Using the template model to analyse directory visualisation

✍ Scribed by Chris Roast; Jawed Siddiqi

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 281 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0953-5438
• DOI: 10.1016/s0953-5438(97)00014-3

✦ Synopsis

This article describes the template framework, a conceptual abstraction that enables both system and user properties to be combined. The intended purpose of the framework is illustrated through an example of applying it in the assessment of a commercially available interface for visualising and managing a directory service. The template framework is one technique for promoting the recognition of human factors within formal system modelling. The framework encourages the recognition and formalisation of system features that are relevant to effective use. Through examining interaction and interface designs in this way, assumptions about intended use, system design and user tasks can be made explicit.

An informal description along with a partial formal development of the directory service and its interface is given, as well as an outline of the sort of tasks it may be expected to support. An analysis of the interface in terms of the adherence between its 'system provided view' and the 'user expected view' is carried out which is investigated in terms of a generic notion within the template model known as output correctness. The investigation focuses on determining the specification constraints required to satisfy output correctness and explores the implications of these constraints upon interface design.