Design of a user interface for a knowledge refinement tool

✍ Scribed by Andrew Basden; Alex J. Brown; Stephen D.A. Tetlow; Peter R.R. Hibberd

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 359 KB
• Volume: 45
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1071-5819
• DOI: 10.1006/ijhc.1996.0047

✦ Synopsis

As argued in a companion paper , Basden and Hibberd (1996) , there is a need for a more ''proximal'' form of user interface than is currently of fered by traditional WIMP styles of interface . This is necessary for knowledge representation tools used in ill structured domains , in the use of which new knowledge is generated by the very act of representation . The tool should ideally then become so ''proximal'' that the user's flow of creative thinking is not interrupted .

In this paper we examine traditional principles that guide the design of user interfaces and find them suited to user activity that is a series of separable , goal-directed events but not to activity that is a continuous , holistic process . While some of the principles are applicable , others must be replaced or augmented and most must be made more specific . We describe a set of principles that we found important to guide the design of a knowledge representation tool , some of which do not seem to have been brought together before in the way described here , and discuss what forms their implementation might take .