Intelligent Presentation: The Generation Problem for User Interfaces Jock Mackinlay Thesis Proposal

Effective communication is fundamental to many definitions of intelligence, including Turing's test [23]. The communication between computers and humans, which is only one aspect of this general topic, is the basic concern of this research. Effective communication requires competence in two related areas: interpretation of messages and generation of messages. Effective generation must take into account how messages are going to be interpreted, and successful interpretation must take into account how and why messages are generated. This thesis proposal describes research on the generation of effective communication by a computer system for a human user of that system.