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CHAPTER 16
dialogue notations and design

 outline 

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 resources 

 exercises 

Dialog is the syntactic level of human-computer interaction; it is rather like the script of a play, except the user, and sometimes the computer, has more choices.

  • Notations used for dialog description can be:
    • diagrammatic: easy to read at a glance
    • textual: easier for formal analysis.
  • The dialog is linked:
    • to the semantics of the system, what it does
    • to the presentation of the system, how it looks.
  • Formal descriptions can be analyzed:
    • for inconsistent actions
    • for difficult to reverse actions
    • for missing items
    • for potential miskeying errors.