Window Design for a Professional Workstation in the Office Environment

Abstract

This presentation describes the development of the user interface for a windowing system implemented on a multi-tasking professional workstation used in the office environment. The project was completed under severe schedule restrictions which impacted the implementation tradeoffs for user interface design. The functional and user interface goals for the windowing system were as follows: • The user should be able to subdivide the screen with a different application running in each window. • The user should be able to quickly and easily move between open windows/applications. • Operation of an application within a window should be the same as when the application is full screen. • The user should be able to quickly alternate between a partial view and a full-screen view of an application.