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Part II
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1. | Introduction | ||
1.1. | Expert Systems | ||
1.2. | The Acceptance and Success of an Expert System | ||
1.3. | The Role of Its User Interface | ||
2. | Background | ||
2.1. | History | ||
2.2. | Usability Issues with Expert Systems | ||
2.3. | Special Needs for Expert System Interfaces | ||
2.4. | User Modeling and Adaptive User Interfaces | ||
3. | Techniques, Practices, Methodologies, and Applications | ||
3.1. | User Interface and Explanation | ||
3.2. | Dialog Models | ||
3.3. | The Role of a Conceptual Model | ||
3.4. | Intelligent Interface | ||
3.4.1. | Models of the Intelligent Interface | ||
3.4.2. | Intelligent Interface and Machine Reasoning | ||
3.4.3. | Expert Systems as Intelligent Interfaces | ||
3.5. | Direct Manipulation | ||
3.6. | User Interface Management Systems for Expert Systems | ||
3.6. | WWW Interfaces | ||
4. | Research Issues | ||
4.1. | Acceptance | ||
4.2. | Effective Means of Explanations | ||
4.3. | Empirical Exploration | ||
4.4. | Fitting into the User Environment | ||
5. | Future Trends and Summary | ||
References |
An expert system is meant to embody the expertise of a human expert involved in a particular field, in such a way that non-expert users, looking for advice in that field, have the expert's knowledge at their disposal when questioning the system. An important feature of expert systems is that they are able to explain to the user the line of reasoning that led to the solution of a problem or the desired advice.
Expert systems have gone from academic laboratories, through industrial development, and have reached a substantial user population. One of the major concerns is whether these systems are hard to learn and difficult to use in practice. Real users of expert systems have a large body of knowledge about the problem in their specialized areas. They want to understand what is happening and be in control. They prefer to be in charge along the way, directing the machine and developing an effective cognitive model of the task domain that reduces their dependency on the expert system.
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) addresses how a computer system can be made easy to learn and easy to use. A large number of methods have been developed for prototyping, inspecting, and evaluating the user interface of a system in particular and the overall system in general.
However, the existing literature of both HCI and AI (artificial intelligence) reveals relatively few studies that specifically focus on user interface design issues for expert systems. The link is weaker between the two fields than it ought to be. In this chapter, we aim identify reasons for the relative weakness of the link and clarify issues that will be essential to the strengthening of such a link and thereby increase the usability of expert systems as a whole.
First, we revisit the questions raised about a decade ago with emphasis on the needs of users. We refer the reader in particular to two edited collections of papers about expert systems and interfaces (Hendler, 1988; Berry and Hart, 1990). Second, we address issues that have the potential to help the design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces for expert systems.
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