Operational Complexity of Direct Manipulation Tasks in a Windows Environment

Authors

  • John Maltby Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v2i2.402

Keywords:

complexity, communication theory, Microsoft Windows, Markov

Abstract

A method to quantify operational complexity of direct manipulation tasks in a windows environment is discussed. The method utilises a formula from communication theory due to Shannon and Weaver which describes the uncertainty H(p1,p2,...pn) in outcome of an event which is the result of a Markov process where the individual events have probabilities of occurrence P1,p2,-Pn- A taxonomy of basic windows operations is developed for Microsoft Windows and used to show that a windows dialogue can also be described as a Markov process. The H formula is then applied to determine the total complexity of a sequence of basic windows operations and thus provide some measure of the complexity of a given task as seen by the user. An estimate of the total entropy of a Microsoft Windows language source is obtained, indicating that the redundancy of windows dialogue is about 28%.

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Published

1995-05-01

How to Cite

Maltby, J. (1995). Operational Complexity of Direct Manipulation Tasks in a Windows Environment. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v2i2.402

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 2 (1995)

Section

Research Articles

License

AJIS publishes open-access articles distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Non-Commercial and Attribution License which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and AJIS are credited. All other rights including granting permissions beyond those in the above license remain the property of the author(s).