How users repeat their actions on computers: Principles for design of history

Greenberg, S. and Witten, I. H. (1988)
How users repeat their actions on computers: Principles for design of history. In Proc. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI'88). (Washington), ACM Press, pages 171-178, May 15-19. Also as Report 1987-279-27, September.

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Abstract

Several striking characteristics of how often people repeat their actions on interactive systems are abstracted from usage data gleaned from many users of different classes over a period of months. Reformulated as empirically-based general principles, these provide design guidelines for history mechanisms specifically and modern user interfaces generally. Particular attention is paid to the repetition of command lines, and to the probability distribution of the next line given a sequential "history list" of previous ones. Several ways are examined of conditioning this distribution to enhance predictive power. A brief case study of actual use of a widely-used history system is also included.

Keywords

Command-based systems; command reuse; history mechanisms; human-computer interaction; design principles.

Bibtex entry

@INPROCEEDINGS { 1988-RepeatActions.CHI,
CLASS = { CONFARTICLE },
AUTHOR = { Greenberg, S. and Witten, I. H. },
TITLE = { How users repeat their actions on computers: Principles for design of history },
BOOKTITLE = { Proc. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI'88) },
PAGES = { 171-178 },
YEAR = { 1988 },
MONTH = { May 15-19 },
PUBLISHER = { ACM Press },
ADDRESS = { Washington },
NOTE = { Also as Report 1987-279-27, September },
KEYWORDS = { Command-based systems; command reuse; history mechanisms; human-computer interaction; design principles. },
}