Many of the principles that guide user-interface design for commercial systems do not scale down to simple applications developed on personal computers. These “very small systems” are typicaly designed within a high-level application such as a database or a spreadsheet. The entire development process may take no more than a few days. In this restricted context, iterative design and usability testing are unaffordable luxuries, while detailed task analysis and early focus on users fail because the task and users will not coalesce until the system is in place. We describe our experiences with developing and using a very small sytem. We present suggestions for successful design in similar situations.

No abstract available.

This paper investigates whether changes in the user/computer dialogue structure will affect the performance of users who are familiar with an earlier version of the product. Quantitative predictions using the Kieras and Polson (1985) production system model were derived to test whether changing the lexical attributes and structure of a popular menu-driven word-processor would permit transfer of existing knowledge of the word-processor to a new version. The results show that changes to the dialogue structure of the menu-system are not detrimental, while changes to the lexical attributes of the menus will hinder user performance.