Josefina Guerrero-García

A Theoretical Survey of User Interface Description Languages: Preliminary Results

A user interface description language (UIDL) consists of a specification language that describes various aspects of a user interface under development. A comparative review of some selected user interface description languages is produced in order to analyze how they support the various stages of user interface development life cycle and development goals, such as support for multi-platform, device-independence, modality independence, and content delivery. There has been a long history and tradition to attempt capturing the essence of user interfaces at various levels of abstraction for different purposes, including those of development. The recent return of this effort today gains more attraction, along with the dissemination of XML markup languages, and gives birth to many proposals for various user interface description languages. Consequently, an in-depth analysis of the salient features that make these languages different from each other is desired in order to identify when and where they are appropriate for a specific purpose. The review is conducted based on a systematic analysis grid and some user interfaces implemented with these languages.

Towards Canonical Task Types for User Interface Design

Task models are the cornerstone of user-centred design methodologies for user interface design. Therefore, they deserve attention in order to produce them effectively and efficiently, while guaranteeing the reproducibility of a task model: different persons should in principle obtain the same task model, or a similar one, for the same problem. In order to provide user interface designers with some guidance for task modelling, a list of canonical task types is proposed that offers a unified definition of frequently used tasks types in a consistent way. Each task type consists of a task action coupled with a task object, each of them being written according to design guidelines. This list provides the following benefits: tasks are modelled in a more consistent way, their definition is more communicable and shared, task models can be efficiently used for model-driven engineering of user interfaces.

A Model-Based Approach for Developing Vectorial User Interfaces

This paper presents a model-based approach for developing vectorial user interfaces to an interactive applications, whether it is a web or a stand-alone applications. A vectorial user interface exhibits the capability of being rescaled in any dimension without any loss of information, while taking advantage of the screen real estate offered by the computing platform on which the interactive application is running. A model describes the vectorial user interface in order to capture its presentation and behavior in a way that is independent of any context of use. Implemented as a browser plug-in, a rendering engine parses this model at run-time so as to render the user interface bounded with the domain, thus producing together a running application. This facilitates platform adaptation, since the interface scales up or down depending on the screen resolution and user adaptation since the model can change from one session to another. The interface is then re-rendered with adaptation for the benefit of the end user. Both platform and user adaptations contribute to making the web application accessible in a ubiquitous way.

Evolutionary design of user interfaces for workflow information systems

In this paper we argue that user interface design should evolve from iterative to evolutionary in order to support the user interface development life cycle in amore flexible way. Evolutionary design consists of taking any input that informs to the lifecycle at any level of abstraction and its propagation through inferior and superior levels (vertical engineering) aswell as the same level (horizontal engineering). This lifecycle is particularly appropriate when requirements are incomplete, partially unknown or to be discovered progressively. We exemplify this lifecycle by a methodology for developing user interfaces of workflow information systems. The methodology involves several models (i.e., task, process, workflow, domain, context of use) and steps. The methodology applies modeldriven engineering to derive concrete user interfaces from a workflow model imported into a workflow management system in order to run the workflow. Instead of completing each model step by step, any model element is either derived from early requirements or collected in the appropriate model before being propagated in the subsequent steps. When more requirements are elicited, any new element is added at the appropriate level, consolidated with the already existing elements, and propagated to the subsequent levels. A workflow editor has been developed to support the methodology.

Towards Model-Game-Based Rehabilitation Information System

Everyday people suffer accidents at home while doing activities of daily life, resulting in physical and cognitive injuries that need physiotherapy rehabilitation. Some problems of physiotherapy reported by physiotherapists are lack of commitment of the patient, lack of motivation, and lack of immediate feedback conveying patients their progress. Thus, it is very frequents that patients abandon their therapy. This paper presents our research towards the development of a model-game-based rehabilitation information system. Our proposal being model-based allows easy integration of games which is a step forward compared to existing work from the literature, where is majorly art-based and lack of design knowledge, if exists, to reproduce their solutions. With the advancement of technology, mainly Internet and plug-ins, our system is available for patients, who only need a device and Internet to run the application. Specialists can monitor their progress, allowing patients to make their rehabilitation at the time that they can.

Methodology for the development of vocal user interfaces

Natural User Interfaces allow users to interact with systems similarly as they interact with people. Human communications occur, mostly, in an oral way, since personal dialogs to phone calls and more recently in complain or information systems; the tendency is to automate some of these activities so the user might complete tasks in a more efficient way. The necessity for having a methodology that supports the development of vocal interfaces is therefore taking interest on it. The objective for this sample paper is to establish a methodology and to describe a set of rules that might be used for developing a software tool to generate code for multiplatform vocal User Interfaces from models.

Getting Research Findings into Practice: Guidelines to Produce Quality Software Engineering Diagrams to Assist Novice Engineers

Computer Diagrams are the communication mechanism among the different stakeholders of the software development lifecycle. While they are though at school, and promoted to be used by students for current and future projects, we still do not see full adoption in real life context. The literature reviewed points out some reasons related to this issue and propose some solutions, but still the problem persist. In this paper, we present our findings of three years of research at the University while working with senior students on real-life projects. Different methodologies were used as an iterative process, improving the quality of the results year by year. We present the lesson learned including guidelines on how to facilitate novice engineers to adopt diagrams and produce them with high quality standards. The proposal is validated with a real life case study.

Return to Activities of Daily Life: Physiotherapy Rehabilitation with Serious Game

Everyday people suffer from accidents at their home while doing activities of daily life. This results in physical and cognitive injuries that need physiotherapy rehabilitation. Some physiotherapy problems reported by physiotherapists are: lack of patient commitment, lack of motivation and lack of patient feedback to communicate their progress. Thus, it is very frequent that patients abandon their therapy. In this work we investigate the process of creating serious games as a solution to the aforementioned problems. We explore in deep the process of physiotherapy rehabilitation to generate a list of problems and propose a list of requirements as a solution. We present the design using a formal framework to define the analysis, design and some elements of the developed system, which still is in a prototype phase.

An Iterative Method to Design Traffic Flow Models

Existing traffic flow modeling theory lacks of guidelines to construct traffic flow models from scratch. In addition, traffic flow models are mainly analyzed with computer simulation then computer programs are involved in the test of the model. Different methods have been proposed not just from traffic flow but for modeling in general, however, existing methods do not rely on iterative process, which is widely used for designing software. In this paper a methodology to generate traffic models is presented. The methodology proposes an agile iterative process to design traffic flow models. The method has been validated with a real life case study; a model for a sector of the traffic flow in Puebla City. Data were gathered from the city and used to validate the model. In addition, an algorithm to modify the traffic lights’ control accordingly to the global traffic conditions was developed and tested with the collected data. The results show a reduction in traffic density during peak hour for traffic.

Towards the definition of an instrument for usability testing on interactive collaborative applications

The use of technology on educational processes has enriched the traditional teaching system as it provides teachers with tools for reinforcing the knowledge they pass to the students. When defining methodologies for this purpose, it is important to take into account an evaluation phase over the generated products in terms of perception towards the use of technology and collaborative learning, usability, and knowledge skills. The present work is aimed on describing an instrument for usability testing that returns quantitative data about the interaction of preschool children and interactive collaborative applications created following a specific methodology.