Date of Award

12-1993

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Paul D. Bailor, PhD

Abstract

This research refined the visual presentation and usability of a previously developed visual interface for a domain-oriented application composition and generation system. The refined visual interface incorporated domain-specific bit-mapped graphics and sophisticated user interface design concepts to reduce user workload. User workload was reduced through object layout, window design, and color utilization techniques; by combining repetitive procedures into single commands; and reusing, rather than recreating, composition information throughout the application composition process. The Software Refinery environment, including its graphical interface tool INTERVISTA, was used to develop techniques for visualizing and manipulating objects contained in a formal object base. INTERVISTA was supplemented with graphical routines provided by Common Windows, a Lisp-based graphical environment that serves as the foundation for INTERVISTA. The interface was formally validated with a well-understood application domain, digital logic-circuits, and users of the interface were polled to ascertain the subjective usability of the interface. A comparative analysis of the application composition process with the previous visual interface was conducted to quantify the workload reduction realized by the new interface. Workload was measured as the number of user interactions (mouse or keyboard) required to compose an application. On average, application composition effort was reduced 44.0% for the test cases.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GCS-ENG-93D-04

DTIC Accession Number

ADA274080

Comments

The author's Vita page is omitted.

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