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Design rationale: the argument behind the artifact

Published: 01 March 1989 Publication History

Abstract

We assert that the product of user interface design should be not only the interface itself but also a rationale for why the interface is the way it is. We describe a representation for design based around a semi-formal notation which allows us explicitly to represent alternative design options and reasons for choosing among them. We illustrate the approach with examples from an analysis of scrolling mechanisms. We discuss the roles we expect such a representation to play in improving the coherence of designs and in communicating reasons for choices to others, whether designers, maintainers, collaborators or end users.

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGCHI Bulletin
ACM SIGCHI Bulletin  Volume 20, Issue SI
March 1989
374 pages
ISSN:0736-6906
DOI:10.1145/67450
Issue’s Table of Contents
  • cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '89: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    March 1989
    397 pages
    ISBN:0897913019
    DOI:10.1145/67449
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 March 1989
Published in SIGCHI Volume 20, Issue SI

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