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(Do What IMean) A design philosophy that causes the software to figure out what the user means without implicitly stating it. In the mid-1960s, the term DWIM originated with Warren Teitelman's BBN LISP language, which corrected common typing errors when programming. As a result, automatic spelling correction is considered a DWIM concept. See BBN.
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construct DWIM (do what I mean) capabilities for household, educational, commercial, and industrial appliances, yielding machines that infer the desires and intentions of the users and cooperate with them in achieving their aims.
Making computers easier to use: use of multi-modal interfaces, DWIM techniques, intelligent help, advice giving agents, and cognitive models;
For example, if the user issued a command referring to a nonexistent file, DWIM would not issue an error message but try a spelling correction on the file name.