Question

The goal of designing a direct manipulation interface is to make use of the system intuitive to the end user. Direct-manipulation interfaces are now being used for a wide range of purposes.

Describe how direct manipulation interfaces are designed in the following applications.

1. Checkbook maintenance and checkbook searching interface

2. Airline reservation system

Answer 1

1) Direct Manipulation Interface is Human Machine Interaction using Graphical user Interface. It is very effective because the changes made by user are directly could be seen on screen immediately.

a) Checkbook maintenance and checkbook searching interface :

The design of checkbook maintenance and checkbook searching interface would be something like where user can see the details of his checkbook like check number , amount , payee , date etc. For example "Quicken" is a software that displays checkbook register where it could display check number , amount , payee , date. New entries could be made easily and user can make a check mark near to the transaction that is verified.User can also search for specific payee by typing his name in a field and the pressing search button.

b) Airline Reservation System :

There are multiple application that provides a direct manipulation interface for booking flight. For Example "MakeMyTrip" is a web based application where user can first select the source city and destination city and then select the date of journey. Based on this details , he would be able to see prices of flights on that day. He could sort flights based on cheapest , time of arrival , fastest.