Hildeberto Mendonça

User interface derivation from business processes: a model-driven approach for organizational engineering

This paper defines a model-driven approach for organizational engineering in which user interfaces of information systems are derived from business processes. This approach consists of four steps: business process modeling in the context of organizational engineering, task model derivation from the business process model, task refinement, and user interface model derivation from the task model. Each step contributes to specify and refine mappings between the source and the target model. In this way, each model modification could be adequately propagated in the rest of the chain. By applying this model-driven approach, the user interfaces of the information systems are directly meeting the requirements of the business processes and are no longer decoupled from them. This approach has been validated on a case study in a large bank-insurance company.

Towards method engineering of model-driven user interface development

Model-driven user interface development environments and their associated methodologies have evolved over time to become more explicit, flexible, and reusable but they still lack to reach a level that allows tailoring a method to the reality of software development organizations and their projects. In order to address this shortcoming, method engineering provides strategies to define and tailor software engineering methods. They should address any usability concerns, which are primordial for the integration of model-driven user interface development methods in the competitive reality of software organizations. To address the issues of explicitly defining a flexible method, we defined a strategy based on method engineering for model-driven user interface development that uses usability goals as a starting point. With the application of this strategy, we aim to help method engineers executing the method with more efficiency when defining or tailoring methods and facilitate the application of model-based user interface development methods in software organizations.

Applying a multi-criteria approach for the selection of usability patterns in the development of DTV applications

In this paper we describe a multi-criteria approach in which the execution of its steps integrated to a Software Development Process (SDP) allow the generation of the User Interface (UI) Definition Plan, which is an artifact used for UI design of software. This approach applies techniques from Operational Research (OR), and from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), considering diverse criteria (functional and non functional requirements) that have an impact on the interaction design and using usability patterns, respectively. In this text, its main goal was to identify the order of attractiveness of a list of usability patterns for a certain interactive task of Digital TV (DTV) applications, thus allowing the selection of the most appropriate pattern in this new communication resource.

Getting users involved in aligning their needs with business processes models and systems

Purpose – This paper aims to present a case study of the application of a methodology that represents an innovative strategy that integrates researches on interaction design and business process management with practical implications. This methodology is devoted to aligning the needs of enterprise system users with business processes (BPs). Design/methodology/approach – This approach establishes an unbroken network of links between BPs, task models and abstract representations of user interfaces. Once the models are linked, it is possible to identify the impact that any change on these models may produce in other models. The main challenge is to organize the linked models according to the organizational context and manage those links with consistency in order to support improving process efficiency and user productivity. This approach has been applied in a large telecommunications organization during four months with its application in two different projects and validated with a cost-benefit analysis. Findings – Applying this approach in large organizations has demonstrated that: every involved stakeholder is capable of understanding the whole approach in one working day; creating the models and linking them with the corresponding business process models takes around three men/day per core business process; and applying this approach brings up to 60 per cent of return on investment related to process improvement and user experience. Originality/value – The main differentials of this methodology include using simple models; considering light actions; preserving the independence of technology; and adopting a human-oriented approach assuring that every managed information impacts people and not only systems, thus enabling fast adaptation to the business dynamism.

A fusion framework for multimodal interactive applications

This research aims to propose a multi-modal fusion framework for high-level data fusion between two or more modalities. It takes as input low level features extracted from different system devices, analyses and identifies intrinsic meanings in these data. Extracted meanings are mutually compared to identify complementarities, ambiguities and inconsistencies to better understand the user intention when interacting with the system. The whole fusion life cycle will be described and evaluated in an office environment scenario, where two co-workers interact by voice and movements, which might show their intentions. The fusion in this case is focusing on combining modalities for capturing a context to enhance the user experience.

User Interface Development Life Cycle for Business-Driven Enterprise Applications

This work presents how business process models are described in terms of task models to solve traceability issues for large systems. The proposed approach presents a method with activities specifically selected for the scenario of develo-ping user interfaces (UIs) for enterprise applications founded on extensive business processes. Furthermore, some of these activities are detailed to make the work on UIs aligned with business processes. With the use of the tool proposed in this research, it is then possible to identify the UI components that are impacted whenever changes are made on business processes.

Addressing the impact of business process changes on software user interfaces

This paper defines an approach to maintain the work of business process analysis aligned with the work of UI designers. With this approach, models are derived from each other and aligned in order to more efficiently propagate changes when needed. In this way, each model modification could be adequately propagated in the rest of the chain. By applying this model-driven approach, the user interfaces of the information systems are abstracted from models and their interrelationships, thus directly meeting the requirements of the business processes. This approach has been validated on a case study in a large bank-insurance organization and with the implementation of a traceability tool.

High level data fusion on a multimodal interactive application platform

This research aims to propose a multimodal fusion framework for high-level data integration between two or more modalities. It takes as input extracted low level features from different system devices, analyzes and identifies intrinsic meanings in these data through dedicated processes running in parallel. Extracted meanings are mutually compared to identify complementarities, ambiguities and inconsistencies to better understand the user intention when interacting with the system. The whole fusion lifecycle will be described and evaluated in an ambient intelligence scenario, where two co-workers interact by voice and movements, demonstrating their intentions and the system gives advices according to identified needs.This research aims to propose a multimodal fusion framework for high-level data integration between two or more modalities. It takes as input extracted low level features from different system devices, analyzes and identifies intrinsic meanings in these data through dedicated processes running in parallel. Extracted meanings are mutually compared to identify complementarities, ambiguities and inconsistencies to better understand the user intention when interacting with the system. The whole fusion lifecycle will be described and evaluated in an ambient intelligence scenario, where two co-workers interact by voice and movements, demonstrating their intentions and the system gives advices according to identified needs.

Multi-domain framework for multimedia archiving using multimodal interaction

Multimedia content is very rich in terms of meaning, and archiving systems need to be improved to consider such richness. This research proposes archiving improvements to extend the ways of describing content, and enhance user interaction with multimedia archiving systems beyond the traditional text typing and mouse pointing. These improvements consider a set of techniques to segment different kinds of media, a set of indexes to annotate the supported segmentation techniques and an extensible multimodal interaction to make multimedia archiving tasks more user friendly.

A Resource Oriented Multimedia Description Framework

This chapter presents a multimedia archiving framework to describe the content of multimedia resources. This kind of content is very rich in terms of meanings and archiving systems have to be improved to consider such richness. This framework simplifies the multimedia management in existing applications, making it accessible for non-specialized developers. This framework is fully implemented on the REST architectural style, precisely mapping the notion of resource with media artifacts, and scaling to address the growing demand for media. It offers an extensive support for segmentation and annotation to attach semantics to content, helping search mechanisms to precisely index those content. A detailed example of the framework adoption by a medical imaging application for breast cancer diagnosis is presented.