HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
second edition

Dix, Finlay, Abowd and Beale

Chapter 8 - Dialog notations and design

Overview

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.

Detailed table of contents

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