A FRAMEWORK FOR DESCRIBING VISUAL INTERFACES TO DATABASES

In the field of HCI there exist many formalisms for analysing, describ ing and evaluating interactive systems. However, in developing and eva luating user interfaces to databases, we found it necessary to be able to describe presentation and interaction aspects that are catered for poorly or not at all. in current formalisms. This paper presents a fr amework for the systematic description of data model, presentation and interaction components that together form a graphical user interface. The utility of the framework is then demonstrated by showing how it c an be used to describe two existing visual query interfaces. These exa mples show that the framework provides a systematic method for the con cise description of graphical interfaces to databases that can be used either during interface design or as a communication aid. (C) 1998 Ac ademic Press.