Interactive systems — Product design consideration

Abstract

There exists today a wide spectrum of interactive systems products ranging from stand-alone minicomputers to time sharing systems integrated into large-scale general-purpose systems. This paper examines the need for such a variety of implementations and discusses design parameters, implementation techniques, and trade-offs arising from the ways in which such systems are used.

Fundamentally, the purpose of an interactive system is to execute interactive programs in behalf of a human user at a terminal. The relationships between a particular user and the programs he uses, this user and the other users, and the programs and the data stored on the system determine the degree of specialization and optimization possible in the design. This paper characterizes these relationships and describes how they relate to the design of interactive products. Generally the paper focuses on the design of the software underlying interactive applications rather than the design of the applications (e.g., interactive command processing programs, transaction handlers, etc.) themselves. The paper concludes with a discussion of future trends and an identification of areas requiring further research. It is assumed that the reader is generally familiar with the milieu of interactive system products.