The Demonstrational Interfaces Project at CMU

The Demonstrational Interfaces Project at CMU has been investigating various aspects of demonstrational interfaces for the last eight years. During this time, we have created six interactive software building tools that use demonstrational techniques, as well as an architecture to support demonstrational programming in general. In addition, we have created a demonstrational Visual Shell (iconic interface to a file system, like the Macintosh Finder), a demonstrational text formatter, and a demonstrational charting tool. There are three fundamental research questions we explore through these tools: how to give the user appropriate feedback and control over inferencing, appropriate algorithms for inferencing, and which domains are appropriate for demonstrational techniques. This paper summarizes our activities, approach and lessons learned.