This part of ISO 9241 provides guidance on the design of direct manipulation dialogues. In direct manipulation dialogues the user directly acts on objects on the screen; for example, by pointing at them, moving them and/or changing their physical characteristics (or values) via the use of an input device. Such objects are typically
concrete, often graphical, representations of abstract software structures or capabilities and generally fall into two categories.
a) Task object a metaphorical representation of a real-world artefact manipulated to support the user s task (e.g. a sheet of paper, pen, spanner, graph).
b) Interface object an object introduced into the interface so that the user can perform tasks related to the use of the computer application or system. This introduced object may be a real-world object but the metaphor is not directly related to the user s real work task (e.g. button, slider, window, screen).
Objects and their representations on the display are referred to as objects, except where it is necessary to make a clear distinction.
Interfaces that use stereoscopic or virtual reality-type interfaces are not covered in this part of ISO 9241.
In practice, the term direct manipulation is often used interchangeably with graphical user interfaces (GUIs).
However, within GUIs other dialogue techniques, such as menu dialogues or command dialogues, are often implemented as well. Though GUIs can provide many direct manipulation features, not every user input in GUIs can be interpreted as direct manipulation. For example, printing a document by moving a document icon upon a printer
icon implies a higher degree of direct manipulation than a mouse click on a push button labelled "print".
This part of ISO 9241 covers usability issues of direct manipulation dialogues. Recommendations on GUI components are given only if they are related specifically to features of direct manipulation.
Features of dir (. (...abbreviated)
Der Teil 16 der EN ISO 9241 behandelt Fragestellungen zur Gebrauchstauglichkeit in Bezug auf die Dialogführung mittels direkter Manipulation und gibt dabei Hilfestellung für die Gestaltung. Bei der Dialogführung mittels direkter Manipulation bearbeitet der Benutzer die auf dem Bildschirm dargestellten Objekte direkt, wobei die Norm Unterscheidungen trifft zwischen Objekten der Arbeitsaufgabe und dem Objekt der Benutzungsschnittstelle. Benutzungsschnittstellen mit stereoskopischen Komponenten oder Techniken der virtuellen Realität werden in dieser Norm nicht behandelt. Einige der angeführten Empfehlungen sind nur bedingt anwendbar und zwar jene, die in einem für sie relevanten Komplex zu beachten sind. Empfehlungen zu Komponenten graphischer Benutzungsschnittstellen werden nur dann angeführt, wenn sie sich direkt auf die Dialogführung mittels direkter Manipulation beziehen.