Generic Man-Computer Dialogue Specification: An Alternative to Dialogue Specialists

Abstract

It has long been argued that man-computer dialogues should be written by user-oriented human factors specialists rather than by systems designers who were once programmers and who tend to think like programmers. The difficulty is that very few human factors specialists have access to the dens of systems designers and even when their usefulness is recognized there are not enough such specialists to meet the need. This paper will report on an alternative procedure in which the human factors input is made at the stage at which system planning is under way, when system characteristics are sufficiently well defined that it is possible to write a dialogue specification, but before systems designers have begun to write dialogues. If this specification is effective, it will give the designer freedom to do what he does best, but will do it within predefined constraints that will promote the development of an effective interactive system.

In conjunction with the development of a large-scale man-computer system proposed by the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service such a set of dialogue specifications was written. The specifications would permit several system design teams to work independently, but produce dialogue that is relatively uniform from subsystem to subsystem and that meets standards for good human factors design. The steps undertaken to create the specification will be described together with selected samples of the kind of dialogue that may result.