Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency

To date we have used ITS to generate the interfaces to a number of demonstration applications. We plan to continue with more extensive applications developed both by our group and by external users. At first, two workbenches will be implemented to help application and style experts. The application workbench will contain syntax-directed editors for dialog tags and attributes, and a variety of editors for control flow. The style workbench will focus on creating, modifying, and understanding style rules. Of particular interest will be explanation tools to trace the execution of rules which have led to specific style decisions.
At the same time, we are testing the usability of the tools and the applications developed with them. Studies of tool usability are particularly helpful since many applications will reuse interaction techniques originally developed for tools. We look forward to describing these activities in future reports.