DMS—A system for defining and managing human-computer dialogues

As the complexity of human-computer interfaces increases, those who use such interfaces as well as those responsible for their design have recognized an urgent need for substantive research in the human factors of software development. Because of the magnitude of the task of producing software for human-computer interfaces, appropriate tools are needed for defining and improving such interfaces, both in research and in production environments. DMS (dialogue management system) is a complete system for defining, modifying, simulating, executing, and monitoring human-computer dialogues. It is based upon the hypotheses that: (1) dialogue software should be designed separately from the code that implements the computational parts of an application, and (2) different roles are defined for the dialogue author and the programmer to achieve that goal. This paper discusses several of the technical aspects underlying the design of DMS.