The AUSOM Application Design Framework

AUSOM is an acronym for A User State of Mind — the name of a framework or architecture for designing software applications that are easier to design, implement, test, document and support. In addition, an application developed using the AUSOM framework is more capable of being: incrementally enhanced, progressively installed and updated, dynamically configured and is capable of being implemented in many execution environments. This paper describes the Core Framework, the status of its current runtime implementations and its additional features and benefits.

What is AUSOM?

The AUSOM Application Design Framework is a new way to design client-side applications. The original implementation of the framework is based on a few basic concepts: user scenarios and detailed task analysis, visual design using state-transition diagrams, and implementation using traditional Windows message handlers.

The original motivation for the framework grew out of the need to implement a highly modeless user interface that was comprised of commands or tasks that were very modal (e.g. allowing the user to change how a polygon was being viewed while the user was still sketching the boundary of the polygon).

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