Visual design consultant

The authors describe the design of a tool to aid programmers in developing better man/machine dialogues. It is hypothesized that incorporating into dialogues design principles that are based on behavioral studies of human information processing capabilities will improve the quality of man/machine interaction. These design principles must be made readily available to help programmers in constructing dialogues, so the authors are constructing a tool, an expert system that contains knowledge about behavioral studies gleaned from human factors experimenters. Dialogue creation encompasses a very large area, so the domain of expertise has initially been restricted to the creation of menu displays. This prototype expert system helps programmers creating menus by giving advice on the proper formatting of the menu. 13 references.