scope:

Gives guidance on the design of direct manipulation dialogues. In direct manipulation dialogues the user directly acts on objects on the screen; e.g., by pointing at them, moving them and/or changing their physical characteristics (or values) via the use of an input device. Such objects are typically concrete, often grahpical, representations of abstract software structures or capabilities and generally fall into two categories: a) Task object - a metaphorical representation of a real world artefact manipulated to the user's task (e.g., a sheet of paper, pen, spanner, graph). b) Interface object - an object introduced into the interface in order that the user can perform tasks related to the use of the computer application or system. This may be a real world object but the metaphor is not directly related to the user's real work task (e.g. button, slider, window, screen).