Juan Manuel Gonzalez Calleros

A Method for Developing 3D User Interfaces of Information Systems

A transformational method for developing tri-dimensional user interfaces of interactive information systems is presented that starts from a task model and a domain model to progressively derive a final user interface. This method consists of three steps: deriving one or many abstract user interfaces from a task model and a domain model, deriving one or many concrete user interfaces from each abstract interface, and producing the code of the final user interfaces corresponding to each concrete interface. To ensure the two first steps, trans-formations are encoded as graph transformations performed on the involved models expressed in their graph equivalent. In addition, a graph grammar gathers relevant graph transformations for accomplishing the sub-steps involved in each step. Once a concrete user interface is resulting from these two first steps, it is converted in a development environment for 3D user interfaces where it can be edited for fine tuning and personalization. From this environment, the user interface code is automatically generated. The method is defined by its steps, input/output, and exemplified on a case study. By expressing the steps of the method through transformations between models, the method adheres to Model-Driven Engineering paradigm where models and transformations are explicitly defined and used

Towards a Library of Workflow User Interface Patterns

A collection of user interface design patterns for workflow infor ma tion systems is presented. Each Workflow User Interface Pattern (WUIP) is characterized by properties expressed in the PLML markup language for expressing patterns and augmented by additional attributes and models at tached to the pattern: the abstract user interface and the corresponding task model. These models are specified in a User Interface Description Langua ge. All WUIPs are stored in a library and can be retrieved within a workflow editor that links each workflow pattern to its corresponding WUIP, thus giving rise to a user interface for each workflow pattern. The software then gathers these UIs and the ones corresponding to workflow tasks into a user interface flow, a new concept introduced for specifying the intertwining of interfaces used by workers and the workflow manager in a single workflow.

A Method to Design Information Security Feedback Using Patterns and HCI-Security Criteria

To design a user interface of a secure interactive application, a method is provided to designers with guidance in designing an adequate security information feedback using a library of user-interface design patterns integrating security and usability. The resulting feedback is then evaluated against a set of design/evaluation criteria called human–computer interaction for security (HCI-S). In this way, notifications combining visual and auditive channels required to achieve an effective feedback in case of a security issue are explicitly incorporated in the development life cycle.

Advance human---machine interface automatic evaluation

The need for accessibility evaluation tools is motivated by several endogenous and exogenous reasons coming from the end user (the designer and the developer) and companies releasing information systems. Existing evaluation tools mainly concentrate on examining the code of Web pages: Web pages more and more frequently contain non-HTML parts that entirely escape from being treated by existing techniques. This is the case of the advanced human–machine interface (AHMI), a piece of software programmed in C/C++, used for controlling the advanced flight management system in the aircraft cockpit. Studying this new user interface (UI) requires a structured approach to evaluate and validate AHMI designs. The goal in this work is to develop an evaluation tool to automate the process of evaluating the AHMI. The method addresses: support of multiple bases of guidelines (accessibility or usability or both) on-demand (partial or total evaluation), with different levels of details (a presentation for developers and for those responsible for certifying accessibility). The method goes a step toward the automatic evaluation of UI containing non-HTML parts.

A Pattern Methodology to Specify Usable Security in Websites

This paper presents an overview of a new pattern methodology which is oriented to achieve basic usability and security design requirements in websites. We emphasize the need of adequate and uniform guidelines useful to incorporate essential security and usability aspects in websites. In order to diminish this problem a methodology is provided to developers with guidance in designing a trustworthy environment through an effective feedback in case of a security issue are explicitly incorporated in the development life cycle. Our proposal integrates several collections of design patterns (based on HCI-S design criteria), complemented with measurement models (based on Goal Question Metrics, GQM, approach) to evaluate the obtained results.

Activity Theory as a Framework for Activity Taxonomy in HCI

In this article, the Activity Theory (AT) is analyzed to take it as a basis for the definition of an Activity classification Model of Interactive Systems called: Activity Taxonomy (ATx) for Interactive Systems. Our purpose is to use the ATx for: a. Set discussions about the effectiveness of the artifacts used in software engineering to specify the activity, b. The incorporation of the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in the processes of software development, c. Definition of the minimum activity classifiers to specify interactive systems that promote HCI, d. Evaluation and integration of languages and/or software development processes, e. Promote normalization of the artifacts used in the specification of software, f. The specification of the execution models of interactive systems. This paper focuses specifically on b, c, d and f.

Patterns of Interaction Description Including Aspects of Constraints

Interaction patterns emerge as a solution for creating successful interactive systems, aiming mainly to solve a problem of an end-user interaction with a user interface, these patterns may be linked through the interaction pattern languages. Over time, various proposals have suggested such patterns, and its definition have been raised different formats describing patterns, in which the author is free to decide what elements or characteristics considered in its definition. This article is primarily concerned with showing how a template for defining patterns are selected. This is part of a research project that aims to propose a language interaction patterns for the design of software products focused on the user experience. To this end, it has carried out a conceptual review of some of the different formats describing patterns hitherto proposed and defined what elements or characteristics used, the findings have been compared with the application of a survey expert knowledge on the subject of patterns on the level of importance of the features found.

Task-Driven Plasticity: One Step Forward with UbiDraw

Task-driven plasticity refers to as the capability of a user interface to exhibit plasticity driven by the users task, i.e. the capability of a user interface to adapt itself to various contexts of use while preserving some predefined usability properties by performing adaptivity based on some task parameters such as complexity, frequency, and criticality. The predefined usability property considered in task-driven plasticity consists of maximizing the observability of user commands in a system-initiated way driven by the ranking of different tasks and sub-tasks. In order to illustrate this concept, we developed UbiDraw, a vectorial hand drawing application that adapts its user interface by displaying, undisplaying, resizing, and relocating tool bars and icons according to the current users task, the task frequency, or the users preference for some task. This application is built on top of a context watcher and a set of ubiquitous widgets. The context watchers probes the context of use by monitoring how the user is carrying out her current tasks (e.g., task preference, task frequency) whose definitions are given in a run-time task model. The context watcher sends this information to the ubiquitous widgets so as to support task-driven plasticity.

How to Describe Workflow Information Systems to Support Business Process

This paper addresses a methodology for developing the various user interfaces (UI) of a workflow information system (WIS), which are advocated to automate business processes, following a model-centric approach based on the requirements and processes of the organization. The methodology applies to: 1) integrate human and machines based activities, in particular those involving interaction with IT applications and tools, 2) to identify how tasks are structured, who perform them, what their relative order is, how they are offered or assigned, and how tasks are being tracked. For this purpose, workflow is recursively decomposed into processes which are in turn decomposed into tasks. Each task gives rise to a task model whose structure, ordering, and connection with the domain model allows the automated generation of corresponding UIs in a transformational approach.