The Author's Interactive Didogue Environment (AIDE) of the Dialogue
Management System is an integrated set of direct manipulation tools used by a dialogue
author to design and implement human-computer interfaces without writing source code.
This paper presents the conceptua! dialogue transaction model upon which AIDE is based,
describes AIDE, and illustrates how a dialope author develops an interface using AIDE.
A preliminary empirical evaluation of the use of AIDE versus the use of a programming
language to implement an interface shows very encouraging results
