Douglas Jeffrey Lorch

DEVELOPING A USER INTERFACE TECHNOLOGY FOR USE IN INDUSTRY

We are developing a user interface technology to address ease of learning and ease of use concerns on the user side of the interface during the design process. Modelling the user how-to-do-it knowledge required by a design is one step toward development of such a technology. We report on an evolving methodology that is intended to give developers early warning indications of potential usability problems that may arise from a set of design decisions.

A version management method for distributed information

Information networks in which workstations access central data collections primarily to extract information are a growing application segment. When a workstation is likely to use an item more than once it may be economical to retain a copy locally. We describe how to propagate updates for an arbitrary relationship between the source database and cached items when the network connection is intermittent, unreliable, and/or slow.