Another consideration that has a bearing on dialog design is the use of commands to initiate dialog flows.
When designing dialogs, particularly loosely structured ones, a number of instances arise in which a command is needed merely to initiate a dialog flow. When this is the case, you should adopt some standard. These standards will allow the users to easily distinguish between commands that directly perform “real work” (such as adding a customer, canceling an order, or displaying a report) and commands that indirectly invoke another procedure that performs the work.
An example standard is to prefix with an X all commands that cause a flow. For example, ADD, CANCEL and DISPLAY are appropriate for adding customers, canceling orders, and displaying reports. The commands XADD, XCANCEL and XMENU can mean “transfer to the Add Customer procedure,” “transfer to the Cancel Order procedure,” and “transfer to the MENU procedure” respectively. This distinction eases maintenance.
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