The authors of [50] have identified some requirements of
systems for the development of user interfaces (UIs): consideration of
standards, openness to all interaction styles, and provision of comfortable
design tools. They argue that most of the existing systems fulfill only
some of those requirements. Therefore, they present a layered model for the
interface between an application's functionality and its UI which will
especially be useful for the design of UIs for multi-tasking,
multi-windowing systems that support a free choice of input and output
media. Two pictures shown in figure 4.3
Figure 4.3
: The basic software architecture (left picture) and the
corresponding layered model for human-computer interaction (right
picture). (Adapted from [50])
By introducing these layers, the authors want to achieve ``a clear separation of application functionality from dialog functionality, and a clear responsibility for the different actions that are involved in a dialog.'', i.e. different actions are located in different layers. The responsibilities (and functionalities, resp.) have been defined as follows:
Esprit Project 8579/MIAMI (Schomaker et al., '95)