PRESENTATION AND FORM IN USER-INTERFACE ARCHITECTURE.

The increased software usability is considered. Emphasis on ease of learning and use is directed at the recently discovered software component, the user interface. Unfortunately, these two trends can often be at odds. The upshot of the conflict is that people using end-user systems frequently lose track of where they are and what they are trying to do. They can produce tangles of errors and ad hoc recovery behaviors that no manual (on-line or off) can anticipate or analyze. Two directions are pursued to achieve quality in user-interfaces: architectural presentation and architectural form. The distinction between both is made and discussed.