A Graphical Interface to an Economist´s Workstation

The International Monetary Fund has undertaken a project to develop a prototype economist´s workstation. Interviews revealed first that the workstation must have facilities for the acquisition, analysis, and display of economic and financial data. In addition, the work load and travel schedule of desk economists require that the workstation support the rapid prototyping of economic analyses and be usable with minimal training and external documentation. To develop a prototype with these characteristics, the artificial intelligence rapid prototyping methodology was adopted. The rich software environment of Interlisp and the display-oriented features of Xerox 1108 were exploited in developing Tisp, a time-series procession. The prototyping effort concluded with a review of the prototype workstation by 15 desk economists.