published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

by Siu Hon-chung. / Bibliography: leaves [63]-[64] / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1985

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries / Department: Computer Science.

Typescript (photocopy) / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

A persistent problem among researchers in office automation has been the absence of a comprehensive theory of office information systems. Commercial software such as spreadsheet and financial packages provide only limited support for tasks such as developing balance sheets and income statements. It also supports only limited software integration, usually at the interface and data levels. A model of an office is proposed as a basis for developing integrated office systems. Prior approaches to this problem have been mostly limited to only one or two aspects of the office with the exclusion of others. These approaches have been characterized as forms, data, information, procedural, functional, communication, and decision oriented. The integrated model synthesizes these different views of the office. The proposed model consists of macroscopic and microscopic components. The macroscopic structure is modelled with a semantic network which describes how "functions" of the office are related to one another. The lower level component of the model consists of "procedures" which support the functions described by the functional structure. These procedures use utilities and tools at a lower level of accomplishing standard operations. Thus support for functions is provided through procedures which rely on utilities at a lower level. The model is operationalized with a knowledge base/database containing the necessary knowledge/data for accomplishing the functions and procedures. Detailed designs of the components of the architecture are presented. A prototype based on the design has been implemented in Prolog. The contribution of the dissertation has five dimensions: these are the literature review, the office study, the conceptual model, and a prototype office system. The literature review provides a clarification of concepts and identification of research problems. The office study contributes to a better understanding of analyzing offices from the point of view of modelling. The conceptual model is a good starting point for designing and developing integrated office systems. The prototype system demonstrates the feasibility of the model for developing an integrated office system.

In order to effectively design an automated office system, it is necessary to understand the nature of office procedures and interactions. In the design of any office system, characterization and formalization of the information flow through the office are important factors in the attainment of effective system design. A model has been developed by defining office components and their representation in terms of system objects, attributes and relations. The model is based on a set of rules specified in a manner that supports analysis of system completeness and consistency. The model representation has been combined into an office specification system which consists of a specification language and analysis software. Using the system presented, information flow through an office can be characterized and formalized. The system provides the capability of categorizing data into one of a number of data types and of tracking data as it travels through an office. These capabilities provide information necessary to eliminate redundant data, indicate incomplete data, and specify useless data. Through the use of analyzer reports and analysis software, system completeness and consistency are determined.

This dissertation presents the GDI (Goal Directed Interface) approach to the user interface for office systems. The primary objectives of the approach are to create an interface that (1) requires little user training and (2) tries to perform higher level task activities (ex. 'schedule a meeting') that have been excluded from computerization in the past. The GDI technique (1) postulates a simple model of the office environment consisting of persons, things, and processes, and a decomposable goal set, (2) represents knowledge in the office environment through rules, frames, and scripts, and object-oriented programming techniques, (3) creates an iconic visual representation consisting of persons, things, and processes that closely mimics the user's 'mental model' of the office world, (4) requires that the user's own 'person icon' be present for all interactions so that actions appear to take place in a user controllable context (the user's icon is, literally, in the interface), (5) provides a 'selection window' through which the user communicates his/her goal by grouping relevant icons, (6) uses a rule-based expert system to examine an icon configuration and, through its expertise, derives a user goal (despite ambiguous or faulty icon placements), (7) attempts to complete the user goal through the use of scripts and multiple expert systems.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries / Department: Computer Science.

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