scott@shuksan.UUCP (Scott Moody) (06/07/91)
(because this relates to a language I am posting here)
I am interested in more information on UAN, a User Action Notation
for:
'task and user-oriented notation for behavioral
representation of asynchronous, direct manipulation
interface designs.'
Especially tools that have been developed to support UAN.
UAN was described in great detail in the following:
'The UAN: A User-Oriented Representation for Direct
Manipulation Interface Designs'
H. Hartson, A. Siochi, D. Hix
Virginia Tech
ACM Trans on Information Systems, July 1990.
Example of using UAN taken from the paper:
- description for selecting an icon:
(1) move the cursor to the icon
(2) click the mouse button and the icon will be highlighted.
In UAN:
User Action Interface Feedback
----------------------------------------------------------
~[file_icon] Mv file_icon !
~[x,y]*~[x',y'] outline of file_icon follows cursor
M^ display file_icon at x',y'
----------------------------------------------------------
(all the ~*'^v are special motion and feedback keys)
If anyone knows about this approach, do you think
this structured grammar will be useful either as the input
language for detailed descriptions of User Interfaces, or
as the intermediate representation obtained from a graphical
direct manipulation tool?
I know others are working on interface languages,
and lots of work is being done at the
direct manipulation level. Should UAN and these interact?
The interesting feature of UAN seems to be the abstraction level they
are tackling, the behavior of the system, not necessarially
the appearance (although highlighting icons, moving mice, etc,
start to dictate some of this). This allows numerous
implementations to adopt their own conventions, window systems, etc.
I work in a Human Factors section of Boeing as a software
designer, and I know there are established ways of describing
the tasks or behavior of how the user interacts with the computer,
but mainly how long their reach to certain buttons will be. I don't
think anyone has tried to apply a technique or formalism, such
as UAN, to the established 'human factor process'.
Thanks.
p.s. are there other groups that are also appropriate? I know windows
might, but this is more abstract. Is there a human factors group?
--
Scott Moody "The Boeing Mountain Network"
scott@shuksan.boeing.com
uunet!bcstec!shuksan!scott