Types of user interfaces

User interfaces can be classified into the following three categories:

• Command language based interfaces

• Menu-based interfaces

• Direct manipulation interfaces

Command Language-based Interface

A command language-based interface – as the name itself suggests, is based on designing a command language which the user can use to issue the commands. The user is expected to frame the appropriate commands in the language and type them in appropriately whenever required. A simple command language-based interface might simply assign unique names to the different commands. However, a more sophisticated command language-based interface may allow users to compose complex commands by using a set of primitive commands. Such a facility to compose commands dramatically reduces the number of command names one would have to remember. Thus, a command language-based interface can be made concise requiring minimal typing by the user. Command language-based interfaces allow fast interaction with the computer and simplify the input of complex commands.

Menu-based Interface

An important advantage of a menu-based interface over a command language-based interface is that a menu-based interface does not require the users to remember the exact syntax of the commands. A menu-based interface is based on recognition of the command names, rather than recollection. Further, in a menu-based interface the typing effort is minimal as most interactions are carried out through menu selections using a pointing device. This factor is an important consideration for the occasional user who cannot type fast.

However, experienced users find a menu-based user interface to be slower than a command language-based interface because an experienced user can type fast and can get speed advantage by composing different primitive commands to express complex commands. Composing commands in a menu-based interface is not possible. This is because of the fact that actions involving logical connectives (and, or, etc.) are awkward to specify in a menu-based system. Also, if the number of choices is large, it is difficult to select from the menu. In fact, a major challenge in the design of a menu-based interface is to structure large number of menu choices into manageable forms.

Direct Manipulation Interfaces

Direct manipulation interfaces present the interface to the user in the form of visual models (i.e. icons or objects). For this reason, direct manipulation interfaces are sometimes called as iconic interface. In this type of interface, the user issues commands by performing actions on the visual representations of the objects, e.g. pull an icon representing a file into an icon representing a trash box, for deleting the file. Important advantages of iconic interfaces include the fact that the icons can be recognized by the users very easily, and that icons are language-independent. However, direct manipulation interfaces can be considered slow for experienced users. Also, it is difficult to give complex commands using a direct manipulation interface. For example, if one has to drag an icon representing the file to a trash box icon for deleting a file, then in order to delete all the files in the directory one has to perform this operation individually for all files – which could be very easily done by issuing a command like delete *.*.

Source by www.tuition.net.in