Introduction to User Interface Systems for HCI Developers and Researchers

SIGCHI Tutorial
April, 1994

Introduction to User Interface Systems for HCI Developers and Researchers

Wilfred J. Hansen

Director, Andrew Consortium
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University

ABSTRACT

User interface systems (UIS) combine essential applications for compound documents with a toolkit for building new applications that inter-operate with the others. The essential applications--word processing, drawing editor, spread sheet, equation editor, image editor, electronic mail management, and so on--all support embedding of objects to create compound documents and can themselves all be embedded as objects in compound documents. When building new applications, the user draws the screen image with the drawing editor and selects components from among the applications or the objects in the toolkit. The earliest and most complete system at this time is the Andrew User Interface System, which will be used for examples during the tutorial.

User Interface Systems challenge HCI workers to develop interface conventions that stretch harmoniously across the wide spectrum of applications. However, these same systems aid HCI work by simplifying construction of experimental interfaces and providing tools for evaluation of user behavior across multiple diverse applications.

KEYWORDS:

user interface system, compound documents, word processing, electronic mail, graphical user interface toolkit, application builders, user interface management system, text editing, Andrew User Interface System, AUIS, Andrew Toolkit, ATK, evaluation of user behavior, standards for interactive interfaces, object linking and embedding, OLE.

INTRODUCTION

A user interface system (UIS) is an integrated environment for interactive computing which provides key applications, a component toolkit, and an application building environment for constructing new applications which cooperate with all others. In times past, the data stream shared by applications was ASCII text; in a UIS the data stream is that of compound documents, that is, documents with typographic formatting and embedded objects. Indeed, most applications can embed others and can themselves be embedded, so there is recursive embedding of objects. The most common applications/embeddable-objects are word processing, drawing editor, image editor, spread sheet, equation editor, and electronic mail management.

As in typical graphical user interface toolkits, a UIS includes a collection of objects suitable for constructing new applications: buttons, labels, sliders, dials, and so on. In addition, the UIS provides an application building environment to aid construction of new applications by assembling components. The system is extensible because created objects and applications can serve as components of still newer applications. Moreover, the UIS architectures permit new applications to inter-operate with each other and existing applications. This means that new and old objects can share data streams, access to an extension language, universal cut/copy/paste, and printing of the resulting images.

AVAILABLE SYSTEMS

The first attempt to create a comprehensive user interface system was the Andrew User Interface System[10, 2]. Developed in C for Unix at Carnegie Mellon University, the system has now been converted to the C++ object-oriented language. Based on ideas from Andrew and Interviews[5], an X Consortium committee is defining the Fresco system[4]. Commercial systems are just beginning to be introduced and include OLE[6] from Microsoft and OpenDoc[8] from the Component Integration Laboratory. The latter three systems do not actually offer key applications; the expectation is that vendors will offer them once the framework is in place. OpenDoc is even more focused in that it does not even define a graphic layer; applications in OpenDoc adopt whatever graphics layer is appropriate.

As an example of a user interface system, the Andrew User Interface System (AUIS) offers several stand-alone applications: word processing, shell interface, help browser, and a MIME compatible mail and bulletin board reader, writer, and manager. Among the objects available as both applications and embeddable objects are images, drawings, spreadsheets, equations, and simple animations. There is a collection of small widget objects and a dozen other interesting objects that are not usually used as stand-alone editors. Extensibility is supported with a template generator for coding objects, an application builder[7], and an extension language [3].

HCI CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Since a UIS defines a community of inter-operating applications and objects, the user can be expected to interact with many of them, often simultaneously. The HCI worker is challenged to develop habitable interfaces for each application. More challenging, however, is to develop interfaces that are harmonious between applications so that behavior learned in one application will be useful--or at least harmless--in another. The Macintosh environment[1] and Motif[9] both offer guidelines for user interfaces, but there is significant room for improvement.

In a good UIS, user interface actions are encapsulated into objects. Thus the HCI practitioner has a unique opportunity to explore alternate interfaces to multiple applications by just changing a single object. This can be exploited during development or as an independent variable in an experiment.

Once an interface has been constructed, the HCI scientist must measure how humans react to it and interact with it. Typically, users are videotaped to record their gross behavior and the software logs each input interaction. Logging is facilitated by the UIS in those architectures where all inputs are initially fielded by a central routine which distributes them to the appropriate object. The UIS can also be utilized to quickly create applications which present questionnaires to gather user's subjective reactions.

SOFTWARE INTERFACES

In evaluating user interface systems, there are several programmer interfaces to look for. These permit sharing of resources between an object and the substrate in which it is embedded [11, 12]. Among the resources to share are screen space, user input devices, file data streams, memory, execution time, printed page, and access to the extension language.

REFERENCES

[1] Apple Computer, Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, Apple technical library, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass, 1992.
[2] Borenstein, Nathaniel S., Multimedia Applications Development with the Andrew Toolkit, Prentice Hall, 1990.
[3] Hansen, Wilfred J., Enhancing documents with embedded programs: How Ness extends insets in the Andrew Toolkit, Proceedings of IEEE Computer Society 1990 International Conference on Computer Languages, (March, 1990, New Orleans), IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1990, pp. 23-32.
[4] Linton, M. and C. Price, Building Distributed User Interfaces with Fresco, Proceedings of the 7th X Technical Conference, (January, 1993, Boston, Massachusetts), X Consortium, Boston, MA, 1993, pp. 77-87.
[5] Linton, M. A., J. M. Vlissides, P. R. Calder, Composing user interfaces with interviews, IEEE Computer 22(2), February, 1989, 8-22.
[6] Microsoft Corp., Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), Part No. 098-31727, Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, 1992.
[7] Neuendorffer, Thomas, "ADEW: A Multimedia Interface Builder for Andrew", Proceedings Multi-Media Communications, Applications and Technology Workshop, (Sydney, Australia, 1-2 July, 1991) ftp: emsworth.andrew.cmu.edu: papers/{atk,ps}/Neuendorffer.ADEW, 1991.
[8] OpenDoc Design Team, OpenDoc Technical Summary, Apple Computer, ftp:cil.org:/pub/opendoc-interest/OD-tech-summary.RTF, October, 1993.
[9] Open Software Foundation, OSF/MOTIF Style Guide, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1990.
[10] Andrew J. Palay, Wilfred J. Hansen, et al., The Andrew Toolkit - An Overview, Usenix Conference, Dallas, TX, January, 1988.
[11] Palay, Andrew J., Towards an "Operating System" for User Interface Components, in Multimedia Interface Design ed. Meera M. Blattner and Roger B. Dannenberg, ACM Press, New York, 1992.
[12] Sherman, Mark, D. Anderson, W. J. Hansen, T. P. Neuendorffer, A. J. Palay, Z. Stern, "Allocation of User-Interface Resources in the Andrew Toolkit,", Proceedings of the International Conference on Multimedia Information Systems (Singapore, January, 1991), McGraw-Hill, New York, 1991.