Direct Manipulation as a Basis for Constructing Graphical User Interfaces Coupled to Application Functions

Given a collection of application functions, a system is discussed that allows designers to construct the three parts of a graphical man-computer interface, t.w. layout (including presentation and graphical constraints), dynamic aspects (behavior or dialogue), and coupling to application functions, all by means of direct manipulation of graphical objects. In other words the methodology is based on interface-by-example, without the designer using a programming language. This system, called DIGIS, for Direct Interactive Generation of Interactive Systems, is presently in the design phase with prototyping being used to hone requirements and design, and to demonstrate preliminary results. Insofar as results from human factors (ergonomics) research are available, they will be applied to the design of the interactive system DIGIS itself, as well as to the target user interface. The implementation of DIGIS is done in the locally designed parallel object-oriented language Procol, a superset of C. It is built to be easily portable to existing windowing environments on workstations and personal computers, but the initial target is the X window system.