Interface design tool based on explicit task models

Producing high-quality, comprehensible human interfaces is a difficult, labor-intensive process that requires experience and judgment. In this paper, we describe an approach to assisting this process by using explicit models of the user's task to drive the interface design and to serve as a functional component of the interface itself. The task model helps to ensure that the resulting interface directly and transparently supports the user in performing his task, and serves as a scaffolding for providing in-context help and advice. By crafting a library of standardized, reusable tasks and interface constructs, we believe it is possible to capture some of the design expertise and to amortize much of the labor required for building effective user interfaces.