Applying direct manipulation concepts: direct manipulation dik operating system (DMDOS)

Software engineers are often called upon to design user interfaces, but strategies and guidelines are only beginning to emerge. Shneiderman (1983) introduced the term "Direct Manipulation" to describe user interfaces which have:1) continuous representation of the objects of interest.2) physical actions (movement and selection by mouse, joystick, touch screen, etc.) or labeled button presses instead of complex Syntax.3) rapid, incremental, reversible operations whose impact on the object of interest is immediately visible.4) layered or spiral approach to learning that permits usage with minimal knowledge.The concepts of direct manipulation has been applied in some distinctive systems such as XEROX STAR and APPLE Macintosh, and many application software products such as spread sheets, word processors, drawing tools, desk-top managers, etc.However, the basic software of personal computers, the operating system, is still often based on command language concepts. This paper describes DMDOS (Direct Manipulation Disk Operating System), that we designed by applying the concepts of direct manipulation. to MS-DOS on the IBM PC.