Tutorials for software : a comparison of the Appleworks software tutorial with pre-entered data and an experimental tutorial with user entered data

The attention directed toward computer software research has been sparse which is quite evident in particular facets such as learning methods, specifically towards tutorials. Some authors have identified various important issues which include cognitive factors, reduction of presentation of superfluous information, and the importance of interaction with software and hardware. The present . study examined two tutorials which were similar except in their level of required user behaviors. Tutorial A required only user manipulation of disk stored data. Tutorial B required the user to enter the data into the computer, design the screen format, and then to manipulate it. It was predicted that the extra task of entering data and designing the screen format would provoke more positive scores for Tutorial B as measured by two independent questionnaires, would require fewer requests for assistance than for those using Tutorial A, and require a comparative duration period to complete. The results obtained supported all hypotheses except for the duration period which took longer for Tutorial B. The implication is that there should be development of improved Tutorial options utilizing research based methods such as these presented

DESIGNING INTERACTIVE USER INTERFACES: DIALOG CHARTS AND AN ASSESSMENT OF THEIR USE IN SPECIFYING CONCEPTUAL MODELS OF DIALOGS

The conceptual design of user interfaces focuses on arriving at a specification of the structure of the dialog, independent of any particular implementation approach. There is common agreement as to the importance of this activity to both IS professionals and end-users, but few -- if any -- modeling methods were developed to specifically support the process of conceptual design, and the usefulness of such methods has not been adequately addressed. This paper introduces the Dialog Charts (DCs), and documents a preliminary examination of their perceived usefulness by designers of user/system interaction who actually used them. The DCs yield high level dialog schemas that are abstract enough to support the conceptual design of dialog control structures. In a uniform diagramming framework they combine the concept of dialog independence, distinguish between the dialog parties, provide for hierarchical decomposition and enforce a structured control flow. The usefulness of the DCs has been studied empirically in a qualitative inquiry. Recalled experiences of designers were captured and analyzed to ascertain the concept of usability, as well as assess the usability of the DCs. Usability has emerged from this study as a set of 38 concerns that operationalizes the broader aspects of purpose of use, design stage, impact on product structure, impact on design process, and attitudinal patterns. In general, the Dialog Charts were found by these dialog designers to be a useful, exhibiting the essential attributes of tools for conceptual modeling.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

AN EXAMINATION OF THE USE OF DIALOG CHARTS IN SPECIFYING CONCEPTUAL MODELS OF DIALOGS

The conceptual design of user interfaces focuses on the specification of the structure of the dialog, independent of any particular implementation approach. While there is common agreement with respect to the importance of this activity, adequate methods and tools to support it are generally unavailable. The Dialog Charts (DCs) yield high level dialog schemas that are abstract enough to support the conceptual design of dialog control structures. They combine dialog concepts with widely accepted design principles, in a uniform diagramming framework. Specifically, the DCs distinguish between the dialog parties, provide for hierarchical decomposition and enforce a structured control flow. A clear set of guiding principles for the conceptual design of dialogs has yet to emerge. In this paper we have elected to focus on the notions of descriptive power and usable power, as they apply to conceptual dialog modeling tools. The conceptual descriptive power of the DCs is informally examined by applying them in a varied set of examples and relating them to their lower level counterparts, namely implementation dialog models like augmented transition networks or context-free grammars. The usable power of the DCs has been examined empirically through a qualitative study of their actual use by system designers. The Dialog Chart models were found by dialog designers to be a useful conceptual design tool, which exhibit the essential attributes identified for conceptual models.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

AN EXAMINATION OF THE USE OF DIALOG CHARTS IN SPECIFYING CONCEPTUAL MODELS OF DIALOGS

The conceptual design of user interfaces focuses on the specification of the structure of the dialog, independent of any particular implementation approach. While there is common agreement with respect to the importance of this activity, adequate methods and tools to support it are generally unavailable. The Dialog Charts (DCs) yield high level dialog schemas that are abstract enough to support the conceptual design of dialog control structures. They combine dialog concepts with widely accepted design principles, in a uniform diagramming framework. Specifically, the DCs distinguish between the dialog parties, provide for hierarchical decomposition and enforce a structured control flow. A clear set of guiding principles for the conceptual design of dialogs has yet to emerge. In this paper we have elected to focus on the notions of descriptive power and usable power, as they apply to conceptual dialog modeling tools. The conceptual descriptive power of the DCs is informally examined by applying them in a varied set of examples and relating them to their lower level counterparts, namely implementation dialog models like augmented transition networks or context-free grammars. The usable power of the DCs has been examined empirically through a qualitative study of their actual use by system designers. The Dialog Chart models were found by dialog designers to be a useful conceptual design tool, which exhibit the essential attributes identified for conceptual models.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Formally-based tools and techniques for human-computer dialogues

With ever cheaper and more powerful technology. the proliferation of computer systems, and higher expectations of their users, the user interface is now seen as a crucial part of any interactive system. As the designers and users of interactive software have found, though, it can be both difficult and costly to create good interactive software. It is therefore appropriate to look at ways of "engineering" the interface as well as the application. which we choose to do by using the software engineering techniques of specification and prototyping. Formally specifying the user interface allows the designer to reason about its properties in the light of the many guidelines on the subject. Early availability of prototypes of the user interface allows the designer to experiment with alternative options and to elicit feedback from potential users. This thesis presents tools and techniques (collectively called SPI for specifying and prototyping the dialogues between an interactive system and its users. They are based on a formal specification and rapid prototyping method and notation called me too. and were originally designed as an extension to me too. They have also been implemented under UNIX*. thus enabling a transition from the formal specification to its implementation. *UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratorie

Formal specification based prototyping

Rapid prototyping is an approach to software development which attempts to remedy some of the shortcomings of the linear life cycle model, e.g. its inability to cope with fuzzy requirements and system evolution. This thesis first presents a broad survey of rapid software prototyping. It describes the rationale behind the process, the applications of prototyping, and specific techniques which may be used to achieve them. We then describe a system, called EPROS, together with its methodology, which supports a number of prototyping techniques in a coherent framework. The system is comprehensive in its approach and covers the prototyping and development of both functional and human-computer interface aspects of software systems. The former is based on the execution of VDM-based formal specification notation META-IV; the latter is based on a textual representation of state transition diagrams. Dialogue development is further supported by a rich set of abstractions which allow interaction concepts to be specified and directly executed rather than implemented. EPROS is based on a wide spectrum language which supports the main phases of a software development process, namely specification, design, and implementation. Included in this notation is a meta abstraction facility which facilitates its extension by the programmer. The primary application of EPROS is for evolutionary prototyping, where a system is developed iteratively and gradually from the abstract to the detailed, while it undergoes use and while its capabilities evolve. EPROS copes with all the requirements of evolutionary prototyping, namely rapid development, intermediate deliveries and gradual evolution of the system towards the final product. The thesis also describes a number of case studies where the presented ideas are put in practice, and which provide data in support of the effectiveness of the described system

Integrating Human Factors with Structured Analysis and Design Methods

Current human factors input to system development is effected through methods, tools and guidelines. Although the input prompts the consideration of human factors concerns during system design, reports have highlighted inadequacies with respect to the scope, granularity, format and timing of the contributions, e.g. Smith, 1986; Chapanis and Burdurka, 1990; Sutcliffe, 1989; etc. The thesis argues that such problems are obviated if design needs of both Software Engineering and Human Factors are appropriately represented within an overall system design cycle. Intersecting concerns may then be identified for explicit accommodation by the design agenda. To derive an overall design cycle, current conceptions for the individual disciplines should be examined. Since these conceptions are expressed at a lower level as methods, an overall design cycle may be instantiated more specifically by integrating compatible methods from the two disciplines. Methodological integration is desirable as design inter-dependencies and roles may be defined explicitly. More effective inter-disciplinary communication may also accrue from the use of a common set of notations. Methodological integration is facilitated if the design scope, process and notation of individual methods are well defined. Such characteristics are found in a class of Software Engineering methods commonly referred to as structured analysis and design methods. Unfortunately, the same are not currently to be found for human factors since its methods are generally unstructured and focus only on later design stages. 1 Thus, a pre-requisite for integration is the derivation of a reasonably complete and structured human factors method. Since well developed Software Engineering methods already exist, it would be appropriate (for the purposes of methodological integration) to structure human factors methods around specific structured analysis and design methods. The undertaking is exemplified by the present research for the Jackson System Development method. In other words, the scope of the thesis comprises the derivation, test and integration of a structured human factors method with the Jackson System Development method. In conclusion, the research contributes to the Human Factors discipline in two respects. Firstly, it informs the research community on how similar work with other structured analysis and design methods may be set up. Secondly, it offers designers an extended Jackson System Development method that facilitates the incorporation of human factors during system development

The interaction network : a performance measurement and evaluation tool for loosely-coupled distributed systems

Much of today's computing is done on loosely-coupled distributed systems. Performance issues for such systems usually involve interactive performance, that is, system responsiveness as perceived by the user. The goal of the work described in this thesis has been to develop and implement tools and techniques for the measurement and evaluation of interactive performance in loosely-coupled distributed systems. The author has developed the concept of the interaction network, an acyclic directed graph designed to represent the processing performed by a distributed system in response to a user input. The definition of an interaction network is based on a general model of a loosely-coupled distributed system and a general model of user interactions. The author shows that his distributed system model is a valid abstraction for a wide range of present-day systems. Performance monitors for traditional time-sharing systems reported performance information, such as overall resource utilisations and queue lengths, for the system as a whole. Performance problems are now much more difficult, because systems are much more complex. Recent monitors designed specifically for distributed systems have tended to present performance information for execution of a distributed program, for example the time spent in each of a program's procedures. In the work described in this thesis, performance information is reported for one or more user interactions, where a user interaction is defined to be a single user input and all of the processing performed by the system on receiving that input. A user interaction is seen as quite different from a program execution; a user interaction includes the partial or total execution of one or more programs, and a program execution performs work as part of one or more user interactions. Several methods are then developed to show how performance information can be obtained from analysis of interaction networks. One valuable type of performance information is a decomposition of response time into times spent in each of some set of states, where each state might be defined in terms of the hardware and software resources used. Other performance information can be found from displays of interaction networks. The critical path through an interaction network is then defined as showing the set of activities such that at least one must be reduced in length if the response time of the interaction is to be reduced; the critical path is used in both response time decompositions and in displays of interaction networks. It was thought essential to demonstrate that interaction networks could be recorded for a working operating system. INMON, a prototype monitor based on the interaction network concept, has been constructed to operate in the SunOS environment. INMON consists of data collection and data analysis components. The data collection component, for example, involved the adding of 53 probes to the SunOS operating system kernel. To record interaction networks, a high-resolution global timebase is needed. A clock synchronisation program has been written to provide INMON with such a timebase. It is suggested that the method incorporates a number of improvements over other clock synchronisation methods. Several experiments have been performed to show that INMON can produce very detailed performance information for both individual user interactions and groups of user interactions, with user input being made through either character-based or graphical interfaces. The main conclusion reached in this thesis is that representing the processing component of a user interaction in an interaction network is a very valuable way of approaching the problem of measuring interactive performance in a loosely-coupled distributed system. An interaction network contains a very detailed record of the execution of an interaction and, from this record, a great deal of performance (and other) information can be derived. Construction of INMON has demonstrated that interaction networks can be identified, recorded, and analysed

Large-Scale Modelling and Interactive Decision Analysis

These Proceedings report the scientific results of an International Workshop attended by more than fifty scientists from thirteen countries. This volume is structured in three parts: (I) Theory and Methodology, (II) Interaction Principles and Computational Aspects and (III) Applications. Part I contains papers dealing with utility and game theory, multicriteria optimizations theory and interactive procedures, dynamic models/systems and concepts of multicriteria analysis. Papers dealing with the user-machine interface, intelligent (user-friendly) decision support and problems of computational aspects are included in Part II. Contributions with applications are mainly concentrated in Part III but can also be found in several papers in other parts. Use of the term "large-scale" in the title of the Proceedings was especially substantiated by contributions dealing with modelling and decision analysis problems of the size of a whole national economy like structuring the carbochemical industry, the energy system or even natural gas trade in Europe