Decision Making for Sustainable Use and Development - Coastal Lagoons: Ecosystem Processes and Modeling for Sustainable Use and Development - page 346

• Hybrid User Interfaces: These interfaces have graphical and command

line-based parts. A hybrid user interface consists of many computer pro-
grams interacting with each other and working together. Usually the
graphical part takes the management of the command line-based parts.
The command line-based parts interact with the raw data and the graphical
part is responsible for visualization of modeling data.

8.4.4.2 What Can a User Interface Do?

A user interface will help a user enter the correct data in the correct format. A
situation may arise, when a user makes a mistake when entering data, which cannot
be detected by the model. A user interface will detect the error and ask the user for
a correct entry, before running the model with invalid input data. Another thing a
user interface can do is to create a model input file from different data sources such
as databases or GIS data. A new user of a model would find a GUI very useful,
because he or she would not need to deal with data formats of a model and could
concentrate on other things. Some modeling packages have grid generators, which
use GIS data to create computational grids for the models.
Some user interfaces also have post-processing facilities, which are even more
important in analyzing and visualizing the results after a model has been run. Some
models may create output files, which might be several hundred pages long. A
graphical post-processor, which is a part of the user interface can make the long
output file more understandable and accessible. Some of these post-processors can
create outputs for GIS, making it even easier for the user to interpret the results.
User interfaces can do a lot of work for the user, and they make the lives of
scientists, engineers, and managers easier, but they cannot do all the work for the
users. The data analysis, preparation of the input data with valid and correct param-
eters, and interpretation of the results are (and will be) three important tasks that
should be accomplished by the user(s). The user must never forget that “garbage
in” means “garbage out.” There are many cases where impressive and “colorful”
results with no physical meaning were obtained from simulations within a few hours
of computational time. So the user interface only helps the user to get rid of the
information technology details.

8.4.4.3 Design and Development of User Interfaces

Three important steps in a user interface development process are planning, visual
design, and code writing.
In the case of GUI and hybrid user interface development, the visual design is
very important. User interfaces may get data from different sources such as electronic
spreadsheet and database files. Another important issue in user interface design is
presentation of outputs. Because model outputs may be used in scientific or engineer-
ing reports, they should be converted into readable data with a desktop publishing
software package used for report writing.
The most important concept in user interface design as a part of a modeling
software package is feasibility. Many information technologies such as object