Computer commands labelled by users versus imposed commands and the effect of structuring rules on recall

摘要

In the office of the future, computers will be found in the work environment to accomplish many various tasks. Often times, one will find computer command languages built from words of natural language, thereby facilitating the use of these new office automation systems for users inexperienced with computers. The study presented here focuses on very simple languages, without embedded features and where each computer command label corresponds to only one function. Three different approaches have been taken in order to improve the design of such simple languages: evaluation of existing languages (Scapin [1]); study of experimental languages that differ on linguistic or semantic variables (Hammond et al. [2]; Carroll [3]; Scapin [4]); research on the design of languages by the users themselves (Carroll [3]; Bisseret et Scapin [5]).