GDI: (Goal Directed Interface): An intelligent, iconic, object-oriented interface for office systems.

Abstract

This dissertation presents the GDI (Goal Directed Interface) approach to the user interface for office systems. The primary objectives of the approach are to create an interface that (1) requires little user training and (2) tries to perform higher level task activities (ex. 'schedule a meeting') that have been excluded from computerization in the past. The GDI technique (1) postulates a simple model of the office environment consisting of persons, things, and processes, and a decomposable goal set, (2) represents knowledge in the office environment through rules, frames, and scripts, and object-oriented programming techniques, (3) creates an iconic visual representation consisting of persons, things, and processes that closely mimics the user's 'mental model' of the office world, (4) requires that the user's own 'person icon' be present for all interactions so that actions appear to take place in a user controllable context (the user's icon is, literally, in the interface), (5) provides a 'selection window' through which the user communicates his/her goal by grouping relevant icons, (6) uses a rule-based expert system to examine an icon configuration and, through its expertise, derives a user goal (despite ambiguous or faulty icon placements), (7) attempts to complete the user goal through the use of scripts and multiple expert systems.