Integrated Information Manipulation Systems (IMS) - A Cognitive View

The personal computer of the future will offer its owner an information manipulatio, 9~stem (IMS). It will be a totally integrated system being able to manipulate arbitrary information structures, eg programs, prose, graphical objects and sound. An IMS will be an important step towards achieving the goal that we can do all our work on-line -placing in computer store all of our specifications, plans, designs, programs, docummentation, reports, memos, bibliography and reference notes and doing all of our scratch work, planning, designing, debugging and most of our intercommunication via the consoles. We outline the basic principles underlying the design of an INS. We discuss the cognitive dimensions (specifically for text processing and programming systems) which should serve as the design criteria for systems whose goal is to reduce the cognitive burden and augment the capabilities of a human user.