Procedural Consistency in the User Interface

Abstract

Existing user interface standards focus largely on issues related to the “look and feel” of the user interface, and thus they cannot be used to achieve procedural consistency. A new approach to standards, known as functional user interface standards, articulates a common user model for performing specific sets of tasks. The functional user interface standards rely upon object-oriented technology to define a set of platform-independent user interface objects which may be employed by a designer to construct a compliant design. These objects operate as reusable components in much the same way that software components are reused to facilitate the production of software. This new approach has been used to generate applications that may differ with respect to their appearance, but are consistent with respect to the procedural model presented to the user.