sahunt@warwick.UUCP (Steve Hunt) (12/05/85)
Here at last is the promised summary of the references I received
about Iconic Unix interfaces. Sorry it took a while, pressure
of work, play, drunkenness etc.
If anyone has any of these papers in electronic form I would be very
grateful if you could email me a copy.
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From Andrew Stewart @ Heriot-Watt University, UK <andrew@cs.hw.ac.uk>
1) All the bumph on smalltalk-80 (well worth a read)
2) The papers on window systems in the proceedings of the recently-held
BCS conference on HCI (held in Norwich).
3) The implementation notes for the PERQ window management system.
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From Jan Pachl, CS Dept, University of Waterloo
<...!seismo!ihnp4!watmath!watdaisy!jkpachl>
Waterloo Port is a (distributed) operating system for IBM PCs,
in which icons are used to invoke activities (commands).
There is a Master's thesis about the interface:
Patrick P. Chan: Learning considerations in user interface
design - the room model
(Univ of Waterloo, CS Dept Res Report CS-84-16, July 1984)
There is also a paper:
M. Malcolm and Doug Dyment: Experience designing the Waterloo Port
user interface
(Proc. ACM Conf. on Personal and Small Computers, December 1983,
pp. 168-175).
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From David Haynes (...!utzoo!ecrhub!david)
Interective Programming Environments
David R. Barstow (editor)
Howard E. Shrobe (editor)
Erik Sandwell (editor)
(c) 1984 McGraw-Hill
ISBN 0-07-003885-6
Sections are:
1. Perspectives on INteractive Programming Environments
2. Modern Interactive Programming Environments
3. Aspect of Interactive Programming Environments
4. Artificial Intelligence in Interactive Programming Environments
5. The Future of Interactive Programming Environments
Also:
The New Interface Technology, Robert W. Warfield, BYTE Magazine, DEC 83
The User INterface:Two Approaches, Martin Herbach, Richard Katz and Joseph
Landau, BYTE Magazine, DEC 83
Of course, Inside Macintosh is excellent since it shows you how its already
been implemented once.
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From Gilbert Cockton <gilbert@cs.hw.ac.uk>
There's an IJMMS article 1984, Autumn on an iconic front end to
UNIX, can't find full reference in my disorganisation though.
See also CHI83 article on Human Factors in Star Design - useful
description of their icon evaluation experiments.
See Teitelman's work on the Interlisp IPSE (IJCAI 1977) for use
of windows in programming systems. Teitelman's work and those of many
others are brought together in "Interactive Programming Environments"
Eds. Barstow, Strabe (Strobe?) and Sandewall, McGraw Hill 1984.
Finally see Sproull's three articles in the 1983 IBM seminar on
MMI at Newcastle and consider his arguments that there is more to
useability than the bells and whistles of WIMPs interfaces
(Windows, Icons, Mouse Processors). Proper interface design must
begin with
a) Full task analysis
b) Some user analysis
That is, who is using your UNIX system and what do they use it for?
Without this Human Factors input and the resulting task model for
UNIX users, you'll end up with just another implementation and not
a good useable interface. See work of Norman's La Jolla group in
CHI83 and Interact84 for task analysis of UNIX and associated
methodologies. If you haven't contacted the psychologists at
Warwick working on HCI (eg George Kiss), do go and see them to
get an idea on how psychologists can help with design evaluation.
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From ihnp4!ihwpt!jtkrist (sorry no full name)
you might want to read
'User Interfaces for Office Systems' by
Ian H. Witten and Saul Greenberg, Research Report No 84/161/19
Revised Feb 1985, Department of Computer Science, University of
Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 1N4
They're on the net, but I can't find their address right now.
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From Brian McElhinney (...!uw-beaver!fluke!mce)
I started with the following (which of course have bibliographies):
IEEE Computer: Feb 1982, Nov 1984, Aug 1985
IEEE Software: Jan 1984, Mar 1985
Most of these deal with visual programming, but hopefully your visual
shell will have a visual shell scripts! The biggest problem I have found
is in allowing the user quick access to a wide variety of 'commands'.
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From Dan LaLiberte (ihnp4!uiucdcs!liberte)
Of course, look at the Macintosh interface, one in a class of several.
We are examining an Integrated Systems machine which has a rather nice
iconic interface for Unix, although it doesnt appear to go much beyond
execution of programs labelled by icons. Oh yes, it is a multi-window
system with pop-up menus.
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From David England (de@uk.ac.lancs.comp)
%A Goldberg
%A Robson
%T Smalltalk-80
%I Addison-Wesley
%D 1983
%X The Langage and it's implementation
%A Goldberg
%T Smalltalk-80
%I Addison-Wesley
%D 1984
%X The Interactive Programming Environment
The Cedar Programming Environment:A midterm report and examination.
Warren Teitelman (available from Xerox Parc, Palo Alto)
--
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Steve Hunt "Wel-come ho-o-ome!"
Computer Science Dept "On-our-way-'ome"
Warwick University
Coventry CV4 7AL, ENGLAND ...mcvax!ukc!warwick!sahunt