User interface specification and modeling in an object oriented environment for automatic software development

Software product line (SPL) is a software engineering paradigm for software development. A software product within a product line often has specific functionalities that are not common to all other products within the product line. Those specific functionalities are termed “variant features” in a product line. SPL paradigm involves the modeling of variant features. However, little work in SPL investigates and addresses the modeling of variant features specific to user interface (UI). Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the de facto modeling language for object-oriented software systems. It is known that UML needs better support in modeling UIs. Thus, much research developed UML extensions to improve UML support in modeling UIs. Yet little of this work is related to developing such extensions for modeling UIs for SPLs in which variant features specific to UI modeling must be addressed. This research develops a UML extension -Web User Interface Modeling Language (WUIML) to address these problems. WUIML defines elements for modeling variant features specific to user interfaces for Web-based SPLs. The model elements in WUIML extend from the metaclass and BasicActivity of the UML2.0 metamodel. WUIML integrates the modeling of variant features specific to user interfaces to UML. For example, in a Web-based patient registration software product line, member products targeting British users may use British date format in the user interface, while member products targeting United States users may use United States date format in the user interface. Thus, this is a variant feature for this product line. WUIML defines a model element, XOR, to represent such exclusive or conditions in a product line user interface model. WUIML would reduce SPL engineers’ efforts needed in UI development. To validate the WUIML research outcome, a case study was conducted. The results of this empirical study indicate that modeling UIs for Web-based SPLs using WUIML is more effective and efficient than using standard UML.

Interface consistency is an important basic concept in web design and has an effect on performance and satisfaction of end users. Consistency also has significant effects on the learning performance of both expert and novice end users. Consequently, the evaluation of consistency within a e-learning system and the ensuing eradication of irritating discrepancies in the user interface redesign is a big issue. In this paper, we report of our experiences with the Shadow Expert Technique (SET) during the evaluation of the consistency of the user interface of a large university learning management system. The main objective of this new usability evaluation method is to understand the interaction processes of end users with a specific system interface. Two teams of usability experts worked independently from each other in order to maximize the objectivity of the results. The outcome of this SET method is a list of recommended changes to improve the user interaction processes, hence to facilitate high consistency.

This chapter presents the visual Formal Interaction Logic Language (FILL) for the description of executable user interface models. This modeling approach is based on an architecture called 3LA, which separates a user interface from its outward appearance as a set of interaction elements called physical representation, and its functional part called interaction logic, which connects the physical representation with the system to be controlled. The latter refers in general terms to a business model of an interactive system, where the interaction logic is further meant to describe dialog-specific aspects, e.g., the availability of widgets depending on the system state or other widgets. FILL is algorithmically transformed to reference nets, a special type of Petri nets, which makes it executable and equips FILL with formal semantics through the formal semantics of reference nets. FILL models are modularization which enables the description of multidevice user interface models as well as the reuse and exchange of parts of the model. For the creation and execution of FILL-based user interface models, the UIEditor tool is presented. It offers editors for modeling the physical representation and the modularized FILL-based interaction logic. It further implements the transformation algorithm for generating reference nets out of a given FILL model and finally the execution environment for the user interface model. The applicability of this modeling approach will be shown by means of a case study for the control of a simplified nuclear power plant. The chapter will conclude with a broader view to future challenges this approach is facing.

User interfaces represent a major part in software products. Generally, it is difficult to document the content and the structure of the user interface. However, there is a need to save and preserve the overall state and structure of the user interface for later communication and modifications in requirements, design and implementation. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) storage format should be universal and can be transferred from one application to another (such as XML). GUI states are usually defined as the overall combination of properties of all the components or widgets of the GUI This paper suggests an alternative back end representation of user interfaces and their state from their original format within the applications. The user interface model is transformed to a schema saved in an XML file. The schema structure represents the user interface state. This state considers only the structure of the user interface and ignores controls' specific properties. XML format is widely used and accepted by many applications. It is the infrastructure language for web pages and database management systems. User interface documentation is useful for future evaluation and comparison, useful for stakeholders' communication. It is also for some GUI testing activities such as regression testing where we trigger testing if there is a change in the user interface.

The South Australian lobster fishery management model

The ongoing utilization of computer technologies in all areas of life leads to the development of smart environments comprising numerous networked devices and resources. Interacting in and with such environments requires new interaction paradigms, abstracting from single interaction devices to utilize the environment as interaction space. Using a networked set of interaction resources allows supporting multiple modalities and new interaction techniques, but also requires the consideration of the set of devices and the adaptation to this set at runtime. While the generation of user interfaces based on UI models, although still challenging, has been widely researched, the runtime processing and delivery of the derivable user interfaces has gained less attention. Delivering distributed user interfaces while maintaining their interdependencies and keeping them synchronized is not a trivial problem. In this paper we present an approach to realize a runtime environment, capable of distributing user interfaces to a varying set of devices to support multimodal interaction based on a user interface model and the management of interaction resources.Keywordsmultimodal distributed user interfacesmodel-based user interfaceshuman-computer interactionsmart environments

This paper describes the user interface and interaction model of a system for Personal Environment Control -- the PECo System.The Personal Environment Controller (PECo) is a digital assistant system that provides the user with a unified facility for organizing and accessing the different media repositories at his disposal and for direct manipulation of his physical environment (projectors, TV sets, hi-fi systems, Lights, shutters, etc.).

This paper discusses the design and applications of an object-oriented user interface management system (UIMS). Specifically, the Lockheed User Interface System (LUIS) is described. LUIS is based on a user interface model that includes declarative and procedural components. The package has been used by both non-programmers and programmers in several applications at Lockheed. Experiences derived from applications of the package are used to address several key issues in the UIMS field, such as procedural versus declarative specification, separation of the user interface from applications, UIMS flexibility, and UIMS support for design evaluation.

Interacting with the Web of Things

Nowadays very different people use computer systems for their daily working activities, but also for fun and entertainment or only to satisfy their information needs. Designers are doing their best to create computer systems that work as end users expect, but it must be honestly admitted that they often fail and end users have all rights to complain. In order to improve this situation and create better systems, participatory approaches have been proposed, which involve end users in the design and development process. However, this solution is not without flaws, mainly because timing and ways of users' participation are very critical. In this paper we discuss our approach to create working systems , which is based on a star model of the software life cycle that drives system design, development and evolution, since software design and development is seen as an evolutive process, driven by end-users activities in the real life. System development does not end with its first release; it is experimented by its end users and further evolved on the basis of their feedbacks. End users are truly engaged in the software life cycle as co-designers and experimenters of the software tools they will use in various application domains.

Research into eyes-free mobile reading devices has grown in recent years. This research has focused mainly on the image processing required by such a device, with a lower emphasis on the user interaction. In this paper, a model of a voice user interface (VUI) for a mobile reading device is presented. Three field studies with blind participants were conducted to develop and refine the model. A formal grammar is used to describe the VUI, and a stochastic Petri net was developed to model the complete user-device interaction. Evaluation and analysis of the user testing of a prototype led to empirically derived probabilities of grammar token usage for the commands that comprise the VUI.

This chapter will show you how to use and specialise UML diagrams for describing the user interfaces of a software system. In order to accomplish the description of user interfaces, the proposed technique considers three specialised UML diagrams called user-interaction, user-interface, and GUI-class diagrams, which will be built following a model-driven development (MDD) perspective. These diagrams can be seen as the UML-based UI models of the system. In addition, this chapter is concerned with code-generation to implement the user interfaces of the system by using GUI-class diagrams and user-interaction diagrams. A case study of an Internet book shopping system is introduced in this chapter to proof and illustrate the proposed user interaction and interface design technique.

An emergency can occur at anytime, anywhere and at anyone. The local government offers an application called “Panic Button” as a solution to these problems. This application aims to help people who experience or see emergency conditions so that they can be followed up by the authorities. However, this application has not been targeted for disability users. The procedure for using this application still has weaknesses that make it difficult for users with hearing loss, especially when an emergency event is confirmed. Normally, emergency events confirmation uses telephone calls to the incident reporter (user). This confirmation method is a big problem for those users with disabilities to be able to confirm the details of emergency events. In this research, a user interface re-design was carried out at the application interface to be able to accommodate the users necessary. The user interface modeling is done using the User-Centered Design (UCD) method to produce a user interface design that suits the user’s characteristics and limitations. USE Questionnaire was used to test the resulting prototype and results in a usability value of 87% with an excellent category after the third iteration. These results indicate that the results of the re-design that have been done have met the needs of the deaf, with the use of appropriate communication for people with hearing loss so that they can confirm emergencies properly.

EXPOSE is an expert system with the objective to provide user interface designers with empirical knowledge about common practice of the application domain, with software-ergonomic (HCI-) knowledge comprised from psychology and ergonomics research findings and with procedural knowledge about a principled approach (design rationale) to user interface design. The system provides the designer with a tool to describe the design decisions for a specific user interface subsequently in four models in order to reduce the design complexity: a conceptual model, a model of the dialog structure, a concretized model of the user interface and the prototype, following the four views of MUSE (Method for User Interface Engineering).

Performance analysis has always been an integral part of a computer architect's agenda. However, the term performance is used largely to measure “speed”. The dictionary defines performance more broadly as “the manner in which or the efficiency with which something reacts or fulfills its intended purpose”. In today's internet based on line computing environment, performance has taken a broader view. For example, power and energy efficiency is becoming as or more important measures of system performance as speed of computation. The industry's ability to deliver speed has outpaced the ability of most applications to consume it effectively. This talk will discuss how performance is viewed in the world of on line web services from an end user's point of view.