Evaluating Human-Computer Dialog Styles: Command vs. Form/Fill-in for Report Modification

Abstract

This study compared three human-computer interface designs for a report modification task. The designs varied as a function of dialog style. One design represented a command dialog style, another design represented a form fill-in style, and the third design was a hybrid of the two styles. The performance of computer naive subjects was recorded as they used all three interface designs to make changes to the format of a computer generated tabular report. Results indicated that subjects performed better with and preferred to use the interface based on the form fill-in style. The conclusion was that a human-computer interface designed around a form fill-in dialog style will benefit naive computer users engaged in tasks like the report formatting task, which require the modification of a small set of parameters.