TOWARDS MORE NATURAL INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS

It is argued that to obtain the maximum benefit from interactive computer systems principles of program and dialogue design are needed. It is unlikely that natural languages such as English will provide a suitable basis for designing a man-computer dialogue. The objective should be to model the task domain in a way that will be comprehensible to the user and to provide an explicit “image” of the “underlying processes”. Design principles are discussed both for general purpose programming languages and “bespoke” languages intended as tools for a specific purpose. It is concluded that AI research may eventually provide intelligent tools with the inferential powers necessary for a genuine dialogue, but that for the time being it is better to make the underlying mechanisms and their limitations as explicit as possible. © 1979, Academic Press Inc. (London) Limited. All rights reserved.