HUMANOID is a user interface design tool that lets designers express abstract conceptualizations of an interface in an executable form, allowing designers to experiment with scenarios and dialogues even before the application model is completely worked out. Three properties of the HUMANOID approach allow it to do so: a modularization of design issues into independent dimensions, support for multiple levels of specificity in mapping application models to user interface constructs, and mechanisms for constructing executable default user interface implementations from whatever level of specificity has been provided by the designer. KEYWORDS: Design Processes, Development Tools and Methods, User Interface Management Systems, Rapid Prototyping, Interface Design Representation, Dialogue Specification. INTRODUCTION Interface design really begins much earlier than current tools recognize. Long before a designer is ready to experiment with presentation issues like the layout of widgets chosen...

this paper achieves this goal by separating the user interface from the application program, as is done in many user interface management systems [Pfaff 83], and by using a user interface editor to build the interfaces. In a sense, we apply the direct manipulation style [Schneiderman 83] characteristic of user interfaces to the very process of building them, as opposed to building them by programming. The disadvantage is that we have to determine fixed but sufficiently general classes of user interfaces that can be assembled by direct interaction and yet cover most of the common cases. However, we gain a method of easily constructing, modifying, maintaining and customizing interfaces

Prototyping is an important technique to reduce the cost and risk involved in developing complex software systems [Rudd 94]. It essentially involves building a small scale version of a complex system in order to acquire critical knowledge required to build the system. Even though prototyping involves building only a small scale version of a system, significant costs and risks

The programming walkthrough is a method for assessing how easy or hard...

Live music-making using interactive systems is not completely amenable to traditional HCI evaluation metrics such as taskcompletion rates. In this paper we discuss quantitative and qualitative approaches which provide opportunities to evaluate the music-making interaction, accounting for aspects which cannot be directly measured or expressed numerically, yet which may be important for participants. We present case studies in the application of a qualitative method based on Discourse Analysis, and a quantitative method based on the Turing Test. We compare and contrast these methods with each other, and with other evaluation approaches used in the literature, and discuss factors affecting which evaluation methods are appropriate in a given context. Key words: Music, qualitative, quantitative 1.

The ideas and findings in this report should not be construed as an official DoD position. It is published in the interest of scientific and technical information exchange.