphical User Interface that is able to control all these features. In order to build such a Graphical User Interface we first need to choose a proper hardware platform and then an operating system for which we will build the Graphical User Interface application. As for the hardware, an industrial-targeted Mini-ITX mainboard meets our needs of reliability, stability and speed. The mainboard is based on the Personal Computer x86 platform and we can expand its features with peripherals such as CompactFlash card for data storage, touchscreen LCD for user interaction and an external board, connected to the USB port of the mainboard, for data interchange. The operating system used is Microsoft Windows Embedded CE in a combination with a Dynamically-Linked Library to control the features of the external USB board. With such a configuration we obtain a fast and compact controller with data interchange capability and a sophisticated Graphical User Interface. Since the Graphical User Interface is custom-made and the operating system gets loaded fast the end-user does not have a feeling to be using a PC. The main benefit is the system’s upgradeability because even with major hardware changes we can still reuse all our code to rebuild our Graphical User Interface and transfer it on a new platform without losses.

As the control systems are becoming complex and there is more and more information that is handled in the system, the need for graphical user interfaces providing good user experience increases. Human machine interface (HMI) in the control system has some unique charasteristics which affect its design. In the control cabin there is physical control equipment such as joysticks and hand panels. In addition, there is usually a screen that is used to display the graphical user interface showing machine's s status information. As control equipment is critical in the sense of response time and the graphical user interface is a non-real-time application, new challenges for the system design arise. In this paper, we present five patterns that tackle the challenges in HMI design for control systems.

In user interface design a common pitfall is to use the technical properties of the device as basis for the design, which easily causes a user interface to become too complicated and hard to use. Also, the great development in the area of different hand-held terminal devices has set new requirements for user interfaces: screen sizes of devices are very small, advanced I/O devices are used instead of ordinary mouse and keyboard and the operating environment of the devices differs significantly from familiar PCs and laptops. However, governmental and in particular military communications systems often trail behind this development. To be able to overcome the aforementioned challenges and take usability of governmental communication systems to a new level, a new approach is needed. This paper covers user-centered design of graphical user interfaces to advanced communication devices designed to be used in challenging environment, e.g., in moving vehicles and outdoors in any season, and to support devices with limited screen size and touch screen technology. We also introduce a proof-of-concept implementation and show through a user test that general principles introduced in the paper can easily be applied to a specialized communication device.

We introduce Reality-based User Interface System (RUIS), a platform that even novice programmers can easily use for prototyping novel user interfaces. We implemented a puzzle application with a 3D user interface employing modified Nintendo Wii Remotes as 6-DOF controllers to showcase some of the features that are possible with our platform: two-handed gestural interaction, natural interaction metaphors, and haptic feedback. We conducted a basic user study with 16 participants to evaluate the puzzle application and its 3D user interface. The results show how test subjects using the puzzle application tended to rate the 3D user interface to be more fun, intuitive, and realistic than a traditional mouse interface.

This paper discusses a user interface design tool for use in the Alvey ECLIPSE project. ECLIPSE is a second-generation integrated project support environment for medium to large software projects. Currently tool user interfaces in ECLIPSE are written in the Format Description Language (FDL) which defines the objects the user sees on the screen and how he/she interacts with them. FDL is interpreted at run time by a user interface management system. However, a language-based approach makes it difficult to visualise the user interface. A more direct approach is required (especially for the graphical interfaces used in Eclipse) to assist rapid prototyping and permit more user involvement in design. This paper looks at a tool for the "Direct Manipulation" [1] of interface objects and the methodology surrounding the tool. The tool is the centre of a design-prototype-evaluate iterative loop.

Constructing graphical user interfaces for interactive applications is a difficult and time consuming task, typically requiring extensive programming and experimentation with many prototypes. Thus, the ability to package portions of the specification of user interfaces into components that can be reused in the construction of many interfaces, and the ability to change an application's user interface without impacting the implementation of the functionality are crucial. These abilities can be realized in the measure that the dependencies between the implementation of an application's functionality and the user interface can be minimized.

User interface design has many components. Usable computer interfaces should be easy to learn, result in high user productivity and high user satisfaction. There are a number of components in user interface design that affect the usability of the interface. Within the human factors community we tend to emphasize the ergonomic and cognitive components of the computer interface. There is another component that is frequently ignored, the visual interface design. This panel will present information on the visual component in various user-computer interfaces and will discuss the contributions of the visual designer to the interfaces and usability.

Without the support and understanding of operators and engineers, the full benefits to be gained from investing in computer-controlled equipment may never be realised

The construction of intelligent interfaces can be greatly facilitated by classifying the information that users and programs communicate, and by separating the user interface from the functionality of a program. This paper presents a scheme for classifying this information, and show how, by structuring the interface around this scheme, the user interface and functionality of a program can be separated, and tools can be built that provide assistance to both users and developers of user interfaces.

The poster describes a simple procedure for evaluating the potential usability of a user interface at the earliest stages of product design. A black-box model of the user interface is generated which can be examined for inconsistency, unnecessary complexity and unpredictability.