Transient Posture

This is a term invented by Alan Cooper in his seminal work About Face - The Essentials of Interaction Design (buy it; it's brilliant). A program that runs in transient posture is subsidiary to the main application(s) that the user is running; it demands total attention from the user, but only briefly. Dialogs are typical transient programs.

See this article by Cooper describing the main application postures.

See also: SovereignPosture, DaemonicPosture

-- Contributors: CrawfordCurrie - 22 Jul 2007

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